3 Interpersonal Differentiators

Most of the time, psychology studies the basic cognitive processes that, with some nuance, occur in all human beings in the same way. Thus, we can say that in these cases, psychology seeks the link between individuals in order to have a generic vision of man.

However, certain cognitive processes are at the root of interpersonal differentiation, such as personality. The discipline responsible for studying these factors is the psychology of individual differences or differential psychology.

The psychology of individual differences is a scientific discipline that attempts to respond to the fact that human beings are very similar. But at the same time very different. In other words, its aim is to explain the processes and factors that underlie interpersonal differentiation. In fact, if we did not investigate, it would be very difficult for us to explain human behavior, because the factors we are telling you about greatly modulate behavior and cognition. Studying differences helps us understand their causes and observe the higher processes behind them.

According to the various studies carried out, the two factors of interpersonal differentiation par excellence are personality and intelligence. Depending on the personality type or the different intellectual qualities, we will observe one behavior or another. However, there are other interpersonal differentiators that will be explored in more depth:

• The interests.
• Cognitive styles.
• Learning styles.

The interests

Interest is a factor of great importance in the study of interpersonal differentiation. These can be defined as emotional inclinations or preferences for certain areas, activities, knowledge or hobbies. All things considered, interests will in some way predict the direction and enjoyment of the chosen behavior.

Interest has three main characteristics:

• They are directive or conative in nature. That is, they cause the person to move in a certain direction.
• They have a certain degree of intensity. This is indicated by the energy that the individual devotes to a behavior, as well as the emotional response and activation that results from it.
• They are dynamic. They appear, change, become stronger or lose their intensity through the continuous interaction of the individual with his environment.

The study of interests has a strong impact on educational psychology. Indeed, knowing the interests of the pupils helps to make teaching interesting and to considerably improve the quality of teaching. In addition, their study is useful for us to understand why children show different patterns of interest and different degrees of attention regarding the same topics.

Cognitive styles

This interpersonal differentiator stems from the need to explain the different levels of performance achieved by people in different types of tasks. Traditional intelligence tests barely explained individual variability when faced with different tasks. Some researchers have also tried to explain it through personality, but this solution was considered equally insufficient. Therefore, the construction of cognitive styles was created.

Cognitive style refers to the usual way of processing information and using the mental resources at our disposal, such as perception, memory or learning. In short, it represents the usual pattern with which the individual faces a task or problem. Depending on their cognitive style, a person is more efficient than others at certain types of tasks.

Here are examples of different dimensions that can be observed with regard to cognitive styles. Due to their magnitude, it is difficult for us to define them in this article, but they serve as an introduction to this concept.

• Dependence and independence of the field.
• Leveler and sharpener.
• Impulsive and reflective.
• Visualizer and verbalizer.
• Visual and haptic.
• Serial and holistic.

Learning styles

Just as cognitive style is the usual pattern by which we deal with a problem, so learning style is the usual way we deal with a learning task. In other words, these are the learning strategies and resources that we use to acquire new knowledge or new behaviors.

These styles arise from a strong interaction between the person and the context. The influence of socialization and natural preferences for one style or another seem to be the factors that explain the genesis of learning styles.

Psychologist David A. Kolb has created a scientifically recognized taxonomy of learning styles. It is designed as follows:

• Divergent style. They are the ones who take many points of view, are good at generating ideas, have broad cultural interests, etc. They are people who are effective in artistic activities or tasks.
• Assimilative style. They are people who have a wide range of information and logical thinking within them, and who show an interest in ideas and the abstract. They are not interested in the practicalities of theories and ideas. They are proficient in science or information-based disciplines.

• Style converge. They opt for the practical use of ideas and theories. They tend to be good at solving technical issues as opposed to interpersonal issues. And are effective in technology careers.
• Comfortable style. They are the ones who process information in a practical way. They plan, seek new experiences, and tend to be good at interpersonal skills. They are good at action-oriented jobs (sales, marketing, etc.).

As we can see, the psychology of individual differences has a lot of keys to help us understand how we function. In this article, you learned about three of the factors that most distinguish us from each other. However, this branch of human study is extremely large and much remains to be discovered.

Our thoughts

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