Psychological Portrait (Semantic Content) of the Poles of the Socionic Trait “Questim–Declatim” — Results of an Experimental Study

Introduction

This article is part of a large new series of our works devoted to the detailed experimental study and description of the empirical psychological portraits of the 16 basic socionic psychotypes, the 8 socionic functions (in their various positions), and the poles of socionic dichotomies. The results of all works in the series (including the results presented in the tables of this article) were derived from the outcomes of a mathematical-statistical analysis of respondents’ answers to questions in psychological questionnaires (in total, more than 5,500 different questionnaire items). These responses were obtained from more than 5,000 different respondents with preliminarily determined socionic psychotypes.

Psychological types (essentially, independent non-overlapping sectors of a multidimensional psychological space) gradually became in empirical socionics the primary, fundamental concept. In socionics they are most often diagnosed as a whole. In American typology, which is very close to socionics in terms of structuring psychological space, this is not the case at all; instead, four basic traits are consistently taken as the foundation. These traits are extraversion–introversion, rationality–irrationality, logic–ethics, and intuition–sensing. Each trait represents a hyperplane in psychological space; four hyperplanes ultimately divide the space into 16 sectors, each of which is called one of the 16 psychotypes. Both in the works of Carl Gustav Jung and in the early theoretical constructions of the founder of socionics, Aushra Augustinavičiūtė, such an approach was also used. However, later socionics in Russia, Ukraine, and a number of other European countries began to rely in diagnosing psychological types not on four-factor diagnostic questionnaires, but on live expert diagnosis of types in their “holistic” expression. Despite its obvious disadvantages from the standpoint of standardization, this tradition yielded undeniable scientific advantages. These “advantages” consist in the fact that within the emerging socionic culture, a wide variety of characteristic properties of psychotypes were more easily noticed, forming at the intersections of the four dichotomies. These properties were studied and not ignored, although they often represented a kind of new formation relative to the semantic content of the four basic diagnostic traits. Thus, for example, it was discovered that the psychotypes of the second and third quadras differ from the psychotypes of the so-called “peripheral” quadras by a new property not reducible to the four basic traits—decisiveness vs. judiciousness—and accordingly, the same sensing can behave differently in “decisive” and “judicious” psychotypes—in one case as aggressive “forceful sensing,” in another as a very significantly different “sensing of sensations.” Similarly, differences were identified between manifestations of black and white intuition, black and white ethics, black and white logic. Correspondingly, theoretical models of socionics developed, incorporating new concepts. Such development did not occur in typology, where rigid constraints at the “input” of diagnosis did not allow fundamentally new conclusions to be identified at the “output.” Unlike typology, socionics for a long time followed a path of empirical “probing” of the most objective boundaries between psychological types, that is, in constant live contact with natural truth, it formed optimal boundaries of sectors in psychological space, not avoiding consideration of newly discovered properties of types that were not directly reducible to their differences in extraversion–introversion, rationality–irrationality, logic–ethics, and intuition–sensing. Was it good that it was so? Yes, very good. The fact is that the substantive content of the four basic traits initially used in diagnosis was never “given by God,” but represented a preliminary result of the same empirical observations by founding researchers of the diversity of human manifestations. There is no reason, for example, that intuition should manifest identically in all types of the so-called “intuitive” pole (today we know that for each of the eight types these manifestations are highly specific); however, the initial “rough hypothesis” of the founders, especially beginning with Briggs and Myers, prescribed that intuition, within this initially “rough hypothesis,” manifest identically across different types, and Briggs–Myers diagnostics was also aimed at identifying exclusively common features of their dichotomous pole in types. Accordingly, in typology the boundaries between types were distorted, shifted away from their natural loci. Another example is the axis of rationality–irrationality, which, being unambiguously fixed in the original Briggs–Myers diagnostic questionnaires, prescribed identical behavioral manifestations of rationality or irrationality for all types—although today we already know well that the irrationality of intuitives manifests differently than that of sensors, and in extraverts differently than in introverts (for example, if for extraverts the key aspect of irrationality is improvisation, then for introverts it is passivity and inertia, although in essence both manifestations stem from a deficit of evaluative functions and the resulting lack of planning). Nevertheless, such nuances were ignored in typology, which led to incorrect drawing of boundaries between types based on purely voluntaristically selected and fixed “diagnostic” properties. As a result, any potentially new properties of psychotypes and their groups, not reducible to those initially embedded in the Myers–Briggs questionnaire, were blurred and not identified in research.

Socionics avoided these shortcomings in its development. As a result, among all existing psychological classifications, the boundaries between sectors of multidimensional psychological space, gradually identified by its expert “collective opinion,” today apparently best correspond to real physiological factors of brain activity that objectively underlie the division of psychological diversity into psychotypes. The adequacy of the socionic classification is also emphasized by the fact that within the boundaries between types accepted in socionics, new properties are revealed, nonlinearly generated at the intersection of several “basic” traits (from physiological considerations, this is precisely what should be expected from “correct” models of the structure of psychological space).

Socionics often criticizes itself for the low convergence of expert type diagnostics between different experts. However, it should be noted that this is not a critical flaw that undermines the achievements of socionics as a science. Indeed, when reading numerous descriptions of psychotypes by different socionic authors, it is easy to see that for each type, authors mostly note the same characteristic manifestations. These knowledge and observations are undeniable scientific truths; they coincide among different authors and arise from their observation of numerous clearly expressed, “obvious” cases from the standpoint of type diagnosis. However, these insights cannot always be translated in reverse, from general to particular, when it is required to diagnose the type of a less clearly expressed subject. It should also be noted that the convergence of expert diagnoses is low even among representatives of the same socionic school. If we exclude a number of obvious quasi-socionic “reinventors of the wheel” and fraudulent amateurs posing as experts, the dispersion of diagnoses reflects not so much differences in views of different schools on boundaries between types, but rather the fundamental limitation of any expert’s ability to simultaneously account for and weigh the diagnostic contribution of numerous traits relevant to type diagnosis. From our research, discussed below, it directly follows that any property “characteristic” of a psychotype, function, or pole of a socionic trait has only a probabilistic nature. There are no properties or manifestations that can be called necessary or sufficient for diagnosing any type. One can only say that within a type, a given property appears with higher probability than in the population as a whole. Thus, reliable type diagnosis can only be based on the simultaneous consideration of many specific properties, and a reliable socionic diagnosis is possible only by relying on the statistical law of large numbers. Only formalized procedures (questionnaires or strictly formalized and sufficiently long expert interviews) can reliably rely on the statistical law of large numbers, whereas human cognition is not capable of this—no matter how experienced and “advanced” the expert. Socionic expert type diagnosis is especially unreliable in cases where the subject objectively lies in a problematic zone near the boundary of sectors of psychological space (and such cases are numerous). In our opinion, based on experience, the reliability of expert type diagnosis cannot exceed 60% in principle, and only with special selection of the most clearly expressed subjects can it approach 90%. These limitations do not apply to formalized procedures (for example, well-constructed large questionnaires), but for this such questionnaires must necessarily account for the full diversity of psychotype properties described in socionics (that is, ideally diagnose psychotypes holistically rather than by a few basic traits) and must not repeat other errors of questionnaires constructed according to outdated Briggs–Myers schemes.

At present, all the advantages that socionics could extract from the “non-formalized” development of its scientific culture have already been exhausted. The characteristic properties of psychotypes and mental functions have been described; further refinement within expert diagnosis is no longer possible. The time has come to fix and formalize the current achievements of socionics in the language of more exact sciences. Only with the help of a precise language of mathematical statistics, sensitive even to subtle psychological nuances, will it be possible to build interdisciplinary bridges from socionics to brain physiology. Only by formalizing the current level of socionic knowledge about the characteristic properties of types and functions in standard questionnaires (and this level is an order of magnitude higher than that available to the creators of the first Briggs–Myers questionnaire) can socionic type diagnosis be standardized and its accuracy significantly increased. While applied type diagnosis may still tolerate expert “by eye” typing, for scientific purposes reliable and modern diagnostic questionnaires are absolutely necessary. Without them, socionics has for decades been in a scientific deadlock, engaging in the worst case in outright unscientific myth-making, and in the best case in recycling outdated theoretical constructs. The present series of our scientific works, based on mathematical-statistical methods applied to a very large body of experimental material, is devoted to solving these urgent tasks.

Our study is the first and unique study of this kind regarding the structuring of psychological space adopted within the socionic paradigm (or, more broadly, neojungian personality typology, which divides the diversity of psychological space into 16 independent and relatively symmetrically arranged sectors called psychotypes). The properties of functions and traits are derivative of the properties of psychotypes, since the properties of functions in various positions and poles of socionic traits are ultimately computed by averaging the properties of certain groups of psychological types (for example, to determine the properties of program forceful sensing, the properties of psychotypes SLE and SEE are averaged, etc.). Therefore, the key potential question for studies of this kind is: how are the psychotypes, whose properties are then analyzed, diagnosed?

In our studies, psychotypes were determined using questionnaires by correlating respondents’ answer vectors with “reference” (averaged) answers to the same questions given by “average representatives” of all 16 sociotypes. Thus, for determining the type of a given individual, 16 empirically obtained correlations were compared. The maximum correlation indicated the diagnosis of the leading psychotype (sociotype). All 16 correlations together formed the full individual psychological profile of the respondent, most fully characterizing their individual uniqueness. For example, if the maximum correlation assigned a person to type LII, then the second-highest correlation might assign them to one of several other types (EII, LSI, LIE, ILE, even SLI or IEI). Accordingly, the height of other peaks in the profile, in addition to the highest peak, indicates the individual character of accentuation, supplementary to the base type. The reliability of determining the leading type of respondents by this procedure, as calculations showed, averaged no less than 90% correct diagnoses (this percentage was verified by convergence of diagnoses in retest procedures using questionnaires with completely different diagnostic questions). By “reference answers” of types (the basis of diagnosis), at early stages of developing the system of diagnostic coefficients (identical to ideal reference answers), we mean the averaged responses of respondents in the training sample who had competently declared their type based on self-typing or repeated external typing (primarily by experts from professional socionic schools in Moscow and Kyiv). The competence of declared diagnoses was assessed by the number of discrepancies in basic dichotomies between the declared type and the preliminary questionnaire-based diagnosis. Declared diagnoses with three or more mismatches were excluded from the training sample as clearly false or erroneous. Other quality control mechanisms for incoming questionnaires and declared diagnoses were also used, unrelated to their socionic content and therefore incapable of negatively influencing analysis results through partial exclusion of data. Ultimately, within each type in the training sample, all honestly given responses of respondents preliminarily typed by different experts with partially differing views on type boundaries were averaged. This ensured reflection of the average view of type boundaries within the general socionic culture of Russia and Ukraine. Additional refinement of reference answers, increasing the accuracy and reliability of diagnostic coefficients, was performed using three special mathematical procedures. The first was stepwise recurrent refinement of respondent diagnoses. The second was so-called symmetrization of the training data array (based on the fact that the reference answer of any type to a given question can be predicted with high accuracy—via decomposition by Reinin traits—based on reference answers given by the other 15 types). The third and most important procedure was symmetrization of diagnostic coefficients across an array of two thousand aggregated psychological properties, sufficiently evenly describing the diversity of possible manifestations of a hypothetical complete psychological space. This last procedure is based on the assumption that in psychological space, the difference (i.e., mathematical distance in property space) between types LIE and LII should be the same as between types EIE and EII, SLE and SLI, etc., and between types ILI and SLI approximately the same as between types LSI and LII, and so on. If such equality of distances is not achieved, the inequality is partially corrected by rotating the necessary axes in multidimensional space, which leads to slight corrections of diagnostic coefficients initially obtained empirically for each questionnaire item and each of the 16 psychological types. At early stages of obtaining and refining diagnostic coefficients, two additional procedures were also used. One controlled the presence of negative excess at the boundaries of poles in probability density graphs describing the distribution of the four basic socionic traits; the other controlled maximization of substantive content in three quadral traits when varying the rotation of the four basic axes while preserving their mutual orthogonality. At later stages, declared psychotypes were no longer used, as all information they could provide had already been utilized. Diagnoses were then made solely based on questionnaire data using diagnostic coefficients from the previous iteration, and further refinements were introduced only via symmetrization of the diagnostic coefficient array (also accounting for the requirement of maximal orthogonalization of all socionic axes). The same truncated procedure was used when expanding the database with new questionnaire items.

Thus, initially (at the very first stage of developing the system of diagnostic coefficients), for each TIM a “training sample” was formed from individuals who self-typed with sufficient socionic experience or were typed by different experts from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Ukraine and declared that TIM. It is clear that correct declared diagnoses in this sample did not exceed 45–55%, but this is sufficient to obtain reliable average values of quantitatively graded responses for each questionnaire item (since errors of opposite direction tend to cancel out when averaging—the statistical law of large numbers). At the next stage, statistical procedures were applied to control negative excess, maximize the content of quadral traits under the condition of their maximal orthogonality to basic traits, and finally symmetrize results (TIMs in multidimensional psychological space should be equidistant from each other, forming a symmetric structure). These procedures typically introduced only minor corrections, but helped eliminate systematic errors (for example, caused by certain socionic schools over-typing subjects as “Hamlets,” or by preferences in self-typing). At final stages, diagnostic coefficients obtained from training samples were used directly for questionnaire-based diagnosis, ignoring previously declared TIMs. Diagnostic coefficients were recalculated on the expanded sample, and checks were performed for symmetry of TIM placement in psychological space, correspondence of identified characteristic properties of TIMs to their “canonical” descriptions by most authors, and analysis of resulting properties of the 8 functions and poles of basic traits—again verifying consistency with descriptions. All checks were passed. In cases where discrepancies appeared, additional data were collected for refinement. As a result, after many iterations and using more than 5,000 subjects, a practically ideal system of diagnostic coefficients was obtained for more than 5,500 questionnaire items, allowing the construction of any shorter diagnostic questionnaires with very high reliability of type determination. The validity of the developed diagnostic procedures was confirmed by very high correlations between results of questionnaire pairs with completely different questions applied repeatedly to the same subjects (above 0.93). Content validity is also confirmed by maximal correspondence between experimentally obtained “psychological portraits” of psychotypes and functions and their descriptions by most authors.

Obtaining valid diagnostic coefficients for more than 5,500 original questionnaire items, characterizing more than 2,000 different psychological properties, makes it possible to construct arbitrary diagnostic questionnaires, each immediately ready for use without any additional adaptation. When selecting items from the database for a new questionnaire, it is only necessary to maintain diagnostic symmetry of coefficients (roughly speaking, the sum of squares of diagnostic coefficients across all 16 psychotypes for selected items must match, and systems of diagnostic coefficients derived for the 15 traits must be mutually orthogonal—i.e., their scalar products equal zero). Selection of items under these conditions is easily implemented through simple mathematical control procedures.

Thus, the socionic questionnaire-based type diagnostic method developed by us, subsequently used in a large series of studies to obtain detailed “psychological portraits” of psychotypes and mental functions, is characterized by high accuracy and reliability of type diagnosis (above 90%), exceeding any expert typing and free from subjective systematic errors of experts. The method also differs fundamentally for the better from previously known socionic diagnostic questionnaires. It is characterized by:

1. complete absence of authorial subjectivism in selecting questions and assigning them diagnostic values;
2. use of questions with maximal discriminative ability, mathematically confirmed;
3. absence of distortions—for example, where in some other questionnaires irrationality was diagnosed using manifestations characteristic primarily of intuitives;
4. absence of reliance on traits as such—TIMs are diagnosed holistically.
   The use of holistic type diagnosis, without targeted application of socionic traits during diagnosis, makes it possible to validly study manifestations of any socionic traits and verify their substantive content (regardless of whether it concerns extraversion–introversion and rationality–irrationality, or, for example, questimity and positivism—since for this method all traits are equal, none has an a priori advantage embedded in questionnaire design). The same applies to the guaranteed purity in constructing “psychological portraits” of mental functions in their various positions (program, creative, etc.).

The substantive content of the poles of the “questimity–declatimity” trait — experimental results

The more than five thousand questionnaire statements analyzed on the basis of the results of a many-year experiment, which respondents evaluated by “trying them on” themselves, were manually grouped by us—based on their semantic content and mutual correlation—into approximately 2,300 aggregated clusters, each including from one to several dozen questionnaire items close in meaning, as a rule characterizing more generalized psychological properties. On the one hand, replacing the primary questionnaire statements with their generalized clusters simplifies the presentation of results, since it reduces the number of primary properties under review; on the other hand, averaging across several items further increases the accuracy of projections of psychological properties onto psychotypes.

Table 1. Deviation of the average type-level values of psychological properties reliably associated with the poles of the “questimity–declatimity” trait from their population-average value (in fractions of the standard deviation of the general population). Psychotypes of the questim pole are marked in yellow, those of the declatim pole in blue.

Table 2. Deviation of these same traits (Table 1), averaged across all types belonging to the poles of each of the 15 socionic traits, from their population mean (in fractions of the standard deviation of the general population). A “minus” in the values indicates a deviation of the trait toward the opposite pole of the corresponding socionic trait (for example, a “minus” in the extravert column means that the trait is more characteristic of introverts).

All properties presented in the table show positive deviations toward the questimity pole, and their projection specifically onto the questimity–declatimity axis is, with the exception of items 8 and 10, the most substantial among all 15 traits (or close to that). It is clear that for the “declatim” pole, the opposite semantic meaning of the properties listed in the table is characteristic.

The components of the first cluster of Tables 1 and 2, which is the most informative for “questims–declatims,” include, for example, the following specific manifestations (each of them individually has a weak, at the level of a weak statistical trend, association with the questim pole):

• Suicidal tendencies (when the surrounding environment becomes highly irritating, there may arise a desire to take revenge on everyone by committing suicide, or at least by threatening one’s own death).
• It is irritating when people place incorrect stress in speech; there is always a desire to correct them.
• When faced with an offensive injustice directed at oneself, loses diplomatic ability, stops considering consequences, and instead attempts to “push through” the situation without retreat.
• Very easily irritated when having to explain something for a long time to an uncomprehending listener.
• Often draws the attention of relatives and close ones to their minor actions that caused inconvenience and in which they are at fault.
• Reserved regarding one’s personal life and straightforward in expressing opinions, not always diplomatic, sometimes “flares up” with anger.
• Often enjoys negatively affecting the emotions of others, agitating people, disrupting their usual comfortable equilibrium.
• Becomes furious if unnecessarily awakened or disturbed during meals.
• Easily becomes irritated during explanations if they are not immediately and correctly understood.
• When offended or upset, initially does not want to talk or explain anything, but rather wants to shout, cry, run away, or fight.
• Always addresses people formally (“you” as a distancing form).
• Is irritated when poetry is recited without expression.
• Often finds it difficult to restrain impulsive aggression.
• Poor physical condition may cause abandonment of desires, but resistance from others never does.
• In situations of threat or danger, becomes less flexible and less impulsive in actions.
• Feels comfortable only in an environment where everyone thinks and believes the same (since disagreement provokes a stubborn aggressive reaction that further intensifies disagreement).
• Finds it difficult to restrain negative emotions in relationships with people.

One of the general impressions from examining Tables 1 and 2 (in comparison with observations of other socionists) is that questims (in tendency) are more irritable and conflict-prone than declatims (as a purely preliminary hypothesis, one may even suppose that under conditions of neuropsychological stress these qualities increase further, whereas for declatims, on the contrary, they decrease). Based on analysis of all our experimental materials, there are also grounds to suppose that questims (ILE, LII, IEI, EIE, SEE, ESI, SLI, LSE) are, in group tendency, more inclined toward an underlying drive for disagreement between parties and, in any case, toward internal dispute, and in this sense are inclined to provoke argument, whereas declatims (the remaining 8 types) are more characterized by a tendency toward achieving general agreement and “unity of thought”; in this sense, declatims are more inclined toward harmonization and calming of opinions. Questims tend to pose questions and problems; declatims tend to “resolve” them. “I am a friend of authorities and an eternal enemy of so-called questions,” wrote the IEE poet of the late 19th century, A.K. Tolstoy. Although this was said jokingly and with considerable irony, it nonetheless expresses a significant part of the credo of “declatims.” Questims are generally more revolutionary, as they tend to play the role of provocateurs of disagreement and problem-setting. It is characteristic that even to the direct question about inclination toward revolutionary behavior (“Had I lived in the past, I might have become a revolutionary”), a positive answer is indeed more often given by questims (+0.11 standard deviation; although the contribution of the questim pole to this property is overshadowed by even stronger contributions of extraversion and logic poles). Almost all of the above-mentioned traits of questims had already been noted by V. Stratievskaya (although, in our view, in her subjectively adopted “map of psychotypes,” the supposedly characteristic questim properties she identifies strongly overlap and duplicate properties of the intuition and democracy poles; that is, her TIM map is not fully symmetric, and therefore shared properties of questims with intuition and democracy poles are exaggerated). It is also confirmed that questims (though only as a very weak statistical tendency and with large variation between types within the pole) are more inclined toward the poetics of distant journeys and the romance of pioneers. It is also confirmed (but only on average across the pole) that, as noted by V. Stratievskaya and P. Tsypin, while questims search for truth, declatims are more inclined to impose their opinions (item 8 of Table 2, item 6 of Table 4), and therefore declatims are more attentive and exacting regarding whether their interlocutor accepts their arguments and listens carefully. The assumptions of A. Augustinavičiūtė and V. Mironov about the supposedly high characteristic presence of frequent questioning and interrogative intonation for the questim pole were not confirmed in this study (see Tables 3 and 4 below). However, some properties of the questim pole were identified for the first time (good absolute musical pitch, strong drawing ability, a tendency to frequently look at oneself in the mirror), which had not previously been described. It should be noted that all properties of the questim and declatim poles presented in the tables are revealed only when averaging across all types of a pole, are small in absolute magnitude, and types within each pole differ not only in magnitude but even in the sign of the supposedly “characteristic” property. Thus, in expert diagnosis, manifestations of the questimity–declatimity trait may be used only with respect to specific psychotypes, but in no case with respect to all types of the pole as a whole. For example, interrogative intonation may be considered a weight in favor of EIE or IEI, with somewhat lower probability for IEE or EII, and as an argument against SLE and LSI, but in no case as an argument for assigning an unknown subject to the questim pole. It is more productive to use certain properties of the “questim–declatim” trait in diagnostic questionnaires; moreover, its properties are also of significant theoretical interest.

Here is how the famous Russian-Israeli poet Igor Guberman writes about the predominant (as it seems to us) questim properties of the Jewish people (“Jerusalem Gariki.” Moscow, Polytext, 1994. In the humorous and warmly friendly images of these “Jerusalem gariki,” in our opinion, clear signs of questimity are visible—who knows, perhaps among Ashkenazi Jews there are indeed many questims?):

“Rushing off on departures,

Jews suddenly realize

that they have become so Russified

that Jews irritate them.

The Jewish spirit is salted with tears,

the soul chronically aches;

a Jew who is satisfied with everything

is either a corpse or disabled.

To defeat disagreement,

and make the dissenters sour,

a Jew knows how to object

to a thought not yet expressed.

There are many ideas and ventures in the world,

but it will never happen in history

that men give birth to children,

and that Jews do not argue with each other.

Jews are drawn to move everything

and subject it to observation,

and one must dismiss them in time

to avoid trouble.

The name and essence of the Jewish mind—

a wanderer, fugitive, and outcast:

having found the right path,

he immediately seeks another.

I am at times a lion, at times a hare, at times a fox,

thoughts roam in a mad crowd,

for I am a Jew, and to agree

is hardest of all with myself.”

In general, this is written more about questims than about any national characteristics, and written with understanding and affection. The energy of the declatim is more directed toward pacification or submission to rules, whereas the energy of the questim is directed toward stimulating discussion and disagreement. Only in this sense (and not in the sense of mythical “interrogative intonations”) can the questim be associated with a “question mark.” It should be recalled, moreover, that “quest” in correct English translation means not a question, but a search.

So what, after all, is the relationship between questimity–declatimity and predominantly interrogative or declarative speech intonation, the tendency to ask (or not ask) questions, and the tendency to answer (or not answer) them?

Table 3. Verification of a number of “generally accepted” questim traits for their actual belonging to the questim pole (designations are the same as in Table 1).

Table 4. Verification of a number of “generally accepted” questim traits for their actual belonging to the questim pole (designations are the same as in Table 2).

What follows from Tables 3 and 4? In an average (across types within the pole) and very weak group-level tendency, interrogative intonation is indeed heard somewhat more often in the voices of questims—but far from in all types of this pole. Accordingly, a predominantly declarative, falling intonation is also characteristic not of all declatims, but only of some. Among the “questim” types, a reliably interrogative intonation is found only in two psychotypes out of eight!!! (IEI and EIE). In four questim types (SEE, ESI, SLI, LSE), declarative intonations, on the contrary, weakly prevail; two other “questim” types (ILE and LII) are indifferent to this property. As for the declatim pole, the “correct” predominance of declarative intonations is observed exclusively and only among declatim logicians (SLE, LSI, ILI, LIE). As for declatim ethicists of the fourth quadra (IEE and EII), in their speech interrogative intonations quite clearly dominate in most cases! There is nothing surprising in this—Table 4 shows that the main influence on intonation is exerted not by the much-discussed questimity–declatimity, but by entirely different axes: ethics–logic and intuition–sensing. Therefore, the most pronounced interrogative intonations occur not in the questim pole, but in the humanitarian club (and correspondingly, declarative intonations in the managerial club). Moreover, even within each of these clubs, the individual variation of subjects in magnitude and even sign of the property remains very high (let alone the questim–declatim poles, where even the average type values of intonation for more than half of the psychotypes do not follow the general rule). Why then does the questim pole as a whole still show a weak statistical association (albeit at the level of a low-reliability trend) with interrogative intonation? Exclusively due to the questims IEI and EIE, in whom this intonation is indeed very strongly expressed (so that when averaging across all types of the pole, this strong expression outweighs the contributions of all other types). It should be clear to everyone that the property “good ability to draw” can hardly serve as a meaningful diagnostic marker when choosing between psychotypes, and even more so for determining poles of any socionic traits. Yet, for distinguishing between questim and declatim poles, this property turns out to be far more informative than speech intonation (compare item 6 of Table 2 and item 1 of Table 4).

The tendency to ask questions and to answer them, as follows from Tables 3 and 4, turns out to be even less related to the “questimity–declatimity” trait, with one exception. If it concerns asking clarifying questions (to verify and track whether one is being correctly understood), then this specific property is associated with the DECLATIM POLE! This is also not surprising, especially since we were not the first to observe it. In socionics, many authors have long noted (as mentioned above) that questims are generally indifferent to whether they are correctly understood by others or whether others share their position—truth is important to them in itself—whereas for declatims this is not the case, since they do not seek “truth for themselves,” but rather pragmatically propagate their viewpoint for subsequent personal benefit. Questims are more oriented toward clarifying positions and sharpening problems, whereas declatims are oriented toward establishing agreement (by humane means in EII and IEE, by forceful means in SLE and LSI), aiming at “homeostasis,” at developing a common formula of compliance and ultimately resolving problems and questions. This, incidentally, explains why LII and ILE are researchers, whereas ILI and LIE lack this gift in group tendency (although in terms of the balance of black and white intuition, ILI differs little from LII, and LIE from ILE, and if one compares intuition of possibilities in LIE and LII, LIE even has more of it!). For the same reason, presumably, the declatim LIE is more successful in politics than ILE, and ILI more than LII, although the questim LII has greater initial interest in politics.

However, the main conclusion from the results of this work for practicing “typing socionists,” in our view, lies not in refining the substantive content of questim–declatim differences. The main conclusion for practitioners is that no psychological property is distributed evenly across trait poles (any traits, including basic ones, and especially in the case of the relatively weak trait “questim–declatim”). Thus, for example, strongly expressed interrogative or declarative intonations can indeed be used in diagnosis to distinguish between humanitarians and managers, but with respect to types of the other two clubs—scientists and socials—this property categorically cannot be used diagnostically. The strongest and most vivid expression of specific properties belongs not to trait poles, but to psychotypes themselves; therefore, psychotypes are best diagnosed directly and holistically, based on a sufficiently broad set of their individual properties. Mental functions (due to averaging manifestations from at least two psychotypes in each) have more smoothed, leveled characteristics, where variability between poles is smaller than between different psychotypes, many details disappear, and as a result, type diagnosis based on functions becomes inevitably less precise. The only advantage of function-based diagnosis is that there are fewer functions than types, making their properties easier to memorize. However, the worst characteristics, in terms of leveling of manifestations and massive information loss due to averaging across all 16 types within poles, belong to socionic traits. The associated dispersion of psychological properties is at least 4–6 times lower than for psychotypes. Consider in Table 1 property 1: “Negative emotions and conflict-proneness easily arising in relationships with people.” This property clearly differentiates types LIE and LSE, and distinguishes each from the population average. For example, the probability that a specific LIE has reduced conflict-proneness in relationships is 73%, and 27% that it is increased. The ratio of these probabilities is large (2.75), making it diagnostically useful. But now consider the same property in Table 2—among declatims “as a whole,” due to averaging across all types of the pole, conflict-proneness is reduced not by 0.56, but only by 0.27 standard deviations. Thus, the probability that a specific declatim has below-average conflict-proneness is only 62% (38% that it is increased). The probability ratio is only 1.6—insufficient for diagnostic use in expert assessments. And can declarative intonation in speech be used to diagnose declatimity? The averaged difference between poles on this property is only 0.12 standard deviations—meaning the probability that a randomly selected declatim has declarative falling intonation is 55%, only 5% above chance. This is completely insufficient for expert diagnosis—assigning someone to declatims based on declarative intonation will result in error nearly half the time (45%). Therefore, it must be considered a misunderstanding that in socionic practice some still attempt to perform type diagnosis based exclusively on holistic socionic traits (even strong and basic ones, without accounting for specific psychotype features). The necessity of considering manifestations at the level not only of traits, but also of functions and directly of psychotypes, has been repeatedly emphasized by V. Gulenko, but evidently must be emphasized even more often.

A second methodological error that has spread in recent years, even more dangerous for socionics because it not only reduces diagnostic accuracy but removes its “anchors,” is also associated with the use of “weak” socionic traits (to which the questim–declatim trait belongs). Suppose a typed individual manifests as a pronounced intuitive and a pronounced ethical type. Formally, they should possess properties of the “aristocrat” pole. But this is only formal, since in practice this regularity holds only as a statistical tendency. The aristocrat pole has its own exclusive properties, by which it can be diagnosed. If we take more than two dozen such marker manifestations (for greater accuracy) and quantitatively assess the expression of “aristocratic properties,” it turns out that not all strongly expressed ethical-intuitive types exhibit equally strong “aristocrat” properties. For ethical-intuitives (as well as for logical-sensors), “canonical” aristocratic properties are characteristic only at the group-average level, but for any individual they may not appear. Moreover, about 15–20% of ethical-intuitives will manifest across most marker properties as “democrats.” What does this indicate? Not limited measurement precision, but that all interrelations in the psyche are fundamentally statistical and probabilistic. There are no absolute rigid connections, no exact equations. One property cannot be automatically substituted for another. For example, you test a person on many markers and determine that they are extraverted, irrational, ethical, and democratic. On this basis, you classify them as SEE. But then you assess intuition–sensing balance and find they are strongly intuitive. Then they would be IEE. So which are they? All markers were correctly measured—the issue is that socionic traits do not always align as prescribed by simplified theory. The brain is not a machine with four degrees of freedom; it has many more. In such conflicting diagnostic situations, the question arises: which trait should be trusted more? Typically, preference is given—and should be given—to basic traits (they form the foundation of socionics and have the strongest substantive content). When conflicting traits are equally weighted, preference is given to the more strongly expressed pole. Experienced practitioners proceed this way, but still qualify their conclusion: for example, “you are not a ‘central’ IEE; you have strong additional accents toward certain ‘democratic’ types, shifting your aristocrat–democrat pole toward the democratic side.” In contrast, amateurs arbitrarily select any four of the fifteen traits (regardless of strength, often mismeasuring some), and on that basis assign a type. Such approaches implicitly assume the brain corresponds exactly to “Model A,” as a machine with gears, producing exactly 16 standard configurations. Typically, erroneous diagnoses rely on traits with weak substantive content—such as questim–declatim, static–dynamic, or positivism–negativism—whose behavioral manifestations are weak, poorly studied, and rarely reliably known. This is analogous to identifying a car model by engine noise. Such practices lead to proliferation of pseudo-socionics systems, substituting real structure with superficial indicators. If holistic type manifestations are ignored, and especially if even some basic socionic traits are ignored (which are fundamental precisely because they account for most observable behavior), such diagnostics cannot be trusted.

References

А.Аугустинавичюте, 1985. Теория признаков Рейнина. Очерк по соционике. Раздел 2. Опубликовано: «Соционика, ментология и психология личности», 1998, №№ 1 – 6. http://www.socioniko.net/ru/authors/augusta.html

В.Стратиевская. http://socionika-forever.blogspot.com/

Рабочая группа по соционике при лаборатории междисциплинарных исследований ИБПЧ (Санкт-Петербург). Наполнение признаков Рейнина: результаты практических исследований. http://www.socionics.spb.ru/Socionics\_works/Priz\_Rei\_2.htm