17 pages and still have yet to see anyone make Socionics scientific.
17 pages and still have yet to see anyone make Socionics scientific.
Don’t worry lol, we’re here to protect you.
@Karatos I can give you things to work on if you are volunteering.
@Karatos Also, isn’t that exactly what you’re doing if you’re the one waiting?
Ne polr confirmed lol.
Returning to the topic, I've been mulling over this topic for a while, and I think that mathematically proving the inner connections sadly is unlikely to get it accepted as "scientifical", as psychology is very much an area of "softer sciences", so that would require more empirical results to get any level of credibility, I think. Kind of like MBTI or Big Five, which have a main company behind the name of the theory and certain definitions that is agreed by said representative, money making people behind it. So I don't see it being seen like anything but astrology with just the math of it, though I do find it fascinating and the symmetry is something rather pleasing to see/figure out on a personal level.
I mean, even said two personality theories/tests are seen little more than astrology/some current pop culture bs where they sell you info on how they know you better than yourself and can tell you how to handle your very specific problems if you follow their ten step program which is absolutely not them cashing on recent two or so decade's 'personal development' economy, even if there might be some truth inside it.
So my suggestion would be talking it with people who are currently in the field, that what is currently generally accepted as true, what is debated, what sort of procedure is used to recognize something as psychology related discovery than pop culture quiz to grab your money scams that has been around particularly in the last decade or so. I know that sounds vague, but honestly, proving the numerical connections inside a model simply confirms its' consistency inside, and just because it numerically matches with past symbols (Ie. Enneagram's usage of rule of 3, how most of the types' numbers can be associated with numerology/what shapes with such sides were used to symbolize etc) does not mean it would be accepted either.
I think most likely case would be someone/people in the field keeping having discussions and proving validity of Jung's work as that is the core base underneath Socionics, so that it can't be called out on having dubious groundwork based on assumptions and biases than concrete, objective data that can be confirmed and tested. I know that there is at least one Neo-Jungian group writing on Jung's work out there, but afaik they don't associate themselves as much with neither MBTI (as it really is a commercial theory at this point, sans maybe theories like Beebe's and other people who are technically not working for/associated with the MBTI® financially) nor Socionics, as well as they were more focused on parts like alchemy/mandala symbolism and dream interpretations (all things that afaik are seen as things without credibility/old superstitious ideas as it is still fairly Freud/by Socionics standards Te-heavy area) so I am not sure how credible just defending Jung's work itself is, as well.
So that's my take, at least. I would like to see it systematized better than just a few people throwing ideas and theories out to no regulation, while also I see the danger in that ending up in commercialized, little more than selling people said ten step program supposed self help books snake oil remedies with a halt in actual discovery and natural state of being renewed to keep a consistent narrative for it to sound believable and sell well, so at the end of the day, answer really is that it is highly unlikely for it to being seen as "scientific" in the current psychology canon without agreeing on one of the models being the core one that works, with an agreed description of IMEs and tests with enough accuracy to be some level of evidence, then tying it to current knowledge/facts and accepted theories of the field to make it sound more "credible" and "acceptable", while also likely needing a (few) figure head(s) for it, and even then, it is not for certain that it will be seen more than any other personality theory like Enneagram or MBTI or Temperaments or whatever you like, given the nature of Jung's work.
That's my two cents, at least.
^^^ You just summed up everything already said in the thread @ApeironStella .
Except, mathematically confirming some of the inner relationships does help prove it empirically because you’d need to gather empirical data in the process of doing it.
Thus, this proves it both in terms of external consistency and internal consistency, as I said in an earlier post in this thread.
And @ajsindri is a genius for coming up with doing it this way. No other socionists have done this before, or at least nothing that anybody has posted in this thread so far that’s come up.
Mothafuckaz.
With this thread having turned to bickering at least twice from what I recall, I honestly forgot that people responded seriously at first, as anytime I saw it on the latest posts tab it was more the former than the latter, OTL.
Going through the thread from the start right now, so yep, basically ended up doing that.
And hmm... Could you give an example to how it could help to prove empirically then? I don't quite see that angle.
So say you’re trying to prove that A trait or dichotomy is positively correlated with B trait or dichotomy. How would you measure these traits to collect the numbers for them?...
You need to collect data from the environment to use for the calculations in the first place. If they exist in the environment, that proves they exist empirically.
A few people have said proving the higher level correlations is not meaningful and cannot be the basis of a scientific test. I don't understand, why not? If we create reliable empirical measures, and there is a high correlation between the measures at an appropriate alpha level (which normally <5% for published research), why is that not enough?
It’s just because since you never mentioned or emphasized the empirical measures part, people assume you weren’t even considering using empirical data at all. We thought you didn’t have that side to your experiment.
And technically, since you haven’t fleshed that side out more yet, we still don’t have anything satisfactory yet. This would require a lot more discussion though, and hopefully not preceding actual hopeful leads to have a chance of carrying it out.
So just to be clear, everything I am proposing is driven by empirical data. The mathematics is to analyze the empirical data, measure how well it fits the theoretical model, and decide if that application passes or fails.
Sorry about that - without active mods, I can't stop people from starting useless fights. This topic is extremely important, so everyone, please please stay on topic.
Oh, I see. Yeah, since the empirical research/numbers and data used in that also counting as math didn't come up, saying Socionics Math= The math that is being done is the FB group where I still yet to have gain a full grasp on and still was fairly speculative, but in case there is normal, statistical math involved, that's a valid point.
Now that I'm checking the first page again, the first derail happened just after Chakram asked what you meant with this:
"Right now, I'm trying to figure out a universal mathematical space that can record empirical observation of any approach. I think I'm close to finishing that. When I do, I want to make statistical tests specifically for socionics that can calculate the strengths of theoretical structural correlations in practice."
And I think that's where for me (and possibly for others) where the connection of "speculative, possibly would be written off as overthinking it/seeing patterns where there is none" was made with what you were trying to suggest, rather than the empirical side of it, as the quote again Chakram has is about that, but topic died down before you could explain further?
It is sadly nothing you can do much as a forum member without mods intervening, sadly, maybe aside from asking to them to have those parts of the thread split? I recall seeing them doing that once or twice, could make it easier for people to follow what was going on/not to dismiss this thread as "turned to another shitshow" threads?
In the meantime, I have a lot to catch up at the group then, as from again what I understand from that quote, you are almost done with the theoretical base of it to move on to testing area? I'm a noob at that level of math though, so what did you exactly mean by "universal mathematical space that can record empirical observation of any approach." part?
All schools in socionics are measuring the same 16 types, but with different methods. If someone is typed with two methods, it makes sense to compare the results to see if they are consistent. If they don't agree, that means at least one diagnosis is incorrect.
I not only want to compare type outputs of any two given approaches to socionics, but all their parts as well.
Sure. For example, it might make sense to have a metric that can determine which one of the four Jungian cognitive processes is dominant. That could be determined with a polychotomic model. But I don't think we will know which diagnostic scheme works the best without testing the different possibilities.
The traditional three letter code is mathematically superior to anything else, including the MBTI style XXXx code, because the three letter code incorporates the dihedral four structure of Jung's original theory, and the intertype relations.
@ApeironStella Like I said, I want to extend this to all levels of socionics, but for simplicity's sake, let me show you what I have for reinin dichotomy system. This is the equation that sums all levels of correlations.
Here is a program that generates all the correct correlation combinations:
https://repl.it/@ajsindri/Reinin-Dic...tion-Genorator
I have this correlation structure working in my excel program, but for this to work in real life, you would at least need to weight and normalize each dichotomy input, and maybe more steps. I'm still working on this. This is an analysis of how I rate myself on the reinin dichotomies. You can see definite banding of each dichotomy. If it was a random input, it would look like tv static.
I ran 100,000 random dichotomy inputs and got this curve. You can see it is close to a normal curve, but skewed slightly the right. The total possible range the harmony score can be is -35 to +91, and the alpha less than or equal to 5% point is about 1.4 (this value changes a bit depending on the number of likert options and items per dichotomies. This was with 5 likert options and 1 question per trait). That means if you tested a bunch of people, you could use this to determine if the dichotomies were random. This has the same problem as ANOVA, where you can detect and effect, but you don't know exactly what factors are causing it.
Last edited by Lao Tzunami; 12-17-2018 at 07:24 PM.
Building on this...
At best, Socionics suffers from the same shortcomings as nomothetic methods of research and idiographic methods of research in addition to its pseuo-scientific qualities. Nomothetic methods of research attempt to develop general rules for how things work and how things are. Since nomothetic methods devise generalized explanations for observations, and Socionics Model A has non-empirical terms, and the biology-psychology gap exists, Socionics researchers don't have empirical verification that their explanations really account for underlying causes of behavior. Generally, nomothetic research faces setbacks even under rigorous standards of scientific testing because various factors create uncertainty. For example, even when researchers arrive at statistically significant data, they don't know if their explanations for the data actually account for root causes. In the Asch conformity experiment, researchers observed that subjects had a tendency to toe the line with other participants, yielding statistically significant figures, yet the model, on its own, fails to explain exactly what governs the conformist behavior in empirical terms. Since the model fails to account for empirical causes, corresponding behavior doesn't necessarily repeat in the real world. Additionally, experiments run the risk of contamination due to confounding variables, skewing statistical models and creating even more uncertainty about the validity of nomothetic explanations. Unlike the Asch experiment, Socionics already has non-empirical terms, making it even less explainable within the scope of the scientific method. Socionics testing methods also suffer from shortcomings of idiography (ie. research focusing on individual characteristics, such as interviews and self assessments). For instance, the self assessments involved in idiographic techniques, such as those of Gulenko, Sociotype.com, and echidna fucker, rely on a subject's fallible self-awareness, which is constrained only to their own experiences, limiting their ability to accurately classify their abilities and values within the scope of general Socionics criteria. A person may think of themselves as "ethical" or "logical", but since they've never been anyone else, they have no basis for comparison and therefore no justifiable certainty. Moreover, how Socionists frequently fuse idiographic elements with nomothetic elements to test subjects tends to lead to faulty thinking. For example, using Model A as the sole criteria for personality during an idiographic test, as I have seen Socionists do on this website, tends to create further confusion about Socionics and subjects because concepts become conflated.
This is all underscored by the fact that Model A, its assessment of what makes one type more "sophisticated" in its processing of information than any other, and its limitation to 16 types, scientifically amount to conjecture.
To answer hotelambush's question: I think it's wishful thinking to think that the scientific community will revise the scientific method soon because logical/empirical positivism (ie. the view that only empirically verifiable evidence suffices to justify beliefs) generally prevails in the scientific community. This philosophy is practically hardwired in the scientific method because scientific observations ultimately have the final say in the body of knowledge produced by scientific inquiry. Furthermore, it's generally been the trend that psychology has moved from the more abstract (Freud, Jung, James) to the more concrete (neuroscience).
Last edited by Desert Financial; 12-17-2018 at 04:35 AM.
Those things that show internal cohesion are cool it is consistent. I have thought about those myself. I still wonder how anyone can make people answer honestly or how can we assume that people have required level of self-knowledge. This is why I just think that it has to be measured by using other methods than self report. And this is my bias.
MOTTO: NEVER TRUST IN REALITY
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Sincerely yours,
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Life is a joke but do you have a life?
Joinif you dare https://matrix.to/#/#The16Types:matrix.org
You could show that someone is good at Fe and Ti, or Se and Ni, etc.
You could show that someone's abilities or values changed from one type to another over time (doesn't necessarily disprove socionics but the hypothesis that types remain the same)
You could show that someone has positive reactions to conflicting elements such as Te and Ti, Fe and Fi, etc. (This one seems pretty self-evident though since they are opposite priorities.)
In practice the model is still being refined and we deal with minor flaws (such as, misunderstandings of particular functions or dichotomies) by refining it. I haven't noticed any fatal contradictions as yet.
Basically yeah
I'm not sure how your approach addresses this - unless I'm missing something it's currently only in terms of type dichotomies. If you expand to 4/2-groups and conditional probabilities then it could maybe compare all possible approaches.
Also, this kind of thing may be a bit overkill - for example you can just as easily take two traits that are conjectured to actually coincide, like Ti suggestive and Fe leading. For this all you have to do is check how well the operationalizations correlate.
E.g., have the question "do you have difficulty organizing your thought process?"
and "do you naturally and confidently express your emotional state to others?"
etc. If you find correlations then that would be decent evidence for socionics.
They may reconsider if someone makes significant progress on scientific questions using other means (e.g. rational/mathematical means).
Last edited by Exodus; 12-20-2018 at 08:36 AM.
Socionics may only show that certain behaviours can be grouped together with other behaviours that are considered similar. That in itself does not mean that the eight Information Elements exist in reality.
What Socionics conjectures about intertype relations is distinct from the types themselves, which could be tested, but first, the types would have to be well-defined and there would have to be a rigorous method for determining an individual's type.
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