The subject line of the message read "Engineering Personality."
Now, before going any further, let me apologize to my many engineer friends (and authors) for thinking the phrase announced a joke. Few professions in the oil and gas business are butts of as many jokes and jibes as engineers, regardless of specialty.
Maybe lawyers come closest, but then there always seems to be a bite to lawyer jokes. Accountants? I don't think so.
Professors? Perhaps. Having been a professor for a few years long ago, I can attest to the accuracy of jokes about them.
But engineers? Why is it that we all seem to know at least one engineer joke? "A chemical engineer, electrical engineer, and civil engineer were arguing about what kind of engineer designed the human body…." (Collective groan)
And referring to an "engineering personality" (an oxymoron?) simply invites a smirk, unless you're an engineer, I guess, or maybe the parent or spouse of one.
The e-mail, however, was straight. Gary J. Salton, a sociologist who lists his occupation as chief of research and development (and founder) of Professional Communications Inc., Ann Arbor, Mich., recently circulated on the internet results of his study "The Engineering Personality."
HA + LP > RS + RI
In fact, Salton claims to be updating a 1954 article, by one Charles E. Goshen, who posited—with a straight face, I assume—the existence of such a personality. Who'd have guessed it? Rather than psychology, however, Salton is using something called "I Opt": Input Output Processing Technology.
I Opt lays out four categories, the sum of whose percentages (i.e., 100%) describes how the personality being analyzed processes information: Reactive Stimulator (RS), Logical Processor (LP), Hypothetical Analyzer (HA), and Relational Innovator (RI).
To explain these otherwise opaque phrases, Salton offers a "colloquial annotation" for each: "Spontaneous Action" (RS); "Deliberate Action" (LP); "Structured Thought" (HA); and "Spontaneous Thought" (RI). But, he cautions, these "are not definitions of the categories."
Really?
The percentage distribution of the four categories for any given engineer "creates an information processing profile."
Salton's I Opt analysis of 2,385 "professional, nonsupervisory engineers" revealed that engineers exhibit the highest (33%) of HA ("plans, assessments, etc.," he says) and the lowest (17%) of RS, compared with the more than 8,000 other professionals (human resources, law, sales, among others) he studied.
Bear with me; almost finished.
"It is the pronounced nature of engineering's commitment to particular information processing styles—both high and low [percentages]—that gives rise to the Engineer Personality," Salton concludes.
Later, he reports, of those 2,385 engineers analyzed, the "dominant information processing approach in all areas of engineering is the analytical HA strategic style. This consistency is the basic source of the engineer personality."
No jokes, please.
There's more, far more than either space here or patience allows.
Towards the end of his explanation, however, Salton touches on an "important aspect of any qualitative ‘personality' assessment": It depends on the "person doing the assessment."
If he or she is "positively disposed toward the subject," he is likely to judge "our engineer as calm, astute, patient, and attentive." But, if that individual is "negatively disposed," the exact same behavior is likely to be seen as "slow, timid, trifling, and tortuous."
I'm not sure what we can make of this twist. It seems to undercut whatever small value this academic exercise might offer. However that may be, what I do know is that my engineer friends are often the quickest to tell engineer jokes and to laugh the loudest. Go figure.
Now, please don't send me your favorite engineer joke or, worse, write to vent your irritation at my making sport at engineers' expense.
It's really academic pedantry that's the target here, not engineers. Over the last 32-plus years, my respect for engineers of all kinds has only grown.
Besides, where oil and gas jobs are concerned these days, guess which profession's freshly minted graduates are commanding six-figure salaries and five-figure bonuses?
The joke's on us.
