Showing posts with label quadras. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quadras. Show all posts

Apr 6, 2014

Some Thoughts on Relationships and Socionics

The last 9 months have been very good for me. My life has been steadily getting better and better, and I think I understand enough about why the changes have been taking place to maintain them indefinitely. I'm referring to all sorts of changes relating to nutrition, exercise, sleep, hormones, and neurotransmitters, and also to relationships, social life, work, life strategy, and inner development.

Along the way, I have begun to think about socionics again at times. The first time was when I was pursuing a girl who seemed responsive and interested, but the interaction seemed chronically unstable and off-kilter. After a few frustrating weeks of this, I had the thought, "I wonder what socionics could say about this?" I'll admit that making a good guess at identifying her type (a LIE with a high degree of interpersonal sensitivity) brought some clarity and helped explain the imbalances in the interaction.

Since then I've occasionally (but not automatically) referred to socionics when thinking about other relationships. Experiences with other girls, however, have not exactly fit the socionics model. For instance, I had a fulfilling short-term relationship with an EIE ("quasi-identity"). Luckily, I no longer take socionics very seriously and do not let it influence my romantic choices before the fact. If I did, I might limit myself and fail to obtain experience that conflicts with the socionics model. I think I did this in the past.

Interestingly — as with any idea system — the people who engage in developing socionics are precisely those who take it very seriously... This introduces biases and ideological "overshoot" that the less interested may notice, but rarely take seriously enough to do anything about. Within socionics, as soon as people start to strongly doubt the model, they usually leave the community or become less active and just complain about the discrepancies in the background. Naturally, this is a more or less universal characteristic of schools of thought.

I now believe — as a kind of personal rule — that any relationship can or should be pursued if there is passionate interest. 100% interest and sincerity seems to be a much better predicter of having a really positive experience than socionic factors. However, this assumes that you have the maturity and wisdom to not overstep the natural bounds of the relationship and to not force it to be something that it cannot.

Some people (a lot of men) experience strong romantic interest on a daily or weekly basis. They have to find different rules and formulas for deciding how to pursue relationships and may not relate well to my ideas.

Another observation I've had is that a person may go through stages where they become more or less receptive to different kinds of interaction. For instance, when I am in a "socialite" stage focused mostly on my external social life — going out, meeting people, and doing things with others — the whole type thing can be more or less irrelevant. However, if I enter a more work-focused stage with a lot of focused solitary activity, my need for closer and more "high-quality" relationships increases.

I'm suggesting that in some circumstances a person can be perfectly happy without any dual relations or even any close tet-a-tet relationships. As a person's activities become more focused and idiosyncratic, the need for focused and idiosyncratic relationships seems to rise as well.

In the hunter-gatherer societies that produced modern homo sapiens, people experienced much tighter group relationships and less individualized tet-a-tet relationships. The idea of finding "soul mates" in such circumstances becomes largely irrelevant. I believe that a failure to understand or even think about the relationship structure of primitive societies has led to many of the erroneous ideas contained in socionics. As some readers may know, Augusta Augustinavichute believed humans were a pair-forming species and examined their relationships in a modern (actually, Soviet command economy) context only.

I've had the chance to mingle in a lot of different groups of late. Certainly, different groups have their different "feel," and socionic quadras is one way to look at it. However, some of us are used to feeling like outsiders in virtually every group we find ourselves. Thus, using comfort level as a way to identify quadras may lead to never finding one's own quadra because every group is uncomfortable — just to different degrees. For such people, the idea of quadras and their defining role in establishing the culture of a group can be pretty much irrelevant.

In a "socialite" period of life, you may flit from group to group with ease, but few of the groups are particularly well-established or display any set rules and "quadra flavor." As your life becomes more work-focused, you will probably find yourself spending time in more well-established groups. Obviously, the longer a group has existed and the more fixed its membership, the more rigid the culture of the group will be. I think there's much value in belonging to such a group(s) at some point in life.

I often return to the concept of "highly sensitive people" and observe how these people systematically do not fit into socionic type and relation models. They might as well be a different ype, and can be divided into extraverts (roughly 1/4 of HSPs) and introverts (roughly 3/4). Most are intuitive types, but there are also some introverted sensers among them.

I really strongly doubt that an HSP IEI's ideal match will be any kind of SLE, though many aspects of the relationship may be comfortable and convenient. But an HSP is subject to some kinds of feelings and experiences (states of sensitivity, solitude, loneliness, restriction of sensory stimulation, etc.) to a much greater degree than non-HSPs, and will need to find others who can relate to this "deeper" level. If an HSP lacks a deeper sensitivity-based connection with his partner, he may experience loneliness and even alienation.

I find that HSPs tend to have a mixture of intuitive and sensing qualities and often logical and ethical qualities that perhaps make it less important to have a partner who is at the opposite end of these axes (particularly intuition/sensing).

I'm not sure these axes are even a good way to think about relationship compatibility anymore. One of the reasons they enjoy popularity it because they give people them something to think about before the relationship has occurred. It can actually be akin to voyeurism. By thinking about your compatibility or incompatibility (or that of other people) with someone before a relationship has actually begun, you can 1) fantasize about a relationship that does not yet exist, 2) fantasize about other people's relationship (this is more of a female thing), and 3) justify your own inaction in pursuing someone you are attracted to.



I have a lot more to say on the subject of relationships and well-being, but it is all unrelated to socionics, so I will just abruptly end this post here.

Sep 11, 2010

Socionics and Friendships Between Couples

If finding friendship with one other person is hard, try finding friendship between two couples. What does is take? Each member of both couples must find at least one friend among the other couple in such a way that all members are included. If any one person is left out of friendship, the couples are not entirely friends.

In the best case scenario, all four people are friends with all other three. This is rare, but happens. However, even this arrangement is fragile. A shift in the life circumstances of any of the four people can upset the balance and change the character of the friendship. The probability of such a shift happening in any given year is substantially higher than that of a shift happening among a single couple (a relatively high probability to begin with.

For instance, if a single individual has a 20% chance of a major shift in circumstances in a given year, then a couple has a 36% chance that one or more will experience a shift, and a set of two couples -- 59%. This is just to illustrate why close friendships between two couples are less stable than between two people.

What intertype relations might be more favorable for such a friendship? Among any four people, there is a dizzying variety of possible combinations of intertype relations. And yet, some tend to be more common than others.

It's easiest to recognize friendships between two dual couples. In my experience, it seems relatively common to have:

  • dual couples
  • activator couples
  • semi-duality couples
  • extinguishment couples

(where the relationship is defined by the intertype relation between any two individuals of the same sex)

A relationship between two couples may become unstable if there is cause for attraction between any two members of the opposite sex. Therefore, identity relations between couples are rarer than duality, and mirror rarer than activator. Identity friends typically have to keep their spouses out of the friendship to avoid sparking jealousy and concealed sexual competition between the two males or two females.

Since I have a lot of activator friends, I frequently encounter the "activator couple" scenario. Do couple friendships form in all cases? Only in about a third at most. It seems that most such friendships are saboteuged by rejection between "mirrors." In other words, an IEE and LSE may be close friends and may want to include the spouses in the friendship, but either the SLI spouse rejects the LSE or the EII spouse rejects the IEE.

There seems to be no surefire way of predicting rejection. It seems particularly common for the dual spouse to perceive the activator friend as a competitor for influence on the spouse. The more time the two spend together, the less time the dual gets with his or her spouse.

So, you can see how difficult it is for even an activator couple friendship to materialize. The likelihood of rejection between two opposite sex "mirrors" is quite high.

Paradoxically, more socionically distant relations between couples may be "safer" in the sense that the same sex friend of your spouse is less likely to be perceived as a direct competitor to you. However, such relationships will also likely not develop the same degree of closeness and trust.

Non-dual couples

As soon as we introduce non-dual couples, things get more complex since the likelihood of imbalance between the intertype relations of one member of a couple and the other member rises.

For instance, a LIE-ILI (mirror) couple (male member listed first for consistency) may become friends with a ESI-LIE couple (dual). In this scenario, two people get a dual relation out of the friendship, one gets an activation relation, and one gets "just" a mirror relation. It's easy to see that here the relationship will hinge mostly upon the ESI, who is "needed" by everyone else. Probably, the other three will only be able to talk amongst themselves, but when the ESI comes around, varied activities will become both possible and fun. It's typically hard to have extended fun with identity partners, mirror partners, kindred partners, etc.

The ideal friends for a LIE-ILI couple might be a ESI-SEE couple, but what are the odds of finding one? Likewise, the ideal friends for a LSI-SEE couple might be an EIE-ILI couple, but I would the odds of two such couples finding each other would be very low indeed.

Generally, it seems that the less socionically favorable the intertype relation between a couple, the more difficult it is to maintain friendships with other couples.

Other factors

To avoid sociono-centricism, it should be noted that the less favorable AND stable a couple's relationship is in general (not just in socionic terms), the greater difficulty they will have maintaining friendships with other couples. This applies to duals with an instable relationship just as much as to non-duals with a stable relationship. Can duals have an instable relationship? Of course. (Nonetheless, dual relations appear to be more common than others.)

Furthermore, in practice friendship is based not so much on socionics ("we just feel good around each other -- that's why we're friends") as upon shared interests and history ("we enjoy doing X together, we've been through a lot together, we have a lot to talk about"). Socionic factors certainly influence the likelihood that two people will become and remain friends, but it is far from a 100% determiner.

Looking at interests may help to explain the frequent "mirror rejection" pattern mentioned above. When two activators become friends, they most certainly share some interests and commonalities in values. These shared interests and values won't extend to all areas of life, but they're definitely enough to justify spending time together doing something of mutual interest and talking about life. However, what you share in common with an activator may not be what they share in common with their dual.

For instance, I am passionate about backpacking and the outdoors. A lot of my activator LSE friends have also somewhat enjoyed backpacking -- enough to make trips together generally worthwhile and fun. But what is the probability that someone who enjoys backpacking somewhat, but not passionately like I do, will choose a spouse that also enjoys it? Probably under 50% (the more passionate one is about something, the higher the likelihood they will choose a spouse that shares or sympathizes with the interest). And there you have one possible reason for rejection. The friend's spouse doesn't enjoy or understand backpacking, and is mistrustful of people who make it a central part of their life. Probably, if we were to dig deeper, we would find some other fundamental value differences underlying an interest or disinterest in backpacking that would make itself felt in other ways.

Each thing that just one of the friends is particularly passionate about is similarly prone to cause rejection or mistrust on the part of the other friend's spouse, who, more likely than not, does not sympathize much with the passion.

What seems to increase the likelihood of a compatible intercouple relationship is when both activation partners are equally passionate about their key shared interest/s. This means that it is likely that both have chosen spouses who are at least accepting of and somewhat interested in the area of passion. In this case, everyone can participate and experience enjoyment both from the activity and from the conversations that inevitably result.

But "equally passionate" is just another way of saying that the activator friends are more compatible than two friends who are unequally passionate about their shared interests. Many parameters of compatibility are not encompassed by socionics. Higher compatibility between friends increases the likelihood of compatibility between their spouses and between both couples. If you and your friend have built a friendship upon mediocre compatibility, it is less likely that your spouses can be included successfully in the relationship.

Leaving socionics behind for a moment, friendships between couples are more likely to form on the basis of a common interest or interests among all four members. Socionics becomes one of the limiting factors to the relationship and will tend to make itself felt during longer interaction sessions involving a greater variety of activities (for instance, not just talking about or doing the common interest/hobby, but also eating together, planning logistics, relaxing afterwards, etc.).

Even among two highly compatible couples (say, a complete quadra) differences will arise where one or two people dissent from the majority approach. Dissention can occur on the basis of irrationality-rationality ("I don't like how they don't warn us about what they're going to do"), on the basis of gender ("I'm tired of everything having to be so goal-oriented; why don't you and I take a walk around town together while the men do their thing?"), on the basis of sensitivity ("I just want to be alone for a while"), or any number of other things.

To sum things up, friendship between couples is more difficult and complex than dynamics between two people. Intertype relations between the two couples play a significant role in choice of intercouple friends, but there are a number of other important factors determining the possibility of friendship.

Aug 19, 2010

Integrative and Disintegrative Tendencies in Society

I have been listening to an interesting audiobook in Russian called Istoriya Otmorozhennykh v Kontekste Globalnogo Potepleniya about how climate changes have impacted past civilizations and determined cultural development. The main thesis of the book (written by a journalist, Aleksandr Nikonov, with a strong background in climatology and ancient history) is that comparatively difficult climatological conditions breed integrative tendencies, whereas periods of more favorable climate correspond to disintegrative tendencies.


Do integrative and disintegrative processes correspond to quadra dominance? I tend to think so. Looking at the psychology of individual types, it seems like the most integrative types are in the Beta Quadra while the most disintegrative are in the Delta Quadra. By "integration" I am referring to the centralization of power, decision making, and social life. Disintegration would be the decentralization (or individualization) of all of the above.

The types of Alpha and Gamma quadras seem to have a mixture of integrative and disintegrative tendencies and are harder to put in either of those boxes.

Could it be that a worsening of natural living conditions pushes a society towards integrative processes and that an improvement in conditions promotes a growth in local prosperity and autonomy, and hence a decline in unity?

A secondary thesis of the book is that historically conflicts have been won by the side with the less favorable climate conditions relative to the norm for the location. Numerous examples are cited using the global and regional climate records as a guide. No society is able to maintain a linear integrative or disintegrative trend; there are always major fluctuations on the order of 20 to 100 years.

Assuming the first hypothesis is mostly true, the second might also make sense. Locations with the greatest worsening of conditions receive the greatest integrative stimulus. They also have nowhere to go; for them victory may be a matter of life or death. People defending prosperous, decentralized areas may be poorly organized and psychologically unprepared for the privations of war.

Assuming these hypotheses have some truth to them, what types of processes might we expect in the next 50 years or so, considering climate and geographical factors (which are a hobby of mine, for those that haven't noticed)?

At first, global warming initially probably made conditions more favorable for many or most areas of the globe. This would theoretically stimulate a weakening of central contral and integration. As warming continues and begins to create worse conditions for living and agriculture, we might expect centralization to increase. Places where conditions have worsened the most rapidly will be prone to unite more quickly and enjoy a military advantage over others.

As an example, imagine that Lake Mead goes dry (not hard to imagine, since it's already well on its way) and Las Vegas is left without water. In order to survive, people must band together and strictly observe pragmatic rules to make due with limited shared resources. But still there is not enough for everyone. So Las Vegasites start moving out in organized groups to the nearest more favorable sites, which are probably in southwest Utah. There they raid the local farms and bring the region under their personal control, duplicating whichever structural organization they had developed during their tough days in Las Vegas and en route. Utah, meanwhile, is also suffering from mild drought, but not nearly severe enough to make them band together in a social-military unit capable of withstanding the desperate Nevadans.

This is just an example. When I finish the book, I'll probably add some global scenarios and modify what I've written so far.

[added later: nope, nothing to add]

Jul 17, 2010

Dec 8, 2008

Clarifying "Quadra Values"

"Quadra values" is one of many socionics terms that is repeated often and yet understood litte. I would like to venture a technological explanation of the term that will also help to clarify some of the roots of intertype relations.


Everyone acknowledges all socionic functions and believes they have a rightful place in life. For instance, who would object that people in a competition are trying to beat each other? Or who believes that people should never get mushy and sentimental when they're in love with someone? Or that people whose job it is to forecast should not speculate? No one objects when Alex Trebek (Jeopardy game show) bluntly tells people on his show that they are "incorrect." These are approaches that are inherent to the activity.

Thus, if your conflictor is ESE and you are exposed to him or her using extraverted ethics in an extraverted ethics situation, it probably won't bother you, even though extraverted ethics is your "vulnerable function." What will bother you are uses of extraverted ethics in ambiguous situations or, even more importantly, in situations where you feel a different approach is more justified.

What differs fundamentally among quadras and types are responses to situations where a socionic function is being used outside the inherent domain of that function. For example, being robotlike in an interpersonal situation that demands sympathy and warmth, or appealing to personal sentiments in the context of scientific discourse. Or being overly individualistic and attention-getting when cooperation and trustworthiness are called for. If Alex Trebek continued to routinely tell people they are incorrect outside of his game show, many people would view him as being callous and rude (however, most duals will probably view this is a sign of admirable honesty and sincerity), even though it is perfectly acceptable in the context of Jeopardy.

Basically, if the function that is "overstepping" its bounds belongs to the quadra values (the four valued functions of the quadra, corresponding to the four base functions represented in the quadra), it is viewed as a "minor weakness," a "good joke," or a "sign of sincerity." If the function, however, is not among the quadra values (i.e. is one of the four "suppressed" functions), then overstepping the natural bounds of that function is viewed as "showing off," or as something counterproductive, malicious, or even sinister. 

Naturally, people view their own leading function as the most benign thing in the world and don't see anything wrong with applying it freely to just about anything. Then comes the suggestive function, which they may learn to grant the same range of expression (in others, at least) as they grant themselves in their leading function. Everything else, though, needs to be cropped, caged, and harnessed to make way for the free expression of these functions. So, while an ILE grants free reign in applying extraverted intuition and (if he's lucky) introverted sensing to nearly anything in the world, he sincerely believes introverted ethics must be limited to Mother's Day cards and eulogies. When he oversteps the natural bounds of extraverted intuition, it's just "practice" or "fun and games," but one someone else oversteps the natural bounds of introverted ethics, it's a deadly sin. 

So, to recap, peoples' negative reactions to use of certain functions occurs when they perceive someone to be applying the wrong function for the situation. There's nothing inherently negative about one's vulnerable function; one is just particularly sensitive to overuse of this type of activity or approach.

"Dyad values"
Values differ somewhat within quadras as well. For instance, in Beta Quadra, the LSI and EIE dyad (dual types) are more forgiving of overdoing things with introverted logic and extraverted ethics and a little less tolerant of overdone extraverted sensing and introverted intuition, though they still remain generally sympathetic. 

Application
I believe this explanation has some constructive applications. For instance, if you want to avoid conflict, then try to resist natural, lazy impulses to overstep the natural bounds of your Ego functions, and instead try to appreciate (and possibly learn) the "best practices" inherent to each area you venture into rather than compulsively applying your leading function behavior to everything you see. Other types will be sure to point out your "errors."

Nov 9, 2007

Recognizing Group Threats

From the title it may seem that this post has very little to do with socionics, but it actually ties into the quadras and their roles in society. When we look at history, we can easily recognize periods where power was more or less centralized and when nations were in a state of alarm and readiness or in a state of ease and complacency. It seems that the presence of external threats slmost inevitably leads to a greater concentration of effort and power within countries, while the absence of clear threats generally leads to a decentralization and overall "relaxation" of society.

At the same time, there is also a tendency for centralized states to "create threats" in order to preserve the need for centralization of power. Decentralized states, in turn, downplay threats in order to preserve their comfortable, individualistic status quo. When the difference between the actual threat and the perceived threat reaches extreme levels, society becomes unstable and the whole government system can fall apart.

I believe that the ability to recognize threats to one's group is related to socionic type and to quadras. The greatest extremes in this regard seem to be the Beta and Delta quadras. Beta types are naturally attuned to the territorial expansion and contraction of systems (extraverted sensing blocked with introverted logic), while Delta types are attuned to recognize the traits and potential of individuals within the context of personal interaction and relationships (extraverted intuition blocked with introverted ethics ).

Beta types perceive people within the context of social groups and systems, the development of these systems over time, and feelings that are expressed between different groups. This doesn't mean that they are blind to individual traits or much more prone to stereotyping, but simply that they are more likely to talk about these aspects out loud, comfortably and naturally. Delta types perceive people as individual "case studies" who have different skill sets, relationship patterns, personality makeup, and daily habits. They are more likely to keep their thoughts about group patterns to themselves or state their observations very carefully and tactfully (which basically means restricting the use of these functions).

What this means in practice is that Beta types are much quicker to recognize and respond to threats to their group and to society at large, often banding together at the mere hint of such a threat. EIEs generate awareness of the threat within society and stir up people's emotions. SLEs mobilize people into bands to fight off attackers. IEIs and LSIs perform subtle, behind-the-scenes operations (of course, these are just broad generalizations). The "weakness" of the Beta quadra is that many Beta types are prone to see threats when there actually are none or exaggerate the danger of minor threats, thus wasting people's energy on fighting a nonexistent foe. When the danger is real, however, Beta quadra's ability to mobilize society is critical to the survival of society as a whole.

Delta's attitude towards threats is quite different. They are not good at operating in a state of fear and anxiety and try to find ways of avoiding whatever is causing these negative emotions. They prefer to make preparations in advance to reduce the likelihood of threats to an absolute minimum, because when a threat actually arises, they don't know how to mobilize for action. Because of Beta types' confidence in repelling threats, they seem less prone to lengthy advance preparations.

Examples
In my opinion, what we see across much of Europe now is a Delta stage of national ambivalence coupled with unforeseen material wealth. For decades now since WWII, European countries have been freely accepting immigrants, ignoring the cultural and now political threat that this has begun to pose. This attitude of acceptance and "extreme" rejection of anything that could be construed as racism is probably a reaction to the atrocities of WWII. Individual freedom and (probably) material prosperity are the result of this worldview, but it may be reaching its limits as threats to society grow and governments take few measures to counteract them.

Meanwhile, a Beta-dominant, xenophobic Russia is seeing threats all around them. What many people in the West don't recognize is that Russia is also experiencing a cultural revival. The benefit of being equipped to recognize and eliminate threats is, of course, a strong will to survive. The drawback is that if the threats are in fact too greatly exaggerated, maniacal leadership can lead to bloodshed and impoverishment.

The United States -- almost in the position of an island country (just two bordering countries) -- has historically flipped between isolationism and international involvement. During periods of isolationism, power tends to be more decentralized, and more energy is spent on perfecting domestic policies; during periods of international involvement, territorial interests are under threat and power becomes more centralized. Obviously, the U.S. is currently in a stage of involvement. This leads to a certain loss of freedoms within the country in order to better fight the country's enemies.

(I'll stop there for now)