Aphantasia and Personality
From memory can you describe the front door of your house?
When you think about the door, can you see it?
You might ask, “what do you mean by see?”
That is a tough question, which is why for so long no one realized there is a fundamental difference in how people visualize or conceptualize things.
There are, however, at least a few ways we can tease out some differences. First, can you describe your door? The shape? the color? the texture? A person who can describe it compared to a person who can not may not have to do with visualization but rather memory, right?
Okay, how about we get a little more scientific. A recent neuroscience study showed that when asked to imagine a bright light, some people’s pupils would constrict and others would not. Indicating that some people were able to visually imagine and others not.
Does that definitively prove that some people see pictures in their mind and others don’t? What if some people just have a hard time focusing or following instructions?
Alright, here’s another way: Do you read fiction? Just that alone says something right? But let’s go further. Have you ever read a book, then watched the movie, and the characters clearly didn’t look like what you imagined? I am not talking about Harry Potter where clearly on the cover of the book it shows Harry with his lightning scar between his eyes and then for some reason in the movies they put it off center…That’s just obviously wrong. I am talking about imagining a character a specific way and then you see the movie and you are like, “That’s not them!”
The idea of aphantasia is very recent. There are still many unknowns, but things seem to be pointing at a spectrum of visualization ranging from visualizing with shape, color, and texture, to visualizing nothing at all. This may sound crazy, but for me, for example, I could not tell you the color, texture, or even the shape of the front door of where I am living. It’s not that I haven’t gone outside in a long time. I have had Covid five or six times if that is any indication of how much I go outside. Just kidding, I do like it inside actually, but I did seriously somehow get almost every variant.
Anyway, aphantasia is the complete absence of visualization. I stumbled into it a year ago. I am not sure how the google algorithm knew to suggest it to me, I certainly hadn’t talked about it. I guess the neural networks have already noticed a trend in what the small, roughly 5% of the population with aphantasia watch. What was odd, was that I only clicked on the video because I thought it was about aphasia, which is not being able to speak, and is usually the result of a stroke. I saw the thumbnail and wondered why a person who looked young had suffered a stroke.
In the video they said, 3-5% of people don’t see mental images in their head. I was like, “what? People see pictures in their head. I turned to my wife and asked her to close her eyes and visualize an apple. “Do you see it?” “Yes, of course.” “No, but do you see it? Like the shape, the color and the texture?” “Yes, it’s red and yellow, and an almost waxy texture, the light is reflecting off it. What do you see?” “Nothing, it’s just black.” “Wait what? What can you picture?” “Nothing. Unless I am dreaming.” “What about memories?” “I mean, I remember details of things, but I don’t see anything.” “So without a picture you would forget what someone looks like?” “I would recognize them if I saw them, but yeah, I couldn’t visualize what they looked like.” “That's scary!”
I wasn’t scared I was missing out, I was scared for another reason. I was scared because I took neuroscience in undergrad and in medical school, and working in a clinic I saw a patient who had a sports concussion and after weeks still had problems balancing and wasn’t even aware he was struggling. A pit formed in my stomach as I thought about all the concussions I have had.
I raced dirt bikes, wrestled, and have found myself intentionally upside down with a board strapped to my feet both over snow and water on many occasions, not all of which were successful. Luckily I am not in the double digits for concussions, but it’s not that I’m not close to it though. Had all that recklessness finally caught up to me?
I panicked a little, but luckily I found some forums for people with aphantasia, and since I love research and doing surveys I started asking people whether they had ever had a concussion, and everyone said “no.” I felt better, but still don’t ever rule out anything completely. It wasn’t just the survey that calmed my fears about the possible irreversible damage I had self-inflicted–I know my visualization circuits in my brain couldn’t be completely broken, because I have vivid dreams.
There was another perplexing question that arose. That being, why, apart from the prospect of irreparable central nervous system damage, did it not bother me that other people could visualize in pictures and I couldn’t. It was then that the question arose, what if because of personality preferences I just don’t value visualization as a tool for conceptualization, compared to other tools like schematics, formulas, concept maps, words, symbols, shapes, and narratives. For me I like to see things as a formula or concept map. For example, I couldn’t tell you what color the front door is, but I could tell you the implications of the features it has, and the door that was there before, and key memories associated with both.
Realizing this I decided to do a survey to look for a correlation. To identify personality preferences I used the system of seven attributes or ideals I discovered several years ago. I asked participants to pick their top three of seven attributes they relate to, and the attribute they relate least to. This survey had a video linked which further explained these seven qualities and their correlation with emotions and early childhood memories as well. Here are the seven attributes:
The first attribute is Initiation: it’s Charisma or Confidence
The second is Deconstruction: it’s Intelligence or Insight
The third is Expansion: it’s Creativity or Well-roundedness
The fourth is Unification: it’s Kindness or Sociability
The fifth is Application: it’s Hard work or Reliability
The sixth is Preservation: it’s Organization or Preparation
The seventh is Transformation: it’s Wisdom or Character
These attributes represent intentions or actions aimed at ideals and correlate with emotions. Each ideal is not ideal by itself but only if all seven are maximized or integrated. These actions have an order to them and that order repeats.
The cycle starts with the first step, which is a the initiation of an action, followed by Reflection, Exploration, Incorporation, Implementation, Reinforcement, and finally a conclusion of the best overall direction to go.
It made sense that each of these steps would have a different utility for visualization in the form of pictures, but the results still shocked me. I had speculated that Expansion, which is the Exploration step, would possibly influence visualization, but it turned out that the three big influences according to the study were Deconstruction which is the Reflection step, Initiation which is the Action step, and Transformation which is the Conclusion step. The results showed that it was six times more likely that someone with aphantasia preferred Deconstruction to Transformation, and four times more likely that some with aphantasia preferred Deconstruction to Initiation. Not a single participant listed Deconstruction as the least preferred attribute. 64% listed Initiation or Transformation as least preferred attributes.
These results are in contrast to the numerous surveys and interviews I have done which showed an even distribution of each of the personality preferences. This data isn’t too surprising however because there is theoretical coherence which supports it. This theoretical coherence surrounds the difference in the value of visualizing between each of the seven attributes.
Each attribute is correlated to an intention or goal. These intentions are sequential steps towards an integrated action. As we dive a little deeper into the nature of each step or intention it will be pretty clear the role visualization would take.
Initiation is the first step. As with anything in life there has to be a starting point–it doesn’t always have to be a giant leap of faith into the unknown, but it will at least carry some uncertainty and require speculation and confidence. The confidence to take that first step comes from visualizing yourself doing what you think will work. Using that picture to aim at.
Deconstruction is the second step. Before the first step of initiating, there isn’t any hard data. After taking that first step however, there is…you just have to sort through it. You have the limited picture of what you wanted to do, and the limited picture of what you think actually happened. How do you know what the most accurate picture is? You have to break it down pixel by pixel, compare and try to verify. Visualizing at this level doesn’t look like anything recognizable of what it is. For example, what is this, a picture of?
It doesn’t resemble anything.
Red 143, Green 68, and Blue 88 doesn’t say much about what this picture is, but it says a heck of a lot about what color that pixel is. Not only that, but that data is reproducible. You could plug it into your computer and get the same color…well, if both monitors are color calibrated the same…and the composition of rods and cones are the same…and okay, well, anyway, you get the point , it is much more accurate that just calling it pink or red–Deconstruction dissects down to the most accurate variables. Because of this, the result of deconstruction would not be a picture, but something akin to a line of computer code describing where a pixel is and what color it is.
The next step is Expansion, which takes the variables identified in the second step and looks at them in a wider perspective. For example, expansion would ask, “what all in the world is Red 143, Green 68, and Blue 88?” Similar to deconstruction, this step is not a static picture either.
If anything it is a mindmap with how each thing is tangentially related. Expansion is not just trying to group things into categories, but seeing how many different ways things can be grouped. It’s not just a mind map, but a mind map of mind maps.
The fourth step is Unification which is bringing everything you figured out in the first 3 steps together in a harmonious way. It is a Frankenstein at best, and changing rapidly. If it were anything, it would be venn diagrams of compatibilities. These compatibilities could be represented by pictures, that wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest, but it also could be conceptualized as a narrative or something more intuitive.
The fifth step is application, it is solidifying a plan and putting it in action. It doesn’t make as much sense to me why this attribute would be the second most common personality preference for people with aphantasia. The only thing I can think of, is that since this step is when you put your head down and work, either your focus is externalized on the action rather than in your own head; or that when associated with Deconstruction, it amplifies that action because it schedules what processes need to be done, and if your personality preference suggests that what needs to be done is more deconstructing, then you will keep deconstructing until you get down to sub-atomic particles, first principles, string theory, or Midichlorians.
The sixth step is preservation, it looks at what is or could undermine the goal and prepares against it. Similar to the fourth step Unification, this step could utilize pictures– it makes protocols of how to respond to each current or future obstacle, and so it makes sense that each protocol could have a picture or series of pictures associated with it. With pictures present of not, it probably looks more like instructions or a checklist though. In the survey this personality preference was evenly preferred or not preferred in people with aphantasia.
The last step is transformation, which is looking at the process as a whole. It looks at what was initiated, deconstructed, expanded, unified, applied, and then preserved to see whether the intention and outcome are effective and efficient; With that information it looks at whether the cost and the benefit are worth it. Initiation was a picture of the first best step; transformation is a picture of the best overall direction. It is looking for a conclusive or complete picture. The seventh step is a consolidation into a conclusion, that will restart the cycle with the Initiating of the next action.
Our personality preferences typically value 3 of the 7 ideals more than the rest, and spend a disproportionate amount of attention on them. This means as we cycle through the seven steps, we somewhat skip over some of the steps. If the steps you tend to skip or gloss over the most are the 2 steps that have the strongest utility for picture-type visualizations, it would make sense that you wouldn’t see them.
It would be a logical conclusion to think that you could convince yourself to value picture-like visualizations, but ironically, the tools you would use wouldn’t contain pictures. Those tools would be in the form of, or nested inside, schematics, Mind maps, venn diagrams, or protocols. It would be like using a flashlight to look for darkness.
Not saying it isn’t possible, but it would be difficult.
Of course, this is all mostly theoretical, but the results of the survey were quite validating. What was also validating was when I posted the preliminary results on the aphantasia forum page.
A person with aphantasia who has been a medical researcher for ten years commented that she felt that it was a large leap in logic to assume that people with aphantasia have a personality preference for Deconstruction. The irony of her claim was not lost on others in the forum who saw her Deconstruction of my claim, and my subsequent deconstruction of her deconstruction. I appreciate that she has that same research and deconstruction preference as me and the same alarm for possible inconsistencies that goes off when unsubstantiated leaps in logic are made. I do also appreciate how much further my study would have to go in order to be more conclusive. I hope this video is one step in that direction, and that other people will see value in help furthering the research. If my guess is that people with aphantasia like deconstructing things and doing research, then it shouldn’t be that hard.
The next step for me in research is to do interviews, as more of a case study approach to further understanding the relationship between aphantasia and personality. There is a survey in the description below with the option at the end to sign up for an interview for the study.
Finding out that aphantasia existed and that I had it was a relief. I am excited to see all the research in the area of the phantasia spectrum because I think it will help us understand ourselves and each other better.
I am glad you joined me today, and I hope this has in some way helped. I hope to see you again!
