# The cognitive function study which found nobody matched Grant stacks



## Ocean Helm (Aug 25, 2016)

I believe there were about 500 people who were gauged in cognitive function strength and none of them matched Grant stacks in order.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about and can help lead me to this holy grail?

I know it's out there somewhere but for some reason I can't find it in the sea of stuff online.


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## brightflashes (Oct 27, 2015)

Ocean Helm said:


> I believe there were about 500 people who were gauged in cognitive function strength and none of them matched Grant stacks in order.
> 
> Does anyone know what I'm talking about and can help lead me to this holy grail?
> 
> I know it's out there somewhere but for some reason I can't find it in the sea of stuff online.


Did you see this in a scientific journal or referenced in an article? The reason I ask is that it could save me some time searching the journals if it wasn't in one. But it would save even more time if it is in one.

In the mean time, I'll look for statistical analyses and see what I can find. Here's one that I found, but probably not the one you're talking about:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0013164488482018


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## Eric B (Jun 18, 2010)

The Grant stack isn't about relative "strength". (people believing this is what makes typology so hard to understand). It's about different complexes that operate through the different functional perspectives.


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## Dissymetry (Apr 15, 2019)

Eric B said:


> The Grant stack isn't about relative "strength". (people believing this is what makes typology so hard to understand). It's about different complexes that operate through the different functional perspectives.


How do you reconcile this perspective when considering the differentiation of functions?


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## Eric B (Jun 18, 2010)

The complexes are what "differentiate" the functions to begin with! What we're calling "functions" are really divisions of reality, akin to compass directions or past/future. Reality is really undivided, but a conscious entity placed within spacetime then divides it into poles of opposites, some "directions" conscious, unconscious, and partially conscious.

"Complexes" or "ego-states" are lesser senses of "I" in the ego-structure (the ego the main sense of "I"). So these are what divide out (differentiate) the data we associate with the functions (tangible, implicational, impersonal or personal awareness, and external or internal orientation).

Type is really two complexes: the ego itself, which sets the dominant function and attitude (again, carving these perspectives out of reality into what we call "differentiation"), and another complex will support this by choosing a different kind of function (perception if the dominant is judgment, etc.) and the opposite attitude. This then becomes the "auxiliary". The other six possible function-attitude combinations are then picked up by six other complexes that are really reflections of these first two. 
These first two will naturally be the first to "develop", and thus be "strongest", and so the associated functions will generally be "stronger" or "more developed" than the others. But other things can offset this, like being in the grip of one of the other complexes a lot. This might be picked up when one takes a cognitive process "strength" test. And the other six are even less likely to fall into any "strength" order.

That's why they might not match. So we can't expect relative "strengths" to match the Grant (or especially, extended Beebe) order, and thus don't disprove it. The order is not about strength.


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## Ocean Helm (Aug 25, 2016)

brightflashes said:


> Did you see this in a scientific journal or referenced in an article? The reason I ask is that it could save me some time searching the journals if it wasn't in one. But it would save even more time if it is in one.
> 
> In the mean time, I'll look for statistical analyses and see what I can find. Here's one that I found, but probably not the one you're talking about:
> 
> https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0013164488482018


I believe it was in a scientific journal or at least a pseudoscientific-looking publication. It tested for people to fit the IEEE (Ni-Te-Fe-Se) and IEIE (Ni-Te-Fi-Se) as a ranked order from 1 to 4 of their preferred functions and one person fit the IEEE (aka Myers stack) and zero fit the IEIE (aka Grant stack).


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## Eric B (Jun 18, 2010)

The attitude of the tertiary is set by two different complexes (according to Beebe's model). The "Child" (which will orient it as the same attitude as the dominant), and the "Trickster" (which will orient it to the opposite attitude). Beebe says both may actually develop together (because the Trickster protects the Child from stronger complexes in others). 

So _that's_ why the attitude of the tertiary was always ambiguous. (Where the more conscious auxiliary and more suppressed inferior were more definitely the opposite attitude). 
So to list the "shadows" of the four functions, he places them below the inferior, and the Trickster ends up #7. Still, it is really still apart of the tertiary function; just its "shadow". (You can also see the opposite attitude, or "attitude of unconsciousness", as what everything but the dominant _defaults_ to, but then the Child reorients it to the dominant attitude).


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## Catandroid (Jul 9, 2018)

Eric B said:


> The Grant stack isn't about relative "strength". (people believing this is what makes typology so hard to understand). It's about different complexes that operate through the different functional perspectives.


Would the below be a representation of complexes or ego states?

1) 
The awareness unit 
.../.......\
TiNi or TiNe


2)
The awareness unit 
.../.......\
NiTi or NiTe


3)
The awareness unit 
.../.......\
TeNe or TiNe


"According to Jung the dominant function is supported by two auxiliary functions. (In MBTI publications the first auxiliary is usually called the auxiliary or secondary function and the second auxiliary function is usually called the tertiary function.)"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_type


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## VoicesofSpring (Mar 31, 2019)

I only found something about JH Reynierse "The Case Against Type Dynamics" in Journal of psychological types. 
https://www.capt.org/research/article/JPT_Vol69_0109.pdf

Good luck to find what you are looking for, could be interesting read !


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## Eric B (Jun 18, 2010)

Catandroid said:


> Would the below be a representation of complexes or ego states?
> 
> 1)
> The awareness unit
> ...


I take it, that's from that “Objective Personality” system that's gained a lot of attention?
This sort of thing comes about because people don't think in terms of specific complexes setting the order; they think it's just arbitrarily stacked (based on the whims of “the Grantians”), so why can't things be changed up a bit?

But the complexes take up one function each. What you're showing there would consist of pairs of complexes shown by their associated functions.
TiNe would be an INTP's ego (or “Hero”) plus “Caretaker” complexes, defining the type. 
TiNi could bi an ISTP's Hero plus Child. 
TeNe could be an ESTJ's Hero plus Child.

As stated before, the Child can appear to become “strong”, and its function thus be picked up as if it were “preferred”. This is what that “OP” system would be calling “jumpers”, which right there is telling, for if Ni could be TI's auxiliary, then what is being “jumped” over?

Yes, the auxiliary and tertiary, being neither as superior as the dominant, nor as repressed as the inferior, are sort of “inbetween”, and so can seem equal (i.e. “two auxiliaries”), or the tertiary even surpass the auxiliary at times. 
But what makes one “#2”, and the other “#3” is the natural maturity level of the associated archetype (complex), regardless of how “strong” or “weak” the actual functions may seem. Again, “tests” based on “strengths” won't pick this up.


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## Catandroid (Jul 9, 2018)

I was hoping the complexes would be based on strength or something we could measure. 

Case number 1) is a standard Myer-Briggs INTP ie. see Blue Wolf test result:
https://www.personalitycafe.com/cog...850-brand-new-cognitive-function-test-18.html

Case number 2) is a standard Myers-Briggs INTJ.


Case number 3) is unclear and not really acknowledge by the Myer-Briggs as something we can observe. However the standard MBTI test will always give it a name.



Eric B said:


> As stated before, the Child can appear to become “strong”, and its function thus be picked up as if it were “preferred”. This is what that “OP” system would be calling “jumpers”, which right there is telling, for if Ni could be TI's auxiliary, then what is being “jumped” over?
> 
> 
> Yes, the auxiliary and tertiary, being neither as superior as the dominant, nor as repressed as the inferior, are sort of “inbetween”, and so can seem equal (i.e. “two auxiliaries”), or the tertiary even surpass the auxiliary at times.
> ...


Interesting, what you are saying here is that there could be a link between this mystical system of John Beebe and the "Jumper" theory. 


The trouble with Myers-Briggs is that 16 is boring now in 2020 and I'll be more interested in being able to observe 32 types instead.


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## Eric B (Jun 18, 2010)

Catandroid said:


> I was hoping the complexes would be based on strength or something we could measure.


Well, the ego itself is going to be the "strongest", and the caretaker, next strongest (or at least, as I said next in maturity level), and that's what sets type, really. Everything else is just a "reflection" of those first two (both the complexes and the functions. It's all the collection of what was rejected from the first two), so we shouldn't get too hung up in their relative "strengths".


> Case number 1) is a standard Myer-Briggs INTP ie. see Blue Wolf test result:
> https://www.personalitycafe.com/cog...850-brand-new-cognitive-function-test-18.html
> 
> Case number 2) is a standard Myers-Briggs INTJ.
> ...


MBTI is framed around the dichotomies, and so measuring functions can produce those "typologically impossible" results. What happens, is if you're very introverted, then for the INTP, it may seemingly "spread to" (color) his iNtuition on those tests, and for the INTJ, it may "spread to" his Thinking. 
As for "NeTe", MBTI doesn't measure that; it will measure high on E, N and T dichotomies, and "J" will determine, by assumption, that it's TeNi, and "P" will assume "NeTi". There's no way to deduce NeTe, as that would be BOTH J and P at the same time (And getting "50/50" in that dichotomy doesn't mean you're "both"; it means your "clarity of preference" is undecided). 
A type that is "TeNe OR TiNe" could only have gotten that from a "cognitive process test", and that's likely an INTP who likely has a strong auxiliary, and so seems more expressive so that his Thinking appears to come out as extraverted. (Especially if the function is defined as "*applied* logic", as it often is, misleadingly so).

I think the functions haven't been well defined in a lot of sources, so they're treated as "things" like polar dichotomies, and attempted to be "measured" as such, and usually expressed in terms of behaviors. But what happens, is that *many behaviors can occur with either attitude of a given function*. 

Both INTP and INTJ are dominantly internally focused, and are both iNtuitive and Thinking. So both can look like "NiTi/TiNi", and will appear to be "in their heads" as they do both functions But the INTP's Thinking (determination of logical "truth") is his dominant perspective, and the INTJ's is iNtuition (awareness of implications). It's the auxiliary complex that for both is externally focused, but again, it may appear they are completely internal. (That is, until the complex begins "Parenting" others with the function, which will then be pointing others to objective data).



> Interesting, what you are saying here is that there could be a link between this mystical system of John Beebe and the "Jumper" theory.


 Well, yest, that's what I believe that "OP" system is picking up, but trying to make separate "types" out of them.


> The trouble with Myers-Briggs is that 16 is boring now in 2020 and I'll be more interested in being able to observe 32 types instead.


 That seems to be the thinking. But everyone's now tacking Enneagram onto it, and PersonalityHacker has produced a comprehensive set of combos for every MBTI type with every Enneatype, so that would be 144 types. Then add in the wings. And the tritypes. In the system I most believe in, there's a third area of interaction (in addition to the social and leadership areas that I believe correspond to Interaction Styles and Keirsey), so with the five temperaments, make 125 combos (5×5×5). Add in four "moderate" variations, and then another four "compulsive" variations of the temperaments, you can have 2197 or 4913 combinations!


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Ocean Helm said:


> I believe there were about 500 people who were gauged in cognitive function strength and none of them matched Grant stacks in order.
> 
> Does anyone know what I'm talking about and can help lead me to this holy grail?
> 
> I know it's out there somewhere but for some reason I can't find it in the sea of stuff online.


I know I'm not helping this thread, but do you know any file, where Grant wrote about his stacks? I wasn't even able to find that.

@Eric B maybe you know that?


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## Eric B (Jun 18, 2010)

It's very hard to find any info on Grant. He's cited in the MBTI Manual, and his books are _Comparability of the Gray-Wheelwright Psychological Type Questionnaire and the Myers Briggs Type Indicator_ (1965), _Self-description by MBTI types on the Adjective Check List_ (1966), and (with Thompson, M & Clark, T) _From image to likeness: a Jungian path in the gospel journey_ (1983). 
The latter is what's credited in the Manual (p387, n7) as seeing the tertiary taking the dominant attitude. You can see the whole book here: https://www.amazon.com/Image-Likeness-Jungian-Gospel-Journey/dp/0809125528 and he discusses the tertiary p22ff

The standard order was never even recognized my most of us as "the Grant stack" until fairly recently, and it's the Reynierse camp that's really been highlighting that.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Eric B said:


> It's very hard to find any info on Grant. He's cited in the MBTI Manual, and his books are _Comparability of the Gray-Wheelwright Psychological Type Questionnaire and the Myers Briggs Type Indicator_ (1965), _Self-description by MBTI types on the Adjective Check List_ (1966), and (with Thompson, M & Clark, T) _From image to likeness: a Jungian path in the gospel journey_ (1983).
> The latter is what's credited in the Manual (p387, n7) as seeing the tertiary taking the dominant attitude. You can see the whole book here: https://www.amazon.com/Image-Likeness-Jungian-Gospel-Journey/dp/0809125528 and he discusses the tertiary p22ff
> 
> The standard order was never even recognized my most of us as "the Grant stack" until fairly recently, and it's the Reynierse camp that's really been highlighting that.


Jeez, I know that internet resources have limited lifetime, but really something so well known just vanished. If not you I would have had a hard time to even find Grant's name. It's also mindblowing how such obscure piece of information is so widespread in our community. Make me wonder why and how we even decided to adopt that. 

The only problem is that it's not a whole book there. It says it's copyrighted material, so I can't see it, but I will trust you.


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## Eric B (Jun 18, 2010)

Forgot to mention, most Google links on "Harold Grant" are about a football player!


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

Ocean Helm said:


> I believe there were about 500 people who were gauged in cognitive function strength and none of them matched Grant stacks in order.
> 
> Does anyone know what I'm talking about and can help lead me to this holy grail?
> 
> I know it's out there somewhere but for some reason I can't find it in the sea of stuff online.


I suspect you're thinking of the 2008 Reynierse/Harker study that Reynierse talks about on page 12 of "The Case Against Type Dynamics."

But really, if the issue you're focusing on is the _lack of validity_ of the Grant function stack, the most important thing for anybody to understand is that, as Reynierse emphasizes, standards-challenged typologists like Berens and Nardi have been peddling it for years now without being able to point to any respectable level of support for it from anybody's studies anywhere. 

Intelligent, knowledgeable people know better than to spend time learning about zodiac-based personality types _not_ because there's a source that _definitively proves_ that there couldn't possibly be any correlations between somebody's zodiac sign and any aspects of personality. That's not the way personality psychology works. Instead, the burden's on whoever's offering up a typology (or typology _offshoot_) to gather a respectable body of data samples that shows that, yes indeed, the people in one of their type groups tend (on average) to have X, Y and Z aspects of personality in common. And zodiac-based personality typologists have never been able to do that — which is why the respectable districts of personality psychology say that zodiac-based personality typology has _no validity_.

And notwithstanding over 50 years of MBTI data pools, correlating the MBTI types with everything under the sun — internal and external both, and including countless aspects of personality as separately measured by lots of other established personality instruments — the correlational patterns associated with the "function axes" have _never shown up_ in any non-random number of data pools.

Nobody's ever found a single blessed Si-vs.-Se thing where the SJs _and NPs_ favored Si and the SPs _and NJs_ favored Se.

Nobody's ever found a single blessed Ni-vs.-Ne thing where the NJs _and SPs_ favored Ni and the NPs _and SJs_ favored Ne.

Nobody's ever found a single blessed Fi-vs.-Fe thing where the FPs _and TJs_ favored Fi and the FJs _and TPs_ favored Fe.

And nobody's ever found a single blessed Ti-vs.-Te thing where the TPs _and FJs_ favored Ti and the TJs _and FPs_ favored Te.

And at this point, I think we can be pretty confident that nobody ever will find any of those things, because those goofy "tandem"-based groupings are natives of the same realm as the unicorns and the munchkins.


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## brightflashes (Oct 27, 2015)

Catandroid said:


> According to Jung the dominant function is supported by two auxiliary functions. (In MBTI publications the first auxiliary is usually called the auxiliary or secondary function and the second auxiliary function is usually called the tertiary function.)


Unfortunately this statement isn't cited. Does anyone here know if this is true? I have by no means read all of Jung's works, but I'm trying to get them all under my belt and I have yet to read anything like this (or, if I have, I do not remember). @reckful? You're the only one I can think of who might know what, if anything, this is referencing.

Also, I think if I could get reckful, Turi, and Eric B alone in a room and just listen to the three of you talk - about anything - my ovaries would explode in 3 minutes.


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## Catandroid (Jul 9, 2018)

Eric B said:


> It's very hard to find any info on Grant. He's cited in the MBTI Manual, and his books are _Comparability of the Gray-Wheelwright Psychological Type Questionnaire and the Myers Briggs Type Indicator_ (1965), _Self-description by MBTI types on the Adjective Check List_ (1966), and (with Thompson, M & Clark, T) _From image to likeness: a Jungian path in the gospel journey_ (1983).
> The latter is what's credited in the Manual (p387, n7) as seeing the tertiary taking the dominant attitude. You can see the whole book here: https://www.amazon.com/Image-Likeness-Jungian-Gospel-Journey/dp/0809125528 and he discusses the tertiary p22ff
> 
> The standard order was never even recognized my most of us as "the Grant stack" until fairly recently, and it's the Reynierse camp that's really been highlighting that.


It sounds like the Grant stack is simply presented as the Gospel for productivity and it's a tool to believe in for self improvement so I am not dismissing it as such.

John Bebee came along and justified it with his system and Dario Nardi talks about developing the pattern of a custom function.

They can be right.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Eric B said:


> Forgot to mention, most Google links on "Harold Grant" are about a football player!


I use Duck Duck Go and still find nothing


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