Socionic and non-socionic scales: a hypothesis

[Dmitri Lytov]

http://www.socioniko.net/scales.pdf

[tcaudilllg]

Well it should be possible.

[discourse]

K.

[aestrivex]

what are eysenck and witkin's methods? i don't think most of us are familiar with them.

[Dmitri Lytov]

Hans Jurgen Eysenck (Great Britain, emigrated from Germany) created several versions of his Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI). I think it is even possible to find it in the Internet. At least, Eysenck is one of the most cited psychologists of the world, by far more than Jung.

Herman Witkin (USA) did not create his own methods of testing. He described several cognitive styles but relied on already existing methods of testing. Unlike Eysenck, however, Witkin relied not as much on questionnaires as on tests based on fulfillment of certain intellectual tasks (people were graded by efficiency of solving of such tasks).

[Jonathan]

In a quick Google search, most references to field dependency were to abstracts of research papers, however, this seems to give a fairly clear definitions: http://www.cvgs.k12.va.us/research/P...a/In-Text.html.

From the definition, it appears that field-independence would correlate with IQ; consider this statement:

"The Group Embedded Figures Test Manual
(2002) states that field dependent persons see the whole object and have a hard time finding the embedded
figures inside the whole figure given. Field independent people tend to pick better strategies for solving problems
than the strategies of those who are labeled as field dependent (Wang, Wang and Ren, 2003).

To some extent, field independence may correlate to an extent with innovative in Kirton's creative style (innovation/adaption) scale, which in turn correlates (in the MBTI) to N (intuition) and P (perceiving). There is a slight correlation with E (extraversion), but almost insignificant.

Your graph would indicate that introverts would have lower field independence; but I find it hard to believe that (for example) LII types would have low field independence.

The case for a correlation between field independence and T/F seems stronger...but in my experience F people can really surprise one in terms of their abilities; so, I'm not sure that correlating T/F with something that seems to correlate somewhat with level of ability is really going to work.

[Jonathan]

By the way, I want to make clear: I don't think your idea is a bad one. It's just that I question whether field independence is the correct scale to consider. I've also seen before that types may associate certain qualities with extraversion that are possibly more related to .

Here's how I'd approach the problem. It seems, first of all, that the central problem you're addressing is that definitions of extraversion that relate to being sociable, people-oriented, socialized, etc., seem to relate as much to being a Feeling type as to being an Extraverted type. If, then, this notion of extraversion is related to EF vs. IT, then the question is what corresponding scale can we balance it with, that would be related to ET vs. IF?

So, the way I'd phrase it is, What do the four ET types seem to have more than any other type, and what do the four EF types seem to have more than other types?

A good source is your very own set of dual descriptions (in a sub-menu underhttp://www.socionics.us/socioniko/en...ndex-rels.html); here, we can see what the ET types help the IF types with, and visa versa.

It seems to me that in their own way, all four ET types are enterprising in the sense that they take a great deal of initiative in a way that can sometimes make enemies, rub people the wrong way, or go against certain social norms. In contrast, all of the IF types seem to be highly sensitive to others' feelings or needs, and correspondingly take less initiative, at least less of the sort of initiative that might put them at odds with others.

This, rather than an field independence test (which EII and IEI types may in fact perform well on), seems to me to be a much better "balancing" scale to the other one.

[Jonathan]

Here are some questions that could possibly help get at what I think would be the appropriate scales; they could be evaluated with responses that range from "needs help in this area" to "may be about average in this area" to "can help others in this area."

Correlates to E+F:
1. Socializing with people
2. Making social contacts
3. Paying attention to people

Correlates to E+T:
1. Doing what needs to be done even if others will criticize
2. Being willing to go against the group or tradition when necessary
3. Taking unpopular actions when needed

Correlates to I+F:
1. Avoiding behaviors that might hurt other people
2. Being sensitive to other people's needs and feelings
3. Having a good sense of the limits of behavior in terms of appropriateness or ethics

Correlates to I+T:
1. Being able to focus for a long time on things not specifically related to people
2. Having clear insight by not being too influenced by connection with others
3. Seeing how to focus efforts through logic or insight, so as not to waste effort

So from this, you could look at high and low scores on each scale and deduce which of the four quadrants a person is, in regard to I/E and F/T. For example, an INFp would be expected to be very low on ET, very high on EF, but may vary on the other two scales. An ENTp would be very high on ET, low on IF, but again could come out a variety of ways (probably mostly in the middle) on the other two scales.

[Dmitri Lytov]

My drawing is just a hypothesis. Maybe these scales should be located under different angles to each other.

The theory of cognitive styles attracted me because cognitive styles are measured by series of task-solving experiments, not by questionnaires, and this makes them somewhat more objective.

The description of field-(in)dependence criterion indeed reminded me a lot the T/F scale; however, upon reading and comparison of descriptions of this scale presented by different authors I concluded that this scale is most probably "impure" and must correlate with the SOCIONIC extraversion/introversion. I know some LII that consider themselves rather field-dependent. As for E/I according to Myers and Briggs: their definition of this criterion is something between the socionic and Eysenck's E/I.

[Jonathan]

My drawing is just a hypothesis. Maybe these scales should be located under different angles to each other.

The theory of cognitive styles attracted me because cognitive styles are measured by series of task-solving experiments, not by questionnaires, and this makes them somewhat more objective.

The description of field-(in)dependence criterion indeed reminded me a lot the T/F scale; however, upon reading and comparison of descriptions of this scale presented by different authors I concluded that this scale is most probably "impure" and must correlate with the SOCIONIC extraversion/introversion. I know some LII that consider themselves rather field-dependent. As for E/I according to Myers and Briggs: their definition of this criterion is something between the socionic and Eysenck's E/I.

I would say that the fact that field (in)dependence is tested according to measures of ability is a double-edged sword. In a way it's more objective, but if what you're trying to measure isn't supposed to correlate with intelligence, you may have a problem. You may want to consider Kirton's creative style scale (KAI), which has been shown not to correlate with intelligence (although it is self-report). Nevertheless, I still strongly suspect that the KAI will correlate with intuition/sensing and irrational/rational a bit more than extraversion/introversion. Of course, if one's sample of extraverts includes a lot of types, that might skew the results towards a higher correlation with these various measures of cognitive style.

I found a paper online (http://www.isp.uio.no/elsin/papers/P...Congnitive.pdf) that may interest you; it mentions some studies that show correlations between intelligence and some measures of field independence (although it didn't find a correlation with this VITrap scale; that may be something to look into, although it may not be relevant to the dimensions we're looking at here):

[web:1ef5febaca]http://www.isp.uio.no/elsin/papers/ParkinsonRedmondMullallyCongnitive.pdf[/web:1ef5febaca]

Would you say that Socionics extraversion and thinking correlate with intelligence?

Is there anything online where we could see a sample field independence question?

By the way, another angle on this: You imply that MBTI extraversion would correlate less with field independence. I would be interested in understanding why the Socionic view of extraversion should correlate more than MBTI does. I have seen some descriptions of Socionics extraverted types that may suggest this, but I assumed that's because they were written by types who tend to associate extraversion with . Why should an ESE type have greater field independence than, say, an IEI or EII type? If I understood your reasoning better, that could help.