Typing “Scientifically”? An idea.

[sbbds]

Let’s say you randomly divided 50 people who are Socionics hobbyists into 5 groups of 10 people: A, B, C, D, and E.

Next you put each group into separate rooms closed off from one another without means of communication between them.

Then you bring a person in and let them go into each of the 5 rooms one by one, staying in each room for an hour each. The sessions are recorded. The group members can all interact with the person together and discuss what this person’s type might be with one another (without telling or sharing private discussion on this with the subject). The group members of each team can also watch their session recording afterwards and have time to discuss further.

The task for each group is to arrive at one typing for the subject by 70% majority vote.

After this exercise, what do you think the chances of all 5 groups arriving at the same typing for the subject are?


What are your thoughts on this kind of experiment?

[Memento Mori]

I would imagine the results yielding perfect type assessment would be very exceptional, and generally mixed. The probability of the experiment's accuracy also relies heavily upon the individual comprehension of each of the 50 individuals. The implicit goal of any attempted scientific procedure would be to control for this variability of comprehension by optimizing the environment and circumstances. How this would be achieved is not easily answered, but I like Your idea.

Ultimately, typology broadly will struggle to ever be embraced by scientific consensus. A scientist can test a theory or procedure on a rock, or some consistently predictive object, but rocks don't talk back, and the nature of some cognition is neither known nor being tested. Humans speak for themselves, making both the adequacy of the theory as well as the the assertions of the subject in question paramount. There are so many factors to consider with a person's admission, be that simple rambling or responses to specific questions. Their honesty, their motives, their level of self reflection and awareness, and--in this instance--their comprehension of the theory as well as how it applies to themselves. This last point alone can take many years to substantially grasp.

Accounting for all these variables makes this root question an incredibly hard one to tackle, but all the more interesting a challenge. If Typology could be directly translated by genetics or neuroscience (at least reliably) then we'd have incredible predictive power over the behaviours and cognition of not only ourselves, but the prospect of raising children, and what to adjust for and be vigilant of.

[sbbds]

I would imagine the results yielding perfect type assessment would be very exceptional, and generally mixed.

Why?

IME IRL group brainstorming, especially with some at least semi-passionate people thrown in tends to yield good results.

How would you alter the experiment to make it better?