Is White Intuition Interested in History and Evolution?

It turns out that it is not.

White Intuition is interested exclusively in imagined narratives that continue over time, in which the subject is involved as an observer or direct participant, rather than in historical facts and dates. Without an element of personification of the forces at work, Ni becomes bored, so it is certainly not very interested in the sequence of geological epochs.

Let us examine clusters of properties with specific questionnaire items:

1) INTEREST IN WORLD HISTORY (with emphasis on historical facts, causal relationships, and systematization)

Interest in world history (with emphasis on historical facts, causal relationships, and systematization)

(averaging the profiles of 19 scale questions, 16587 respondent answers in total; all profiles except the second type profile are normalized to a unit sigma of the type profile)

Unnormalized type profile (deviations from the mean in fractions of the population standard deviation):

Contribution of traits to the variance of the property, in percent:

1. I like reading serious historical and journalistic books. 0.89

2. Historical events are always well interconnected in my mind - through their simultaneity with other events of the same period in other parts of the planet, analogies with other periods, and also their causal interconnectedness with one another. 0.88

3. I often compare the historical past with the present of our world. 0.86

4. I like watching films on television about the political history of different countries. 0.82

5. If I begin telling a child episodes from the world history of past centuries, I am more likely to continue a narrative about one particular subject, establishing causal connections between events close to one another in time and emphasizing their sequence, than to give similar historical examples from different periods. 0.77

6. I instantly retrieve an appropriate historical example from memory. 0.76

7. I am convinced that young people’s complete ignorance of historical events of the past is a more important and dangerous problem for society than alcoholism and drug addiction. 0.75

8. I like reading and studying history, and I know very well, almost “automatically,” what was happening in different parts of the planet during the same spans of time a hundred or two hundred years ago. 0.73

9. At school, I was distinguished by a good memory for the exact dates of various battles and other events that one was expected to know in the national history curriculum. 0.73

10. I know world history, from the adoption of Magna Carta to the present day, considerably better than most of my peers, both male and female. 0.72

11. I place great value on historical truth. 0.60

12. I like watching television programs featuring discussions about assessments of various historical events of the past. 0.59

13. The profession of an academic historian reconstructing the entire sequence of long-ago events from fragmentary surviving facts would suit me very well. 0.52

14. I remember many historical dates. 0.49

15. The profession of a research historian would suit me very well. 0.43

16. History at school interested me little; to this day I get confused about the sequences of historical events and epochs. -0.25

17. Acquiring a machine for instantaneous movement from one point in space to another (teleportation) would interest me more than acquiring a time machine. -0.68

18. When I studied a particular historical epoch at school, I imagined it as a separate fragment only in that one country, while parallels with simultaneous events in other countries scarcely formed in my mind. -0.73

19. I have no interest whatsoever in the surnames and life histories of those who led the country in the last century. -0.74

The main function for this property turns out to be Ti (see the attached tables). Fi hinders the property, while the role of Ni is close to neutral, but is also somewhat negative (unlike Ne).

Two socionic traits prove decisive for interest in history – PROCESS and MERRINESS, with Process leading very strongly (accounting for 41% of all variance, Merriness – 16%).

2) LOVE OF “LIVE” MODELING AND PLAYING OUT NARRATIVE VERSIONS OF PAST HISTORICAL EVENTS IN THE IMAGINATION (with emphasis on the effect of as-if personal participation and presence)

Love of “live” modeling and playing out narrative versions of past historical events in the imagination (with emphasis on the effect of as-if personal participation and presence)

(averaging the profiles of 5 scale questions, 8450 respondent answers in total; all profiles except the second type profile are normalized to a unit sigma of the type profile)

Unnormalized type profile (deviations from the mean in fractions of the population standard deviation):

Contribution of traits to the variance of the property, in percent:

1. I often think about various dramatic events of the past, about turning points in history. 0.90

2. I often think about various events of the past, about turning points in history. 0.86

3. I like mentally investigating the mainsprings of long-past historical events, getting to the most probable versions of those distant events and to their true mechanisms. 0.79

4. I often play out fantasy versions in my thoughts using the historical past of previous centuries as material. 0.78

5. I like watching serious historical films. 0.55

Here, however, it is a completely different matter! Live action and intrigue appear, and the role of Ni immediately rises sharply; moreover, it becomes decisive (although the strong positive role of Ti and the negative role of Fi are also retained).

The role of the general Intuition factor rises sharply, whereas the role of Process and Merriness, although it also remains “on the positive side,” falls sharply in its percentage contribution.

Still, Radzikhovsky, with his historical lectures full of palace secrets and intrigues, is more likely IEI than EIE.

From the profiles of this property it is also clear which types should be interested in historical and historical-fantasy television series. These are all four Beta types (but especially IEI), followed by the Alpha logical types, ILI, and EII.

But types such as SEI, ESI, SLI, and IEE – it is better not to torment them with these films!

3) INTEREST IN THE PROBLEMS OF HUMANITY, SOCIETY, AND THEIR DEVELOPMENT

Interest in the problems of humanity, society, and their development

(averaging the profiles of 14 scale questions, 29762 respondent answers in total; all profiles except the second type profile are normalized to a unit sigma of the type profile)

Unnormalized type profile (deviations from the mean in fractions of the population standard deviation):

Contribution of traits to the variance of the property, in percent:

1. I often think about the political organization of the world and the fates of different states within it. 0.79

2. Almost daily, thoughts circulate in my head about how rational and proper life could be organized on a worldwide scale. 0.78

3. Knowledge of economics, science, and politics can help in making decisions in everyday life. 0.77

4. I have always been interested in the laws governing the development of society and civilization. 0.77

5. I often think about the shortcomings of legislation and existing rules and procedures. 0.75

6. I like speculative fiction about social utopias or dystopias, that is, about different versions of the organization of society. 0.74

7. I have always been interested in regularities in the historical development of society. 0.69

8. I am interested in the structure of the state and its electoral system. 0.60

9. The globe and the world map have never especially interested me - to this day I sometimes get confused about some world capitals and about where particular countries are located. -0.76

10. The advancement of society is not of any particular importance to me - there are values more important than that. -0.78

11. One should improve not the world, but oneself. -0.80

12. I think about the fate of the world and humanity: 1) Often, more often than others 3) Like everyone else 5) Rarely -0.82

13. The interests of the family are more important to me than the interests of humanity. -0.83

14. Problems at the level of the family and the group are more interesting to me than the problems of society. -0.89

Here the picture again resembles the very first one, that is, general interest in historical events and the historical process. The role of Ni is neutral, the role of Fi is negative, and Ti, Qi, and Ne lead in positive influence on the property. Process again plays the leading role among the traits, accounting for more than a quarter of all variance.

4) INTEREST in the evolution of the Universe and Earth, in the general laws of world development

Interest in the evolution of the Universe and Earth, in the general laws of world development

(averaging the profiles of 3 scale questions, 4564 respondent answers in total; all profiles except the second type profile are normalized to a unit sigma of the type profile)

Unnormalized type profile (deviations from the mean in fractions of the population standard deviation):

Contribution of traits to the variance of the property, in percent:

1. I have always been curious about questions of the geological evolution of Earth, the origin and development of the first forms of life on it. 0.86

2. I always enjoy watching films about research and discoveries related to the emergence of life on Earth and its geological history.. 0.76

3. Questions of the origin of the universe and life, evolution, historical development, and the further prospects of civilization interest me more than other questions. 0.74

The role of Ni is neutral; Ti leads in the positive direction, while Fi and Se lead in the negative direction (if, in historical fights of the distant past, Se still finds something of interest for itself, albeit with some yawning, then in the alternation of geological strata and species that disappeared from Earth long ago, it sees absolutely no practical benefit for itself). By contrast, the positive influence of Ne rises sharply. Among the types, the logical-intuitive types of the first quadra clearly dominate. For all the other 14 types, this turns out to be “of no concern at all” (apparently, if Charles Darwin was indeed a “Balzac,” then with strong additional accentuations on Ne and Ti).

Well, for comparison, let us consider a love of narrative fantasies themselves – not necessarily purely historical ones.

5) PREDISPOSITION TO FREQUENT NARRATIVE FANTASIES (about one’s personal past, future, or abstractly imagined situations, - more often either with the subject directly involved in the action, or - less often - as a passive observer)

PREDISPOSITION TO FREQUENT NARRATIVE FANTASIES (about one’s personal past, future, or abstractly imagined situations, - more often either with the subject directly involved in the action, or - less often - as a passive observer)

(averaging the profiles of 29 scale questions, 69524 respondent answers in total; all profiles except the second type profile are normalized to a unit sigma of the type profile)

Unnormalized type profile (deviations from the mean in fractions of the population standard deviation):

Contribution of traits to the variance of the property, in percent:

1. I enjoy wandering pleasantly in imagination along the viscous and continuous streams of future events. 0.93

2. Most of all, I like thinking about the past and future, fantasizing about the possible development of past or future events under various assumptions. 0.93

3. I often like to look in my mind at all sorts of imaginary pictures of the future and play with them. 0.92

4. I often like to fantasize about how history might have turned if this or that in it had happened just a little differently. 0.89

5. Almost every day I have very vivid experiences of past events, including sudden, involuntarily arising and emotionally intense memories from early childhood. 0.87

6. In my imagination, I often observe the same object in different time periods. 0.86

7. I have a tendency toward fantasy, imagination, and living in an invented reality. 0.86

8. I often “play out versions” in my thoughts in my personal past - how the situation might have unfolded if only things had been different… 0.86

9. In my imagination, I can play out scenes resembling cartoons. 0.86

10. As a child, when playing various games, I liked talking to myself. 0.86

11. I often deliberately imagine various situations solely in order to derive pleasure from these thoughts. 0.85

12. I constantly “run” various scenes of possible developments through my mind, with the imagined participation of the relevant characters. 0.84

13. I easily “jump” with my mental attention across different time periods in the history of my life.. 0.83

14. I often indulge in mental games in which my imagination escapes into other invented worlds. 0.83

15. I am often in a pleasant trance of certain narrative fantasies extended over time - as though I were mentally watching a film with characters, or fragments of waking dreams, or listening in my head to pieces of theatrical scenes improvised on the spot. 0.83

16. I often imagine various fictional situations with many naturalistic and sometimes even nauseating details. 0.78

17. I often run alternative variants of events in someone’s life through my mind. For example, it could have turned out this way if… Or it could have been this way. Or it could have been yet another way. 0.76

18. Many characters are present in my thoughts at the same time. There they talk, move, and live their natural unpredictable lives, while I merely observe from the side, as if sitting in a theater. 0.72

19. In my memories of the past, alongside events that actually occurred, there are always (more than half) also narrative versions - how everything might have happened and developed then if only things had been different… 0.71

20. I sometimes think in detail about how differently my life would have turned out and developed if I had enrolled not in this educational institution but in another one, had then ended up not in this job but in another, etc. 0.71

21. When I think about something, I almost always also think at the same time about what happened before and what will happen afterward. 0.70

22. Every hour, in my thoughts I “run ahead,” going over versions of events that have not yet occurred. 0.70

23. I often recall in detail various conversations and dialogues in which I participated many weeks or even many months ago. 0.68

24. My fantasies most often have an extended narrative character unfolding over time - they resemble films or theatrical scenes. 0.60

25. My imagination most of all resembles a waking dream in which objects move, communicate, and play out various scenes. 0.57

26. Every day I recall in detail various events from long ago in my life, mentally reliving them. 0.47

27. After watching cartoons as a child, I often fantasized, putting myself in the place of one of the characters, and in my thoughts tried to make the main villain even angrier, bringing him to boiling point and a thirst for revenge. 0.42

28. My world is the real world; fictional worlds are not for me. -0.87

29. It is difficult for me to move through time in my thoughts - whether through the past or the future. -0.87

And only now, in this fifth property, does the role of Ni (and Intuition as a whole) become strongly positive and decisive!