This is actually one of the core ideas of NLP, known as a “Primary Representational System.” There’s all sorts of crazy synesthesia tricks that NLP has developed.
Example: If your primary representational system is visual, making things brighter, closer, clearer, and first person (for most people) makes them more salient, while making them smaller, farther, blurier, and third person makes them less salient. For sound, making it louder, clearer, and closer usually does the same thing. If you have a voice in your head that you want to stop taking seriously, try making it sound like Donald Duck.
Some other fun observations from NLP:
You’ll tend to use language that has to do with your PRS. For instance, if you’re primarily, visual, you’ll say things like “I see”. If you’re auditory, you’ll say “I hear you.” They used to think that speaking in the language of someone else’s PRS could create rapport, but AFAIK that’s been disproven by research. The concept of language affecting it I think is still in the air, but I’m not sure.
In the wikipedia article it suggests that everyone uses all the systems situationally but seems to have a dominant one. I don’t believe you that you never use the visual/auditory/kinasthetic phrases, happy to accept if you say that you rarely use them. I guess your task for the next week is to try to notice if you ever use a sensory-phrase and then try to think about why you chose that phrase. Report back?
I guess your task for the next week is to try to notice if you ever use a sensory-phrase and then try to think about why you chose that phrase.
The fact that I will be observing myself would probably influence the results. It would probably be better to e.g. look at my older LW comments. So, here are the results from my 10 recent comments (excluding comments in this articles):
Well, okay, this seems to point toward a visual system.
(Now I wonder if I do the same thing when not writing in English. I mean, I mostly use English online, which is inherently a visual approach; I may be more likely to copy phrases of other people than invent my own spontaneously; and my vocabulary is more limited.)
Typical mind fallacy, are you? I believe him because I can relate. I tried to determine my primary canvas and the answer is none of the ones you gave. It’s the canvas of concepts and ideas.
People also say I hear you or I see[=understand] when it is exactly what they have to convey. Saying I see instead of I hear you can at times be counterproductive… And vice versa...
(It might be a quirk of how I learned English.) For me, “I hear you” is an acknowledgement of listening, possibly negotiating, and “I see...”—of the other person already thinking they have heard all they need to, possibly a dismissal. Of course, intonation matters too, and maybe it so outweighs the actual words that the above doesn’t matter, but I mostly intake English as written.
that link is not quite working, needs a \ in front of the ) at the end I think. Thanks for a good link to NLP info. NLP always seems like a reasonable-enough yet unproven theory. it falls into my box of those theories. If I had a better use for it’s ideas I would be looking deeper into it.
This is actually one of the core ideas of NLP, known as a “Primary Representational System.” There’s all sorts of crazy synesthesia tricks that NLP has developed.
Example: If your primary representational system is visual, making things brighter, closer, clearer, and first person (for most people) makes them more salient, while making them smaller, farther, blurier, and third person makes them less salient. For sound, making it louder, clearer, and closer usually does the same thing. If you have a voice in your head that you want to stop taking seriously, try making it sound like Donald Duck.
Some other fun observations from NLP:
You’ll tend to use language that has to do with your PRS. For instance, if you’re primarily, visual, you’ll say things like “I see”. If you’re auditory, you’ll say “I hear you.” They used to think that speaking in the language of someone else’s PRS could create rapport, but AFAIK that’s been disproven by research. The concept of language affecting it I think is still in the air, but I’m not sure.
More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_systems_(NLP)
How about people who don’t use any of these? Who instead of “I see that 2+2=4” or “it feels to me like 2+2=4″ simply say “2+2=4”? Me, for example.
I don’t think that’s represented in the NLP PRS model, but I’m severely out of date with NLP developments.
In the wikipedia article it suggests that everyone uses all the systems situationally but seems to have a dominant one. I don’t believe you that you never use the visual/auditory/kinasthetic phrases, happy to accept if you say that you rarely use them. I guess your task for the next week is to try to notice if you ever use a sensory-phrase and then try to think about why you chose that phrase. Report back?
The fact that I will be observing myself would probably influence the results. It would probably be better to e.g. look at my older LW comments. So, here are the results from my 10 recent comments (excluding comments in this articles):
1: “touch”, “seems”; 2: “look”; 3, 4, 5, 6: nothing; 7: “imagine”; 8: nothing; 9: “seems”; 10: “look”, “see”.
Well, okay, this seems to point toward a visual system.
(Now I wonder if I do the same thing when not writing in English. I mean, I mostly use English online, which is inherently a visual approach; I may be more likely to copy phrases of other people than invent my own spontaneously; and my vocabulary is more limited.)
If the canvas is innate the population-wide use of perception-related words should be stable. I checked that on the n-gram viewer and found some unexpected results: https://twitter.com/Gunnar_Zarncke/status/1575992631750168590
Typical mind fallacy, are you? I believe him because I can relate. I tried to determine my primary canvas and the answer is none of the ones you gave. It’s the canvas of concepts and ideas.
People also say I hear you or I see[=understand] when it is exactly what they have to convey. Saying I see instead of I hear you can at times be counterproductive… And vice versa...
Can you give an example when “I hear you “as an idiom works but “I see what you’re saying” doesn’t?
Also, nobody says ‘You hear,...’ instead of ‘You see,...’
(It might be a quirk of how I learned English.) For me, “I hear you” is an acknowledgement of listening, possibly negotiating, and “I see...”—of the other person already thinking they have heard all they need to, possibly a dismissal. Of course, intonation matters too, and maybe it so outweighs the actual words that the above doesn’t matter, but I mostly intake English as written.
that link is not quite working, needs a \ in front of the ) at the end I think. Thanks for a good link to NLP info. NLP always seems like a reasonable-enough yet unproven theory. it falls into my box of those theories. If I had a better use for it’s ideas I would be looking deeper into it.