Why Socionics Is Awesome

Amidst all the angst of the socionics community and my own frequent critiques of socionics as a half-baked system not particularly conducive to scientific progress, I sometimes forget my own personal experience of socionics, which is that… socionics is awesome.

So, lest I be mistaken for another disgruntled ex-socionics junkie, let me lay out the ways in which socionics has been an extremely worthwhile and positive school for me.

1. Socionics can easily be used to improve quality of life. For over a year after learning about socionics (age 23), I experienced virtually no interpersonal distress for the first time in my conscious life. Granted, much of this was due to the fact that I was in a constant state of private intellectual discovery and thus was not as sensitive as usual to real or perceived negative interpersonal situations (disagreements and conflicts, loneliness, lack of acceptance, social awkwardness, etc.). But mostly I attribute it to the fact that I had begun applying a constructive, socionics-based approach to managing my emotional and social life, consisting of: 1) a recognition that my emotional state is less the product of my own making than the result of my social interactions; particularly 2) the quality and depth of my connections to people of various personality types; specifically 3) whether I am too emotionally connected to the wrong types or too distant from the right types; suggesting that 4) emotional life can be improved by reducing emotional investment in one set of people and increasing investment in another set.

At first this required a kind of willful restructuring of my interpersonal connections, but eventually it became second nature. This formula clearly works — if it is not too compounded by other issues. I consider it one of the most important life skills, right alongside things like learning to provide for yourself and manage money, avoiding addictions, and taking care of your physical health. Some people are raised with one or more of these skills and may never appreciate what it takes to acquire them through conscious effort. Like these other life skills, keeping your interpersonal life in order requires a certain amount of self-love. No one else is going to do it for you.

Over time my understanding of what kinds of people are "right" or "wrong" for some kind of emotional interdependency has grown to include a lot more than simply socionic type. But the foundation for this skill was laid by socionics.

Positive relationships, particularly intimate ones, impact one's life in a variety of ways. If you have an idea what you're looking for — even if it's as simplistic as "a dual relationship" — that probably increases the chances that you'll find it. I'll never know how much of my romantic success or failure has been due to socionics, but I consider myself quite fortunate considering where I was coming from and what I have experienced so far in life. It could have been a little bit better, but it could also have been far, far worse.

2. Socionics is a secret weapon. My own socionics schooling — which included ruminating over the writings of Augusta (other authors' writings seemed dull in comparison), large amounts of introspection, studying my reactions to people, observing them closely and trying to identify their types under the guidance of a skilled but imperfect teacher, over a hundred hours of poring over photographs trying to recognize personality traits in facial features and expressions, and eventually meeting other socionics aficionados — brought to my awareness many things that had previously been unconscious. At the time it felt like I was acquiring a secret weapon that made my responses to the outside world less blind or mechanistic than other people's. When I realize at what level most other people think about the people around them, using conventional descriptors such as "nice," "good," "dull," etc. and assuming the superiority of their own psychological makeup, I'm eternally grateful to have undertaken a serious study of people and relationships and to have a more objective understanding of why I experience different feelings towards people.

Socionics also makes it easier to recognize and take advantage of numerous "shortcuts." Having a feel for someone's type (or at least elements of their type) allows you to build beneficial relationships quicker than otherwise, particularly if you have accumulated a large body of experience dealing with people of different types. Knowing that there is someone you will be able to confide in and rely upon to some degree may encourage you to take that risk and move to a new location that you feel will be better for you. Or, you may more quickly realize when you are in a bad situation due to the types and prevailing culture of a group you have landed in. A knowledge of socionics provides a more sophisticated feel for how much and in what ways you may be able to rely on someone and, in turn, be useful to them. This can help in choosing employers, partners and assistants, hobby groups, and roommates, not to mention romantic partners.

The caveat is that spiritual and interpersonal choices work best when they are based foremost upon feelings, not mental concepts, so it is very important that you develop an understanding of socionics that is congruous with and highlights your actual emotional experience rather than letting ideas about what you "should be" experiencing according to some interpretation of socionics take precedence over your actual feelings. This one caveat basically encompasses all the potential negative side-effects experienced by so many socionics aficionados. This is a complex problem not at all unique to socionics, and I no longer blame socionics for it. When a school of fish changes direction, it could be said that only the lead fish — the one with the strongest internal compass relative to herd instinct — is following her "true instincts." For whatever reasons, the other fish choose to repeat her movements instead of trying to access their own internal compass — at least, until a greater stimulus (e.g. predator) comes along, temporarily overriding the imperative to "follow the fish in front of you." The issue of negative side-effects of socionics is actually a fundamental and intractable "internal compass vs. external suggestion" problem. It's probably best dealt with individually by strengthening the internal compass (as if it were that easy!) and distancing oneself from the source of suggestion, if necessary. But if a person is able to do this at all, they probably didn't have much of a problem to begin with! Suggestibility exists, and it serves a function for the individual and for society. If people were insusceptible to suggestion, there would be no person-to-person learning.

3. Socionics can trigger a cascade of new intellectual pursuits. Before socionics I had less than a layman's understanding of science and hadn't seriously grappled with its big ideas. I had developed a theologically centered worldview that was clearly at odds with reality and insulated me from scientific and philosophical thought. As imperfect a scientific theory as it is, socionics suggested to me a simple universal principle that gradually undid my entire worldview: all things have their causes. I realized that up till then I hadn't really concerned myself with the causes of things, but had gone around in mental circles trying hopelessly to live up to acquired religious ideals. At first I applied this cause-and-effect idea to the emotional and interpersonal sphere (see #1), but soon began examining everything in its light. I became fascinated by thinking about phenomena divorced of moral judgments and reflecting on the likely material causes of things, eventually formulating my interest as follows: I want to know what is, not what is supposed to be. Later I formulated: the rejection of faith as a guiding principle is the very foundation of science. There's no good reason to have to stop asking "why?" — at least inside yourself — when you reach things that you or anybody else would like to be true but actually have no compelling reason to believe.

Through socionics I became interested in psychology and got a minor in the field. A couple lectures into psychology, I realized that the foundation of modern psychology was evolution. So I began reading about evolutionary psychology to mine it for important ideas, and soon read Darwin's Origin of Species for background, gaining a great admiration for scrupulous rational thought. Then I did quite a lot more reading on evolution, biology, memetics, and the philosophy of science. I literally felt my mind expanding; I could think thoughts that just a few months before had been totally out of reach. Later I would learn to appreciate philosophy in general and read widely in esoteric spirituality. Once I began developing Socionics.us and Wikisocion, socionics became a springboard for learning more about art, music, and history. All this careful thought and reading greatly stimulated my intellectual life and contributed to me later becoming a writer.

Oddly enough, I've never met anyone who experienced anything quite like this as a result of learning about socionics. To many people it sounds as strange and counterintuitive as a waiter becoming a fighter pilot as a result of ballet lessons. Clearly, my particular intellectual response was determined by the mounting tension between my acquired religious worldview and my natural disposition. Nonetheless, I will never forget that it was socionics that opened the floodgates.

4. Socionics encourages and rewards braininess. Sure, there are plenty of people in socionics with personal problems; that's what brings most people to it in the first place. There's nothing shameful about that. Why would you ridicule scrawny or overweight people who go to the gym? But most people who get into socionics are also smart, and it can become a kind of social refuge for brainy people who lack community. It's okay to be smart in socionics, to speak (write) using nerdy terminology, to defy conventional wisdom and present your own wacky ideas to be shot down by others whom you can call names like "conservative" and "orthodox." Sure, there are some people who just pretend to be brainy (just as there are people at the gym who pretend to be buff), but at least the community culture rewards braininess due to the nature of the subject. When I first got in contact with the Ukrainian socionics community, particularly publishing or researching socionists rather than aficionados, it was the first place I had been where you could be as brainy as you wanted. All the communities I'd experienced before that — even my high-achiever high school and university — still had this attitude like, "Hey now, don't get too brainy on us here, hahaha." Through socionics, I've met some really intelligent people that I wouldn't have met otherwise. This has been really valuable to me. Since then, I've found a few other places where braininess is accepted and rewarded, but socionics was the first.

5. Socionics opens the door to higher levels of objectivity, helping to weed out typocentrism and other kinds of biases from one's worldview. It allows you to see, as William James says in Pragmatism, that each man's philosophy is merely a justification of his native disposition. We will likely continue to act in typocentric ways, but at least we can begin to remove biases from our conscious values and worldview, granting other people the possibility of living a legitimate and dignified life according to our own definitions, though we choose to live differently. A study of socionics clearly suggests that 1) there are different legitimate life strategies, each with its potential pitfalls, 2) no type-determined trait can be considered a defect in any sort of intellectually honest way (i.e. such a defect is in the eye of the beholder), and 3) many of the things that bug us in other people are outgrowths, or extreme expressions, of fairly typical and basically benign qualities, thus 4) the "defect," if any, is in the disbalance or misapplication of traits, not in the underlying traits themselves. From these thoughts it seems natural to conclude that 1) each set of traits has its place and its purpose, 2) your own traits may "feel" superior, but only in some abstract ideal sense, as natural selection has decided otherwise by not granting them to everybody.

For me, these realizations have encouraged me to look beyond what works only for me and people like me and look for formulas that are more universal. At some point, I realized that philosophical acceptance of other temperament-determined strategies could itself be considered an extreme viewpoint, given that rejection thereof is a far more common occurence. Most likely, I am in fact less philosophically accepting than much of my writing suggests, and militant promoters of a temperament-specific philosophy are actually not as militant as they appear. In certain situations, I might turn out to be more vehement than them. At any rate, thanks to socionics I am able to think about these things much more clearly, recognizing potential biases as they crop up in myself and others.

So, there you have it. Socionics is awesome! Despite the lack of empirical studies and other flaws, and despite all the caveats and pitfalls. Probably, after reading this article, you will have realized that each person's response to idea systems is highly individual.

Socionics Model and Associations

Here's most of a letter I wrote recently regarding my typing of person that was discussed at the Polish socionics forum:

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The fact is, all socionists type by association, even those who claim otherwise. And all socionists apply some type of "model thinking" — even those who seem to type by association alone. I used to make more of an effort to present my thoughts and conclusions in "model language," but I don't care enough anymore. It's a kind of intellectual laziness that comes from feeling that the socionics model as it is is doomed anyway. Associations with people of known types are actually a good way of typing (and again, every socionist relies on them heavily) inasmuch as the types of the people being associated with were properly identified and analyzed by the typer.

People would like to think that socionists have some strict algorithm they apply, because this would make socionics easier to understand, apply, and develop further. However, I don't believe I've ever met such a socionist. As soon as a person begins taking responsibility for his typings of others, he finds that "model thinking" alone is insufficient to produce a result. It's like listening to a technical debate between two experts and trying to determine who is right using your emotional reactions alone with no intellectual knowledge of the subject. Emotional reactions can be honed and cleansed of outside influences to the point that they become a fine tool for understanding many things, but they are clearly inadequate to deal with primarily intellectual matters. Likewise, socionics is primarily about how we respond to different types of people on a mostly unconscious level. Using "model thinking" alone (if that were even possible) can get you quite far, but it's not the ultimate arbiter. The ultimate arbiter is the network of invisible psychological-emotional connections between people, which are hard to put into "model language." Once this invisible network becomes evident, you can use that to correct your understanding of the model.

At least that's the way I see things. Many socionists who emphasize a model-heavy approach would disagree with me, particularly those who are unable to feel the nuances of interpersonal interaction on an emotional level. But actually the whole reason of socionics' existence is to explain relationships, and the better it does that, the more useful it becomes. The model is a semi-decent approximation at best.

Wikisocion Needs a New Admin

Wikisocion may have a hoster lined up but still needs an admin to perform relatively frequent security updates.

Note from current admin:

"The version of mediawiki used for wikisocion is version 1.15.5, and the latest version of mediawiki of 1.17.0. I already had written a script that I used to update 1.15 versions, but this probably won't work for upgrading to 1.17, so that needs to be done manually, and it's a bit of work to find out what needs to be done."

Interactions Between Male and Female Attractiveness

The previous two posts raise many questions that need to be addressed separately. I will mention them briefly in the post to avoid potential misunderstandings and to suggest some interesting avenues of thought:

• Do people choose partners who are at a similar place in their lifetime graph of overall attractiveness?
• If men reach peak attractiveness on average X years later than women, why is the average age gap between the sexes at time of marriage only Y years? Does X = Y? If not, does this suggest my models are off?
• What more can we find out if we begin graphing not attractivenes relative to an individual's peak, but "absolute" attractiveness relative to other people? For instance, can we identify possible causes of a pattern of older men remarrying younger women, but of lower status/stature than previous wives? Or can we identify moments when the overall attractiveness of a couple begin to diverge, creating potential for problems?
• Here we have looked at sexual attractiveness, but what about the role of friendship in choosing a mate? Friendship likely tends to be easier with someone of roughly the same age. Does this temper differences in absolute attractiveness and attractiveness relative to one's lifetime peak?

Female Attractiveness Over Time

In comparison to male sexual attractiveness, female attractiveness over time is easier to model and exhibits less variation. This is probably because the biological constraints on reproduction for women are greater than for men in light of their far greater energy investment in offspring. Again, this model is an oversimplification, but I think female attractiveness over time can be effectively modeled based on 2 rather than 3 (for males) factors:

1. Physical qualities: sexual maturity and fertility, physical maturity, health and fitness level, probability of surviving childbirth and critical years of childrearing
2. Psychological qualities: confidence, flirtatiousness, independence, ability to manage complex family relationships and responsibilities

Part of the second set of qualities could be separated into a third category, but this would reduce the comparative weight of physical qualities, which are important enough to deserve half the weight of the overall attractiveness index.

In contrast to men, a woman's physical attractiveness goes through ups and downs as she becomes pregnant, gives birth, recovers, and is once more physiologically ready to give birth. Likewise, her psychological attractiveness goes through swings as she becomes correspondingly more or less flirtatious. One can imagine such "wiggles" on the graphs below instead of smooth curves.

A woman's graph of attractiveness over her lifetime depends in part upon decisions such as when and how many children to have. A woman who has many children successively may in effect "squander" her attractiveness more quickly than one who has just one or two, because of the greater physical toll of having multiple children close together. Also, a woman who begins having children later can enjoy more years of peak attractiveness than one who starts early. However, by having children when the body is most equipped to have them, the woman who starts early might do better at preserving her health in the long run.

In terms of difficulty of childbirth, risk of death during childbirth, and the physiological toll of having offspring, I believe Homo Sapiens takes first or near first place among the Animal Kingdom, with our unusually large-headed offspring, long gestation, and lengthy period of breastfeeding. This heightens the importance of physiological fitness and in effects skews the attractiveness curve of a woman towards her early childbearing years when she has the most strength and has not yet put her body through the ordeal of childbearing. In other species the age of the female may be less important as long as she is fertile.

One might suppose that a woman would become entirely sexually unattractive upon reaching menopause, since she can no longer reproduce. However, at least in modern societies, this is clearly not the case. As reproduction becomes a more and more of a secondary "goal" of intimacy (thanks to medical advances, contraception, and a host of related phenomena), post-menopause women become comparatively more and more attractive than they were before. Also, as populations age, there are fewer and fewer young women to focus sexual energy on, and older women and their sexuality have become increasingly "normal."

There are many individual variations in the graph below depending on individual factors such as how quickly and completely a woman's body recovers from childbirth, however, the graph below seems to be fairly accurate for women in modern societies in general.

It is rare for a woman's peak overall attractiveness to extend beyond age 30. This might occur if she has a very youthful appearance and matured late as an individual, with complexes or lack of experience at age 20-25 finally giving way to spontaneity and flirtatiousness by age 30. In primitive societies peak attractiveness might come as early as age 18. Not too long ago this was the average age of first pregnancies in many traditional societies.

Once again, as in the previous post, we find that sexually attractive psychological qualities are expressed in approximately the degree to which a woman senses she is attractive to the opposite sex. Are these qualities a cause or an effect? Probably a bit of both. With physical attractiveness comes confidence, but with age may also come greater freedom to be oneself, greater spontaneity, etc. These qualities may enable a woman to remain attractive to potential mates well into middle and even old age, even though her peak attractiveness was still somewhere back around age 25.

Male Attractiveness Over Time

I've attempted to model male attractiveness over time by looking at how 3 sets of qualities and their sum evolve over a person's life. Naturally, this model is somewhat arbitrary, but it seems to fit my observations well. The basis of this model is:

• observation of countless actual men and their attractiveness to the opposite sex
• research and reflection on the evolutionary basis of qualities feeding into attractiveness

I've divided qualities determining male attractiveness into 3 groups:

1. Physical qualities: sexual maturity and potency, physical maturity, health and fitness level, probability of surviving through critical years of childraising
2. Psychological qualities: self-confidence, charm, mental sharpness
3. Ability to support a family materially: income, financial independence, social status and standing, capacity for work, ability to focus on productive activity

"Attractiveness" shall be defined as the sum of these three qualities.

Instead of comparing different people to each other, I've chosen to look at an individual male's level of attractiveness over his lifespan. To do this, the number 100 shall represent a person's peak level of a given set of qualities.

At some point in life a man will reach his physical peak, psychological peak, and peak ability to support a family — often at different moments. Generally, the physical peak comes first, followed by a psychological peak and later a peak in his ability to work for and feed others. Obviously this differs from person to person, but there are some general patterns.

In the first example we'll look at a man who enjoys professional success and good health and takes good care of himself. Here's the graph generated:

As you can see, this person reaches peak attractiveness at 40-45 years of age and enjoys a 15-year-long "hump" from 35 to 50 years of age.

It's possible to imagine a "rich celebrity" version of the above with a peak of wealth, fame, and ability to provide for a family as late as age 70. Presumably, such a meteoric rise in wealth would also powerfully affect the person's confidence level (psychological qualities), leading to a later peak in those as well. This would delay the period of peak attractiveness to 55 years in this model, with a broad hump from age 45 to 70. At age 80 the man would be just as attractive as at age 25 despite a substantial loss in physical strength and sex drive. Here's the graph for that:

Next we look at someone who doesn't take care of himself and/or has health problems and thus has an earlier peak in physical attractiveness. This might affect psychological attractiveness as well, as confidence may be on the decline from an earlier age, and mental sharpness might be affected. We'll assume also that this man has a relatively "aimless" career whose success depends not so much on building upon what has come before, but the person's energy level and ability to jump into new jobs. This implies an earlier peak in ability to provide for others. On the whole, such a man "burns out" more quickly than the previous cases and reaches peak attractiveness at 30-35. Here's the graph for that:

The above graph might also be close to the typical pattern for men in subsistence economies where surviving and thriving depends in a much greater measure on physical strength and health, and yet the physical conditions of life may take a greater physical toll. In such a situation a man's peak ability to provide for others might come a bit earlier than in the graph above — say, at age 30-35. This would shift the man's hump of overall attractivess to 25-40 years of age, which seems to fit with my experiences of traditional subsistence cultures.

In complex societies with developed economies a man's peak attractiveness generally comes later in life since it takes more time to acquire the experience and skills to be effective in a complex system. In general, the more successful a man, the later in life his peak occurs. This holds true in societies of any degree of complexity.

In summary, we've looked at 4 different situations with broad peaks in overall sexual attractiveness occurring at different times — 35-50, 45-70, 25-45, and 25-40 years of age.

Comment

As I reread this post I noticed that on each of the 3 graphs peak attractiveness was reached at the same time as the person's peak psychological attractiveness. This was inadvertent and led me to consider whether psychological qualities might not be an independent factor, but basically derived from physical qualities and material success. Perhaps a man's attractive psychological qualities rise and fall in complete sync with his overall attractiveness and depend almost entirely on his internal gauge of how desirable he is as a mate? Something to think about.

How Life Circumstances Influence Perception of Socionics

Now that I've criticized socionics in several blog posts, I will present a new perspective that may begin to reconcile different viewpoints on the accuracy of socionics*.

* When I write "socionics," I am referring to intertype relations — the core and purpose of socionics theory.

How acutely a person experiences socionics depends on their current life circumstances. You may go through phases where socionics seems to hold little sway over you, and phases where socionics seems to imprison you or dictate how you feel and what you are able to accomplish.

Here are the kinds of things that influence your sensitivity to intertype relations:

• How well-adapted you are in general at this stage in life. How stable your work and close relationships are.
• How much freedom you have to choose and regulate relationships and activities.
• Whether you are spending more time one-on-one with people or in groups.
• How much variety is built into your lifestyle.

The "worst" possible situation is when you are poorly adapted, have few friends, unstable work, are stuck with whoever you live and work with and are unable to maintain personal boundaries and spiritual hygiene, belong to no groups, and live a lifestyle with little variety. In these life circumstances socionic relations are likely to be experienced very acutely, with many or most intertype relations producing distress. The range of acceptably compatible people narrows to a very small group that is able to reach you through your chronic stress and defensive position.

The "best" possible situation is when you are well adapted, have several close friends and confidants, a stable work situation, freedom to choose and adjust your partnerships and activities to suit your tastes, belong to groups where you participate in interesting and enjoyable group interaction, and have variety built into your lifestyle such that you are engaging the mind, body, and emotions in a number of different ways on a regular basis. In these life circumstances socionic relations may seem to hold little sway over you, and virtually everyone seems compatible in some way or another. The range of people you are able to connect with meaningfully expands, and your openness and sense of security makes it easy to brush off slight manifestations of incompatibility that you might otherwise be sensitive to.

But beyond the influence of life circumstances, it seems that some inherent and developed personality traits can make a person more or less susceptible to socionics. For instance, a typical extravert (in the popular sense) may find that while they personally don't sense incompatibility with other people, for some reason others often react negatively to them and say they are "pushy," "overbearing," "too talkative," etc. Typical extraverts may generally feel untouched by socionics, while occasionally experiencing periods of intense loneliness when they feel that everyone dislikes them and they have no true friends (or for other reasons). Typical introverts (in the popular sense) may generally feel highly susceptible to intertype relations and only able to tolerate a narrow range of highly compatible people. Occasionally some of these introverts may experience states where they can open up and briefly abandon their sensitivity.

Furthermore, one can develop attitudes that affect how acutely socionics is felt. I'm not sure "develop" is the right word, because I think even this type of development is largely outside of conscious control. For instance, if one comes to believe things like — 1) one's own perception is innately limited and prone to error, 2) all people contain some amount of wisdom to be learned from, or 3) all people experience the same basic things and can thus be empathized with — then a greater openness can be felt towards other people, softening the effects of socionics. Likewise, beliefs such as — 1) I know the truth, 2) it is my duty to bring the truth to other people, 3) some people are good and others bad, or 4) some people are innately defective — will tend to make one's experience of intertype relationships more acute than otherwise.

Some life circumstances allow a person to escape the "necessity" of duality (or let's just say, "fulfilling intimate relationships"). The formula I have discovered for this is:

• a vastly simplified lifestyle that allows you to keep your mind uncluttered
• a high degree of freedom and elective solitude
• large amounts of group interaction
• frequent new acquaintances with the option of getting to know people quickly and thoroughly

This is the lifestyle of the wandering philosopher, the spiritual teacher, the long-distance hiker or skilled solo traveler. Those in this position get to experience the best of people (their life experiences, accumulated knowledge, hopes and dreams) while avoiding the worst (finding ways to cooperate in day-to-day living). Living this way, you may develop a kind of "love of mankind"; instead of emotionally latching on to particular individuals you know well, you experience positive feelings for everyone you meet and for the world in general. In this state duality and deep intimacy may lose their importance because you are regularly connecting deeply with many different people. This is the lifestyle of Jesus (assuming the New Testament is accurate), the Dalai Lama, Ghandi, and some long-distance travelers I've met. I think some types are more predisposed to develop this way.

(I encourage readers to think about if there are other types of lifestyles that produce similar effects but work for different kinds of people.)

To summarize, sensitivity to intertype relations as described by socionics is highly influenced by how healthy your life circumstances are at the moment, how sensitive you are physiologically and psychologically, what attitudes you have developed, and whether you are traveling.

Wikisocion Needs New Home

Once again, Wikisocion needs a new home. We either need 1) a reliable for-pay hoster, 2) hosting on someone's personal server, or 3) hosting on one of the free wiki farms that offers mediawiki support (the software package that Wikisocion uses).

Critique of MBTI Research Paper on Climate Scientists' Types

I was recently sent a link to a paper titled "Personality type differences between Ph.D. climate researchers and the general public: implications for effective communication".

This is a great example of a pseudoscience trying desperately to make itself socially and academically relevant. Behind all the academic language and references is a trivial observation: climate change researchers are, on average, more intelligent and academically-minded than the general public.

Let us scrap the MBTT for a moment and propose a new typology. In this new system people will record the number of hours a week they spend communicating with scientists and academics either through reading scientific papers and texts, writing such texts themselves, or verbally communicating with scientists.

Next, we divide the results into 16 intervals roughly as follows:

1. 20-100 hrs
2. 15-20
3. 10-15
4. 5-10
5. 2-5
6. 1.5-2
7. 1.2-1.5
8. 1.0-1.2
9. 0.8-1.0
10. 0.6-0.8
11. 0.5-0.6
12. 0.4-0.5
13. 0.3-0.4
14. 0.2-0.3
15. 0.1-0.2
16. 0-0.1

Now, we identify traits common to people of the same or similar type. It turns out, those who spend a lot of time doing, reading, or talking about science have many traits in common. They think differently than those who spend just a few minutes a week encountering science.

Next, we give climate researchers and the general public a single-question questionnaire and discover — lo and behold! — that their types are quite different from those of the general public. As we think about this discovery, it occurs to us that these two groups might experience difficulty communicating with each other. Given that "climate change messaging" and "failure to communicate the science to the public" are hot topics in the climate change policy community, we now feel we have found the answer to this problem: it's because the types of climate researchers tend to be different from those of the public at large.

Our recommendation at the end of our triumphant research paper is that climate researchers need to study our typology to better understand how they are different from the public. They need to learn how people think who do not spend more than a few minutes a week reading, writing, or talking science.

Socionics Inaccuracy in Relationship Compatibility

In my opinion, socionics is inadequate as a predictor of romantic compatibility. It is quite a bit better than chance, which is remarkable in itself. However, it does not live up to the expectations many people acquire when studying the theory.

Here I present two graphs representing (approximately) romantic relationship compatibility distribution among types 1) as suggested by socionics theory, and 2) in practice (in my practice, at least). There are 16 vertical cells in each graph, representing the 16 types.

1. What socionics seems to suggest

What exactly socionics suggests is highly debatable. Some socionists introduce subtypes and use them to further model intertype compatibility. Some socionists talk of the difference between functions and the "specific content of the functions," which depends upon culture and upbringing (a copout explanation, in my view). Some introduce levels of development or intellect which may influence compatibility. Nonetheless, the above picture represents what many or most people seem to think after beginning to study socionics. It often takes many years for the understanding above to gradually morph into something more like the following:

2. What I observe in practice

The height of the colored bars may differ from person to person depending on how far they are from the mean on various physical, intellectual, emotional, and cultural traits. The graph above shows 1 in 40 duals as being "very compatible" and just over half as having some degree of compatibility. For some people even this may be optimistic.

Note that there is no "ideally compatible" category in the second graph. In my opinion ideal compatibility does not exist. It is not built into our biology. Compatibility is a kind of reasonable compromise between two individuals who agree to set aside one set of programs (mate seeking and individualistic behaviors) in favor of another set of programs (relationship building, homesteading, and child rearing behaviors). The socionics model does not reflect this in any way.

Furthermore, romantic compatibility in practice may change during a relationship. The stage of romantic love increases the appearance of compatibility greatly no matter what the intertype relation. As hormone levels gradually return to normal, compatibility may either decrease or increase depending on "underlying" compatibility. Even in a seemingly compatible relationship, there is no guarantee that for one reason or another one or both partners will opt out of the relationship.

There is substantial evidence that humans have a mixture of monogamous and polygamous tendencies and that as a species we are designed with the potential for both life-long monogamous relationships and multiple relationships, whether simultaneous or sequential. The mechanisms whereby people are motivated to switch relationships throw a wrench in the neat system of compatibility suggested by socionics. Again, socionics has nothing to say about these vital biological factors and suggests a simplistic view of compatibility that requires numerous qualifications and provisions.

Next, homo sapiens did not evolve in a nuclear society where people separated into pairs and isolated themselves socially and economically from others. For the most part, homo sapiens lived communally, and intimate romantic relationships were complemented by a complex network of other supporting relationships. In this kind of setting individual compatibility may be less important than in a distinctly nuclear society.

Finally, adult mortality was quite a bit higher than today, and it was quite common for women to die in childbirth. Health, fitness, and ability to provide were probably just as important provisions for choosing a mate as psychological compatibility. After all, what our genes are after is maximum replication. How much this goal favors the evolution of a rigid system of psychological compatibility is an interesting question (I believe I have an article about that at Socionics.us).

It seems to me that the larger and more complex the society, the lower the percentage of romantically compatible mates. As specialization and the web of interpersonal communication increase, people settle into ever more specialized cultural niches. As the complexity of society increases, people with extreme traits have more chances to find each other and produce offspring with even more extreme traits who, in turn, have a harder time finding compatible partners. In a society where one must find a mate within a community of 1000 or so people, out-of-the-norm traits may tend to be quickly brought closer to the mean because of the low probability that you will ever meet someone else with the trait.

If one can realistically choose from only 100 potential mates and knows of no others, one will find a relatively compatible mate among the 100. If there are only 10 mates, one will find the most compatible one of the 10. The smaller the number of people in a certain mileau, the less cultural and psychological diversity there will be.