Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
Right. If it were to be studied that way then there would be a ton of factors to pick apart and research, with no end goal in sight.
So we don’t want to study them as dichotomies in and of themselves but instead observe the correlations between the data (if there are any) to see if the theory is all connected structurally first, in the process collecting data on whether or not certain things within the theory can actually be considered to be dichotomous.
This is the basis of sindri’s hypothesis.
Last edited by sbbds; 12-23-2018 at 12:27 PM.
I don't think my question "What observation would prove Socionics to be false?" earlier in this thread has been explicitly answered, save for essentially saying how we could affirm the view that Socionics is true.
“Tell me," Wittgenstein's asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?”
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
If this doesn’t work, then it’s been falsified, and Socionics has been empirically invalidated.
So if we agree, “according to Socionics, EII type has XYZ qualities”, and we test it and find it to be untrue and/or that such a type doesn’t exist, then we can say the theory was wrong.
There are tons of claims in Socionics like this. As sindri pointed out earlier (just weirdly and in a less obvious way), Socionics is highly falsifiable. The only problem is that we need to set parameters on what our definitions are so we can begin to test these claims.
This is useful. It supports what @Troll Nr 007 and I said about finding ways to collect data on people other than self-report.
It would be good to look into the sources for this in this book and take them into account when designing the experiments/data collection methods.
Thanks for the Xmas gift Dingu.
@ajsindri @thehotelambush
Socionics is about making a current observation, making a model out of it and logically deducing from the model which deduces that the same current observation will be predicted to be repeated again in the future.
We can separate the brain into regions like the frontal lobe, temporal lobe, hippocampus, amygdala, etc., in the same way that we separate cognition into Model A, Fe, Fi, Te, Ti, etc. We can say that "the Hippocampus is responsible for these behaviors", in the same way that "Fe is responsible for these behaviors".
The problem is that we don't actually know exactly what kind of behaviors the hippocampus is actually capable of creating. But at least we can physically "see" the hippocampus area, so we can make some sort of a correlation (but not causation). But how are you supposed to "correlate" certain behavior with Fe?
If Fe is an abstract entity, but nevertheless has its own logic and a coherent system to it, then there must be some sort of a law that logically connects all the supposed amalgamated behaviors that are all labeled under the same umbrella of "Fe". Of course, no such system has ever been proposed in Socionics, but instead they all rely on the "intuition" of the typist, which might as well be nothing but a bias and a prejudice of the typist (what makes my intuition more right than your intuition?). This "intuition" is simply an implicit system that exists in the mind of all typists. Which is why agreement in typing is so rare, since everyone has their own individual systems which might differ from the others' systems.
Or we can spend an infinite amount of time saying and arguing over "This observation is Fe, that observation is Fe", which is absurd, as history shows that human behavior, thoughts, and beliefs change over time. You might as well say that the "Fe" is capable of creating almost an infinite combination of behaviors, which might very well be closer to the truth. It's one of the reasons why evolution has managed to create so much diversity. It's the combination of random errors over time and the possibility of the infinite that is capable of creating so much diversity from a relatively small starting point.
So if things don't stay the same, then how is psychological study possible? What laws exist in psychology that stay the same over time? I think the way to do is by coming up with "general principles" that stay the same that guide human behaviors, rather than listing a set of fixed behaviors that supposedly stay the same over time. The problem is that people have the ability to think abstractly and symbolically, and therefore they can pick and choose whatever behavior they think is appropriate for the circumstance. And there is no limit to what kind of behavior they can choose to create. I very much doubt that certain people are limited to fixed "Fe behavior, Te behavior", but rather people may simply pick whatever strategy that they think will be the most successful, given their own talents, the appropriateness of the circumstance, etc.
I think this is the approach that Albert Bandura has taken in his "Social Cognitive Theory":
SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY
Social Foundations of Thought & Action: A Social Cognitive Theory, Albert Bandura
In the social cognitive view people are neither driven by inner forces nor automatically shaped and controlled by external stimuli. Rather, human functioning is explained in terms of a model of triadic reciprocality in which behavior, cognitive and other personal factors, and environmental events all operate as interacting determinants of each other. The nature of persons is defined within this perspective in terms of a number of basic capabilities. These are discussed briefly below and analyzed fully in the chapters that follow.
SYMBOLIZING CAPABILITY
FORETHOUGHT CAPABILITY
VICARIOUS CAPABILITY
SELF-REGULATORY CAPABILITY
SELF-REFLECTIVE CAPABILITY
THE NATURE OF HUMAN NATURE
Basically, Social Cognitive Theory tells us that (1) people are capable of using and manipulating symbols and abstractions, (2) people have the ability to use forethought, (3) people have the ability to learn through observation (not through blind copying, but by understanding the meaning behind the observation) (4) people have the ability to regulate and direct their own behavior, (5) people have the ability to think about and reflect on their own thought processes, which makes them model themselves and the world around them, as well as to judge their own thoughts and behaviors, so they can choose what best course of action they should take.
All this is explained through how human nature has evolved over time, and how evolution has shaped human nature, which our neuro-plasticity allows us to do more than merely being the biological determinants.
Last edited by Singu; 12-26-2018 at 08:44 AM.
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
I don't think that qualifies Socionics as a theory, rather than a conjecture.
That would be similar to a Texas sharpshooter, where you fire at a target, then circle where you hit the target, and claim that it represents a type that exists in reality.
Saying that an EII type has XYZ qualities can also only be shown to be internally consistent, rather than necessarily existing in reality: i.e. it is true by definition, rather than by observation.
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
GAUGING PERSONAL DETERMINANTS
Different causal models adopt different paradigms for elucidating how personal determinants contribute to human behavior.
Personality theories traditionally approach the issue in terms of omnibus tests of personal attributes designed to serve varied purposes. Such personality tests consist of a fixed set of items, many of which may have limited bearing on the activities of interest in any particular instance. Moreover, in an effort to serve all purposes, the items are often cast in a general form requiring respondents to fill in the unspecified particulars concerning the nature of the actions, the settings in which they are performed, the persons toward whom the actions are directed, how often they are expressed, and their intensity. The more indefinite the items, the more contents the respondents have to fill in, and the less one can know exactly what is being measured.
It is unrealistic to expect such all-purpose tests to predict with high accuracy how people will perform diverse activities under diverse circumstances. We saw earlier that trait measures usually yield modest correlations. Tests of this sort have some practical value in that some predictive gain, however small, is better than sheer guesswork. But progress in understanding how personal factors affect actions and situations is best advanced through the microanalysis of interactive processes. This requires measures of personal determinants that are specifically tailored to the domain of functioning being analyzed. The study of individual differences by trait measures derived from omnibus tests is a method of convenience, which unfortunately sacrifices explanatory and predictive power.
Guys maybe this will make it simpler to understand:
The experiment is just about “Does this previously philosophical/anectodally*-based theory actually match up with reality?” That in and of itself is testable. You don’t need to do anything major for something to be scientific. Even finding correlations is scientific. You don’t need to know why. It just needs to be done objectively and accurately. We are not creating a new scientific theory. We are not comparing Socionics to actual hard science laws.
* This includes the questionable testing done by crazy Eastern Europeans outside of proper institutions.
The only scientific theory that is ever taken seriously is if it has predictive power. I would argue that having an explanation is necessary for being able to predict something, but some may swear that it's not really needed. Nevertheless, if you claim to have a scientific theory, then at the very least it will be need to be able to predict something.
Scientists on science: explanatory power and predictions:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2006/09/5315/These responses suggest that, at any level in the scientific hierarchy, from a hypothesis to a fully formed theory, the ability to make testable predictions is absolutely essential to science. What constitutes a prediction, and how readily testable they are may vary from field to field, but this quality appears central. If this is truly provides a decisive border between science and pseudoscience, it raises a question that I did not think to ask when designing the survey questions: how often can the testable predictions of a field be wrong before it can no longer be considered science? To use an example from the start of this article, homeopathy makes clear predictions about what should be efficacious for a variety of complaints; testing has invariably revealed those predictions to be wrong. If its lack of explanatory power does not necessarily exclude it as science (as it may be considered a nascent field in a descriptive stage), its rejection as science is primarily a function of these failures. How much failure is enough to allow rejection of an entire field?
The problem is that even pseudoscience and other crackpottery is capable of making "predictions". That's why explanations are really necessary.
Well this is hopeless. The problem is that the vast majority of the people on this forum are idiots.
I've been pressing that a scientific theory needs to make predictions for a while, which ajsindri has casually disregarded as being irrelevant. He clearly doesn't understand how science works.
People on this forum think that they're doing "science" by making things look all "scientific-y" by making neat graphs and so on, but what they're really doing is "Cargo Cult Science". They're just blindly copying the behavior of the scientists, but they don't copy the meaning behind it, which is really an ape's way of copying things. It's all just silly and pointless.
Explanatory power and predictive power are the gold standard of science. Without having either, then it just isn't science and it just isn't going to be taken seriously.
Sindri studies and uses science in his daily life.
I used to study and now sometimes teach science, and I’m quite successful in society tbh.
Several other people on this forum have also studied or work in STEM.
You’re basically being a screaming retard about this compared to the vast majority of others on here.
I love you Dingu.
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
The way you suggest is no different to someone saying they are observing reality, and then attempting to prove it by referring to something that is internally consistent.
It may be internally consistent to say that a flying elephant has wings, but it does not prove the existence of flying elephants.
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
It's saying that in order to know how people act under different circumstances, you'll need to analyze the specific determinants that are specifically tailored toward that circumstance, and not just to analyze the individual differences between people, which is what personality theories do.
When you cant detect sarcasm
We are testing to see if there are flying elephants in reality though with set definitions so that others can do so as well.
The reason that you have gotten confused is because your logic assumes that one side would influence the other, making proving it circular. But with set criteria that is meant to be measured against reality and reproduceable, that’s no longer the case. So compared to your original question, basically we are saying Socionics types define people’s personalities. But of course 2 needs to = 2 here, otherwise the theory doesn’t match with reality.
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
I don't make either assumption. It is possible that neither influences the other: I asked that question to try to find out if and how @ajsindri was focused on demonstrating that Socionics had explanatory power. If Socionics types are neither causes of personality or the effects of individuality, then Socionics has no substance. As it is, the situation is such is that there is no focus even on resolving how we might determine the matter of what Socionics explains: circular reasoning does not prove that Socionics types meaningfully exist in reality. But that is not a criticism of anybody in this thread: it would require a significant degree of resources to attempt to move Socionics beyond a conjecture.
It isn't clear if I am in a discussion with people who think that Socionics types are real physical manifestations, or merely useful constructs. I think that is a great part of the reason that we are not quite seeing eye-to-eye. If you want to prove something to be false, it is useful to be clear what is you are trying to prove to be false.
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
A model that cannot be falsified is not much of a model. Attempting to determine if it is internally consistent will have no bearing on whether it is true in the real world.
I don't think we can make Socionics more scientific if its types are merely supposed to be constructs: when you say they are meant to be approximately accurate representations of reality, for all intents and purposes, that is the same as saying "I think they are an adequate proxy for what I think is true".
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits