Thinking Styles

Katherine Benziger - Thinking Styles Assessment

How our brains ACTUALLY function

Dr Katherine Benziger takes a completely different approach to thinking styles assessment, which in complete contrast to the theoretical and philosophical basis of most psycho-metric tests, focuses on the physiological and neurological aspects of how our brains actually function.

As this is a physiological and neurological assessment it is arguably a more objective method of assessment than psychometric tests.

Katherine Benziger's assessment tools are based on the measurement of brain function and energy consumption in the brain.

Her model recognises that the brain has four specialised areas responsible for different brain functions - and significantly we each have natural strengths in only one of these specific areas, and thus we quite naturally prefer to use the thinking style associated with that strength - this is referred to as the "preferred thinking and behavioural mode".

• Mode 1 located in the basal left

  Brain functions: order and habit; ordered procedures; sequential routines
  Response to stimulus: remembers definitions; remembers what is - as described

• Mode 2 located in the basal right

  Brain functions: spiritual experience; rhythm and feeling; harmony
  Response to stimulus: remembers definitions; picks up emotional tone and the presence or absence of harmony; how things are and how we feel about it

• Mode 3 located in the frontal right

  Brain functions: internal imaging; metaphor and imagination; expressiveness
  Response to stimulus: sees the essence of things, in pictures and metaphors

• Mode 4 located in the frontal left

  Brain functions: structural analysis; prioritising and logic; mathematics
  Response to stimulus: converts into logical results or effects; leads to, or produces results

Katherine Benziger has identified that when people adapt their natural thinking and working styles to fit expectations of others, normally created by work and career, tension and stress results and people tend to "falsify type" as they think and behave in ways that are unnatural to them, and predictably this creates problems in their work performance.

Relating directly to this is the work Arlene Taylor PhD, a leading specialist in 'wellness' since 1980, and collaborator with Benziger for much of that time.

Dr Arlene Taylor, a long time collaborator with Benziger, has developed Benziger's observations about the "cost of falsifying type", and as published in 1999 in their joint paper 'The Physiological Foundations of Falsification of Type and PASS' has identified a range of symptoms collectively known as "Prolonged Adaption Stress Syndrome" (PASS) that arise as a result of falsification of type:

1. Fatigue
2. Hyper-vigilance
3. Immune system alterations
4. Memory impairment
5. Altered brain chemistry
6. Diminished frontal lobe functions
7. Discouragement and or depression
8. Self-esteem problems

Here is an excellent introduction to the work of: Dr Katherine Benziger

For full indepth resources see: Benziger Thinking Styles Assessment

Personality Quiz

Return to: Managing Personal Change