Jordan Peterson's Socionic Type
Against my better judgment, I'm going to do that ridiculous act where you attach a label to someone's body-mind after several hours of deliberation for no reason at all other than a kind of empty intellectual satisfaction.
Preface: I like JP and his ideas a lot. He's brilliant and riveting, even moving.
Jordan Peterson: EIE
My initial thought was IEE, but inconsistencies quickly emerged:
- persona not disarming enough; too dark for an IEE
- generates too much passionate devotion in online admirers
- too verbally fluid
- shamelessly and without caveats categorizes (labels) people and groups of people, particularly ideological opponents
- systematically, calculatingly participates in potentially combative situations and seems to feed off the tension
- doesn't pursue relaxation in the moment, comes across as tense and brooding
- prefers formal attire and, apparently, employment in reliable formal structures (e.g. university)
Let's flesh out the typing.
Somatotype: high ectomorphy, fairly high mesomorphy, very low endomorphy. Translation: a loner preoccupied with being true to himself, managing an overactive nervous system, and achieving desired outcomes through focused hard work.
Somewhat more extraverted than introverted (at least in the popular sense, and according to his own words). Expansive gestures and movements. Tends more to "overdo" than to "underdo" things.
Very high IQ. That means very big ideas, especially for an intuitive type.
Other observations: rather high-pitched voice with typical male compensation (overusing the lower end of his vocal range to sound deeper) and resulting frequent loss of vocal range and quality.
Why not a logical type?
- passionate, moving, and devotional
- apparent logicalness can be explained by intellect and ectomorphy
- tends not to talk about things that will have no emotional impact
- all interests tie into the humanities, particularly to human nature and how to best navigate it
- very deep insight into psychology, religion, and the psyche
- skillfully harnesses anger during debates, and doesn't just address opponents' faulty logic
- comments broadly and authoritatively on general life issues
- he really cares about issues, and you can sense it; he cares more than you do!
Random observations:
- defends the inherent purpose of hierarchies ("aristocratic" vs. "democratic" style, so Beta or Delta quadra)
- needs an enemy or opponent to perform best; likes to get a bit riled up
9 comments:
I agree with most of what you observed, but I prefer to see Peterson as IEI. Of course with these types we are on the same page; I will point out some purely observational comments
and you can judge for yourself.
Peterson has a dialectical style of "exploring" concepts as an integral part of explaining them, occasionally falling into uncharted territory where he loses track of his arguments.
One of his major contributions is the interpretation of religious (but specifically Christian) metaphors, imagery, and mythology in a secular context. Yet, he does not have a fully clear delineation between metaphysics and mythology; his mythology bleeds into his metaphysics and he is prone to have magical metaphysical views and (which personally I view as a failure of skepticism, and also personally, this is something which turned me off of his ideas very coldly).
He often repeats the same concepts over and over, such as his oft-mocked discussion of the social hierarchy of lobsters. No doubt this repetitive talking point is necessary to communicate with the masses, but he's in academia, not politics.
He often makes reference to philosophical movements such as Marxism and post-modernism which he likes to criticize. These criticisms tend to be highly reductionist of the view they purport to challenge.
Fair enough. With an IEI I would expect to see a more laid-back, let-things-evolve-as-they-will attitude instead of his intensity and high-strungness.
The WSS team analysed Jordan Peterson and came to a slightly different typing: http://worldsocionics.blogspot.com/2019/01/jordan-peterson-lie-personality-type.html
I certainly agree with your observations of his nervous energy more than I agree with Roan's.
In a similar way you use 'intellect' to explain Jordan's apparent logical-ness, I would actually use 'neuroticism' and 'empathy' to explain Jordan's apparent ethical-ness. In terms of his values, and how he frames his reasoning for doing things, it's for people to acquire as-accurate-as-possible factual information and use this in a continuous but arduous process of personal improvement so that they can become more useful to others in a cruel, challenging world and thus grow in their self-esteem. His actual advice is distinctly practical, albeit stark, with the motivation being far more to provide this information than provoke some sort of emotional reaction in others.
I would also say that his labelling of people can show some signs of generalisation, but that he does not apply these categories to the people he interacts with directly, much preferring to address them as individuals. Instead of carrying the category into a discussion, he focuses on what the person themselves goes on to say and forms his opinion from that, addressing only their points in a case-by-case basis. This is very different to the EIEs I have seen encounter ideological opposition who tend to characterise the person as a representative of the enemy team, rather than look into the individual argument. I would say his treatment of leftists in the absence of any individual is rather more akin to the sort of harsh judgement 'good vs. evil' simplification we saw with Margaret Thatcher in her approach to socialism, or that of George W. Bush towards the Taliban.
LIE may also explain why you initially thought IEE, without having to completely overturn the quadra A bizarrely sensitive LIE could very well appear IEE-ish, only darker in tone, especially with a prevalance of both Extroverted Logic and Extroverted Intuition. They are adjacent on the benefit cycle after all.
Having watched many videos with Jordan Peterson, mostly interviews or debates at talk-shows and the like, I have the following comment.
The reason why he repeatedly talks about his lobsters example is that interviewers and talk-show hosts keep asking him about it, and so he responds and explains it - again and again. But it is they, and not he, that keep coming back to it.
He's INFj.
Delta, IJ temperament, Fi Base, Ni Demonstrative, Te valuing. All obvious.
You think he's ENFj? He gets visibly annoyed whenever he says a funny thing and people laugh, interrupting his train of thought. An ENFj wouldn't do that at all.
I read his 12 rules for life book band his emphasis is more on personal responsability of the individual more than anything, he focuses on practical advices and his claim for the metaphysical is more focused on the actual utility of the metaphysical ideas and he gives practical advices for living a life were purpose and meaning are obtained by acquiring responsability for your own life and doing real things to improve them, such as not surrounding yourself by bad friends, having a "straight (metaphysical) posture" (this is why he talks about lobsters) because if you go trough the state of orderliness your situation in a given hierarchy tends to improve and you can improve yourself and hence be just another person that helps making the cogs of the world work fine, but that starts trough the individual, by taking good care of yourself as if you were taking care of another amongst other things. I think LIE is the best Gamma type for him.
He's the jung version of LII
What does the 'Jung version' mean? It's not as if we haven't all read Jung.
Jordan Peterson is not someone who is attached to the resplendence of his ideas. He is all about painfully tearing down and changing his models for understanding reality based on what is shown to work, while also maintaining that our concrete, empirical approach to understanding the 'what' of reality is not all there is and there is also a more archetypal 'why' of reality that is often not appreciated.
His understanding of what is true or not is based on whether it works at keeping us alive. That's some serious Extroverted Thinking by Jung standards, not Introverted Thinking.
I changed my mind and now I agree with EIE, although IEI remains a compelling explanation.
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