yours and your mother's concerns

[Blaze]

Recent research conducted by Elena Olkova together with Elena Udalova proves that sociotypes aren't genetically determined but rather form as the result of mother's biggest concerns (which form the vulnerable function of a child) during the pregnancy. During the research, 100 pairs of monozygotic twins were tested and clearly showed different sociotypes (i.e. there were no twins with identical sociotypes found).

above from wikipedia socionics article. seems like an interesting proposition and we have discussed genetics and socionics on this forum before. those of you who are moms: does your experience confirm this? what were your biggest pre-occupations while pregnant?

for others, males and not moms yet, what do you think? if you know your mother's type....how do you think it dovetails to yours?

[Blaze]

i tried not to think about the wiki article. instead, i thought hard about what i was mainly thinking about while expecting my two daughters. hopefully this eliminates some bias.

with my older one (age 13 who is reliably typed as ESE) i felt that being a mom was a huge responsibility that could likely get quite burdonsome and vexing at times. i wondered if i could do it and i mainly worried about whether i would be able to love her enough. whether i would care enough. when she was born, i had a huge cascade of emotions which solified love.

with my younger one (age 8, pretty sure she is ILE), i focused on what would i do to help her. to give her a unique identity. to set her up for success. i also worried about giving her equal time compared to the older one, who i had ended up falling in love with, and who i was exceptionally close to. when she was born, i did not have a huge emotional cascade, but i felt that i knew her immediately, that i understood how her mind worked even as a newborn.

i hold off comment for now about my own mother. waiting to hear others thoughts about this topic and about the general idea of mothers forming children's temperaments.

[somavision]

Recent research conducted by Elena Olkova together with Elena Udalova proves that sociotypes aren't genetically determined but rather form as the result of mother's biggest concerns (which form the vulnerable function of a child) during the pregnancy. During the research, 100 pairs of monozygotic twins were tested and clearly showed different sociotypes (i.e. there were no twins with identical sociotypes found).

above from wikipedia socionics article. seems like an interesting proposition and we have discussed genetics and socionics on this forum before. those of you who are moms: does your experience confirm this? what were your biggest pre-occupations while pregnant?

for others, males and not moms yet, what do you think? if you know your mother's type....how do you think it dovetails to yours?

The research as it is presented in this quote appears only to suggest that type isn't dependant on genetics, I can't see how that can be used in itself to support the proposed hypothesis.

[Filambee]

If the pregnant mother had twins and was concerned about the same thing for both of babies, wouldn't the vulnerable function of the twins be the same?

[Blaze]

The research as it is presented in this quote appears only to suggest that type isn't dependant on genetics, I can't see how that can be used in itself to support the proposed hypothesis.

this is initial speculation type of thread not concrete fully supported hypothesis type of thread. i'm asking people what their experiences are, to see if there is even any face validity. if we get a bunch of contradictory responses, then we would tend to dismiss. if there is some confirmation then we could look more closely.

[Slacker]

With #1, probably largely work issues, but also whether I'd make a good mom. With #2, probably how it would affect #1.

I think #1 is IEE. Not sure about #2. Introvert, maybe SEI.

[Slacker]

Oh yeah, and Sept. 11 happened early in my pregnancy with #1, and there was a certain amount of "Oh god what kind of world am I bringing this baby into?"

[Filambee]

I am a ENTp and my mom is a ESTP. She said that she wasn't really concerned about anything when she was pregnant with me. She just wanted to make sure that I was healthy. She worked out, drank milk, and stayed away from smokers.

[Jarno]

Isn't there a contradiction in the results?

Sociotype is determined by pregnancy, but all the twins had different sociotypes.

But when the mother was pregnant, she was pregnant of both at the same time, how can they have different sociotypes then if the pregnancy determines sociotype?

[Slacker]

WorkaholicsAnon is an identical twin.

I think it could be partly genetic and partly random, or partly genetic, partly womb conditions, partly random. I feel skeptical of the theory in the OP though.

[Crispy]

Since my Mom is my super-ego I guess she was just being herself.

[Creepy-]

How can the proposition in the OP be empirically tested?

I believe that type is partly genetic and partly influenced by external factors... this research indicates that it is at least not wholly genetic, but I don't see how this yields the conclusion which was apparently arrived at.

[Galen]

That is by far the stupidest hypothesis for why sociotypes are formed I've ever seen, hopefully the stupidest one I ever will see.

There's no way to test this. Is the baby supposed to read the mother's mind about what her concerns are? How are we supposed to know which concerns cause the type to form and which don't? The whole thing seems way open to interpretation and makes a ton of premature conclusions that aren't verifiable. God Russians are idiots.


I just read a bit more of that section on the Wiki page:

The second concept is so called functional dimensions. It was introduced in co-operation of Ermak and Bukalov. They define the first dimension as the personal experience (Ex), the second dimension as social norms (No), the third dimension as the current situation (Si), and the fourth dimension as the globality, or time perspective (Ti). This concept is brilliant because it best illustrates the difference in cognitive power (imagine measuring capability of 2D vs 3D measuring tool) and roughly describes abilities of each function to process and generate information.

THIS CONCEPT IS BRILLIANT

Someone please delete that entire section.

[munenori2]

All I know is that my mom ate a ton of jalapenos when she was pregnant and I love spicy food.

[Slacker]

Yeah I love Indian food and my kids love it too, but the amniotic fluid gets the flavor of what you eat, as does breastmilk, so that actually makes sense. Don't know if my kids were fetal mind readers though.

[The Ineffable]

Isn't there a contradiction in the results?

Sociotype is determined by pregnancy, but all the twins had different sociotypes.

Yeah LOL, I/O error.

Blaze: explanations; did we miss something regarding the "mother's biggest concerns" factor?

[Blaze]

thanks everybody. maybe it's a little bit too half baked an idea. seemed worth asking about though.

i tried to google the researcher in question and didn't find anything to further explicate what the wiki article was saying about the mother's concerns. for myself i just went with my own interpretation.

but it seems that my concerns are very similar to Mariella's and i bet most moms. so the idea seems captivating but perhaps is ultimately too supernatural.

lol

[pianosinger]

Yeah, it all seems rather unplausible to me. And self-contradictory (as someone else ponited out, how can the author claim that the mother's concerns during pregnancy determine the PoLR function, but then go on to say that twins rarely share the same type?).

The theory, sadly, was probably formed by some IEE type...

[DirectorAbbie]

i tried not to think about the wiki article. instead, i thought hard about what i was mainly thinking about while expecting my two daughters. hopefully this eliminates some bias.

with my older one (age 13 who is reliably typed as ESE) i felt that being a mom was a huge responsibility that could likely get quite burdonsome and vexing at times. i wondered if i could do it and i mainly worried about whether i would be able to love her enough. whether i would care enough. when she was born, i had a huge cascade of emotions which solified love.

with my younger one (age 8, pretty sure she is ILE), i focused on what would i do to help her. to give her a unique identity. to set her up for success. i also worried about giving her equal time compared to the older one, who i had ended up falling in love with, and who i was exceptionally close to. when she was born, i did not have a huge emotional cascade, but i felt that i knew her immediately, that i understood how her mind worked even as a newborn.

i hold off comment for now about my own mother. waiting to hear others thoughts about this topic and about the general idea of mothers forming children's temperaments.

I think I'll go with this theory. There's no evidence against it.

I can influence my childrens' types! No Betas for me.

[Creepy-female]

I think I'll go with this theory. There's no evidence against it.

I can influence my childrens' types! No Betas for me.

My parents are Delta and my dad and brother are conflictors. He was probably like "Fuck you people, I'm Beta!!" in the womb.

[DirectorAbbie]

My parents are Delta and my dad and brother are conflictors. He was probably like "Fuck you people, I'm Beta!!" in the womb.

My parents are Delta and my youngest brother is a Beta. He was supposed to be a girl, too.

[Jimbean]

wow, if you folks end up finding out how a person's type is determined while being in the womb, let me know!

[Timeless]

wow, if you folks end up finding out how a person's type is determined while being in the womb, let me know!

sperm cells.

[Capitalist Pig]

How can the proposition in the OP be empirically tested?

 

It can't.

In fact, none of this shit can be empirically tested.

[Jarno]

In fact, none of this shit can be empirically tested

if you have large enough amount of data you could do a lot of testing with this kind of shit.

[Capitalist Pig]

if you have large enough amount of data you could do a lot of testing with this kind of shit.

Assuming you had a consistent method of typing individuals, and could articulate a factual basis for the existence of types.

[Jarno]

Assuming you had a consistent method of typing individuals, and could articulate a factual basis for the existence of types.

There are sufficient methods which work for typing individuals.

The existence of types is evident from the empirical evidence already acquired.

Psychology is empirical! Claiming that you can't use empirically testing for psychological phenomena is for me like saying you can't repair a car using mechanical tools.

[Capitalist Pig]

Psychology is empirical!

Oh I don't disagree. I'm just not convinced that, in the case of Socionics, there is enough evidence stacked up to meet the challenge. If there is, then I don't know what everyone is waiting for. . .

[jughead]

In Russia test validates itself!
They probably use this to sell shit to idiots.

[Blaze]

first one: your beneficiary or benefactor

second one: EIE or LIE

according to the theory. lol

[glam]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socionics


i think all the text starting from "Recent research conducted by Elena Olkova . . ." all the way through the "Mathematics" section should probably be deleted. that stuff is all too in-depth and technical - it could be posted up on Wikisocion somewhere, but not in a general article about Socionics.

iirc, that article used to list each MBTI type as the "equivalent" of a certain sociotype (e.g. Socionics ILE = Myers-Briggs ENTP). i no longer see that anywhere on the page, so it's good to see that it's apparently been removed.

[Jarno]

Oh I don't disagree. I'm just not convinced that, in the case of Socionics, there is enough evidence stacked up to meet the challenge. If there is, then I don't know what everyone is waiting for. . .

ah oke.

But are they waiting then? Socionics is already being used to benefit humankind. I don't think there is a need to prove any aspect of socionics more then already done.

[krieger]

socionics could be subjected to empirical research, but doing so would completely transform the theory. 95% of all of it's claims wouldn't survive the process.

it would also not be a very spectacular thing to restrict the research to empirical testing, because the result would almost certainly be that socionics as it is currently formulated doesn't predict experimental results accurately. The focus would have to be on how the claims can be adjusted to reflect more or less the same perceived phenomenon, but also yield predictive results.

[Jarno]

socionics could be subjected to empirical research, but doing so would completely transform the theory. 95% of all of it's claims wouldn't survive the process.

it would also not be a very spectacular thing to restrict the research to empirical testing, because the result would almost certainly be that socionics as it is currently formulated doesn't predict experimental results accurately. The focus would have to be on how the claims can be adjusted to reflect more or less the same perceived phenomenon, but also yield predictive results.

The current type and relationship descriptions are the results of empirical investigating. The majority of people have no problem with those descriptions, therefor I don't see where this rewriting 95% comes from. It has little use I think.

I also don't see why socionics would predict any less than for example personality disorders which is well comparable to it.

[Blaze]

well i did not reach the conclusions by very reliable means that's for sure. haha anyway, i tend to think that work related concerns would be expressed by the child through a relation of benefit, while health related concerns would be expressed through the child's Si polr. evidently this holds no water.

my mother had work concerns about me and i am her beneficiary. i have more to say about this in my response to starfall.

[Blaze]

When my mom was pregnant with me she was very lonely & depressed. She was originally from England & had just moved to America & obviously hadn't gotten to know anyone yet & the culture was different for her. Apparently this caused her to grow very attached to me. She wished for a loving, deep, artistic child who liked dragons. Interestingly enough, I have always fit that criteria. It's kind of weird because I was obsessed with dragons as a kid.

this is very interesting, exactly how i was thinking this topic could be talked about when i posted the thread.

i was born in 1964, before feminism really took hold. my mother was a high school foreign language teacher. when she began to to "show" her pregnancy, she was fired. i guess pregnancy was obscene for high school students to see back then.

ok so on to her "concerns". she was only 22 years old when she gave birth to me and had only just gotten married. she wasn't ready for a child, but my father had convinced her that unprotected sex was the most natural thing for them to do. well, naturally, she became preganant. she has shared with me over the years that she didn't want to have kids so soon, and also that she deeply resented having gotten fired from work due to her pregnancy, which ended up being the beginning of a long trend of not reaching her career goals. so her concerns, in a nutshell, were her relationship with my father and work. she is my benefactor.

i have always felt that i have had to fulfill a mission from her to succeed at work and to rise in the hierarchy. that the purpose of my life is to live this out, in part for her. we even connect best on work related issues. she is very interested in all the politics and strategizing, etc that comes with the kind of work that i do, and unlike the vast majority of nearly everyone on the rest of the planet, can talk about it for quite some time.

when i compare this to how i feel about my own kids i can see a pattern. with my first, i wanted to love my child. what better type for an ILE than an ESE, if this is the desired outcome? indeed, ESE is well loved by nearly all people. with my second, i wanted most to be able to help her. what better type for an ILE to help than another ILE?

i kind of think that there is something to the idea that mothers imbue their children with purposes and missions. and that mothers do that more than fathers. being a mom myself, and looking at my own mom, i can see there's something there, but trying to figure out what, is where i thought the group consensus might be helpful.

[DirectorAbbie]

I talked to an older woman at the facility where I'm doing my childcare practicum. She fully believed the mother's concerns during pregnency have a direct effect on the child's personality. I interviewed my mother (SLI) and got these results.

First Child: She was hoping she could find a good doctor to deliver the baby. She was concerned that there was no place to put the baby and not enough money for baby things. She was also concerned that she didn't know anybody and therefore couldn't expect a baby shower to get baby things.
Result: An LII who needs very little room, is frugal, and isn't very social.

Second Child: She was hoping for a healthier baby who was livelier than the first.
Result: A healthy LSE who sometimes took her clothes off and made her mom chase her around the house.

Third Child: She was worried about the age gap and wanted a child who would get along well with the other. She was also concerned because she had to find a new hospital and wanted the most natural birth possible.
Result: An easygoing SEI.

Fourth Child: She wanted a child with more spunk and would like someone to help with physical work.
Result: An athletic SLE.

[pianosinger]

I talked to an older woman at the facility where I'm doing my childcare practicum. She fully believed the mother's concerns during pregnency have a direct effect on the child's personality. I interviewed my mother (SLI) and got these results.

It has been proven (I believe) that stress and anxiety in a pregnant woman does affect her unborn child. To take it so far as to say a child's Socionics type (particularly the Vulnerable function as the OP asserted) is determined by the mother's concerns is much more questionable. Especially as it has been pointed out that even twins pretty much always have different personalities.

First Child: She was hoping she could find a good doctor to deliver the baby. She was concerned that there was no place to put the baby and not enough money for baby things. She was also concerned that she didn't know anybody and therefore couldn't expect a baby shower to get baby things.
Result: An LII who needs very little room, is frugal, and isn't very social.

Second Child: She was hoping for a healthier baby who was livelier than the first.
Result: A healthy LSE who sometimes took her clothes off and made her mom chase her around the house.

Third Child: She was worried about the age gap and wanted a child who would get along well with the other. She was also concerned because she had to find a new hospital and wanted the most natural birth possible.
Result: An easygoing SEI.

Fourth Child: She wanted a child with more spunk and would like someone to help with physical work.
Result: An athletic SLE.

Highly coincidental, IMO. Besides, even these examples do not support the original theory, that the mother's concerns determine the PoLR. At least, not the way I am understanding the theory's assertions.

[Creepy-]

I interviewed my mother (SLI) and got these results.

First Child: She was hoping she could find a good doctor to deliver the baby. She was concerned that there was no place to put the baby and not enough money for baby things. She was also concerned that she didn't know anybody and therefore couldn't expect a baby shower to get baby things.
Result: An LII who needs very little room, is frugal, and isn't very social.

Second Child: She was hoping for a healthier baby who was livelier than the first.
Result: A healthy LSE who sometimes took her clothes off and made her mom chase her around the house.

Third Child: She was worried about the age gap and wanted a child who would get along well with the other. She was also concerned because she had to find a new hospital and wanted the most natural birth possible.
Result: An easygoing SEI.

Fourth Child: She wanted a child with more spunk and would like someone to help with physical work.
Result: An athletic SLE.

Correlation does not equate causation (necessarily).

I have no reason to doubt you're lying, but if the test supposedly conducted was actually conducted, and it got those results, I would say that it pretty much destroys this theory. If all these premises hold true then, I would consider your mother's case(s) pure coincidences.

[pianosinger]

But, I will reveal my own concerns from when I was expecting each of my boys. Just for the sake of argument, or whatever.

Child One: DH and I had to move in with his parents for a while, so it wasn't always easy for me psychologically, living in someone else's home. However, I was not very stressed about this initially (it took about a year for the stress to really hit, and by then my son was already born). I actually was kind of glad for the fact that I wouldn't be in a house alone with a new baby while my husband went off to work (he also worked out of his parents' home as he was helping with the family business). My biggest concern actually was that I might have a premature delivery like my mom did with all of her babies (or would have except she went on bedrest with the last three to prevent premature birth). So I was actually rather relaxed and inactive during much of my pregnancy, and ended up actually going past my due date. At that point, I finally was a little stressed, because I was worried that the baby might not arrive before my mom flew up to see him.

Child Two: I was dealing with a very active, stubborn 2-year-old. I stressed myself out trying to get him potty trained before his baby brother arrived, and it was all in vain and resulting in a lot of willfulness on his side and on mine (think epic Se struggle, or at least that's what it felt like). I was quite active with this pregnancy, unlike my first. I was determined not to go past my due date again, and I was doing everything in my power to help things along. I wanted a natural labor, so I did my research and prepared for that. Aside from the potty training struggle, though, I did not feel very stressed and was truly looking forward to having this baby. It wasn't until after the birth that the anxiety triggered.