Socionics: is it possible to choose a partner or a career according to temperament

Followers of socionics believe that people are divided into 16 types of personalities and this determines their life. Trends figured out how scientific this approach is

What is socionics

Socionics is the concept of relationships between individuals. Followers of the direction believe that people can be divided into 16 types, depending on how a person perceives information. And knowing your type will help you better build relationships, both personal and work.

The “Big Explanatory Dictionary” does not define socionics, but the concept is mentioned in the “Dictionary of Foreign Words” edited by Komlev. They describe socionics as the science of interpersonal relationships. [1] But is socionics really a science?

Who Invented Socionics

The theory of temperaments of Hippocrates-Galen

It is believed that Hippocrates proposed to divide people according to types of temperament in the book “On the Nature of Man” in the 2th century BC. The theory was based on the idea that four “vital juices” flow in the body – blood, phlegm (lymph), bile and black bile. The dominance of one of the fluids could cause illness and affect the character of a person. Moreover, the combination of juices depends on the combination of stars at the time of birth. [XNUMX]

Six centuries later, the ancient Roman physician Claudius Galen, based on the teachings of Hippocrates, described 13 temperaments. And the types of temperament known today (choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic and melancholic) were finally created by Aetius.

Socionics: is it possible to choose a partner or a career according to temperament

Carl Jung and socionics

In the 1921th century, psychiatrist Carl Jung also studied temperament types. In XNUMX he published the book Psychological Types. In this work, for the first time, terms were sounded that influenced many teachings about personality types.

Jung identified four personality types according to the predominance of one of the mental functions – thinking, emotions, sensory and intuition. Carl Jung believed that there are no “pure” personalities, and each person is extroverted (open to the world) or introverted (immersed in himself). There are eight personality types in total.

Susan Dellinger relied on Jung’s work: she assigned a geometric sign to Jung’s eight personality types, placed them on a scale, and added another parameter. She additionally suggested dividing people into rationals and irrationals. This is how psychogeometry with its 16 types appeared.

In the late 1920s, Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isabelle Briggs Myers took Jung’s theory and created their own system for assessing personality. For 20 years, the researchers have been refining the typology and have presented a testing technique, which is known as the Myers-Briggs test. There are also 16 personality types in this concept. [3]

A simplified version of the teachings of Jung and Myers-Briggs in the USSR was adapted by Aushra Augustinavichute.

Aushri Augustinavichyute theory

In the 1960s, the Soviet and Polish researcher Aushra Augustinavichute studied the works of Freud, Jung, and Kempinski. By that time, Myers and Briggs had already created their own classification. On the basis of these theories, Augustinavichute writes the essay “The Dual Nature of Man”. It is believed that this is one of the first publications on socionics. The essay begins with the argument that there are people who are not suitable for each other. And in fact, all further classification of types is help in choosing the right partner. [four]

Aushra Augustinavichiute changed Jung’s definitions, arguing that Jung’s names “do not quite suit us.” Thus Jung’s “thinking” became “logic”, “emotions” became “ethics”.

Socionics is based on the idea that differences between personality types are differences in the exchange of an information signal with the environment. And although Augustinavichyute’s opinion that all people perceive and transmit information differently was not new, it was from him that socionics began in the USSR.

Socionics and 16 personality types

Augustinavichiute’s work was influenced by the Polish psychologist Anton Kempinski. He, like Briggs and Myers, singled out 16 personality types and wrote them down using a letter code. For example, ILE is an intuitive, logical, extrovert.

Augustinaviciute proposed an alternative notation and named 16 personality types after historical and literary characters. So there were “Don Quixote”, “Dumas”, “Hamlets” and others. For each there is a description of the main patterns of behavior and character traits.

For example, the personality type “Don Quixote” (intuitive-logical extrovert) is characterized by dreaminess, passion for one’s ideas. Such a person can be painfully sensitive if he is not supported; he is annoyed by down-to-earth realists.

Descriptions of types according to Augustinavichute affect not only the main personality traits, but also appearance. For example, “Don Quixote” is characterized by a sloping chin, high growth. For “Dumas” – roundness of lines, fullness.

Augustinavichute believed that only opposites would be happy and harmonious in love relationships, as they complement each other: “An extrovert sees true femininity in an introverted girl, an introvert sees in an extroverted one.” [5]

Why socionics is pseudoscience

Socionics argue that with the help of their teaching it is possible to classify people, predict their behavior, strengths and weaknesses. As far as Augustinavichute’s theory is scientific, Trendam was commented on by the RAS Commission for Combating Pseudoscience.

Pseudoscience or pseudoscience refers to an activity or teaching that is mistakenly believed to be based on the scientific method. [6] Pseudoscience pretends to be science but is not. One of the most popular pseudosciences is homeopathy. And although numerous independent studies have confirmed the ineffectiveness of the method, many people continue to believe in homeopathy. [7]

Alexander Sergeev, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences commission to combat pseudoscience:

“Pseudoscience in the first approximation is any activity that is not scientific (in terms of topics, goals, methodology, quality, recognition by colleagues, and so on), but obsessively passed off as scientific, because it is beneficial (brings attention, respect, influence, money).

There are no clear formal criteria for pseudoscience, since science itself, and especially its imitations, are very dynamic. Rather, we can talk about the signs of pseudoscience. There are many different ones. But, first of all, these are attempts to achieve scientific recognition outside the scientific community, as well as opposing their ideas to the scientific community, attempts to separate from it and create their own separate scientificity, not related to the rest.

Alexander Panchin, senior researcher at IPTP RAS, laureate of the Enlightener award, analyzed socionics for signs of pseudoscience for Trends.

Use of scientific terminology and marker words

Sociologists in their work use such phrases as “energy charge and impulse” and “information metabolism”. But what do these specific terms really mean?

Alexander Panchin:

“The founder of socionics Aushra Augustinavichyute wrote: “During its functioning, energy charges move in the brain. Two rings of informational metabolism (IM) are formed.” It’s a meaningless set of words. There are no rings of informational metabolism.

Consider the use of the term energy charges. This is a misuse of a scientific term. In fact, the energy charge is a physical scalar quantity that determines the ability of bodies to be a source of electromagnetic fields and take part in electromagnetic interaction.” [eight]

Lack of scientific research on socionics

There are no scientific articles on socionics in the international databases PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science.

Alexander Panchin:

“I would say that the vast majority of people who claim to be engaged in socionics or came up with original tests or courses on it did not conduct any research that even resembled scientific ones in form. I only know a couple of people who have tried to investigate something on large samples, however, I have serious questions about their methods, and their work has not been recognized.”

One of the main modern socionics, Alexander Bukalov, has posted almost 400 articles in open access. Some of them even got into the database of the Russian Citation Index (RSCI), but a third of his publications were published in his own journal Socionics, Mentology and Psychology of Personality. [9]

Suppression of facts that contradict the theory

Ivan Pavlov tried to scientifically confirm the dependence of a person’s temperament on his physiology. However, his experiments did not confirm the hypothesis. [ten]

Researchers at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in 2015 investigated the relationship between perceived personality types and actual behavior. They conducted a study in 46 American schools and found no relationship. [eleven]

Alexander Panchin:

“If you look at the original selection of 16 types and its rationale, then it is, in fact, taken from the head, and not obtained in any empirical way. Here is the justification of the creator of socionics: “Due to the fact that the energy impulse can have one of two directions, and both rings are active rings, it becomes clear why there are sixteen personality types: 4 × 2 × 2 = 16.” This is not an explanation, but a meaningless jumble of words.

Take more or less any personality trait that can be somehow quantified: IQ, degree of extraversion, analytical thinking, conscientiousness, openness, and so on. According to any of them, we see a normal distribution of people: that is, most of us are “average” according to these characteristics, and the further we go to any of the extremes, the fewer people there are. This goes against the idea that people are divided into distinct types.”

interest in earning

According to Panchin, a typical method of involving people in socionics is to offer to take a personality test and evaluate the resulting description. This technique is based on the Barnum effect, when people easily find themselves in rather vague descriptions. This is not a scientific approach. The same technique is used by astrologers.

At the same time, training courses, seminars and master classes in socionics are quite expensive. For example, for a two-day training at the so-called “Research Institute of Socionics” you need to pay ₽20 thousand.

Another popular course in socionics costs from $400. At the same time, according to the organizers, all groups are busy until mid-2022.

Why do people get interested in socionics

Despite the evidence of the pseudoscience of socionics, people continue to be believed in the theory of dividing people into types. The concept has even “penetrated” into some curricula of universities: they make reports on the topic, they test students to determine the type of personality, teachers recommend literature.

“International Institute of Socionics” carefully preserves any mention of its direction in education. [12] So, in 2003, St. Petersburg State University, within the framework of the discipline “Sociology of Conflict”, recommended at least two books on socionics for reading. [13]

Belief in a pseudoscientific concept can be explained by the fact that a person is subject to cognitive distortions. One of them is confirmation bias, or confirmation bias. [14] The human mind is designed in such a way that it will look for information that will confirm rather than refute the data. This evolutionary trick helps to avoid stress, makes the world more understandable and predictable.

Alena Golzitskaya, researcher at the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education, psychotherapist, specialist in the service for the selection of psychologists Alter:

“People gravitate toward all sorts of typologies to simplify the perception of reality. Socionics offers one of the thousands of options for psychological classifications. As with any way of dividing people into types, this approach should not be abused – after all, there will always be those who do not fit into the description.

Classifications in psychology are quite common, it is enough to recall at least the classification of temperament types. But this approach has one significant drawback – they are based on averaging features, which always leads to the loss of nuances of values.

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