Scientific and unscientific typologies

[Singu]

Science... if you believe in such a thing.

Here is a critique of MBTI, not Socionics, but the premises of MBTI and Socionics are basically the same, except that some of the orderings are different, etc. They are both based on the Jungian dichotomies, namely the I/E, T/F, N/S and J/P.

The critique is mostly based on scientific enquiry, brain science and more evidence-based psychology:

Goodbye to MBTI, the Fad That Won’t Die - Psychology Today


What are some of the main problems? Brain science says, they are based on false dichotomies:

3. Apples and Oranges are Both Fruit, and So is a Tomato—But a Potato Isn’t

Categories are mutually exclusive if they capture different traits that are separate, and combine traits that have commonalities. Here, too, the MBTI misses the mark. Let me illustrate with two (of many) examples:

• Exhibit A: in the MBTI, thinking and feeling are opposite poles of a continuum. In reality, they’re independent: we have three decades of evidence that if you like ideas and data, you can also like people and emotions. (In fact, more often than not, they go hand in hand: research shows that people with stronger thinking and reasoning skills are also better at recognizing, understanding, and managing emotions.) When I scored as a thinker one time and a feeler one time, it’s because I like both thinking and feeling. I should have separate scores for the two.

• Exhibit B: the feeling type is supposed to tap into my orientation toward people and emotions. But this lumps together three separate traits that capture a positive orientation toward others, the tendency to feel negative emotions, and the receptivity toward these emotions.

It ignores your key features in your personality traits that already exist:

4. A Physical Exam That Ignores Your Torso and One of Your Arms

A comprehensive test assesses the major categories that exist. One of the key elements missing from the MBTI is what personality psychologists call emotional stability versus reactivity—the tendency to stay calm and collected under stress or pressure. This turns out to be one of the most important predictors of individual and group patterns of thought, feeling, and action, so it’s an unfortunate oversight. As another example, the judging-perceiving scale captures whether I’m an organizer and a planner, but overlooks the industriousness and achievement drive that tend to accompany these characteristics—together, they form a personality trait called conscientiousness. As personality psychologists Robert McCrae and Paul Costa sum it up, “the MBTI does not give comprehensive information on the four domains it does sample.”

Even introversion-extraversion, the trait the MBTI captured best, is incomplete. According to the MBTI, extraversion is about where you get your energy: from the outside world or the inner world. This is partially right, but it’s not because of a preference for interacting with people. Our scores are heavily shaped by how our brains process neocortical arousal. As Susan Cain explains in Quiet, “more than a thousand studies conducted by scientists worldwide” suggest that introverts “are more sensitive than extroverts to various kinds of stimulation, from coffee to a loud bang to the dull roar of a networking event.” Besides, it turns out that like all personality traits, introversion-extraversion is shaped like a bell curve: it’s most common to be in the middle. The vast majority of us are ambiverts: in Dan Pink’s words from To Sell is Human, most people are“neither overly extraverted nor wildly introverted.

There is another problem, Jung's theories aren't exactly based on science:

Weaknesses of Carl Jung's Theory

Science

Jung was not concerned with scientific testing, and many of his theories are not ones that can be tested in a laboratory setting. He was not concerned with things that could be measured, and this is a weakness in his theory. Jung's ideas cannot be tested to see if they are true because there is no way to test things like chance, collective unconscious and archetypes in the real world. His ideas are mystical and stray very far from scientific thinking.

Okay, so what is actually based on science and backed up by science? Although not perfect, there seems to be growing support and scientific evidence for the Big Five:

Instead, psychologists have spent the past half century building a better car from scratch, using the scientific method. That car is called the Big Five personality traits, and it meets the standards above. Across many of the world’s cultures, five personality traits consistently emerge: extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness. The Big Five traits have high reliability and considerable power in predicting job performance and team effectiveness. They even have genetic and biological bases, and researchers in the emerging field of personality neuroscience have begun mapping the Big Five to relevant brain regions.

The Big Five are far from perfect, and there’s growing support for a HEXACO model of personality that adds a sixth trait: honesty-humility. Right now, though, the biggest problem facing the Big Five is one of marketing. Most people prefer to be called agreeable than disagreeable—we need to repackage this trait as supportive versus challenging. I hope some of you will take up the challenge.

So, there you go. Amazing and insightful insights from the world of brain science.

[Nanooka]

Super interesting article. It raises some really good points on the "bell curve" nature of personality traits, especially. Thinking of dichotomies as a binary rather than a curve leads to a lot of flawed, rigid thinking. I think that tendency is in large part responsible for the kinds of overly broad, vastly oversimplified, flat-out stupid applications of type theory that we often cringe at and think give our hobby a bad name.

As the article points out though, the Big Five does have quite a bit of empirical backing. Four of its five dichotomies have repeatedly-demonstrated strong correlations to the basic four dichotomies of MBTI. Sociable/Reserved correlates strongly to Extrovert/Introvert, Organized/Unorganized to Judging/Perceiving, Egocentric/Altruistic to Thinking/Feeling (this is the weakest correlation of the four), Inquisitive/Non-inquisitive to Intuitive/Sensing. This says nothing about the validity of Reinins or intertype relation theory, nor even Jungian function theory. However, it does show Jung was onto something with the core dichotomies.

[Singu]

Another interesting thread:

How scientifically valid is the Myers Briggs personality test?

To begin, it is important to note that no test is "scientifically valid". Validity is not an element of a test, but specifically has to do with test score interpretation. (see the Standards for Educational and Psychological testing 1999, or Messick, 1989). That being said, the Myers Briggs is not a scientifically valid personality assessment. However, personality assessments can be validated for specific purposes.

Moving onto the bigger issue with the Myers-Briggs: Decision consistency. The Myers-Briggs proclaims a reliability (calculated using coefficient alpha) of between .75-.85 on all of its scales (see Myers-Briggs testing manual). These are general, industry standard reliability coefficients(indicating that if you were to retest, you would get a similar score, but not exact). However, the Myers-Briggs makes additional claims about bucketing individuals into 1 of 16 possible personality types. That you can shift up or down a few points if you were to retake the test on any of the four distinct scales means that you may be higher on one scale than another simply through retaking the test due to measurement error. In fact, literature shows that your personality type will change for 50% of individuals simply through retesting. (Cautionary Comments Regarding the Myers-Brigg Type inventory, Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and research, summer, 2005). This result indicates very low decision consistency. The low decision consistency is also a mathematical inevitability given 16 personality profiles using 4 scales and scale reliability around .8.

Given the low decision consistency, and given that claims the Myers-Briggs makes about about your personality(validity information) depends on the decisions made by the test to be consistent and not subject to change simply based on retesting, it is highly unlikely that there can be a solid validity argument supporting the Myers-Briggs as a personality indicator. Maybe there are studies showing that it can be used in a very specific context, but sweeping generalizations about the tests use are not going carry much weight.

Expanding on this, the Myers-Brigg's is not only psychometrically unreliable, it is neither a psychometrically valid nor a theoretically validated assessment of personality. It posits a very distinct structure of personality. We know from Popper's (1934) original argument that the more specific a hypothesis, the easier it is to falsify. This is very much so in Myers-Brigg's case. The process in validating an assessment includes a number of statistical and methodological techniques that include assessing construct, content, discriminant, and convergent validities.

[The Reality Denialist]

Sometimes I think that typology is a good case example where your thinking preference isolates you to oblivion. Probably works better in social sciences since they irk me greatly when you can punch multiple holes in them and they are still happy.
I do not like to go into ILI mode.

Good example Gulenko's cognitive styles: yeah you can say that but those generalizations in bigger picture fall apart since they are not logically 100 % sound because they usually do not represent exception clauses that fills the holes and I have to do it myself which is not hard but imprecise. Which brings me to...

[Skepsis]

Both MBTI and Socionics can be as logically consistent as possibly, but if the underlying premises aren't true, if they cannot be rigorously defending by reason and evidence, then the logical consistency is of no significance. For example, Christianity is likely false because people simply cannot come back from the dead after three days. It doesn't matter the ways in which the religion is logically consistent if the foundation beneath it is knocked out from underneath.

[Tallmo]

Typology is based on very sophisticated observations of psychic processes. It depends on the assumption that these observations are correct.

You can't proove it, but you can look for yourself and see if you see the same.

What I see is that Socionics works and MBTI doesn't. That's understandable since MBTI deviates from Jung, who was the one to make the original observations.

All talk about scientific or unscientific is useless in my opinion. You have to try to see the phenomenon yourself with all the hints socionics gives and then judge. You can't test these things with "objective methods"

[Singu]

Well, I would have completely abandoned Socionics/MBTI/Jung etc. as being bunk.

I don't even think that it's logically consistent. I think that re-taking tests and coming up with different results is a good example of checking its internal consistency.

This whole thing makes sense if and only if you can only talk about it with the other "believers". That's why outside of the circle and the echo chamber, the whole thing starts to sound incoherent. That's why you sort of start to have "cult-ish" elements with Socionics, MBTI etc. communities... you are either a believer or a non-believer.

I don't even think that saying things like "Well, it works for me/it's useful for me" "In my experience, it has worked..." are good arguments. It only proves what you already know it to be true. Basically, it all boils down to confirmation bias and a heck of a lot of cognitive dissonance. It was an entirely subjective process. It's only about as helpful as astrology in figuring yourself and others out.

I think typologies like Socionics and MBTI are akin to a parlor trick. It works beautifully - as long as it only stays in your own mind. Whenever some other pesky people start messing with it and poking around it (especially the non-practitioners), it starts to fall apart. It's a great illusion that your mind has created, but you knew that your mind wasn't always as reliable as it seemed.

If you still want to take "personality tests", then there are ones that are more rigorously tested through decades of research that are scientifically sound and backed, such as the Big Five, and it also seems that MMPI-2 is one of them.

[Bertrand]

typology, beginning with Jung, was predicated on the intuition that the scientific worldview is only half of reality at best; to turn it around and say according to science typology is bunk is to establish something already well known, true-by-defintion, and completely trivial

[DavidH]

Well, I would have completely abandoned Socionics/MBTI/Jung etc. as being bunk.

I don't even think that it's logically consistent. I think that re-taking tests and coming up with different results is a good example of checking its internal consistency.

This whole thing makes sense if and only if you can only talk about it with the other "believers". That's why outside of the circle and the echo chamber, the whole thing starts to sound incoherent. That's why you sort of start to have "cult-ish" elements with Socionics, MBTI etc. communities... you are either a believer or a non-believer.

I don't even think that saying things like "Well, it works for me/it's useful for me" "In my experience, it has worked..." are good arguments. It only proves what you already know it to be true. Basically, it all boils down to confirmation bias and a heck of a lot of cognitive dissonance. It was an entirely subjective process. It's only about as helpful as astrology in figuring yourself and others out.

I think typologies like Socionics and MBTI are akin to a parlor trick. It works beautifully - as long as it only stays in your own mind. Whenever some other pesky people start messing with it and poking around it (especially the non-practitioners), it starts to fall apart. It's a great illusion that your mind has created, but you knew that your mind wasn't always as reliable as it seemed.

If you still want to take "personality tests", then there are ones that are more rigorously tested through decades of research that are scientifically sound and backed, such as the Big Five, and it also seems that MMPI-2 is one of them.

People are not internally consistent. They will receive different test results based upon their current mindset.

Typologies are good for illustrating variations that may not naturally occur to us.

[Skepsis]

typology, beginning with Jung, was predicated on the intuition that the scientific worldview is only half of reality at best; to turn it around and say according to science typology is bunk is to establish something already well known, true-by-defintion, and completely trivial

I don't think we know what percentage of reality scientific worldviews constitute.

[Bertrand]

I don't think we know what percentage of reality scientific worldviews constitute.

true, when I said "half" I was invoking notions of human meaning of the kind such as "I finally found my other half" not so much "she weighs as much as me in kilograms" or "we each contribute %50 to the bank account in dollars." in a sense, what that half amounts to is almost unspeakable because it inherently calls into question the radical incomensurability of such human affairs in objective units or schemes. what amount, then, that "side" constitutes of the human experience is itself an open question outside of science and its metrics and by definition will remain so, barring a paradigm shift that would incorperate it, but at that point whatever all encompassing theory that managed to achieve that would be something beyond "science" as we know it today

[Singu]

No mysticism and the occult in the thread about science, plz.

[Nanooka]

R'lyeh Cthulhu fhtagn.

[Tallmo]

It's all in the nature of the phenomenon. It's such a difficult phenomenon that you simply can't test it the conventional way (experiments etc.). Jung himself wrote that it took him 10 years to confirm that his observations were correct

One has to talk about Socionics with other people who have taken the time and effort to observe this in reality. You can call them "believers", and maybe you have to be a "believer" in the beginning to even bother spend hundreds or thousands of hours trying to type people etc. But once one has learned the phenomenon then one doesn't have to believe anymore. But not everyone learns the phenomenon. It requires practise and talent.

To observe the psyche directly is not "an entirely subjective process". There is right and wrong. But it's more difficult than just reading some measurements from an instrument. It is a common bias that anything psychic is just "subjective", as if the psyche wasn't real and couldn't be observed. But our culture has a strong extraverted bias.

Some phenomena are simply on the introverted side. They require a different approach than conventional science. But they won't disappear just because we ignore them.

I don't care about personality tests, they can't possibly work. I don't know why you mention them. I care about the actual phenomenon. Why would I throw out Socionics just because its difficult?

Psychology will always be this way. If you want the really interesting stuff you have to observe the psyche directly. It will be controversial, becaue it goes against current standards, but one will learn more.

Well, I would have completely abandoned Socionics/MBTI/Jung etc. as being bunk.

I don't even think that it's logically consistent. I think that re-taking tests and coming up with different results is a good example of checking its internal consistency.

This whole thing makes sense if and only if you can only talk about it with the other "believers". That's why outside of the circle and the echo chamber, the whole thing starts to sound incoherent. That's why you sort of start to have "cult-ish" elements with Socionics, MBTI etc. communities... you are either a believer or a non-believer.

I don't even think that saying things like "Well, it works for me/it's useful for me" "In my experience, it has worked..." are good arguments. It only proves what you already know it to be true. Basically, it all boils down to confirmation bias and a heck of a lot of cognitive dissonance. It was an entirely subjective process. It's only about as helpful as astrology in figuring yourself and others out.

I think typologies like Socionics and MBTI are akin to a parlor trick. It works beautifully - as long as it only stays in your own mind. Whenever some other pesky people start messing with it and poking around it (especially the non-practitioners), it starts to fall apart. It's a great illusion that your mind has created, but you knew that your mind wasn't always as reliable as it seemed.

If you still want to take "personality tests", then there are ones that are more rigorously tested through decades of research that are scientifically sound and backed, such as the Big Five, and it also seems that MMPI-2 is one of them.

[Singu]

People are not internally consistent. They will receive different test results based upon their current mindset.

Typologies are good for illustrating variations that may not naturally occur to us.

Well, it seems like the internal consistency was not just about re-taking the tests:

Cronbach's alpha is a measure of internal consistency, which is different from test-retest reliability. I know you know this, but for the sake of everyone else:

If I make a scale that measures extroversion (for example), I would use several items that tap into the concept of extroversion. For example, "I love being the center of attention" and "I like big parties." You may also put in items that are the opposite of extroversion such as "I seek quiet" or "I am content to be alone." Cronbach's coefficient alpha looks at how consistent a person's responses are across items. If I am very extroverted, you would expect me to answer strongly positive to the first two items and strongly negative to the second two items. If I do so, alpha goes up. If I answer strongly positive to the first item, strongly negative to the second, strongly positive to the third, and strongly negative to the forth, reliability will be low. Since no scale is perfect and no person is completely one trait or the other, there will be inevitable inconsistency. That is why we accept alpha's of .70 or higher as good reliability.

Coefficient alpha generally indicates that there should be test-retest reliability, but it does not actually measure it. I hope that was somewhat informative and not just pedantic.

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/...riggs/ccy8rfy/

At any rate, it seems unlikely that Socionics will come up with reliable, professional, industry standard level tests any time soon. And even if it did, it will likely encounter the same problems as the MBTI tests did. So... again, there won't be a way to "accurately" type people. Socionics still relies on typing through evaluations by other people, questionnaires etc., which I would guess would give even worse and inconsistent results than the tests.

And that is just with the tests... never mind the validity of all the theoretical claims that its model has made, which looks like it has already been proven wrong by brain science.

[rat200Turbo]

The functions are just too simple. Main value I see in MBTI is it can open your mind to alternative ways of thinking. The article pretty much shreds MBTI... Actually I doubt Jung ever meant his functions to be used in the manner they're used now, his descriptions were always very vague and imaginative.. he really aimed to expand the readers mind more than anything.

[The Reality Denialist]

From Jung's writings you can actually derive basis of socionics structure and even duality. It so blatantly obvious to see. Type beyond kindred/base level was more or less guessing​ game. It gives some foundation to subtypes which are in fluctuation.

This is how ILE mind works
Structure, can you handle the structure

[Skepsis]

true, when I said "half" I was invoking notions of human meaning of the kind such as "I finally found my other half" not so much "she weighs as much as me in kilograms" or "we each contribute %50 to the bank account in dollars." in a sense, what that half amounts to is almost unspeakable because it inherently calls into question the radical incomensurability of such human affairs in objective units or schemes. what amount, then, that "side" constitutes of the human experience is itself an open question outside of science and its metrics and by definition will remain so, barring a paradigm shift that would incorperate it, but at that point whatever all encompassing theory that managed to achieve that would be something beyond "science" as we know it today

True. I have found it interesting, as a professional scientist myself, the lack of philosophical interest or understanding my fellow scientists have of their own field. Science attempts to answer questions empirically. Logical positivism, which is a more narrow field of philosophical inquiry tries to limit conversations, inquiry, imagination, etc to what has been already been empirically validated. Such a rigid, dogmatic philosophy makes hypocrites of men because most of the decisions and conclusions we reach in everyday life aren't scientifically validated. One must be open to inquiry, to what we don't know and what we do not yet understand.

[rat200Turbo]

No, socionics is a big departure from Jung ... Jungs functions are structural and built from the ground up using duality, that's true... but socionics departs from that - rather than expanding the functions it begins recombining them into compound blocks. That damages the internal consistency of the system and it introduces unnecessary complexity, and it's a departure from what Jung did... On top of that, the way Jung speaks in very abstract, dreamy language suites the topic very well and probably that's where things should have remained.

[Singu]

Deliberately bringing up something that is not in the realm of science and claim that "science can't understand everything"... that could only be considered to be deceptive and pure sophistry.

A favorite form of sophistry of the nay-sayers of science... "You're close-minded...!" "You don't know everything" etc. Just because we don't know, doesn't necessarily mean it's true.

[Myst]

Science... if you believe in such a thing.

There is another problem, Jung's theories aren't exactly based on science:

Weaknesses of Carl Jung's Theory

Well one note here. I'm not too worried about whether science investigated something yet or not. I hope some things that have not been yet investigated well can be researched with the right tools and better developed understanding one day.

Jung believed that people who had auditory hallucinations were hearing the words of the collective unconscious speaking directly to them. He did not consider these to be pathological. He actually considered them to be beneficial to the subject and necessary for self-improvement. This has been widely criticised and looked at as one of the weaknesses in Jung's theories. Instead of treating the hallucination, he would treat them as some benefit to the person.

Hmm, well, there is this view that schizophrenic psychosis can be seen as a transformational process. I dunno if Jung's idea with this was about that.

Jung was not concerned with scientific testing, and many of his theories are not ones that can be tested in a laboratory setting. He was not concerned with things that could be measured, and this is a weakness in his theory. Jung's ideas cannot be tested to see if they are true because there is no way to test things like chance, collective unconscious and archetypes in the real world. His ideas are mystical and stray very far from scientific thinking.

I remember reading from Jung that the collective unconscious could be based in genes or something. That didn't seem so mystical. Archetypes seem like a concept for interpreting some mental phenomena. Granted, I didn't delve very deep in Jung's works.

Jung tried with his theories to include religion in psychology, and this is seen as a primary weakness in his theories. His studies in mysticism, folklore and mythology coupled with an abiding interest in religion led him to attempt to explain religion in psychological terms. Many psychologists do not feel that these issues can be explained by psychology. However, there are some that feel that Jung was revolutionary for trying to extend the practice into this area.

"Feel" is not a very scientific argument. I personally don't see a problem with trying to explain religion with psychological ideas, I don't see what else would even make sense. I might be misinterpreting what's meant by this part of the article though. What I mean is that the way of thinking or attitude required for religious views is certainly something that could be researched as a psychology question.

Okay, so what is actually based on science and backed up by science? Although not perfect, there seems to be growing support and scientific evidence for the Big Five:

If only any of it wasn't just correlations of traits to other traits or to other things and explained anything beyond measuring those, I'd be interested more in Big 5. As it is, it explains about nothing to me that I could use in any deeper way. My personal opinion/experience here.

This whole thing makes sense if and only if you can only talk about it with the other "believers". That's why outside of the circle and the echo chamber, the whole thing starts to sound incoherent. That's why you sort of start to have "cult-ish" elements with Socionics, MBTI etc. communities... you are either a believer or a non-believer.

Actually, how about a different perspective here. To me it actually makes less sense if one is to talk about Socionics to most other socionics users because of how many different understandings/frameworks are being utilized. It's like a very bad language encoding a few things in the IE letters and in the three letters for sociotypes... a real mess lol.

What I do instead is just use my own framework which already went beyond Socionics anyway, for specific goals (some personal ones, but here Socionics has already given me almost everything that it could and I'm moving past it) and for a general (and rough, of course) understanding of some cognitive things (and that's the part that goes way way beyond Socionics).

I don't even think that saying things like "Well, it works for me/it's useful for me" "In my experience, it has worked..." are good arguments. It only proves what you already know it to be true. Basically, it all boils down to confirmation bias and a heck of a lot of cognitive dissonance. It was an entirely subjective process. It's only about as helpful as astrology in figuring yourself and others out.

Actually, I found it way more useful than astrology. In Socionics you don't have to tie everything to a birthday/birth location, which is already a great advantage. The other thing is I do liberally go beyond the original Socionics model and just utilizing some concepts that I found valid, inside my own understanding of things, I don't see much of that possible with astrology but this is me. That is, I just find astrology a very different approach, not very systematic (beyond its basic tenets making zero sense) so I can't get into it, let alone manipulate its model so easily.

I think typologies like Socionics and MBTI are akin to a parlor trick. It works beautifully - as long as it only stays in your own mind. Whenever some other pesky people start messing with it and poking around it (especially the non-practitioners), it starts to fall apart. It's a great illusion that your mind has created, but you knew that your mind wasn't always as reliable as it seemed.

A few of the main problems here are the following: 1) the language issue as mentioned above with people not realizing they are actually using different frameworks; 2) the standard Socionics function models and their extensions do not include many principles that can truly be utilized as is, they are mostly just about descriptive trends and should not be used as strict models of anything.

EDIT: I see it also got mentioned that socionics recombines stuff too much. That's a very good way to put one of the issues with it. It uses 8 broad IE categories and then tries to apply them on way too many things in modeling without adding further nuance first.

If you still want to take "personality tests", then there are ones that are more rigorously tested through decades of research that are scientifically sound and backed, such as the Big Five, and it also seems that MMPI-2 is one of them.

I personally didn't find MMPI or CPI or Big 5 etc. any more useful for myself than actual theories on psychological mechanisms. Socionics makes an attempt at the latter but the model itself isn't very good even though it includes some good ideas.

And, as for the title of your thread. Big 5 isn't a typology. I know of no actual typology in academic psychology that would be anything like MBTI or Socionics, actually.


All in all. I do think the scientific way of thinking is the best to investigate things and it has to be applied on the Socionics model too. Otoh I don't really blindly subscribe to the results of a few academic studies. It requires way deeper research to interpret the results of a study/a few studies. And, I don't really understand why you keep talking about the issue of belief or illusion. That's not the only one way to approach this theory.

[Myst]

True. I have found it interesting, as a professional scientist myself, the lack of philosophical interest or understanding my fellow scientists have of their own field. Science attempts to answer questions empirically. Logical positivism, which is a more narrow field of philosophical inquiry tries to limit conversations, inquiry, imagination, etc to what has been already been empirically validated. Such a rigid, dogmatic philosophy makes hypocrites of men because most of the decisions and conclusions we reach in everyday life aren't scientifically validated. One must be open to inquiry, to what we don't know and what we do not yet understand.

Which science are you in?

[Skepsis]

Which science are you in?

Biological

[Skepsis]

Deliberately bringing up something that is not in the realm of science and claim that "science can't understand everything"... that could only be considered to be deceptive and pure sophistry.

A favorite form of sophistry of the nay-sayers of science... "You're close-minded...!" "You don't know everything" etc. Just because we don't know, doesn't necessarily mean it's true.

This is true, many people of faith do this. "Science cannot understand everything", therefore, there are non-scientific means to knowledge. Rationalists hold this to be true, but there is also the mystic or believer in revealed religion. While the rationalist follows reason, the latter believe in what I think is bullshit. Revealed religion is delusional. But, just because science doesn't understand everything, doesn't mean that something else is truly capable of filling in the gap. There will always be gaps in knowledge. Our knowledge currently is incomplete. Only further inquiry will help us here.

Also, there is the philosophy of science, a legitimate branch of inquiry. Then there is scientism, which is dogmatic. It is when science makes metaphysical claims that cannot be scientifically validated that it is no longer in the business of doing true science.

[Singu]

And, as for the title of your thread. Big 5 isn't a typology. I know of no actual typology in academic psychology that would be anything like MBTI or Socionics, actually.

Yeah, I guess they're not typologies, but psychometrics. A comparable typology in the academics might be the DSM... which may have somewhat similar criticisms as the MBTI and Socionics do. It seems like those were fairly rough theories by today's standards, and they will be eventually replaced by more advanced brain science...

Basically, this thread is a repeat of these threads :

http://www.the16types.info/vbulletin...Back-to-Basics

http://www.the16types.info/vbulletin...BTI-is-Useless

[The Reality Denialist]

Singularity, take your heart medicine now.

Socionics deviates from Jung in that it discards integrity and takes pieces here and few pieces there.

You have to break the eggs to... ignoring. I have similar issues with LII's .

[DavidH]

Well, it seems like the internal consistency was not just about re-taking the tests:


https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/...riggs/ccy8rfy/

At any rate, it seems unlikely that Socionics will come up with reliable, professional, industry standard level tests any time soon. And even if it did, it will likely encounter the same problems as the MBTI tests did. So... again, there won't be a way to "accurately" type people. Socionics still relies on typing through evaluations by other people, questionnaires etc., which I would guess would give even worse and inconsistent results than the tests.

And that is just with the tests... never mind the validity of all the theoretical claims that its model has made, which looks like it has already been proven wrong by brain science.

This is not accurate. Science has not disproven MBTI. It has disproven a premise it has placed onto MBTI. The premise of Big 5 is not the same premise as MBTI. Science, the science associated with backing Big 5, has proven apples and oranges.

What the quote is referencing is the individual's views based upon a premise. The alpha is not what he is considering it nor what he is communicating to you. It is not a measure of accuracy nor a measure of scientific proof. MBTI is an explanation of a phenomenon. One cannot disprove an existing phenomenon. One may only explain a phenomenon or not explain a phenomenon.

What the quote is referencing is localization. MBTI results vary over time. This is a known fact. The results of MBTI may vary greatly or to a minor degree. The results of MBTI may vary from day to day or from longer periods of time. These are known facts. The results of MBTI are in agreement with those inventoried at the time of inventorying. This is a known fact. This is a phenomenon. The results of Big 5 are similar. They are purported to be more accurate than MBTI due to low variation of the results over time. These are known facts. This is a phenomenon. The correct comparison of these two separate phenomenon is that MBTI is more localized to the present than the Big 5. The Big 5 are more generalized to the present than MBTI. MBTI is more generalized to the long term than the Big 5. The Big 5 is more localized to the long term than MBTI. This is a difference of phenomenon on the basis of localization of time.

The individuals, including who you have quoted, who assert that they have disproven MBTI and proven the Big 5 have not done such. They have only proven apples and oranges of two different phenomenon. This difference of the phenomenon exists within the Neuroticism scale of the Big 5, which measures the emotional stability to stimuli and the resultant responses. The less neurotic an individual is, the less the individual's emotional responses to the emotional stimuli of the remaining four matrices will vary. An individual with high neuroticism will vary more on the remaining Big 5 traits and the MBTI dichotomies than an individual with low neuroticism will vary on the remaining Big 5 traits and the MBTI dichotomies. The premise of the inclusion of the Neuroticism trait is the conclusion of the Neuroticism trait. This is circular logic determined only by desire of a different premise.

By utilization of the two separate phenomenon. The originators of both systems are capable of effectively being typed in both systems in question to sufficient degree. Both the immediate localized MBTI type of each individual at conception of system origination and the long term localized Big 5 type of each individual despite the conception of system origination.

Socionics is of similar effect. The phenomenon is similar to the other two. The phenomenon is not identical to the other two.

You cannot disprove phenomenon. You may only explain or not explain phenomenon.

[Myst]

Yeah, I guess they're not typologies, but psychometrics. A comparable typology in the academics might be the DSM... which may have somewhat similar criticisms as the MBTI and Socionics do. It seems like those were fairly rough theories by today's standards, and they will be eventually replaced by more advanced brain science...

Basically, this thread is a repeat of these threads :

http://www.the16types.info/vbulletin...Back-to-Basics

http://www.the16types.info/vbulletin...BTI-is-Useless

Yeah, well DSM does have concrete criteria for its diagnoses unlike Socionics for sociotypes, but the various ways you can match this criteria is a bit too inconsistent for my liking. You can have two quite different people with different underlying issues get the same diagnosis.

[Singu]

Well, it seems like whenever Socionics gets questioned with "There is no evidence" "There is no scientific proof or validity to this" "It's pseudoscience/a cult" etc, then it just gets reverted to "Well it doesn't matter if it's accurate or not, as long as it sparks interesting discussions, then it has its use" etc., which just seems like a cop-out to me.

Ok, but what if I just wanted it to be really accurate, and not feel like I'm just imagining things, or feel that other people are just making things up and talking nonsense, with no connection to reality whatsoever which seems like what most people on this forum are doing a lot of the time. It is frustrating and tiring that people are simply taking refuge in talking nonsense because they will never be proven wrong by reality, or at least by some sort of standards.

Some people may type me a certain way, or type other people in certain ways, but those are meaningless to me because the accuracy of such things can't exactly be validated. So I just don't see how people don't start losing interest in this as soon as they see that this thing just isn't accurate, no matter how much you "feel" that it's speaking some sort of truth to you, subjectively.

I mean I guess even if Freud is just some outdated crap and it has mostly been proven wrong (though some of his theories were right), people still talk about it to spark some discussions. I guess I've just never really been a fan of Jung, so this might just be a preference more than anything. It seems like Jung attracts people who are more interested in the mystical, the occult, the unexplainable spiritual things etc.

[Myst]

Well, it seems like whenever Socionics gets questioned with "There is no evidence" "There is no scientific proof or validity to this" "It's pseudoscience/a cult" etc, then it just gets reverted to "Well it doesn't matter if it's accurate or not, as long as it sparks interesting discussions, then it has its use" etc., which just seems like a cop-out to me.

Ok, but what if I just wanted it to be really accurate, and not feel like I'm just imagining things, or feel that other people are just making things up and talking nonsense, with no connection to reality whatsoever which seems like what most people on this forum are doing a lot of the time. It is frustrating and tiring that people are simply taking refuge in talking nonsense because they will never be proven wrong by reality, or at least by some sort of standards.

You are generalizing because for example I was not using that argument that you call a cop-out here.

I don't really understand why it's so frustrating to you if some people talk some nonsense on forums. How does it affect your life in any way directly?

If you feel you might be imagining things or other people might be, well hm I recommend you practice the scientific way of thinking for yourself in terms of testing out things for yourself, so you don't have to rely on whatever a theory or other people claim.

Some people may type me a certain way, or type other people in certain ways, but those are meaningless to me because the accuracy of such things can't exactly be validated. So I just don't see how people don't start losing interest in this as soon as they see that this thing just isn't accurate, no matter how much you "feel" that it's speaking some sort of truth to you, subjectively.

To me it is not about "feeling" some truth in it, if I wasn't clear about that then sorry. I just found some ideas were validated in practice for me. Not the function model as it is, mind you. For those ideas that I found valid, I looked hard and am still looking in other theories (academic psychology theories definitely incl.) but couldn't yet find a better way of interpreting things. I keep looking always tho' since improving my understanding is important to me.

I mean I guess even if Freud is just some outdated crap and it has mostly been proven wrong (though some of his theories were right), people still talk about it to spark some discussions. I guess I've just never really been a fan of Jung, so this might just be a preference more than anything. It seems like Jung attracts people who are more interested in the mystical, the occult, the unexplainable spiritual things etc.

I never read Jung's mystical writings lol. Just the cognitiveish stuff mainly and tried to understand some related concepts. That was all of it, the rest I don't really want to try and follow in the way he puts things. Freud on the other hand just always made me sick.

[squark]

Socionics is a Ti construction of how things could work in reality - so Ti and Ne. Working from the bottom up from various aspects of reality, the model that follows makes sense and holds together in a coherent way. People however don't cooperate with the model, people don't quite fit it as neatly as they should, and that's where the disconnect comes in. Explanations that fit various observations of people are added in to try to make it fit better, and so socionics itself has to stretch in new ways and lose a little bit of its original coherence to cover things. I find the aspects and elements and functions themselves fun to play with, but in application I see the most promise in cognitive styles. People do think in different ways from one another, and looking at what underpins those different modes of thinking is interesting to me. And that's where I've primarily focused on looking for more information and studies in other sources.

[DavidH]

Well, it seems like whenever Socionics gets questioned with "There is no evidence" "There is no scientific proof or validity to this" "It's pseudoscience/a cult" etc, then it just gets reverted to "Well it doesn't matter if it's accurate or not, as long as it sparks interesting discussions, then it has its use" etc., which just seems like a cop-out to me.

Ok, but what if I just wanted it to be really accurate, and not feel like I'm just imagining things, or feel that other people are just making things up and talking nonsense, with no connection to reality whatsoever which seems like what most people on this forum are doing a lot of the time. It is frustrating and tiring that people are simply taking refuge in talking nonsense because they will never be proven wrong by reality, or at least by some sort of standards.

Some people may type me a certain way, or type other people in certain ways, but those are meaningless to me because the accuracy of such things can't exactly be validated. So I just don't see how people don't start losing interest in this as soon as they see that this thing just isn't accurate, no matter how much you "feel" that it's speaking some sort of truth to you, subjectively.

I mean I guess even if Freud is just some outdated crap and it has mostly been proven wrong (though some of his theories were right), people still talk about it to spark some discussions. I guess I've just never really been a fan of Jung, so this might just be a preference more than anything. It seems like Jung attracts people who are more interested in the mystical, the occult, the unexplainable spiritual things etc.

Socionics is simple to verify.

Logic without admission of desire is not reason. It is the denial of reason.

Socionics presents the logical viewpoint of the originator and those similar to her. The reason for the "failure" is in the premise. It is the ILE's view of reality and it's explanation of such by its own information metabolism. The remaining 16 types, other than perhaps the EII by the ILE standards which supervise such, are by admission within the premise of the system going to fundamentally disagree in various ways to various degrees. As such, only the ILE, by the originators standards of the combined objective behaviors and subjective thoughts, are able to be utilized as a standard for verification of accuracy of type.

[Singu]

You are generalizing because for example I was not using that argument that you call a cop-out here.

Yeah, I didn't mean you, but it's more of what I gathered from those threads above. This seems to have been repeated over and over and again, and I'm sure that this phenomena is not exactly unique to this community...

[Pallas]

All typology and all of psychology is unscientific if you define science as based on empiricism. You can't empirically measure people's motivations, feelings, and thoughts. You can empirically measure things that correlate with people's motivations, feelings, and thoughts, but to do that, you have to know what people's motivations, feelings, and thoughts are in the first place, which is inherently unempirical. It's like my criticism of the Milgram experiment. To me, the Milgram experiment, as shown in recordings, is bad acting with a fake B-movie machine and Wilhelm screams, and the situation of shocking someone with a heart condition in a scientific experiment to see if it'll help them learn through pain sounds like a bad B-movie plot that'd never happen. I think the reason most people shocked the "student" was to try to befuddle the experimenter and show how obviously false they thought it was, like some sort of reverse psychology, and a lot of first-person accounts do mention that the "teacher" thought it was fake. But the theory put in place is: if people can resist authority, they won't press the button, and if they do, they won't. But there's absolutely nothing that can empirically be done to show that my explanation is wrong, and if someone did that, someone would come up with another explanation and that'd have to be controlled for and so on. As far as people can be creative and tell what's going on or even have an idea of what's going on in a psychological experiment even if it's false, they can't remotely be controlled for in experiments. Psychology can only rely on case studies and look how that's turned out.

Also, the Big Five is nonsense to me. For one, look at "Conscientiousness". It clearly includes both an egotistical drive for accomplishment, a desire to do one's duty to please others, and a fearful desire not to fail due to possible punishments and losses, but it only looks at the superficial trait of people getting things done. "Agreeableness" is likewise a combination of sensitivity (which I think is really the opposite of "Extraversion"), optimism (which correlates with "Extraversion" and shouldn't be put in the same trait), and guilt, which don't necessarily correlate with each other. All the Big Five sub-traits together are probably expressed through the "Big" traits in a way that triangulates people's motivations and characteristics (such as if someone is abysmally low on both Agreeableness and Extraversion, they're probably a sensitive, hurt cynic without a guilt complex, while if they're low on Agreeableness and high on Extraversion, they're probably a completely insensitive, unapologetic con artist who fits the typical "psychopath" description), but then most tests assume that the "Big" traits are the fundamental aspects themselves and don't weigh the sub-traits equally.

On sub-trait weight on these test: One problem is the one Aylen on here having all of its questions on "Neuroticism" amount to "I hate life and cut myself" with barely any questions about anger or anxiety, while other tests I've done have barely any of that and more "I get angry/anxious easily" with fewer references to whether or not people are easily able to cope with or even make use of (= "spur to action") said feelings. I think being able to cope relates to "Openness" so this is a fatal flaw on many tests, along with tests that frame "Extraversion" in terms of self-confidence like "I can easily assert myself when I want" which ignores that an introvert who can be assertive when they want might rarely want to assert themselves and simply have a nearly 1:1 desire:ability assertion ratio due to feeling good about themselves. I think "Extraversion" really correlates to insensitivity, which would explain the correlation between that and "stimulus seeking" since even very introverted people can perceive themselves as "stimulus-seeking" relative to the amount of stimuli that are available.

Of course, corporations need to be able to sell people on "Extraversion" so pointing out that it's insensitivity in Big Five is not advantageous. But sensitivity is disadvantageous to corporations since sensitivity drives people to make art and philosophy and take action rather than sitting around being lazy, all of which challenge the existing order of things. (Active extraverts would have to be low on Openness to be significantly high on Neuroticism and therefore Conscientiousness, while introverts have to be high on Openness to be able to not be overwhelmed by their "Neuroticism" without dissociating into passivity. And people low on Openness and high in activity/"Conscientiousness" will naturally uphold the existing order. But Big Five is presented as explanatory so no one really looks into it. Trying to correlate it to MBTI is of course so people can justify using this framework for hiring and make sure artists and philosophers don't get paid even if, without testing, they'd show enough Conscientiousness on the job to get paid a lot more.)

[Nanooka]

I'm sure the Big Five-MBTI correlations are all just a conspiracy to ensure philosophers get paid less.

[Pallas]

I'm sure the Big Five-MBTI correlations are all just a conspiracy to ensure philosophers get paid less.

...That is not what I said at all. I also said artists, by which I mean everyone in the arts, not just painters. I mean anyone who could change how people think and re-shape the culture. Things people write and illustrate have a tendency to do that, so we can't give people time to write or illustrate anything, and if we do, it has to be the ideas we approve. Am I awful at saying anything now?

But really, Big Five is a nonsense idea, and Jung's ideas don't correlate with Big Five at all. MBTI doesn't correlate either, if you read, you know, the first post on this forum. If Big Five were such a good idea, why would it have a name that sounds like an American football or basketball conference? None of the good theories have overly catchy names, which is how you know string theory is nonsense.

[Nanooka]

...That is not what I said at all. I also said artists,

Philosophers and artists, yes. It can't be that they just don't happen to have demonstrated skills that their employer finds useful enough to pay highly, said employer must be using tests to keep the arteeste down rather than putting them in positions where they'd (owing to their high "conscientiousness on the job" or something) make said business more money. Makes much more sense.

Like. I agree that using personality tests in hiring is a bad idea and can lead to gross misplacement of people. Where I disagree is that it's likely a deliberate attempt to somehow keep artistic people down, as if that could be coordinated amongst employers. I think it's a corporate fad, much like Japanese management systems in the '80s. Like those, this is dumb, will lead to mismanagement, and therefore will crash and burn.

But really, Big Five is a nonsense idea, and Jung's ideas don't correlate with Big Five at all. MBTI doesn't correlate either, if you read, you know, the first post on this forum.

The first post actually doesn't say that, and Big Five traits besides Neurotic/Calm have been repeatedly shown to have strong correlations with the four basic Jungian dichotomies. Just one off the top of my head, abstract and then the paper itself so you don't have to purchase it:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...91886996000335
https://jfdeschamps.files.wordpress....am-2003-6p.pdf

This states that S/R strongly matches E/I. O/U is strongly correlated with J/P, also has some unexpected association with T/F though. I/N is correlated with N/S. E/A matches T/F, and if you look in the text the confidence interval given from the data sample fits statistical definitions of "strong," though it's less strong than the others.

[Pallas]

Philosophers and artists, yes. It can't be that they just don't happen to have demonstrated skills that business finds useful enough to pay highly, they must be using tests to keep the arteeste down.

If you make people take tests before they get the chance to demonstrate anything, then yeah. This isn't proof, but it does leave things open. I can't even find real statistics on how widely used MBTI is or who exactly uses it. Businesses are bribing people to hide their embarrassment.

The first post actually doesn't say that, and Big Five traits besides N/C have been repeatedly shown to have strong correlations with the four basic Jungian dichotomies. Just one off the top of my head:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...91886996000335

Yes, papers that are funded by the corporations that use MBTI and want it to be shown to have validity. Aside from the original MBTI types not being the ones currently in use at all (look at how often MBTI stereotypes completely change), showing things to correlate above chance doesn't make them valid. That's like saying that since I'm equally likely to see a dragon or a unicorn tomorrow based on past experience, dragons and unicorns are both real. I'm saying that both MBTI and Big Five are nonsense, so nonsense correlating with other nonsense doesn't make it real, especially since parts of the nonsense are being redefined in order to make it correlate with the other nonsense. Especially after I did my breakdown of the Big Five "subtraits" that are acknowledged by actual researchers and somehow perplex them ("Fans of action movies are higher than average in both Openness and Conscientiousness! This is impossible!").

[Nanooka]

If you make people take tests before they get the chance to demonstrate anything, then yeah. This isn't proof, but it does leave things open. I can't even find real statistics on how widely used MBTI is or who exactly uses it. Businesses are bribing people to hide their embarrassment.

So, your idea:
- It's an elaborate plot that involves bribing psychologists and universities to make up a correlation between Big Five and Jungian dichotomies, so they can keep artists and philosophers in low pay jobs, when their "high conscientiousness on the job" means they'd actually be better for that company and make it run more efficiently.

My idea:
- Yuppies are largely a bunch of fad-driven E3s. These fads are often really bad ideas. This is one of them.

I think Occam's razor doesn't favor the former. The simplest answer that explains the available evidence, the one with the lowest amount of logical leaps and holes to fill in, is most likely to be right. Although, here's a theory: maybe 16t is an elaborate plot by the corporations to keep us online all day debating whether Pinocchio is Ne or Te or something else nobody cares about, so we can't get jobs and tear down *smokes blunt* the system, maaaan.

Especially after I did my breakdown of the Big Five "subtraits" that are acknowledged by actual researchers and somehow perplex them ("Fans of action movies are higher than average in both Openness and Conscientiousness! This is impossible!").

Openness and Conscientiousness are not defined as part of the same scale in Big Five. It's totally possible that you can be higher than average in both, it roughly translates into NJs in MBTI. Openness is the Inquisitive/Non-Inquisitive scale, Conscientiousness the Organized/Unorganized scale.

[Aylen]

On sub-trait weight on these test: One problem is the one Aylen on here having all of its questions on "Neuroticism" amount to "I hate life and cut myself" with barely any questions about anger or anxiety, while other tests I've done have barely any of that and more "I get angry/anxious easily" with fewer references to whether or not people are easily able to cope with or even make use of (= "spur to action") said feelings. I think being able to cope relates to "Openness" so this is a fatal flaw on many tests, along with tests that frame "Extraversion" in terms of self-confidence like "I can easily assert myself when I want" which ignores that an introvert who can be assertive when they want might rarely want to assert themselves and simply have a nearly 1:1 desire:ability assertion ratio due to feeling good about themselves. I think "Extraversion" really correlates to insensitivity, which would explain the correlation between that and "stimulus seeking" since even very introverted people can perceive themselves as "stimulus-seeking" relative to the amount of stimuli that are available.

What are you even talking about? The bold part specifically. What does it have to do with me, especially the "I hate life and cut myself". Why are you using my name at all? If you just poorly worded then please rephrase. Did I link a quiz you have an issue with? If so say that. If not, wtf.