the myth that ethical types are better at mentalizing, at reading body language and understanding the internal
Understanding body language and intentions has a lot to do with good extraverted sensing (particularly appearance, studying beauty, seeing how strong-willed someone is, whether self or others). It also requires knowledge and good control of your own thoughts. EIE-Ni don't have good control of their own thoughts and are actually internal-focused, so they often misread people and blow peoples' emotional states out of proportion. They can sometimes plan things, and some EIE do know what other people are thinking and many EIE don't make assumptions. But it's a mistake to think of IEE and EIE as types that are better psychologists than their positivist duals and conflictors, especially the LSI-Se which makes fewer mistakes.
So, the LSI-Se can be just as good at reading people as the EIE-Ni, if not even better, because the LSI-Se is somewhat more focused on the internal and are better at seeing appearance, and the more they learn throughout life the fewer mistakes they make when deciding how someone feels or when deciding someone's abilities. Sometimes they do go through fact books and make mistakes based on those, but they're usually pretty good at reading people and they're more cooperative, more able to interact with others on one to one level (not giving me the impression that they're above them or somehow superior) than EIE-Ni so they make better psychologists than EIE-Ni.
ILE-Ti have perfectly good Se role and good Fe Hidden Agenda and they don't rush to judgments, so unless their mind has been warped by things they've read, they're pretty decent at reading people, especially with practice and due to good Ti they don't make many assumptions. It's common for ILE-Ti to go into social jobs where there is relatively little technical work. Perhaps the biggest mistake ILE-Ti have made, is that very few I have heard/read from have actually concluded that it is definite or very probable that most ILE-Ti are female. ILE-Ti are still subtyped towards Beta, so Fe, and making decisions based on those matters including being animated, is stereotypically/traditionally considered feminine, so that's has to do with why so many people, even most of the ILE-Ti I've heard from themselves, miss that most ILE-Ti are female and that ILE-Ti, similar to LSI-Se, is a female type that's above average in reading people and tends to balance their own needs with others' needs, have a mixture of fluidity and rigidity when going with what other people need.
On the other hand, SLE-Ti sometimes do make mistakes in reading peoples' intentions and can seem kind of paranoid, and some of them are a bit more sure of themselves... they seem somewhat less open to the notion that someone will have changed their preferences compared to LSI-Se... SLE-Ti, despite being Ep types, seem to me to be more surprised when something or someone has changed compared to LSI-Se.
ESI-Se are good at reading people, and better at reading people than their Fi subtype counterparts, because the Se subtype is more externally focused (which means they process more information and remember more) and because they value Fe more.
EIE of both subtypes are often bad with the internal and what someone else may be thinking (especially the worse their conceptual understanding and reasoning and the worse their visual perception is), although the Fe subtype is more accurate--they seem to make more omissions if they don't know and and are more precise in their speech (e.g., saying "it seems to me"), they don't seem to jump to faulty conclusions anywhere near as badly as EIE-Ni do. EIE-Ni are more sure of themselves while also turning out to be wrong more often compared to EIE-Fe. IEE are inclined to make mistakes as well, at least the Ne subtype, partly due to worse logic and over-generalizing.
So there are certain parts of intellect (memory, executive functioning, visual perception, awareness of your own thoughts, logic, understanding the meaning of everything) that correlate with reading people, and logical types often have those abilities more than ethical types do.
In my opinion the four best psychologists are the conflictor dyads LSI-Se, then IEE-Fi and the conflictor dyads ILE-Ti and the ESI-Se. The disadvantages of the latter two are that they really are often not strong enough to be around people based upon the shyness of the ILE-Ti and ESI-Se and based upon peoples' appearance and often avoid dealing with parts of reality that bring them discomfort. An advantage of the LSI-Se is that they're less likely to have those problems with people and an advantage is that they give more explanations compared to the ILE-Ti... ILE-Ti tend to like everyone to figure everything out for themselves. Sometimes LSI-Se may not give an explanation, but they're more likely to give explanations than ILE-Ti. A disadvantage of the IEE-Fi is that they do what they want. If I had to say what the very best psychologist type was and the type that had the best potential for good social skills (as most individuals need), I'd say the LSI-Se. They have the right combination of charm, diplomacy, general and specific knowledge, articulation, visual perception, knowledge of social norms, and logic and the internal strength to go around things with bad appearance and people who are rude (after all, so many of them are urologists) and having the ability to be objective rather than what they want compared to IEE-Fi.
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