Why does Socionics not take off?
What is the reason, being as awesome as it is and pretty easy to learn, that Socionics has not become more widespread and/or mainstream in Society yet? I mean, it has been around since the 70's, and only a handful of people know about it (and it is one of the biggest discoveries of humanity ever IMO).
Is MBTI to blame? Is there some sort of conspiracy ?
Last edited by roger557; 11-16-2021 at 08:24 PM.
A combination of factors:
- MBTI's dominance means Socionics is easy to be dismissed as obsolete since a lot of the structure/language is the same across the two.
- Socionics outside of Russia lacks any kind of centrally recognized authority from which the "right" interpretation flows. Attempts to put material out to the public is often met with dissenting viewpoints dragging it back down.
- The community engages in more overt pseudoscience than MBTI does (that's not to say MBTI communities don't do this too, but these practices are generally kicked out of the public eye). The prevalence of VI is especially detrimental, as well as the esoteric tangents in Augusta's work.
- Socionics is a more daunting system to learn at first glance. MBTI is usually content presenting the letter signifiers and nothing deeper, while Socionics communities often insist on the learning of elements/functions.
Those factors aren't necessarily all equal, but I think they're all very valid roadblocks in the West.
I've got some things to comment:
How can Socionics be considered "obsolete", or superseeded by MBTI, when it has a much more complete body of knowledge? Moreover, MBTI was created in 1942, while Socionics was first developed in the 70's; would it be instead that the pertinent venues (FBI, intelligence agencies, nuclear plants, etc, use MBTI) are accustomed to MBTI, and would not drop it in favor of the superior and more modern Socionics?Originally Posted by Teslobo
That's one of the benefits of Socionics. There must be established some sort of institute in the west, but for that, money or funding is required.- Socionics outside of Russia lacks any kind of centrally recognized authority from which the "right" interpretation flows. Attempts to put material out to the public is often met with dissenting viewpoints dragging it back down.
I agree that in order to publicize it or market it, this might be detrimental. But this is another of the benefits of socionics. VI is true. Moreover, I personally have cracked what it means, and it is indeed all very "esoteric".- The community engages in more overt pseudoscience than MBTI does (that's not to say MBTI communities don't do this too, but these practices are generally kicked out of the public eye). The prevalence of VI is especially detrimental, as well as the esoteric tangents in Augusta's work.
Yep. It is more complex. This could be solved if it simply is taught as a subject in schools. Physics and chemistry are more complicated than Socionics IMO, and everyone studies them in secondary. The problem I think is the self-taught nature of Socionics, which does not sit well with most people.- Socionics is a more daunting system to learn at first glance. MBTI is usually content presenting the letter signifiers and nothing deeper, while Socionics communities often insist on the learning of elements/functions.
More stuff I think is to blame:
- Ganin's site.
- Stupidity of people in general in this time and age.
- Capitalism.
- Conspiracy, because some inteligence agencies do use it, and they know the empowerment that being able to operate socionics bestows on someone, and have no interest in it being spread.
- Bad rap b/c it is russian. The name "Socionics" sounds foreign and weird.
Primarily because people that are already attached to MBTI aren't that willing to read the whole thing, or those that already see MBTI as a workplace horoscope won't think of socionics any more highly.How can Socionics be considered "obsolete", or superseeded by MBTI, when it has a much more complete body of knowledge?
I don't think an institution is necessarily needed. If you're only shooting for popularity, a loud and charismatic person with a sales pitch to companies is all you need.That's one of the benefits of Socionics. There must be established some sort of institute in the west, but for that, money or funding is required.
No.VI is true.
I honestly don't think Socionics is worthy of taking up education system resources.Yep. It is more complex. This could be solved if it simply is taught as a subject in schools.
Somebody famous like an actor for example? Maybe if someone like Brad Pitt for example got into socionics it would finally take off?
Yes.No.
It is.I honestly don't think Socionics is worthy of taking up education system resources.
In response to this - "The name Socionics sounds foreign and weird",
My friend who is interested in psychology and "what makes people tick" reacted that way to the name. He asked whether Socionics is like Dianetics.
He found the idea of quadra progression disturbing because powerful leaders of a prevailing quadra could use their influence to pray upon members of less successful quadras. My friend quickly summed up the divisions of Socionics as cultlike thought.
Can you tell me which intelligence agencies use socionics? Would they let this forum die?
One reason why MBTI is more digestible or marketable may be that Socionics has potential to cause more personal discomfort or pause. It gets you thinking more critically about your weaknesses and under which circumstances (and with who) those become apparent to you.
It's a long story (and forbidden).
I think it's mostly this:
MBTI is a significantly more "user-friendly" system than Socionics is, particularly for people just getting into personality typology stuff. One of my cousins (EIE) who I've tried to get into Socionics told me she just preferred Enneagram + MBTI because it's what all her friends already understand and she doesn't feel she has the free time to dump into figuring out Socionics
“Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.”
— James Russell Lowell猫が生き甲斐
We really do be the Linux of typology
Lol that's a great way of summarizing it.
I should really figure out Linux sometime...
“Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.”
— James Russell Lowell
Do it! I'll be happy to help you install a distribution and figure it out if you'd like.Lol that's a great way of summarizing it.
I should really figure out Linux sometime...
How do you think it could be done that someone like your cousin dropped MBTI in favor of socionics? Maybe explaining the benefits of intertype relations?
If I knew then she'd already have switched lol
I myself switched because I wanted more depth and MBTI wasn't offering it. I don't know how to make someone interested in depth though. My motivation was intrinsic to myself
“Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.”
— James Russell Lowell
This. If socionics is presented as just a way to put people in boxes, then MBTI is adequate enough to the casual user to the point where they don't have a reason to learn socionics.
From that point of view, socionics needs a "unique selling point", whether the relationship theory (which as we know is limited) or something new. For now people just see it as a more complicated version of MBTI, something to be learned "after" MBTI and Enneagram for whatever reason. Socionics can probably be simplified a lot, say if you only use quadras or something like that (not that I recommend doing that).
Enneagram itself has become a lot more popular lately so it could still happen. The contradictory interpretations don't seem to have made a big difference there.
I agree with everything with the exception of the notion of VI being esoteric and overt pseudoscience. Jung himself described on multiple occasions qualitative differences in terms of gaze and function usage and all typology systems are namely based off of his cognitive function theory and for some reason many people don't know that/assume it was just another thing made up in the way.
Now, one could always argue that focusing on one aspect of Jung's work doesn't mean everything else that's part of it should be taken into account (given his spiritual proclivities and et cetera), but this is directly tied to how he describes manifestations of different cognitive functions (namely difference between the eyes of sensors versus intuitives and et cetera). And because of that alone, there are plenty of MBTI typists i've stumbled upon that have been into visual identification (Jung's influence). Again, not at all surprising because if you'll actually adhere to Jung and use his theories as a basis for any other personality type system, entirely dismissing a part of his work extending to cognitive functions specifically is kind of odd.
That's not to say that you're not allowed to disagree with it, but one can easily surmise why people are keen on picking up on it. It's not some seemingly not interconnected or mutually exclusive with analyzing how one metabolizes information in a more "classical" way (going by mostly analyzing behavioral preferences and associating it with different IE usage) thing and it seems like the most vocal VI-related criticisms mostly stem from people that think it's literally based off of concrete physical appearance features/physiognomy which is incorrect and/or people who don't really understand and cannot assimilate it very well.
I myself was a skeptic at first but tried to pick up on it and it turns out - over 95% of the people i try to VI type in my Discord server (usually strangers i have not otherwise interacted with and whose self-typing i am not familiar with) end up telling me that what i attempted to type them based on gaze and et cetera alone is actually congruent with their own self-typing. That seems to happen often enough with actually good VI typists like me, @toska and Ashton to a point where categorically discrediting the mere notion of it is strange... and more of an off-kilter and "esoteric" thing to do than adhering to VI in of itself.
Also re: Aushra's "tangents" - are we really going to act like the majority of this (Western) community actually reads any source material or is genuinely familiar with Aushra's work? "Model Aushra" as we know it has very little do to with Model Aestrivex/Ibrahim that most people around seem to label and perceive as Model A. I don't think it's actually Aushra's writing getting in the way (even if you have valid criticisms of it), in reality it's perhaps more so what passes as Socionics and Model A these days.
I AM YOUR HOLY TOTEM
I AM YOUR SICK TABOO
RADICAL AND RADIANT
I'M YOUR NIGHTMARE COMING TRUE
I AM YOUR WORST ENEMY
I AM YOUR DEAREST FRIEND
MALIGNANTLY MALEVOLENT
I AM OF DIVINE DESCENT
I AM YOUR UNCONSCIOUSNESS
I AM UNRESTRAINED EXCESS
METAMORPHIC RESTLESSNESS
I'M YOUR UNEXPECTEDNESS
I AM YOUR APOCALYPSESTRAY BULLET
I AM YOUR BELIEF UNWROUGHT
MONOLITHIC JUGGERNAUT
FROM THE HEAVENS ABOVE
STRAY BULLET
READY OR NOT
I'M THE ILLEGITIMATE SON OF GOD
McDonalds is bad for you and has no value. Facebook is run by a soulless demon whose aim is to destroy people’s privacy. Why do these things take off?
Why is Edison a million times more well known than Tesla?
It is not easy to learn btw. How many different complex articles and schools of thought in socionics are there again??
Why?
Because Jesus has departed from this Earth
People prefer fast food (MBTI) to learning how to cook well (Socionics).
I don't have an opinion on the OP; only here to crap all over Microsoft. https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerH...ee_on_windows/
This blog is regularly updated.
https://itvision.altervista.org/why-...-10-sucks.html
https://itvision.altervista.org/why-...-11-sucks.html
MS has some very talented programmers. They're not very common, but they exist. The problem is that the entire company is completely and totally focused on developing an absurd number of new features and products, giving them completely unrealistic deadlines, and then shipping software on those deadlines no matter how half-assed or buggy it is.
The idea is that everything is serviceable over the internet now, so they can just "fix it later", except they never do. This perpetuates a duct-tape culture that refuses to actually fix problems and instead rewards teams that find ways to work around them. The talented programmers are stuck working on code that, at best, has to deal with multiple badly designed frameworks from other teams, or at worst work on code that is simply scrapped. New features are prioritized over all but the most system-critical bugs, and teams are never given any time to actually focus on improving their code. The only improvements that can happen must be snuck in while implementing new features.
As far as M$ is concerned, all code is shit, and the only thing that matters is if it works well enough to be shown at a demo and shipped. Needless to say, I don't work there anymore.
Socionics is taking off thanks to the MBTI community, I don't see what you are all talking about.
Ever since the MBTI community has discovered socionics it has majoritarily decided that socionics is a more complex and authoritative form of jungian typology, they even test or type themselves through socionics and then adapt their MBTI letters to it.
You might be worried that socionics could become a sort of puppy for the MBTI, and you might be correct. But if you worry that the MBTI community is less serious than the socionics one, you're wrong.
MBTI is a flawed theory. Some MBTI four letters types, are very rarely their equivalent in Socionics (very common example; MBTI ENTJ's are very rarely LIE's; SLE's, ESE-Si's, LSE-Te's,etc). MBTI is pop-psy; it offers nothing relevant, has no depth, and is fundamented in a great number of people mistyped.
Where's the relation from what you said to what I wrote? Socionics is deeper, more complex, closer to reality... But it's community is not only pop-sy, it's sectarian and composed of airheads.
That might be so. So what's the solution then.
I explained this before, I think it's because socionics has a more in depth personality system. Americans esp. are taught to be hyper independent and competitive and to not really openly focus so much on intertype relationships, but to sell themselves type of thing. Socionics is very 'Fi' in this sense. MBTI otoh is more career focused and more superficial/shell-like, like a LSE corporate person going 'be nice to the shy EII because he's shy' without a lot of depth. Although both can be pretty shallow- MBTI is very shallow-y and Karen-y and people respond to that better. People don't like to think too deeply of things. They just want a shirtless Mario Lopez to save a baby from an alligator or whatever. Well MBTI has an intertype relationship thingie too but it's not really as focused as much as 'this is what you are indepedently of anybody else.'
I guess because I'm 4D Fi and co-dependent but I've always responded better to socionics and the intertype relationship thing, it was always interesting to me a system explaining why I get along with others or why I don't rather than 'this is how I am fits into this corporation' thing which might be a Te polr thing as well but idk lol.
We haven't had a millionaire who could take full advantage of socionics to increase their wealth. If socionics really is worth it's salt, then any serious attempt to use it as a way of increasing efficiency should succeed.
I'm going to toss this idea out there since I'm an anti-capitalist: a very good way to promote socionics would be to set up a dating site, with the lure of duality as its banner. The only thing you absolutely require is a very good test that pins people to their true to type with at least 90% accuracy.
That accurate test is a pretty high hurdle, given that most people are simulations, but the other huge hurdle to Dual dating is that, at least in my experience, Duals don't always think you're all that great at first. And sometimes, not ever.
It would be only the lure; once they got interested the site should contain a rating system where it recommends you possible relationships based on your inter-type with them, so people are not only limited to duality. Also, by knowing beforehand who has a good intertype with you, you will be able to bypass the "how annoying is this person" stage of dualization. The only problem I see with this is that in relationships there are too many factors to count to what makes a succesful relationship, or rather, a relatioship worth experiencing, so there should be a disclaimer that the recommendations of the site are orientative and that you should engage whoever you like, as long as you are aware (a description of the pertinent ITR should appear) of the ITR you have with said person (which defines the "tonality" of the relationship).
I think something like this already exists
Wait a second. What do you mean?
My statement was mainly a joke, but not entirely. Most people who are reasonably healthy have a basic sociotype, but many people don’t believe they have a fixed type, and additional people go against their true type because they have been taught that being who they really are is not acceptable. So they take on someone else’s characteristics.
It's the name, "Socionics" sounds like a damn cult.
...it's not..right?
The Barnum or Forer effect is the tendency for people to judge that general, universally valid statements about personality are actually specific descriptions of their own personalities. A "universally valid" statement is one that is true of everyone—or, more likely, nearly everyone. It is not known why people tend to make such misjudgments, but the effect has been experimentally reproduced.
The psychologist Paul Meehl named this fallacy "the P.T. Barnum effect" because Barnum built his circus and dime museum on the principle of having something for everyone. It is also called "the Forer effect" after its discoverer, the psychologist Bertram R. Forer, who modestly dubbed it "the fallacy of personal validation".
Yeah, it has "socio" right in the title, which sounds like "sociopath". It's Soviet, which might sound strange or experimental to a lot of people.
- all of the primary sources are translated from russian
- lots of jargon and abbreviations
- vague ideas like “energy” and “information metabolism” which scream pseudoscience
- “fi is the internal static of fields” <- excuse me what
- no celebrity endorsement. no tiktok community
- lack of momentum
- the most active socionics forum looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2007
- lack of consensus on basic definitions and examples of types. self proclaimed experts frequently contradict each other
- how the fuck are people going to find out about socionics in the first place? you have to be deeply obsessed with MBTI first
we need a 'love' or 'fuck I love how savage you were and how you pwned just there' button. <3
It makes a lot of sweeping claims regarding intertype relationships. Historically, VI put a lot of people off since socionics.com is a big promoter of the method. It's rather complicated to appeal to the masses interested in pop psychology but it's not scientific enough for researchers to take it seriously.
In Socionics you actually have to find your real, natural, jungian type. Otherwise the ITR and other stuff wont make sense. That can be difficult. Not so in MBTI where many people just identify with a cool type description basically throwing Jung out the window. Then it becomes a meaningless bunch of trivial labels
That could be one reason.
The decisive thing is not the reality of the object, but the reality of the subjective factor, i.e. the primordial images, which in their totality represent a psychic mirror-world. It is a mirror, however, with the peculiar capacity of representing the present contents of consciousness not in their known and customary form but in a certain sense sub specie aeternitatis, somewhat as a million-year old consciousness might see them.
(Jung on Si)
Socionics asserts that people can be classified into sixteen distinct and fixed categories, and that people in each of the sixteen categories will have a distinct and predictable relationship with people in each of the other categories.
Some advocates of Socionics further assert that people can be classified into these categories on the basis of facial features.
On the face of it, these assertions sound fantastic at best and racist at worst.
Personally, when I first encountered Myers-Briggs, I thought it was one of those fun things you do with your girlfriend, like determining how you felt that day based on your three (health, mind, something-else) cycles, which start at the moment of birth and run without deviation for the rest of your life.
When I mentioned Socionics to my SLI son and an ESI friend, just to give two examples, both of them refused to believe that people could be put into boxes. Even I initially thought that everyone I encountered was a special snowflake; one unique creature among billions of unique creatures.
Most people have an aversion to believing that they are simple and predictable.
That’s one problem to overcome.
The second problem is to convince people that, once you fit them into a category, then they will only have one of sixteen fixed, predictable relationships with every other person they meet.
The third problem is the Socionicists who advocate for visual identification. VI smacks of phrenology at best and racism at worst, and the general trend in society today is to refuse to look at a person’s outward appearance when judging them.
So it’s no wonder why there is resistance to accepting Socionics as a true and practical system.
I’m very much a “No bullshit, please” kind of guy, and it took me years to convince myself that Socionics was possibly true and was usually applicable to most people.
As for VI, I thought it might, at best, be slightly useful about 40% of the time in identifying types, but it could never compare to the judgement of skilled Ti investigators. I pursued it only as a tool to be used in online dating, since I didn’t have two years to devote to determining each candidate’s personality type through personal interaction.
My opinion now is that VI is useful about 80% of the time, but that opinion derives from an obsession with Socionics, which most people thankfully don’t have.
Last edited by Adam Strange; 11-18-2021 at 12:23 PM.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote