Exploring Psychological Diversity: Social Differences Explained

Diversity is all around us. Most often people associate the word with differences in ethnicity, language, gender, values, sexual orientation, culture, economic class, or religion. The news talks about it, companies provide training about it, churches offer symposiums about it, and universities have curriculums about it. But psychological diversity is often overlooked. That’s probably because it is the one very real diversity that can’t easily be discerned by looking at someone or through a simple conversation.

The important role psychological diversity plays in behavioral science is one of the seven principles of Perceptual Style Theory or PST. Exploring principle #2 of PST:

Principle #2: Differences in perception result in psychological diversity, and psychological diversity is the most profound diversity there is.

People’s psychology is built on their perception of the world around them. People make decisions about how to be and act in the world based on what they perceive. Because perception is different from person to person, people’s psychology is also different. This perceptual difference results in a psychological diversity that is the most important kind of diversity because it is hard wired, not changeable, and not overtly apparent. What this means is that without an understanding of psychological diversity there are many people whose actions, views, and approaches to life will make no sense to you. You may ascribe this disconnect to some more obvious difference between you such as “she’s a girl and I’m a boy and so she doesn’t get it.”

The reality is psychological diversity cuts across all other types of diversity and it is at the core of human differences. Believe it or not, you will find like-minded people (meaning people who see the world just like you do) in every other category of diversity. It’s not uncommon to feel more than a little surprised when this happens to you. So why is that?

Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Society provides a non-stop barrage of labeling people into groups. We do it in sports (“the fans of xx team are always exceptionally rowdy”), politics (“all the XX party people are nuts”), age (“Baby boomers just don’t get it, Gen X understands”), etc, etc, etc. At the heart of any labeling is an attempt to qualify, quantify, or explain why there are differences between people.

Social differences such as language, culture, values, economic class, and religion are real, but they are the result of circumstance, environment, and learning. Other diversity categories are facts of birth. And, most importantly, so is psychological diversity. The way you perceive the world is innate. You are born with it, and it is an integral part of who you are and how you experience life.

Physiological diversity is at the core of explaining the differences between people. All other types of diversity are secondary – literally layers on top of psychological diversity.