An Experiential Thinking Style: Its Facets and Relations With Objective and Subjective Criterion Measures

Abstract

In Study 1, an experiential factor divided into the following 3 factors when 3 or more factors were extracted: intuition, emotionality, and imagination; whereas a rational factor retained its coherence. In Study 2, an experiential but not a rational thinking style was positively associated with performance measures of creativity, humor, aesthetic judgment, and intuition and with self-report measures of empathy and social popularity. A rational thinking style was associated with several measures of adjustment. Both thinking styles were positively related to personal growth. Support was provided from several sources for the discriminant validity of the experiential facets. In a third study, the independence of the 2 thinking styles and of gender differences in self-reported data were verified by observations by others of participants' thinking styles. The importance of identifying facets of an experiential thinking style and of discovering previously unrecognized favorable attributes of this thinking style was discussed.

Thinking Styles, Perceived Stress and Life Satisfaction

“…In addition, only self-reported measures were used. While it is common in most studies, a more direct way of identifying thinking styles (e.g., assessment of preferred information processing style by people familiar to subjects (see Norris & Epstein, 2011) or observation during various tasks) can bring more valid findings. The found relationships may not only reflect the effect of the information processing style on perceived stress and life satisfaction, but also a stable pattern of viewing an individual's own psychological characteristics.…”

“…The present study aims to fill this gap through the investigation of the relationship between the two major modes of information processing -the rational and intuitive modes -and two interrelated constructs -perceived stress and life satisfaction. Furthermore, given that gender differences have previously been reported in preferences to thinking style (Norris & Epstein, 2011), this study is also aimed at examining the role of gender in this association.…”

“…This finding is probably related to the gender differences in thinking styles. Males have been reported to use the rational style more and the experiential style less in comparison to females across different ages in numerous studies worldwide (e.g., Norris & Epstein, 2011;Pacini & Epstein, 1999;Sladek, Bond, & Phillips, 2010) as well as in Slovakia (Ballová Mikušková, Hanák, & Čavojová, 2015).…”

Not All Great Minds Think Alike: Systematic and Intuitive Cognitive Styles

“…An artist, for example, is likely to have an intuitive style. At work and in other contexts, artists are likely to analyze situations in a complex, holistic manner, linking pieces of information associatively.To date, there is no agreement in the literature as to whether systematic and intuitive styles are two poles of the same dimension (e.g., Allinson & Hayes, 1996;Sagiv et al, 2010) or two distinct dimensions (e.g., Norris & Epstein, 2011;Pacini & Epstein, 1999;Scott & Bruce, 1995). In this research, we investigated the systematic and intuitive styles separately.…”

How Is Stress Reduced by a Workplace Mindfulness Intervention? A Qualitative Study Conceptualising Experiences of Change

“…These different representations of resonance may be reflective of dual information processing models of the self, which posit that reality can be processed via an analytical-rational system and/or an intuitive-experiential system (Pashko 2016). The former is slow but conscious and the latter is quick but unconscious and pre-linguistic, and it has been proposed that people vary in their preference for each (Epstein et al 1996; also described as a Bneed for cognition^; Norris and Epstein 2011). Our data suggested that intervention participants may come with differing processing preferences and that the ability of MBSRbased interventions to meet such individual differences in the first session may be important to securing subsequent benefits.…”