Socionics Is The Wrong Approach

(This post is directed at no-one in particular, I am just continuing the discussion.)

I found a video on youtube. This is an introductory psychology course (PSY 110) taught at Yale University by Paul Bloom. The video I am linking is lecture 13, which is on the psychological differences between people. The subject matter of this lecture is central to the topic of this thread and brings up a lot of the controversy that explains many of the issues I have with Socionics.

The lecture focuses on the two major aspects on which we differ, which are personality and intelligence, and it talks about the two biggest concerns with methods for defining these two aspects, which are reliability and validity. There is also a brief discussion on the Big 5, it's merits, and why it is the psychological standard. This is pretty basic stuff, but it is critical to understand these ideas because they give good reasons to strongly object to Socionics (and cognitive functions) as the right approach to defining personality.

Unless, of course, anyone disagrees with the academic standards of Yale University.

TreasureTower said:

Wow, seriously? I know whether or not, I'm right handed or ambidextrous but I would have absolutely no clue how to answer a question like this.

:laughing:

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Obviously left foot. It's my lead foot as can be seen by my slightly higher hip. It's weird because I am right handed but left footed.

The question may be trying to get at that two sides of the brain theory. Except in a less known way so you won't try to "rig" the answer.

"Socionics is the wrong approach".

Well so is lack of foreplay, but people still seem to make wrong decisions on a daily basis.

I found it to be helpful. The explanations are mostly positive, and encourage me to get things done in my work environment.

Then there's MBTI, where the vagueness creates such a broad understanding, and there really are no objective points reached.

Maybe the topic is freedom. Socionics creates a lack of freedom because it is more detailed in the analyses?

Abraxas said:

Not only is there no evidence for the existence of cognitive functions, there is actually mountains of evidence to suggest that cognition is not made up discreet processes, but rather it is multi-dimensional and made up of various overlapping traits. This is why I comfortably venture that not a single psychology professor at any college anywhere in the world teaches Socionics. If they teach anything at all about personality (which they probably do) they teach the Big 5, because it is widely accepted and has tremendous evidence to support it. Socionics takes the wrong approach because it is based on, and fails to prove, a hypothesis that runs counter to what psychologists already know with strong certainty. It is a fringe theory that almost no professional psychologists take seriously, which is why it is not taught to students.

My experience has been that those who think Socionics is "useful" in the sense of being valid are doing so under the false pretense that just because a model can reliably predict something about a person the model is therefore necessarily valid. But this is simply not the case. Reliability does not equate to validity. Another way to say this is "correlation does not imply causation." It is not that the predictions Socionics makes are false. Many of the predictions about personality that Socionics states are true, are true. It is that they do not follow for the reasons provided by the model, because the premises of the model are false. The model is therefore invalid.

I could even go a step further and frame my objection using an analogy to the "usefulness" of religion. I could, for instance, agree to the notion that some people find a use and a need in their lives for superstitious beliefs in the supernatural. But this does not mean that superstitious beliefs in the supernatural actually are useful. It only means that these people believe their beliefs are useful to them. It also does not mean that anything supernatural actually exists. Their belief that their beliefs are useful is itself open to question, let alone that their beliefs in the supernatural are actually justified to begin with.

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So you're saying that you personally rely more on the Big 5 because it is used more by psychologists? Perhaps it does have a lot of evidence to support it; maybe even much more than Socionics, but then how do either of those theories relate to the idea of supernatural existence? Are you saying that any theory is closely linked to the analysis of existential understandings, but the one that is valid is theory a from the topic of your argument simply because of its popularity and confirmed officialism?

I'm putting your opinion into consideration, although contrasting results are endless depending on both the tester and the tested. Popular vote seems to win due to power in the end, anyway.

ParetoCaretheStare said:

So you're saying that you personally rely more on the Big 5 because it is used more by psychologists? Perhaps it does have a lot of evidence to support it; maybe even much more than Socionics, but then how do either of those theories relate to the idea of supernatural existence? Are you saying that any theory is closely linked to the analysis of existential understandings, but the one that is valid is theory a from the topic of your argument simply because of its popularity and confirmed officialism?

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Validity isn't based on popularity or authority. To say a model is valid is simply to say that whatever the given conclusion or prediction of the model is, it is true because the premises upon which the model is based are also true. If the conclusion/prediction is true but the premises are false, then the model is invalid because the conclusion/prediction does not follow from the premises the model is based on. If the logic of a model is invalid then it is not rational to believe in it.

Socionics does not, or cannot, provide proof of the existence of discreet cognitive processes called "functions" which are the basis for its predictions/conclusions about personality. Therefore, it is wrong. It is useless as a model for personality because it does not actually model personality. It claims to, but it has not substantiated this claim. Not only that, but there is also strong evidence to suggest that cognition is not made up of discreet processes, which is the basis of Socionics. Therefore, there is strong evidence against Socionics. Not only has Socionics failed to demonstrate its validity since its inception, there is reason to believe that it never will because fundamentally it can't.

ParetoCaretheStare said:

so it's just illogical

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TL;DR - Yeah, basically.

I really recommend doing a youtube search or a google search for "introduction to psychology and personality" and seeing if you can find a free lecture provided by a reputable college or university. It will prepare you for delving into this subject so that you don't get misled by people who believe in cognitive functions.

A lot of people are going to say things to you like, "you are using Fe" or "I see a lot of Ti in your post" or something like that. They are trying to tell you that you are showing a preference for a certain cognitive function. The thing is, cognitive functions probably don't exist in the first place. So who knows what they are really trying to say, you see? They're actually failing to say anything meaningful or useful. If they had instead just described what you said like a normal person would, you might have learned something useful about what you said that would help you figure out your personality.

Also, another big thing to watch out for is called the "fundamental attribution error." This is a strong cognitive bias in all human beings. We tend to attribute people's behavior to something deep inside them instead of taking into account the circumstances and the context for their behavior. So if Mary gets into an argument with someone five minutes before she meets you, and you have no idea she got into an argument five minutes ago, and then she reacts to something you say in a negative way, you might make the mistake of assuming Mary is just a hostile person, when the fact is, she's just in a bad mood because of the argument she just had that you don't know about.

You are going to run into people on these forums who actually believe that they can tell with certainty what your personality is just from reading one of your posts at random, ignoring context and circumstance. For instance, you might strongly feel and believe something, and someone might contradict that belief, and so you get upset due to having to face cognitive dissonance (nobody likes to be wrong), and so people will assume this tells something about your personality instead of realizing that anybody would get upset in that circumstance because it is totally normal behavior for anyone.

Reading these posts on either side of the debate has essentially shown me that I don't actually care about psychology. I'm largely interested in Socionics and Enneagram theory for the systematic and mechanical aspects of the theory. There's a lot of cool math inherent to it and interesting frameworks that allow the pieces come together. I'd never bother to seriously argue with anyone that "cognitive functions" or whatever exist. I find the topic totally boring and I have no strong feelings either way. It's true that the more scientific position is definitely that there's no good reason to believe in it without evidence, and I totally respect that. Same goes for big 5. It seems to be nice and testable and it presents a pretty sound hypothesis, but it's really hard for me to scrape together any interest in it.

I mainly use Socionics as an a priori model to give me some insight into that which I would otherwise have no bearing to understand. It describes a system of opposites (the many dichotomies) and mathematically creates a framework for understanding how certain things necessarily must be when other conditions hold. For example, lead Ti necessitates role Fi, suggestive Fe, and ignoring Te. This is cool because knowing how one values a single element allows one to extrapolate on the person's evaluation of three others. The obvious and very reasonable argument to this is "what if none of these even freaking exist?" I'd agree they probably don't. Personality is likely far more complex than can be quantized into some number of discrete opposites. But that doesn't mean the systematic aspect of these insights isn't interesting and sometimes useful. I find that my Socionics type happens to explain certain things about me very well. I'd never claim these things are empirically accurate, but they give me some personal insight on why I have trouble relating to certain others based on a conflicting valuation of different types of information. It is true that I look for logical consistency above many things (you can tell this just from what I've been saying, I think), and Ti happens to fit that. My annoyance with information relating to personal/emotional connections fits with Fi, and so on. Regardless of whether this insight can be said to describe any absolute truth, it sure does help me, and I find it horrendously fun to read and talk about. Plus, without it, I'd be likely to write off people with different perspectives and ways of looking at things as silly or even aggravating. Socionics and other personality theory allows me to see that there may be certain mechanisms that I can understand in their behavior, so even if I can't relate, I can have greater sympathy for alternate viewpoints.

This may be one of the first times I can actually relate with people who are religious. Granted, I would never claim my view has any bearing on reality, and so I despise the idea that a religious institution should have any say on what's taught in schools or passed into law, but I do respect the spiritual and subjective aspect to it. After all, no human being is inherently rational and we all are plagued by magical thinking and all sorts of stupid biases. So I try to make sure the stupid crap that I half-believe is interesting ​stupid crap.

@RoSoDude,

I actually really admire and respect everything you had to say. I really appreciate you sharing that perspective.I probably didn't convey myself well in this regard, but I actually really enjoy studying this stuff myself - otherwise, I probably wouldn't be here. :tongue: In fact, my favorite subject is philosophy (specifically existentialism), not anything scientific at all.

@itsme45, this is a response to the quote you posted in my thread on Filatova's test. I thought it would be more suited to post in this thread because it brings up many more points I'd like to address with Socionics.


There are numerous problems with cognitive functions, but I don't have the time to get into all of them. What I'm about to say might sound a bit condescending, but I don't mean to sound offensive. I just have the tendency to sound rather blunt, and if at any time I sound rude, please forgive me.

I'm going to assume, as I do about the majority of posters here on these forums, that you've never taken a college intro course on psychology or sociology. As such, I'm going to assume that your knowledge of the forces that shape people consists of only your personal experience and not centuries of scientific inquiry. Let me see if I can do my best just to give you an idea of the vast iceberg you've bumped your ship into, and why there is absolutely no reason to take Socionics very seriously at all.

There are a tremendous number and variety of forces at work that decide who we are. To try and reduce them all down into eight discreet cognitive processes, and then say that these eight "functions" exist are useful for describing personality (or even useful for anything), is almost delusional. For one thing, it completely ignores any kind of sociological perspective, and I'm going to talk a bit about that right now, because very few people even know what sociology is and why it needs to be included in any analysis of people as individuals.

People and their personalities do not exist in a vacuum. Who you are is largely not up to you, nor does your heredity or neurology, or whatever cognitive biases you have matter much. The choices available for you to make in life are more limited than you might think. The extent of your agency as sentient creature is mostly directed by and under the influence of social powers and the inertia of historical movements. Regardless of whatever psychological traits and potential you were born with, however that manifests itself depends more upon the pressures and attitudes of the culture and society you belong to than it does to something driving you individually from within. Individually, you barely even exist. That is because you are not just an individual - you are also part of a group, and you play a role within that group whether you are aware of it or not, and whether you believe it or not, and whether you want to or not.

You do not even get to decide what right and wrong is. Society decides that for you, and if you don't agree with me then go become a criminal and see what happens. You do not get to decide what truth is. If you don't agree with that, go make up whatever answers you want on your college exams and see if you graduate. Unless you are a senator or an important politician, you do not get to decide how money ought to be distributed, or what rights women ought to have. If you are poor, you have very few freedoms at all. Your choice of diet, transportation, shelter - these are all extremely limited for you. Your opinion will probably never matter or change anything in this world - not even your family or the people you call your friends - because your family and friends are also part of society and have their own responsibilities and may not have the luxury of being a rebel even if you choose to be.

If that all sounds bleak, it's meant to, but it's also meant to be realistic. It's brutally real about who people really are, and to what extent they have a say in anything. But it goes even deeper than just your freedom to choose what car you want to drive, or where you want to live. Even your fundamental beliefs, your moral convictions, your logical opinions, your manner of speech, your manner of dress, the music you like, your way of expressing yourself to others - all of those are influenced by society as well. Indeed, there simply is no boundary, no hard line where you end and the world begins. Society is as completely penetrating as it is all-encompassing.

Every single idea that exists with which to define your personality is a contrivance of society and the native language you've been taught. The very words that get used to label personality traits themselves reflect biases within the society of which you are a member. They are subtly tied into the opinions and feelings of your native culture, which themselves are the result of historical movements that have been evolving for hundreds of years, some even thousands.

If the circumstances of your world were different - if you were born into a different time and place, but biologically you were exactly the same as you are right now, your personality type would be vastly different and you'd be a very different person as a point of fact. Regardless of whatever your heredity or genetics or family history is, how you came to be who you are is much more strongly shaped by and influenced by those historical social movements than by your individual circumstances, because your individual circumstances themselves only exist because of those movements, and are given a context by those movements in the first place.

To use an analogy, imagine personality as being a like a painting. Imagine your heredity and genetics as being the painter in this analogy, the device that creates the painting. Society, then, is the paint. Society is the canvas. Society is the methods you will use to paint with. Society are the tools you will paint with. Society is what will judge your painting and decide if it is art - indeed, society will decide if your painting is even a painting. So what, then, is the painting - what is your personality - if you take away the paint, the methods, the tools, the canvas, and the standard? The answer really is, nothing.

So then, perhaps you can see how deep this rabbit hole goes now, and why this notion of cognitive functions - if they even existed - having anything much to do with personality, is rather laughable. Again, your personal experiences, how well you individually identify with what you read about cognitive functions, matters very little. The reason why you identify with them is not really because they exist. You might identify with them because deep down inside, you just want to. And you want to because unconsciously, unknown to you, you are under pressure to do so by your peers.

If you think I'm wrong, then hang out for awhile. See if, after you spend enough time around these forums, you don't find your belief in all of this stuff having some reality reinforced ten-fold by the convictions of others. I can promise you right now what is going to happen. You'll find no short supply of people posting here who don't know any better and are going to convince you that this stuff is useful. And you're going to agree with them, not because they are right, but because you think they are - and you think they are because you want them to be because that makes you right, and nobody wants to be wrong. And you will befriend these people as they befriend you, you will fall into a clique, find your niche, and probably live happily ever after.

I think it's true cognitive functions have very little to explain inherently about personality by themselves since what they even are is ambiguous, and that's mostly attributing things to things like cognitive functions which don't depend exclusively on cognitive functions. It's almost too clear.

As to what is useful, of course I'm the last person who'll comment yay or nay on such things.

I think that indirect allusion to philosophy up there by Abraxas gets at the heart of my stance, which is that I tend to explain things philosophically -- I'm articulating an insight I know is there through some philosophical means I have access to, although layers get added which clarify where this insight applies whether to me or to a more objective realm, only with time.

Abraxas said:

...this is a response to the quote you posted in my thread on Filatova's test. I thought it would be more suited to post in this thread because it brings up many more points I'd like to address with Socionics.

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Thanks for the response!

Oh eh. So much wrong with your assumptions. I don't even understand how you ended up at these statements by reading my original post. But that's not a problem, I'm intrigued now. So I don't mind discussing stuff with you. OK, where do I start? Let's see.

There are numerous problems with cognitive functions, but I don't have the time to get into all of them. What I'm about to say might sound a bit condescending, but I don't mean to sound offensive. I just have the tendency to sound rather blunt, and if at any time I sound rude, please forgive me.

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No worries I'm never really bothered by blunt style, I myself am very blunt in debates and even outside debates. And yeah, my intention is also not to offend you, do forgive me etc etc.

I'm going to assume, as I do about the majority of posters here on these forums, that you've never taken a college intro course on psychology or sociology. As such, I'm going to assume that your knowledge of the forces that shape people consists of only your personal experience and not centuries of scientific inquiry. Let me see if I can do my best just to give you an idea of the vast iceberg you've bumped your ship into, and why there is absolutely no reason to take Socionics very seriously at all.

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Wrong assumption. I've taken quite more than one single basic course in psychology at university. In my socionics typing thread had lots of fun talking with aestrivex about this stuff as he's studied neuroscience, which IMO is really interesting. (I see he got banned since then, what? )

So let's forget about phrases like "vast iceberg" in my case.

I will give one thing to you, I didn't really bother with sociology. It's just not my thing.


Otoh, it's not news to me that socionics is not meant to be taken very seriously. I believe my original post was pretty clear about that. Was it not?

Let me quote the relevant parts from my post, did you just miss them or what? I even explicitly mentioned how I have a worldview with which socionics theory "as is" is inconsistent. And these parts belong to this thread anyway.

Part 1: "As for being able to pick my preferred IE's/functions without a real problem, that may be because properties of the functions are also characteristic enough. Even if it doesn't mean that these functions exist "as is". (They pretty much don't.)"

(See the bolded especially.)

Part 2: "I don't believe in the model anyway not only because of inconsistencies with other frameworks I use for my worldview but also because it lacks sufficient depth of explanation, that is I don't view it as having enough reasoning to prove its conclusions from its own assumptions even on a strictly theoretical level."


Btw let me correct you on one thing... centuries of scientific inquiry? Psychology is a very young discipline. Also, not much is clear in psychology, not much is proven and there's a lot of different views and thoughts within psychology from psychonanalysis stuff to cognitive psychology.

There are a tremendous number and variety of forces at work that decide who we are. To try and reduce them all down into eight discreet cognitive processes, and then say that these eight "functions" exist are useful for describing personality (or even useful for anything), is almost delusional.

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I agree. You see, this is one of the things I alluded to when I said I have (unresolvable) issues with the logic in the theory. Basically, the IEs are defined by several characteristics. Some of it cognitive, some of it behavioural correlations. Even if we stick to just the cognitive elements, it's still just a set of traits etc., and there is absolutely nothing mentioned about how there would be any direct causal link between them to be able to group them under one specific IE or function. And if we look at the behavioural correlations, the picture is even sadder. This, among other things, means that if you type someone to have X base function and then type someone else to have the same base function, it will *not* follow that these two people will share that much in common, even in thinking but especially in behaviour. They may or they may not. Fun, isn't it?

For one thing, it completely ignores any kind of sociological perspective, and I'm going to talk a bit about that right now, because very few people even know what sociology is and why it needs to be included in any analysis of people as individuals.

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I almost went to major in sociology before quickly finding out that it was not my thing. Psychology was much more my thing, though certainly not all of psychology, just mostly cognitive psychology and anything biology related.

I don't disagree though that sociology is a good perspective to include in these analyses, however I do heavily disagree about the idea that this approach should be used as the main perspective.

People and their personalities do not exist in a vacuum. Who you are is largely not up to you, nor does your heredity or neurology, or whatever cognitive biases you have matter much.

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Wrong. Of course we don't exist in a vacuum but we are also *not* tabula rasa. Personality is pretty well based in genetic/biological differences. Obviously then the first few years of your life (including the months before birth) will also affect you heavily. The rest of your life will still shape you in a significant way but less determining compared to the first part of your life and genes.

The choices available for you to make in life are more limited than you might think. The extent of your agency as sentient creature is mostly directed by and under the influence of social powers and the inertia of historical movements. Regardless of whatever psychological traits and potential you were born with, however that manifests itself depends more upon the pressures and attitudes of the culture and society you belong to than it does to something driving you individually from within. Individually, you barely even exist. That is because you are not just an individual - you are also part of a group, and you play a role within that group whether you are aware of it or not, and whether you believe it or not, and whether you want to or not.

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I suppose "you" is a general you here but I'll say anyway, this doesn't apply to everyone the same. E.g. I don't really belong to any group. (Not saying I would not like to though.) So I'm not really playing roles. But sure, it does matter a lot that I was born into this age and not into an earlier age.

You do not even get to decide what right and wrong is. Society decides that for you, and if you don't agree with me then go become a criminal and see what happens. You do not get to decide what truth is. If you don't agree with that, go make up whatever answers you want on your college exams and see if you graduate. Unless you are a senator or an important politician, you do not get to decide how money ought to be distributed, or what rights women ought to have. If you are poor, you have very few freedoms at all. Your choice of diet, transportation, shelter - these are all extremely limited for you. Your opinion will probably never matter or change anything in this world - not even your family or the people you call your friends - because your family and friends are also part of society and have their own responsibilities and may not have the luxury of being a rebel even if you choose to be.

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*Yawn*.

I disagree.

I'll take your example of exams vs truth. Just because the material I study at university reflects certain opinions, it does not mean it's absolute truth. Just because I'm to take tests and want to score well on them, it does not mean that I need to believe that I've studied the absolute truth. No one forbids you to question the truth of the study material. And that's exactly what scientific research is for. That's what you use to question the current truth and develop another one (hopefully it's truly a better model of reality), not university exams. Exams are there to be passed, not to debate some imaginary teacher (you only have the paper in front of you so that's why I said imaginary). Before you question the current truth, you better know what it is anyway.

As for your other examples, I could argue against those too in a concrete way but basically my point is that I don't see this as you do, I don't see it being so restricted. You can go a long way if you want something.

If that all sounds bleak, it's meant to, but it's also meant to be realistic. It's brutally real about who people really are, and to what extent they have a say in anything. But it goes even deeper than just your freedom to choose what car you want to drive, or where you want to live. Even your fundamental beliefs, your moral convictions, your logical opinions, your manner of speech, your manner of dress, the music you like, your way of expressing yourself to others - all of those are influenced by society as well. Indeed, there simply is no boundary, no hard line where you end and the world begins. Society is as completely penetrating as it is all-encompassing.

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Bleak? Are you kinda... depressed?

Yes I agree there is no hard line, I always view myself as being part of the world, being in interaction with it.

And sure, stuff is influenced by society. Though there's one thing you're wrong about, why I like the music I like is *not* influenced by society. Oh well I am just this special example, you managed to pick out the wrong person eh

Every single idea that exists with which to define your personality is a contrivance of society and the native language you've been taught.

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Well my main point here, there's many different ideas and views going around even just inside one type of society. How do you pick one for yourself? You certainly don't pick all of them. What does your choice depend on then? Well, it depends on *you* too.

The very words that get used to label personality traits themselves reflect biases within the society of which you are a member. They are subtly tied into the opinions and feelings of your native culture, which themselves are the result of historical movements that have been evolving for hundreds of years, some even thousands.

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Oh, sure that could be *part* of it. Not all.

If the circumstances of your world were different - if you were born into a different time and place, but biologically you were exactly the same as you are right now, your personality type would be vastly different and you'd be a very different person as a point of fact. Regardless of whatever your heredity or genetics or family history is, how you came to be who you are is much more strongly shaped by and influenced by those historical social movements than by your individual circumstances, because your individual circumstances themselves only exist because of those movements, and are given a context by those movements in the first place.

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I'm not so sure that my type would be vastly different. Might or might not be but I'm going by "somewhat different person" with the same biological basis. So we can agree to a point, different person yes, but how can you prove the statement that it would definitely be a "vastly different type" too? You said that was a "point of fact"?

To use an analogy, imagine personality as being a like a painting. Imagine your heredity and genetics as being the painter in this analogy, the device that creates the painting. Society, then, is the paint. Society is the canvas. Society is the methods you will use to paint with. Society are the tools you will paint with. Society is what will judge your painting and decide if it is art - indeed, society will decide if your painting is even a painting. So what, then, is the painting - what is your personality - if you take away the paint, the methods, the tools, the canvas, and the standard? The answer really is, nothing.

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Where's the painter's thoughts in all this? The painting tools are not the only components, a big component is the painter's vision that he wants to paint about - that you forgot to include here. It's not just some standard.

So then, perhaps you can see how deep this rabbit hole goes now, and why this notion of cognitive functions - if they even existed - having anything much to do with personality, is rather laughable.

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Not sure how this sociology perspective has anything to do with this conclusion. It does not follow for me. I'm missing several logical steps here to the conclusion.

E.g., why does it even matter where personality or type comes from, biological or sociological? Type is type, personality is personality, origins of it is another issue.

Another thing is, nothing you said goes against the idea that people are different. Did you try to prove somehow that everyone's the same or something? I'm not clear on this, whether you think so or what.

Otoh I do see a point to the idea that our cognitive functioning (I don't necessarily even mean functions) is only part of what we are.

Again, your personal experiences, how well you individually identify with what you read about cognitive functions, matters very little.

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I disagree. I find that my own experiences do matter and my brain's way of functioning does matter more than just "very little".

The reason why you identify with them is not really because they exist. You might identify with them because deep down inside, you just want to. And you want to because unconsciously, unknown to you, you are under pressure to do so by your peers.

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Nah, I'm not under peer pressure. (Tbh even in my teens I didn't have much peer pressure. Y'know, "outcast".)

If you think I'm wrong, then hang out for awhile. See if, after you spend enough time around these forums, you don't find your belief in all of this stuff having some reality reinforced ten-fold by the convictions of others. I can promise you right now what is going to happen. You'll find no short supply of people posting here who don't know any better and are going to convince you that this stuff is useful. And you're going to agree with them, not because they are right, but because you think they are - and you think they are because you want them to be because that makes you right, and nobody wants to be wrong. And you will befriend these people as they befriend you, you will fall into a clique, find your niche, and probably live happily ever after.

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Nope, wrong prediction. I cannot be convinced about something just because other people claim it's true blahblah. Nope, I need to process things for myself and decide its truth for myself. I make my own observations and make my own analysis. That's just how I am and how I've always been. I do like to try and convince others though. So do you. Nothing wrong with that

True I don't like to think I'm wrong but that's nothing to do with peer pressure. And about cliques, I doubt I'd fall into one here or elsewhere. Though who knows, I wouldn't mind getting a group together about whatever Your last few words are cute.

itsme45 said:

Otoh, it's not news to me that socionics is not meant to be taken very seriously. I believe my original post was pretty clear about that. Was it not?

Let me quote the relevant parts from my post, did you just miss them or what? I even explicitly mentioned how I have a worldview with which socionics theory "as is" is inconsistent. And these parts belong to this thread anyway.

Part 1: "As for being able to pick my preferred IE's/functions without a real problem, that may be because properties of the functions are also characteristic enough. Even if it doesn't mean that these functions exist "as is". (They pretty much don't.)"

(See the bolded especially.)

Part 2: "I don't believe in the model anyway not only because of inconsistencies with other frameworks I use for my worldview but also because it lacks sufficient depth of explanation, that is I don't view it as having enough reasoning to prove its conclusions from its own assumptions even on a strictly theoretical level."

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I must've missed your post, yes. I didn't see it.

itsme45 said:

Btw let me correct you on one thing... centuries of scientific inquiry? Psychology is a very young discipline. Also, not much is clear in psychology, not much is proven and there's a lot of different views and thoughts within psychology from psychonanalysis stuff to cognitive psychology.

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I was referring to sociology and somewhat to psychology. I believe psychology formally began with Wundt in the early 1800's did it not? That would be almost a couple centuries now, but perhaps not quite. I did exaggerate a bit for effect. On the other hand, Sociology has been around since the Enlightenment and emerged post French revolution in the very late 1700's if I recall correctly. So my statement was not really wrong, was it?

itsme45 said:

Wrong. Of course we don't exist in a vacuum but we are also *not* tabula rasa. Personality is pretty well based in genetic/biological differences. Obviously then the first few years of your life (including the months before birth) will also affect you heavily. The rest of your life will still shape you in a significant way but less determining compared to the first part of your life and genes.

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We'll have to agree to disagree here then. In my education I've come to understand that genetic biases and heredity does play a part, but environment plays at least an equal, if not greater role in the development of personality. Before you cite twin studies and such, I'm fully aware of the objective facts about genetic predispositions, and I'm afraid you are exaggerating their influence on personality. I would be an idiot to say that they don't play a part when obviously they play a major role, but they really are not the main attraction.

Also, I did not intend nor did I state outright that we are "tabula rasa." You'll notice I put a heavy emphasis on my perspective, a sociological one, and so I did stress the influence of one's environment on personality development. Perhaps I was a bit too extreme. I'm willing to concede that it is not all there is too it, but again, in my worldview and preferred perspective, I've come to agree with the opinion that it does play a larger role than genetics, even if genetics plays a large role.

itsme45 said:

*Yawn*.

I disagree.

I'll take your example of exams vs truth. Just because the material I study at university reflects certain opinions, it does not mean it's absolute truth. Just because I'm to take tests and want to score well on them, it does not mean that I need to believe that I've studied the absolute truth. No one forbids you to question the truth of the study material. And that's exactly what scientific research is for. That's what you use to question the current truth and develop another one (hopefully it's truly a better model of reality), not university exams. Exams are there to be passed, not to debate some imaginary teacher (you only have the paper in front of you so that's why I said imaginary). Before you question the current truth, you better know what it is anyway.

As for your other examples, I could argue against those too in a concrete way but basically my point is that I don't see this as you do, I don't see it being so restricted. You can go a long way if you want something.

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I think you're arguing against a straw man here. I wasn't really talking about "absolute truth" as you put it. That's something for philosophers to argue about. I was talking about the kind of common sense and facts that people call truth until those facts get changed through scientific research and people come to accept something different. In the meantime, however, you will fail a test if you just put in parenthesis, "this is actually true, please update your test." The "true" answer for the test is whatever the test is asking for. It is in this sense that you don't really have a say in whatever truth is, not unless you are actually doing something to shape truth yourself by your own actions.

This actually brings up the very heart of the issue I am trying to point out. Here, I will be a little bit philosophical and digress for just a moment.

To what extent can we say that a person really has a distinct "personality" if they are little more than merely the echo of what others have to say and think and do? Jung talks about this when he presents his ideas about personas, and the humanistic psychological perspective also goes into this quite in-depth. If all I do is just adopt some kind of persona and underneath that mask there is just nothing else, then who am I? In that sense, I am just a puppet and my strings are tied to the thoughts and voice and deeds of others.

But when, instead, you recognize the forces that shape the world that are man-made, you can recognize the stream and which way the water is flowing. Then, and only then, you can decide which way you want to go and assert your own individuality. Ignorance does not lead to self-actualization, only recognition and acceptance.

But enough of existentialism, lol. Sorry, I am a bit passionate for it even though it is a bit passe these days.

itsme45 said:

Bleak? Are you kinda... depressed?

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Lol, no. I'm quite fine. I was just trying to look out for your feelings and keep my bases covered. I couldn't say how you would react, but I imagine if it was the first time I had heard any of the stuff I was saying it might come across to some people as bleak, don't you? Perhaps even a bit fatalistic. Maybe that is why you dislike sociology? I find it fascinating.

itsme45 said:

And sure, stuff is influenced by society. Though there's one thing you're wrong about, why I like the music I like is *not* influenced by society. Oh well I am just this special example, you managed to pick out the wrong person eh

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I'm very skeptic of this. But I don't want to tit-for-tat and dispute you on every point, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say "okay." If you say so. :wink:

itsme45 said:

I'm not so sure that my type would be vastly different. Might or might not be but I'm going by "somewhat different person" with the same biological basis. So we can agree to a point, different person yes, but how can you prove the statement that it would definitely be a "vastly different type" too? You said that was a "point of fact"?

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Haha, you got me there! I should've left out "point of fact." That was just bad exposition on my part and I let myself get too involved in what I was saying. I suppose I am ahead of myself in anticipating the advent of time machines soon so we can go back and do a rigorous longitudinal study of Doctor Who and the rest of the Gallifreyans. :laughing:

itsme45 said:

Where's the painter's thoughts in all this? The painting tools are not the only components, a big component is the painter's vision that he wants to paint about - that you forgot to include here. It's not just some standard.

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I think this just echos our prior point of disagreement. While on the one hand I have seen studies showing that even infants possess an aesthetic sense, thus suggesting that an appreciation of beauty is actually biological and we are born with a certain way of recognizing something as "art" - nevertheless, this ability to appreciate things as symbolic in an expressive way develops into an enormous and complicated set of artistic values that are almost completely acquired from the cultures of this Earth. Carl Jung actually touches upon this with his study of the archetypes and the collective unconscious.

itsme45 said:

Not sure how this sociology perspective has anything to do with this conclusion. It does not follow for me. I'm missing several logical steps here to the conclusion.

E.g., why does it even matter where personality or type comes from, biological or sociological? Type is type, personality is personality, origins of it is another issue.

Another thing is, nothing you said goes against the idea that people are different. Did you try to prove somehow that everyone's the same or something? I'm not clear on this, whether you think so or what.

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Because I don't think you can begin to say that someone has a "type" which really belongs to them until you can find some way to distinguish "them" from "others." And for this, a person necessarily needs to be aware of just how much of their own identity is something which is mimicking and shadowing the social identity of the groups to which they belong. People have to separate themselves from others in a fundamental way in order to recognize anything within themselves which actually belongs to them, something they can "own" and say, "this is what distinguishes me." This is why I have no problem with trait based personality models, but I strongly dispute the notion of discreet types.

I'm not saying there are not "types" of people, but if we want to start stereotyping, there are better and more empirical ways to do it than so-called "cognitive functions."

itsme45 said:

Nope, wrong prediction. I cannot be convinced about something just because other people claim it's true blahblah. Nope, I need to process things for myself and decide its truth for myself. I make my own observations and make my own analysis. That's just how I am and how I've always been. I do like to try and convince others though. So do you. Nothing wrong with that

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Nothing wrong indeed. This part wasn't meant for you, apparently. But there are many people on these forums to which it applies. Many people in life, in fact. Not just here, but wherever you go. I applaud and encourage you to challenge intellectual foundations and to rebel against group values whenever and however you feel is needed. I do the same myself, as you noticed and pointed out as well.

itsme45 said:

True I don't like to think I'm wrong but that's nothing to do with peer pressure. And about cliques, I doubt I'd fall into one here or elsewhere. Though who knows, I wouldn't mind getting a group together about whatever Your last few words are cute.

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Lol, thanks. :blushed:

Abraxas said:

I must've missed your post, yes. I didn't see it.

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Oh it makes sense then.

I was referring to sociology and somewhat to psychology. I believe psychology formally began with Wundt in the early 1800's did it not? That would be almost a couple centuries now, but perhaps not quite. I did exaggerate a bit for effect. On the other hand, Sociology has been around since the Enlightenment and emerged post French revolution in the very late 1700's if I recall correctly. So my statement was not really wrong, was it?

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1879. And okay about sociology

We'll have to agree to disagree here then. In my education I've come to understand that genetic biases and heredity does play a part, but environment plays at least an equal, if not greater role in the development of personality. Before you cite twin studies and such, I'm fully aware of the objective facts about genetic predispositions, and I'm afraid you are exaggerating their influence on personality. I would be an idiot to say that they don't play a part when obviously they play a major role, but they really are not the main attraction.

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Yes it could be for example 50-50 easily (nature vs nurture), I actually I don't think it's a much bigger part than equal role. Hard to measure these things... just this is how the information I currently know and interpreted about this topic makes sense to me. I'm sure there's more than one way to interpret the data but I find it highly unlikely that heredity only plays a "very little" part.

I think you're arguing against a straw man here. I wasn't really talking about "absolute truth" as you put it. That's something for philosophers to argue about. I was talking about the kind of common sense and facts that people call truth until those facts get changed through scientific research and people come to accept something different. In the meantime, however, you will fail a test if you just put in parenthesis, "this is actually true, please update your test." The "true" answer for the test is whatever the test is asking for. It is in this sense that you don't really have a say in whatever truth is, not unless you are actually doing something to shape truth yourself by your own actions.

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My point was simply that an exam is not the place where you need to start proving why you think the studied material is not true.

I do get the idea that you think many people will never think beyond what they were taught though, right? It's still not the same as not having any say in what is considered as truth. (Ok now we could right away skip to self-actualization etc. that you mention later)

I used the expression "absolute truth" not in the philosophical sense, it just sounded like you meant the current truth is being forced on people making it an absolute truth. I don't see it that way.

This actually brings up the very heart of the issue I am trying to point out. Here, I will be a little bit philosophical and digress for just a moment.

To what extent can we say that a person really has a distinct "personality" if they are little more than merely the echo of what others have to say and think and do? Jung talks about this when he presents his ideas about personas, and the humanistic psychological perspective also goes into this quite in-depth. If all I do is just adopt some kind of persona and underneath that mask there is just nothing else, then who am I? In that sense, I am just a puppet and my strings are tied to the thoughts and voice and deeds of others.

But when, instead, you recognize the forces that shape the world that are man-made, you can recognize the stream and which way the water is flowing. Then, and only then, you can decide which way you want to go and assert your own individuality. Ignorance does not lead to self-actualization, only recognition and acceptance.

But enough of existentialism, lol. Sorry, I am a bit passionate for it even though it is a bit passe these days.

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Interesting. I feel I'm more than an echo though, yes I of course heard about the concept of persona but I'm pretty sure I have more to myself than just that (not even much of a persona tbh - hey I try, I just don't try hard enough ). So perhaps I'm wrong in assuming that I'm not the only one who has more than that and the issue of people just having personas is actually more widespread than I'd have thought. My impression is that there's more than that to most people though. I kind of see every person I meet as different in some way (it's just often hard for me to describe these differences verbally so good categories, scales and systems of those can help a lot there).

Lol, no. I'm quite fine. I was just trying to look out for your feelings and keep my bases covered. I couldn't say how you would react, but I imagine if it was the first time I had heard any of the stuff I was saying it might come across to some people as bleak, don't you? Perhaps even a bit fatalistic. Maybe that is why you dislike sociology? I find it fascinating.

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Yeah the fatalistic part is very different from how I think. It's not bleak, just simply not how I see the world. So no worries about my feelings

No, my problem with sociology is not that. I'm simply just not interested enough in that high level of analysis of functioning of people to spend years of study on it. I'm much more of a "low level guy". Some things can still be interesting about it of course.

I'm very skeptic of this. But I don't want to tit-for-tat and dispute you on every point, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say "okay." If you say so. :wink:

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Yeah it's natural you'd be skeptical about that as I know taste in music is something that's very typically influenced by peers. It's actually an interesting topic about how it could be possible to not be influenced there (I'm pretty sure I'm right in thinking so), that's too OT here though. Maybe it can be discussed elsewhere.

Haha, you got me there! I should've left out "point of fact." That was just bad exposition on my part and I let myself get too involved in what I was saying. I suppose I am ahead of myself in anticipating the advent of time machines soon so we can go back and do a rigorous longitudinal study of Doctor Who and the rest of the Gallifreyans. :laughing:

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Well, one day, haha.

I think this just echos our prior point of disagreement. While on the one hand I have seen studies showing that even infants possess an aesthetic sense, thus suggesting that an appreciation of beauty is actually biological and we are born with a certain way of recognizing something as "art" - nevertheless, this ability to appreciate things as symbolic in an expressive way develops into an enormous and complicated set of artistic values that are almost completely acquired from the cultures of this Earth. Carl Jung actually touches upon this with his study of the archetypes and the collective unconscious.

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Yes, true that culture affects taste in arts but I still think that the painter can have his own thoughts. Perhaps we need to define what's meant by "your own thoughts". For me, it's a product of your own analysis or other processing done in your own brain and not simply a copy of other people's values/preferences/tastes etc. It's obvious that "no man is an island", I just debate the degree of the reliance of our brains' contents on others. Part of it will be from just other people/culture, part of it will be from your own experiences and part will be from your own mind's processing being done on all that.

Because I don't think you can begin to say that someone has a "type" which really belongs to them until you can find some way to distinguish "them" from "others." And for this, a person necessarily needs to be aware of just how much of their own identity is something which is mimicking and shadowing the social identity of the groups to which they belong. People have to separate themselves from others in a fundamental way in order to recognize anything within themselves which actually belongs to them, something they can "own" and say, "this is what distinguishes me." This is why I have no problem with trait based personality models, but I strongly dispute the notion of discreet types.

I'm not saying there are not "types" of people, but if we want to start stereotyping, there are better and more empirical ways to do it than so-called "cognitive functions."

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Ok, can you talk a bit more about how trait based models are compatible but types are not compatible with effects of heavy social influence, in your opinion?

Btw I'm actually not into all this for stereotyping. By type I just mean people with certain characteristics by certain definitions. That's pretty vague compared to a concrete stereotype, right?

Nothing wrong indeed. This part wasn't meant for you, apparently. But there are many people on these forums to which it applies. Many people in life, in fact. Not just here, but wherever you go. I applaud and encourage you to challenge intellectual foundations and to rebel against group values whenever and however you feel is needed. I do the same myself, as you noticed and pointed out as well.

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Yeah I know it can apply to some people. Thanks for the nice words

itsme45 said:

Ok, can you talk a bit more about how trait based models are compatible but types are not compatible with effects of heavy social influence, in your opinion?

Btw I'm actually not into all this for stereotyping. By type I just mean people with certain characteristics by certain definitions. That's pretty vague compared to a concrete stereotype, right?

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I think trait-based models are more compatible with social influence because they distinguish the differences between people even within the same cultures or groups. Because they aren't assigning a discreet type to people, just a handful of traits, you can still measure the traits regardless of social context and just take social context into account. But for a model that uses discreet types, you're just X type or Y type, and so there's no way to really account for social influence. So, for example, in a certain social context you might have a huge number of people that are a certain type (like in America for instance, where Jung believed extraverts were a vast majority), and so the vast majority will test as extraverted. Because it's just X or Y, they might actually be an introvert by the standards of another society - if they lived there.

Although, this is actually not impossible to account for and solve, I just think it's a bigger can of worms for a model that uses discreet types and more easily addressed by a model that just assigns traits on a scale. It's more in particular a gripe I have with MBTI and Socionics. I do think that perhaps it is possible for these models to be adjusted to take a cultural perspective into consideration, it just seems like, as far as I know, they haven't done this. It also seems like it would be really difficult to do and still have a useful model by the end of it. I mean, we can just do that already with the Big 5 or even the MMPI. MBTI and Socionics really needs to catch up to these other models.

Oh, and on the side, I actually don't mind stereotypes or stereotyping people as long as the stereotypes aren't harmful and they are based in reality. In fact, I think stereotypes are rather useful and I couldn't imagine life without them. But on the other hand, a lot of stereotypes tend to get distorted eventually and come to represent something untrue, or are just used to discriminate unfairly and lead to prejudice and elitism. I think this is unfortunate, so I am very careful with stereotypes and always try to make sure that it doesn't come to that. I'm not saying that MBTI or Socionics is this way, but at least potentially it could turn into that, and it already has here on these forums somewhat. There are a lot of people here who will read what you have to say, and then instead of addressing what it is that you said like a normal person, they'll say something dismissive like "that's Ti for you," or, "typical Fe versus Fi."