I watched a recent video on YouTube that helped me realize the complexity of the concept of the mind’s “inner dialogue”. Inner dialogue refers to the silent “conversation” people have with themselves in their thoughts. You can view the video here.
The differences of types of inner dialogues made me think that this may affect our efforts to communicate and understand others. Let me first list the types of inner dialogues that the video describes:
- 40% of people are primarily verbal thinkers. People who include this in their inner dialogue will have something like a literal conversation in their mind about a topic.
- ~50% report visual thinking. Folks that have this inner dialogue will picture things as part of their involuntary dialogues.
- about 20% say they think mainly in feelings, that is, how they feel emotionally about a topic.
- ~20% in sensory replays, or smells, tastes, etc related to a topic.
- a notable minority report no imagery or inner voice (including people with aphantasia).
I asked AI for some related facts regarding these inner dialogues:
- Each person’s consciousness is a unique mix of voices, images, sensations, and silence that no one else can fully access or verify.
- Strong inner voices help with planning, problem solving, and rehearsal.
- The downside of inner dialogue is that they are also associated with more frequent overthinking and looping thoughts.
- People with aphantasia often discover their difference in adulthood when they realize others literally “see” mental pictures.
- Lack of visual inner dialogue has been correlated to artistic ability, that is, people who do not involntarily visualize objects instead realize things by making art.
While there are many advantages of an inner dialogue, this AI summary matches the downside that I also perceived from the description of inner dialogue types:
- Differences in thinking style mean speakers and listeners may effectively use different “operating systems” (words vs maps vs spatial models), which complicates teaching, explaining, and giving directions.
I believe that most communication we are having with other people hinges on how our minds work and specifically how they map to our innder dialogues.
For example, if someone that has an emotional inner dialogue speaks to someone who has none (or little), most of the conversation may be lost of the person receiving it. This can lead to frustration that the receiver is not paying attention of taking the topic seriously, when in fact the listener may not be mentally capable of even understanding the message.
In another example, a person who has had a rich inner verbal dialogue about a topic may get frustrated while explaining it to another person, because they forget the fact that the previous dialogue was all in their own mind.
Any attempts to change our inner dialogues should be approached with caution, if they can be done at all. In the example above, trying to teach an artist to have a richer visual inner dialogue may remove some of their artistic ability !
In the end, the best thing to do would be to have empathy with other people and realize they may be taking in information on a topic in a completely different way than others. Even more effective would be to develop some simple tests so that people can identify what kind of thinkers they are, which can then be communicated to other people easily. That would help us understand others and how they take in information.
For more conversations on topics like this, please engage with the Mindset Dojo.
