Socionics test for determining Cognitive Styles

[Reficulris]

One thing I want to do for my site is to create some quick and dirty tools for people to get at least a sense of where they are in Socionics.

The one I'm most interested in, would be a short test to determine cognitive style.

Any good tips how this could work and or what a good starting point would be for questions?

Replies of "tests are shit" and "this will never work" will be noted and promptly forgotten ;-)

[Beautiful sky]

Hi
I'm not sure how to help

[ouronis]

One approach to doing this would be boiling it down to each of the three dichotomies involved for a simple 2-option 2-question test(since one dimension isn't fully flexible).

[marooned]

i would love a test for this but i have no idea how to create one... i feel like the articles on this aren't even well translated?

[Sol]

One thing I want to do for my site is to create some quick and dirty tools for people to get at least a sense of where they are in Socionics. The one I'm most interested in, would be a short test to determine cognitive style.

Gulenko's hypothesis about cognitive styles is not part of Socionics as is far from basic Jung's theory and has no proof. Also it's not used by most to represent "typical view" of Socionics. Using baseless hypotheses like Reinin's dichotomy and Gulenko's bs misleads people and discredit Socionics.
There was Ganin's with his physiognomy idiocy and many people then thought that Socionics feature is typing by photos with physiognomy. It has created the bad image for Socionics. You plan to do similar thing.

[Reficulris]

Gulenko's hypothesis about cognitive styles is not part of Socionics as is far from basic Jung's theory and has no proof. Also it's not used by most to represent "typical view" of Socionics. Using baseless hypotheses like Reinin's dichotomy and Gulenko's bs misleads people and discredit Socionics.
There was Ganin's with his physiognomy idiocy and many people then thought that Socionics feature is typing by photos with physiognomy. It has created the bad image for Socionics. You plan to do similar thing.

Noted and forgotten

[consentingadult]

I personally believe that the construction of a really good test, even a test with just a few questions, is a very hard task, otherwise the ultimate test would have already been invented.

If I were to create a test, I would probably start with a selection from the IPIP question base and have that questionnaire filled out by a number of people of which I was certain of their types (i.e. information elements), and find correlations between their types and answers given. That would be a major project, but I believe there is no real shortcut.

A major advantage of using these questions is that most of them aren't asking for the obvious. Many Socionics questionnaires use questions that measure all too obvious things, allowing respondents to selects answers that confirm their self-biases.

[Pookie]

You kinda have to encapsulate the spirit of each style, in a distinguishably different manner for each. The curveball is that following the spirit, rather than the letter, means its subjective and thus open to human error on the part of the test maker. But following the letter forces you to use specific terms and parrot words in your question. Which helps no one. If it would be helpful, they would already know their cog type without your test.

Ok so you have:
Causal Deterministic
Holographic Panoramic
Vortical Synergetic
Dialectical Algorhythmic

I would go a This or That test. Ex - Is it more important to you to
A. Examine incoming information or events through multiple perspectives/Points of view, in order to better understand whats happening and limit own bias. or
B. Extract the value of incoming information into sizable memorable bites to better retain info that could be used later at the expense of the non-retained info.

A would point Holographic Panoramic, B would point Vortical Synergetic.
Have each question go up against each other, and you can determine final score by total points in dichotomies. Highest 3 that form one type is the result, or whatever.

[consentingadult]

Is it more important to you to
A. Examine incoming information or events through multiple perspectives/Points of view, in order to better understand whats happening and limit own bias. or
B. Extract the value of incoming information into sizable memorable bites to better retain info that could be used later at the expense of the non-retained info.

Let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that these are not Forer-effect dscriptions. Do you think that the average person understands what is being said here, and if so, is capable of deciding which one applies to them?

[Pookie]

Let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that these are not Forer-effect dscriptions. Do you think that the average person understands what is being said here, and if so, is capable of deciding which one applies to them?

Can it still be Forer effect if neither are ascribed to you, and both are juxtaposed for someone to determine which is more accurate?

I don't think the average person understands anything. But everybody is capable of deciding what is more accurate for themselves. And if their not, then who cares. You cant exchange notes with someone who doesn't know how to read, why even bother worrying about If someone is illiterate, when you're already set on writing a note.

[consentingadult]

Can it still be Forer effect if neither are ascribed to you, and both are juxtaposed for someone to determine which is more accurate?

I don't think the average person understands anything. But everybody is capable of deciding what is more accurate for themselves. And if their not, then who cares. You cant exchange notes with someone who doesn't know how to read, why even bother worrying about If someone is illiterate, when you're already set on writing a note.

I was not talking about literacy/illiteracy, but about things making sense in an unambiguous way. No social or behavioral scientist in their right mind would include a question such as yours in a questionnaire.

[consentingadult]

@Reficulris: what do you actually mean by 'cognitive style'?

[Reficulris]

Let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that these are not Forer-effect dscriptions. Do you think that the average person understands what is being said here, and if so, is capable of deciding which one applies to them?

Can it still be Forer effect if neither are ascribed to you, and both are juxtaposed for someone to determine which is more accurate?

I don't think the average person understands anything. But everybody is capable of deciding what is more accurate for themselves. And if their not, then who cares. You cant exchange notes with someone who doesn't know how to read, why even bother worrying about If someone is illiterate, when you're already set on writing a note.

This discussion is inherent to the idea of making tests and it's one I sometimes struggle with. However, I am not aiming at scientific accuracy levels or even strong replicability. It would need to be a good enough measure to either start people on their way of self discovery or altenatively a tool to decide between a few types that resonate.

im not a socionics purist, my project is closer to Cosmo then American psychology today.

[consentingadult]

im not a socionics purist, my project is closer to Cosmo then American psychology today.

In that case, I wouldn't really worry, women believe anything if it is presented in a glossy format! ;-)

[weirdleftovers]

I've noticed intuitives seem to have a more difficult time typing than sensors. I experienced extreme difficulty typing when I used the standard, available tests. I can only speak for myself, but I think in images primarily, so those dichotomic questions meant nothing to me. I needed metaphors and analogies i.e. the big picture. I watched an ENTP struggle typing because his Ne allowed him to see himself in both sides of the dichotomy. I think he expected to have had a more all or nothing experience to each dichotomy. Also, he was using his Ne to reshape and misinterpret questions. I think nuance is the biggest issue. There needs to be very prominent, distinct, unmistakable differences.

[Pookie]

I was not talking about literacy/illiteracy, but about things making sense in an unambiguous way. No social or behavioral scientist in their right mind would include a question such as yours in a questionnaire.

I don't think a behavioral scientist would make a questionnaire that pertains to cognition and not to behavior. But that's the goal here.

[Reficulris]

@Reficulris: what do you actually mean by 'cognitive style'?

I meant the cognition styles by Gulenko, more or less.


Hmmm

Let me explain a bit of my reasoning here; I think Socionics is a nice way of exploring who you are. It has more tools then for instance MBTI and explains more then big five and "conventional" psychology.

Socionics is also super convoluted and controversial. I want to create a site that offers some resources for people to help them get a lingo, or system, to think about and relay about personality questions. Socionics is what I will use.

One thing that could help is a test to determine type. But as we've debated about many times now they are problematic in many ways. I already have one (that needs improvement) so that thing is covered.

One other thing I want is a test that helps you determine your cognitive style. This could help narrow down a type if the type-test doesn't work.

Similarly, I'd want to make a test that gives you your most likely romance style. Same for communication style.

They all might be biassed, they all might even be "shitty tests" or "non Socionics approved by @Sol" but they'd be things that quickly give someone the ability to start figuring things out.

As someone who's intimidated by the highly technical, and somewhat shitty written Socionics texts I can say that this would have made my foray into Socionics more enjoyable if it had been there.

To summarise; the aim would be to create a roadmap + tools to start figuring out your personality which for some will lead to going deeper into the material here, and for others just to get some validation, consolation, small understanding or otherwise small value.

[consentingadult]

As you already said yourself, Socionics does explain a lot more than e.g. MBTI and Big Five. And in that there lies the problem: I'm afraid there are really no shortcuts to understanding Socionics, let alone the amount of time required to master Socionics to such a degree that you could actually apply in real life. I've been toying with such ideas myself, only to realize that the amount of time I have to invest in it would never weigh up against the returns, whatever they are. Unless, of course, you want to end up with a mental masturbation blog such as World Socionics, where lot of 'famous' people are typed, but no real understanding can be gained.

I'm afraid Socionics currently very much is stuck in the phase where it needs to be pick up by the scientific community for it to make progress. That's what we are running into.

[Not A Communist Shill]

With four options (i.e. only a small number of distinctions), and not being relatable as something like the four temperaments, reading good descriptions of each may be optimal rather than a test: this may mean multiple ways of defining/illustrating them. If such descriptions could be split into chunks of no more than two sentences each, then perhaps they could be used as some form of basic test that lets test-takers score up affinity without it being excessively taxing on the brain (as comparing/contrasting huge descriptions would be).

However, I think the Cognitive Styles are likely to be especially hard to self-determine (while I think that self-analysis is better than evaluation from others, the Cognitive Styles in my experience are difficult to determine inside your own head: and yet, they are difficult to do from an ostensibly "objective" observer). I cannot readily understand how quotes of famous people (or the prose of non-famous forum people) can be "objectively" analysed one way or another: I think there is a real danger of being guided by your own intuition and fishing for the result you expect.

In addition, in regards their relevance to Socionics, I think they are of little or no use (partly for the reasons mentioned above, but also because the correlation with Model-A theory and the IMs is speculative or at least removed from primary means of sociotype analysis): they may indeed be detrimental.