Questions about Socionics
Questions about socionics which make me rather carefull and remote to the subject.
1) How can either 'E' or 'I' be defined reliably in socionics when it's estimation is allowed to be derived from having both 'I' parameters as well as 'E'? The E/I always seems a compromise of having the most 'E' or 'I' which in turn ignore all lesser but still existing parameters in a character. It seems domination and binary based. I really would like to hear INTj's asnwers that one and hear them justifying socionics being able to be a good model while being based on very estimative or dominating datasets. (note that the same applies to E/I N/S T/F J/P). Being 49% introverted or something would not translate into an absolute ENTj in my oppionion. Same goes for the N/S. If this leads to crosstypes, then shouldn't socionics be less absolute in type defenitions and doesn't that make it's branches too binary or it's 'datasets' too estimative?
2) If socionics is an estimative observation, who then decides what are the absolutes everything is derived from?
3) How would you describe the limitations of socionics if it claims capable of describing my type when I'm borderline E/I S/N?
Re: Questions about Socionics
Quote:
Originally Posted by universal
1) How can either 'E' or 'I' be defined reliably in socionics when it's estimation is allowed to be derived from having both 'I' parameters as well as 'E'? The E/I always seems a compromise of having the most 'E' or 'I' which in turn ignore all lesser but still existing parameters in a character. It seems domination and binary based. I really would like to hear INTj's asnwers that one and hear them justifying socionics being able to be a good model while being based on very estimative or dominating datasets. (note that the same applies to E/I N/S T/F J/P). Being 49% introverted or something would not translate into an absolute ENTj in my oppionion. Same goes for the N/S. If this leads to crosstypes, then shouldn't socionics be less absolute in type defenitions and doesn't that make it's branches too binary or it's 'datasets' too estimative?
I should be able to answer this question since I've been actively researching this topic.
Outside of Socionics, I/E is measured on a continuous scale where degrees of extraversion are always taken into account for experiments relative to the differentiation of I/E. So in this case, there are no clear-cut types. However, it is difficult to say whether this disproves the concrete stratifications of Socionics types. But even still, somewhat of a stratification is still made among those outside theories.
For example, in the correlation made by J. A. Gray between our Western theories of I/E and Ivan Pavlov's typology of dogs based on the "strength of the nervous system", I/E is measured basically on the "arousability" of the nervous system. The types of nervous systems are usually classified into "strong" and "weak" types, where strong=extraversion and weak=introversion. Many different diagnostic tests mostly about the properties of conditioning exercises are performed in order to determine the typology of said dog/person. However, my reading has left me still in an ambiguous situation as to the EXACT correlation between these two theories.
However, it is interesting to note that in the early work of Pavlov with dogs, there have often been FOUR different types differentiated from exactly one complex variable, that is, the strength of the nervous system. These types were defined depending on their position on this continuous scale, with two extreme strong and extreme weak types and two equilibrium types which differed only slightly as to the strong/weak classification. So instead of defining a dichotomy, four different types were classified based on one single variable.
I have often thought of the implications of this theory. Perhaps there are really 32 types with four different preferences allowable on the I/E scale. However I would rather assume that the 16 types are interpolated along perhaps two four-class variables or something related to that, where one of the variables is the I/E preference. However, this is only speculation.
Quote:
2) If socionics is an estimative observation, who then decides what are the absolutes everything is derived from?
Hopefully we will eventually have biological means of which to determine type. But until then, Socionics is mostly proof-by-argument, where the idea is to get everyone to agree with you.