No Sex Tonight: the Neurology of Love and Marriage

Years ago I watched a marriage breaking up between two friends of mine. Both Ron and Anna (not their real names) were very intelligent and well educated: indeed both were members of Mensa - the high-IQ society - as was I. But somehow all that mental horsepower didn't seem to help them get past some very basic differences in their ideas about life.

Ron was a physicist turned electronic engineer, very technically minded, and given to expressing himself in carefully reasoned, logical, systematic terms. His personal pursuits were scientific and technical: reading, tinkering with electronic gadgets, ham radio. A card-carrying scientist, we might say.

Anna could hardly have been more different in her interests, her focus of attention, and her manner of expressing herself. She was a card-carrying mystic. Astrology, palm reading, séances, ESP, reincarnation, numerology, tarot card reading - she loved it all. Her conversational pattern was reminiscent of a butterfly - multiple topics all in one brief conversation - even in one sentence. Her language suggested intuition, emotion, spirituality, magical beliefs.

A conversation between them, on any topic more general than the grocery list, would typically degenerate to a glaring contest. He would become extremely agitated whenever she spoke of some new mystical book, a new favorite psychic or guru, or her latest astrological reading. "How can a person of your intelligence," he would bellow, "possibly believe in such ridiculous nonsense? It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" He'd attack, she'd become silent and sullen, and the conversation would run aground. No sex tonight.

Both of them had passed the Mensa qualifying exam. If intelligence wasn't the difference, then what was it? How could they be structuring their interior worlds so differently?

They had asked me to advise them, hoping they could somehow find a path to a solution. As I was already divorced, I wondered about the wisdom of choosing me as their lay counselor, but they were my friends, so I decided to try.

At the time, well before I took up the study of human mental processes in a serious way, I was at a loss to diagnose or explain the cause of their distress. I only knew they seemed to disagree on nearly everything important, and they were good at making each other unhappy.
We met together several times, but never got beyond the stage of accusing, blaming, and condemning - except for an occasional honest attempt at behavioral coding. Clearly, I didn't have well-developed counseling skills - or models - at the time. They finally divorced.

The curious feeling of dissonance never left me. I kept flashing back to this intriguing "two different worlds" phenomenon, and soon I began noticing it in many of the situations I encountered, particularly those involving conflict or misunderstandings. I began to conclude that most of what we call "personality conflicts" are actually caused by differences in people's data processing mechanisms. And, more importantly, I began to see distinctive patterns in these differences.

At that time, the "split-brain" research by physician Joseph Bogen and Professor Roger Sperry at CalTech appeared in the professional literature, and the truth began to emerge: some people really are "logical" in the way they think, and some really are "intuitive." Science had caught up with common sense.

The CalTech researchers had made a remarkable discovery while working with medical patients who'd had their cerebral hemispheres surgically separated. (The reasons for the surgery are a whole ‘nother story.) The left and right hemispheres of these unusual people seemed to be operating like two separate brains, processing their data in very different ways. This led to some stunning conclusions about how we all use our brains.

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The logical left hemisphere, as it turned out, likes information that comes in bits and pieces: words, sentences, numbers, lists, sequences, stepwise procedures, chains of events, and time intervals.

The intuitive right hemisphere, by contrast, pays attention to information that comes in whole patterns, like visual images, rhythms, melodies, colors, shapes, bodily sensations, and emotional impressions. They both get the same data, but they analyze it differently.

Common sense and a lot of research confirmed that most people tend to develop a preference in their early lives for either left-brained thinking or right-brained thinking.

An interesting model soon emerged in the psychological literature. When you combine the dimension of left-brain vs. right-brain preference (which neuroscientists now call lateralization) with the extra dimension of preference for conceptual thinking vs. practical or concrete thinking, you get four possible combinations, or primary thinking patterns:

• Left-brained and concrete, which is logical and experiential.
• Right-brained and concrete, which is intuitive and experiential.
• Left-brained and abstract, which is logical and conceptual.
• Right-brained and abstract, which is intuitive and conceptual.

We all use all four of these patterns, and most of us tend to favor one pattern that becomes our "home base" style of perceiving, thinking, analyzing, storing information, and expressing our ideas. Thus the concept of thinking styles was born.

I quickly became intrigued with this four-style portrait of human mental processes, and began to adapt it in my personal life as well as in my seminars and coaching with business people.

However, the medical-biological language of the split-brain theory was a bit too academic for me, so I evolved a simple set of metaphorical names for the four primary patterns, to make them more easily memorable and intuitively familiar.

I named the left-brained thinking preference as "blue" thinking and the right-brained preference as "red" thinking. Blue for logical and red for intuitive.

I used the term "earth" thinking for the concrete, or experiential preference, and "sky" thinking for abstract, or conceptual thinking. Earth for concrete and sky for abstract.

This gives us: Red Earth for right-brained and concrete thinking; Blue Earth for left-brained and concrete thinking; Red Sky for right-brained and abstract thinking; and Blue Sky for left-brained and abstract thinking. Sort of like four software windows on your computer screen; each one treats the information in a different way

(See graphic model at http://www.KarlAlbrecht.com/images/mindexmodel.png)

Back to Ron and Anna. His preferred thinking style was Blue Earth, with Blue Sky as his secondary preference. Her preferred style was Red Sky, with Red Earth as her secondary. Note that their primary patterns were completely opposite on both dimensions, red-blue and earth-sky. No wonder they had trouble decoding each other's thoughts and encoding their own in ways the other could process.

What became fatal to their relationship was not the differences in their thinking styles, but their inability or unwillingness to learn to respect and accommodate them. His irrational reaction and intolerance of her way of knowing was hardly the way to maintain the sense of empathy and mutuality on which healthy love relationships are built.

My fascination with this concept, and the simple model, have not waned in more than twenty years of working with it. In fact, I developed a self assessment profile questionnaire, called Mindex, and began using it to help people understand their preferred patterns and to understand others as well.

In the business world, where I tend to concentrate, I see the impact of thinking styles every day. Co-workers with different mental patterns who become frustrated and antagonistic when they can't connect. Sales people who insist on selling to themselves instead of listening to discover the mental patterns of their customers. Managers who inadvertently try to impose their own cognitive preferences upon their subordinates - and the whole organization. Teams that fall into conflict and disarray because they haven't learned to honor the preferred ways of knowing of all their members. Trainers who assume that everyone likes to learn the way they do.

Beyond the business world, my database of profiles suggests that the vast majority of teachers prefer the Red Earth thinking pattern. What impact can this have on the way they try to teach, the way they explain ideas, and the kinds of outputs they encourage from the children?

By understanding ourselves better, by listening more attentively to others so we can understand them better, and by honoring all ways of knowing as legitimate and valuable, we can actually capitalize on the differences that make us all unique.

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To find more information on this topic, visit http://www.KarlAlbrecht.com

Dr. Karl Albrecht is an executive management consultant, futurist, lecturer, and author of more than 20 books on professional achievement, organizational performance, and business strategy. He is also a leading authority on cognitive styles and the development of advanced thinking skills. His books Social Intelligence: the New Science of Success, Practical Intelligence: the Art and Science of Common Sense, and his Mindex Thinking Style Profile are widely used in business and education. The Mensa society honored him with its lifetime achievement award, for significant contributions by a member to the understanding of intelligence. Originally a physicist, and having served as a military intelligence officer and business executive, he now consults, lectures, and writes about whatever he thinks would be fun.