Different methods of typing and their uses

[Ave]

I've been thinking alot about actual methods of typing and how to make typing more streamlined. I'll take a look various methods of typing I think are worth using, but I'd also like to talk about how each method applies to different people you are trying to type. For example, VI might be more useful in typing famous actors and musicians since they often play a "persona" which can distort their type. Other methods might be more useful when it comes to typing individuals you know personally.

Visual Identification (VI): Probably the best method for typing celebrities. Since celebrities often play a role in public, it can be hard to determine their type based on the other methods. This method thus seems the most accurate for this purpose. It's best to look at a photo or a realistic portrait of the person you are trying to type, and look at expressions and attitudes, not facial structure, as some suggest. Some problems that can arise are that in the case of famous people, they often strike poses which can be unnatural to them. This is why it's best to look at as many photos as possible.

Text analysis: Useful for identifying authors and writers who's work you know well, or anyone who's writings you are otherwise familiar with. This can be useful in identifying people who died before the invention of the photograph and of whom no realistic portraits exist but writings do. The goal here is to identify the person's cognitive process or train of thought by reading the text. The process can be complicated if the text you are basing your typing on is a translation. Can also be good for typing people who fill out 'type me' questionnaires.

Behavioral analysis: I'm not a big fan of behavioral analysis, since most behaviors often correlate to more than one type. For example, a tendency to get angry over trivial things and aggrandize conflicts can be true of both SEE/ESFp and EIE/ENFj, or even some other types. But it can pinpoint you in the right direction, at least. Not recommended as a standalone method. This is best for people you interact with in real life situations.

Verbal analysis: This is similar to text analysis in that you are looking at speech to follow the person's cognitive process. Probably best for people you interact with in real life situations.

There are probably other methods, but those seem like the main ones to me.

What do you think? What methods are useful for what purpose? Which ones do you like for a given group of people (celebs vs people you know personally, for example). Did I miss any methods? Am I completely off-base here? etc

[Ryan]

[para]

I find that a verbal, associative schematic combined with a focus on a persons general energy works most clearly when performing analysis - that's how i like to understand other people and their thoughts. General, intuitive energy does also help, but to categorize these impressions seem vague and with not enough justification for most, though most people grasp that quickly (as we are capable of doing this clearly as a species). To listen to thoughts, feelings, connections with the outside world and the ability for the typed individual to display these is the most effective when determining someones character, which of course extends to Socionics as a system for me.

[photon]

Behavioural and verbal analysis is part of Visual identification i thought. The two main methods i've noticed online is text analysis (typing from questionnaires and forum posts) and Visual typing.

It's fun to use a combination of both if you can, but I know that VI can be unreliable. When I type people I try to get to know them more. VI is easier when typing celebrities but even persona's can indicate something about their type.

[ouronis]

I think the distinction between mental process and content is what throws me off most. I think you can get glimpses of the "process" by feelings of conflict or automatic understanding of another person's thinking. Under automatic understanding, you have modes of thought that are familiar to you because they are similar to your thoughts and those that are familiar via exposure in depth to another person's thinking but aren't similar to your thinking. This has been the most reliable way of exposing differences, for/to me. Especially when you think you think like another person and you are following them along until some apparently unexplainable but no less (intuitively, maybe not finally) legitimate quirk of their reasoning throws you for a loop.

But again, this is not completely helpful because it brings up the question of explaining the variance via the (only/many) 16 types, and assessing similarity/clusters in terms of somewhat vague and unestablished criteria.