How do you see the world?

Take a look at the three figures below and tell me how they relate to each other:

If I asked you to describe the relationship between these three figures, you could answer in many ways. You could say they’re all rectangles. You could say they all have four sides. You could say two are vertical and one is horizontal, or that two are standing up and one is lying down, or that no figure has precisely the same relationship to the other two. Or that one is different and the other two are alike.

There are many reasonable answers, but ultimately what is going on here? They’re all descriptions of the same picture, but they take completely different approaches. So it is with matchers and mismatchers.

This metaprogram determines how you sort information to learn, understand, and the like. To determine whether someone is a matcher or mismatcher, ask him about the relationship between any set of objects or situations and note whether he focuses first on the similarities or the differences.

Matchers

Some people respond to the world by finding sameness. They look at things and see what they have in common. They’re matchers. So when they look at our figures they might say, “Well, they’re all rectangles.”

Another kind of matcher finds sameness with exceptions. He might look at the figures and say, “They’re all rectangles, but one is lying down and the other two are standing up.”