Lie Scales and Inflated Self-Assessment

1. WHAT IS WRONG WITH EXISTING PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES OF SOCIAL LYING (SOCIAL DISSIMULATION)
2. THE NEED TO CORRECT A RESPONDENT’S ANSWERS FOR THEIR INTEGRAL SELF-ASSESSMENT OF THEIR OWN SUCCESS IN LIFE
3. HOW CORRECTION FOR INFLATED SELF-ASSESSMENT WORKS
4. ON THE CORRELATION OF SOCIONIC TYPES AND TRAITS WITH “INTEGRAL INFLATION OF SELF-ASSESSMENT.”

Here we will examine how the properties of the 16 sociotypes and 15 socionic traits correlate with the INFLATION OF THE RESPONDENT’S SELF-ASSESSMENT. We will also explain how the “raw” answers of people responding to the questionnaire are corrected for this property.

This characteristic is partly correlated with the social lie correction scale frequently used in psychological questionnaires – namely, with the tendency to give oneself predominantly positive characteristics, exaggerate one’s abilities and, most importantly, emphasize in all situations the “social correctness” of one’s behavior. For the latter reason, this scale is often called the scale of public dissimulation (“social dissimulation” - that is, exaggeration of the correctness and social acceptability of one’s behavior in a wide variety of situations).

Here we should immediately state our critical remarks concerning the sets of questions that are ordinarily used in psychological questionnaires as control or correction scales of “public dissimulation.” For example, the Maudsley “social lie” scale, widely known in psychology (social dissimulation, exaggeration of the “social correctness” of one’s behavior, that is, its unwavering conformity to social rules and norms), uses the following 21 questions:

AGREEMENT:

1. I am pleased by another person’s deserved success, even if it is achieved by my worst enemy. 0.36
2. In games I always win much more often than I lose. 0.32
3. All my habits are good and desirable. 0.31
4. If I say that I will do something, I absolutely always keep my promise, even if doing so is very inconvenient for me. 0.28
5. I always respond quickly to letters addressed to me - immediately after I read them. 0.15
6. I have always paid my fare on urban public transport. 0.06
7. I would always declare everything at customs accurately and truthfully, even minor things, and even if I knew for certain that this minor violation would never be detected. 0.01
8. As a child, I always immediately and without complaint did what I was told. -0.02

DENIAL:

9. I sometimes laugh at a dirty joke. -0.07
10. I sometimes boast a little. -0.09
11. I have happened to be very late for a date or for work (at least a couple of times). -0.11
12. During my life, there have been at least several occasions when I told an untruth. -0.11
13. From time to time I have financial worries and problems. -0.14
14. During my life, it has happened that I sometimes started discussing things about which I actually knew nothing. -0.17
15. It happens that I sometimes gossip. -0.20
16. I sometimes put off until tomorrow what I should do today. -0.24
17. I sometimes have thoughts and ideas that I would very much not want other people to know about or even suspect. -0.28
18. Among the people I know, there are some whom I definitely do not like. -0.29
19. Sometimes I become angry and irritated. -0.30
20. From time to time it happens that I lose my self-control and begin to get angry. -0.37

At the same time, some of the questions on this list are simply directed at a person’s level of self-assessment and level of ambition in life, and here, first of all, there is at least a partial association with extraversion and positivism (nos. 2; 14; and partly no. 13). Another and the largest part of the questions is directed at the “social correctness” of behavior – which, as is well known in socionics, is closely associated with socionic rationality and partly with judiciousness. Question no. 12, in turn, is associated with rationality and white Questimity; no. 9 – with Fi; no. 18 – with decisiveness, constructivism, and Questimity.

If all these questions are regarded as indicators only of social lying, and the correlation with this scale is subtracted from all of the subject’s answers, then in practice we will be removing from respondents’ answers a correlation not with their lying, but with quite specific stable traits of their character (first and foremost – rationality, which has nothing to do with lying). Therefore, if this scale is used for quantitative correction of answers, we will obtain distorted results in relation to the subjects’ personalities; and if it is used simply for control, we will obtain the conclusion that almost all Irrationals tell the truth in questionnaires, whereas most Rationals supposedly lie chronically and try to conceal their true nature from psychologists. This is, of course, incorrect.

However, this scale (supposedly a “social lie scale,” which is a misconception held by a large number of psychologists) nevertheless contains a component that is unrelated or only weakly related to rationality and other socionic personality traits, and that characterizes a person’s tendency to overestimate or underestimate their success in life. It may be determined by a person’s upbringing in childhood (when their ambition was suppressed or cultivated), their current mood level, their preceding objective successes or failures in life, and, finally, the person’s intelligence (and, correspondingly, their ambition as well).

All these traits are, for the most part, not socionic personality characteristics (although in places they may correlate weakly with them). It is precisely for these traits that respondents’ answers need to be corrected – because, although they are not the temperamental, innate personality characteristics that interest us, they can nevertheless influence many questionnaire answers that are in any way connected with evaluating one’s success in particular activities. But for this purpose, first, the corresponding scale must consist of very diverse questions characterizing the self-assessed level of a person’s success, abilities, and adequacy in very different areas of life. In addition, the weight coefficients applied to the questions of this scale must then be selected so that the scale ultimately has practically no correlation with any socionic type or trait.

This is not so easy to do, because self-assessment is associated, among other things, with innate socionic traits. Thus, it is not difficult to suppose that, all other life circumstances being equal, self-assessment will be higher among Positivists, Extraverts, Emotivists, and Rationals (and also among Declatims).

Nevertheless, constructing a scale for the level of self-assessment of one’s success that would not correlate at all with socionic traits is a solvable task, and the construction of this scale for each questionnaire (namely, the selection of weight coefficients for statements already present in the questionnaire) is an automated procedure for us, carried out using a standard computer neural network in the EXCEL program.

To illustrate the property of inflated self-assessment of one’s success itself, we will give several questionnaire items having the maximum positive and, alternatively, the maximum negative correlations (the correlations are shown after the questions) with the tendency to overestimate one’s talents, successes, and capabilities:

POSITIVE CORRELATIONS:

1. I am a very self-confident person, flexible and open to new things. 0.61
2. I remain calm, confident, and optimistic even in difficult situations. 0.55
3. I know how not to become irritated by anything and, because of this, to achieve my goals and live for my own pleasure. 0.54
4. I easily overcome failures. 0.52
5. As a rule, my mood is evenly confident, calm, and optimistic. 0.52
6. I know how to steer a general conversation in the direction I need. 0.51
7. I remain calm in stressful situations. 0.51
8. Most of the time I feel calm and self-sufficient. 0.51
9. I have a very flexible mind. 0.50
10. I have an invigorating effect on other people. 0.50
11. I have a very well-developed, calmly confident sense of self-worth. 0.50
12. I know how to “slip between the streams,” so that no social storms are frightening to me. 0.50
13. I am an excellent negotiator. 0.49
14. I effectively solve almost all problems that arise. 0.49
15. I can easily concentrate my attention, without difficulty (on an object, thought, or memory). 0.49
16. On average, my mood contains much more of a feeling of calm, confident comfort than of anger or anxiety. 0.49
17. I am almost always completely confident in myself, without a trace of doubt, hesitation, or reflection. 0.49
18. I am more optimistic than most people. 0.49
19. It is easy for me to control the expression of my feelings. 0.48
20. My unbending willpower sustains me in even the most difficult situation. 0.48

NEGATIVE CORRELATIONS:

1. I have no confidence in my abilities. -0.49
2. A high level of fearfulness and anxiety is usual for me. -0.49
3. I am often nervous. -0.50
4. I often lose my temper and “boil over.” -0.50
5. I am an anxious person. -0.50
6. I am often in despair. -0.50
7. I am afraid of many things. -0.50
8. As a rule, I lose control of myself during all kinds of emergency situations. -0.50
9. I am almost unable to read expressions of fear on people’s faces - I do not have that capacity for recognition. -0.50
10. I feel insecure in my interactions with other people. -0.51
11. I often feel like a victim of circumstances and feel unable to change anything. -0.51
12. Negative emotions can “wind up” quickly in me, even for minor reasons. -0.51
13. I am usually unsure of myself. -0.51
14. I often lose heart and seem to myself to be a person poorly adapted to life. -0.51
15. I am a nervous person. -0.51
16. I often feel depressed and passive. -0.52
17. I easily panic. -0.52
18. I often become very upset over trifles and complain about life. -0.53
19. I often feel crushed by failures. -0.54
20. I often experience fears. -0.58

A person familiar with socionics will immediately notice that at least the questions in the second, negative part of this list also have quite socionically substantive loadings (mainly on the constructivism trait, and partly on introversion and Questimity). Therefore, if in questionnaires we use a similar scale to correct answers for the tendency to overestimate-underestimate one’s successes, with weight coefficients exactly equal to the correlation coefficients already given for these questions with the tendency to overestimate one’s talents and capabilities, then as a result of correcting the respondent’s answers for this trait we will also, undesirably, alter the person’s real scores on Constructivism-Emotivism, Extraversion-Introversion, Positivism-Negativism, Questimity-Declatimity, and some other traits.

But if the weight coefficients of the questions are slightly changed (while still preserving, as far as possible, their maximum agreement with the stated correlations), then the correlation of our correction scale with Constructivism-Emotivism and other socionic traits can be removed. This means that the scale can then be made suitable for correcting the “raw” answers of our subjects. This is what is done for each questionnaire in the manner described above – namely, using an Excel neural network that selects the weight coefficients of the questions on the basis of two criteria: first, so that they differ as little as possible from the existing correlations of these questions with the property of self-assessed success. And second – so that the resulting scale does not correlate with any socionic trait.

As we can see, the meaning of the questions from the above list of correlates of the property of self-assessment of one’s success comes down to the respondent being very good (or, conversely, poor) at this or that, across the broadest possible range of activities. There are few (or almost no) questions here about compliance with social norms, which are strongly linked to the indicator of socionic rationality and, by contrast, predominate in the Maudsley social dissimulation scale. But the aforementioned Maudsley scale is nevertheless also closely associated with the property of self-assessment of one’s talents and successes. To see this, look again at the Maudsley scale presented at the beginning of our post, but this time pay attention to the correlation, shown after each question, between that questionnaire item and the property of overestimating one’s talents and successes.

Note that positive correlations with self-assessment of one’s talents and successes predominate in the positive part of the Maudsley scale. In the negative part – negative correlations predominate. But overall, the Maudsley scale (and the “lie scales” of numerous widely known psychological questionnaires based on it) is nevertheless poorly suited to correcting the influence of self-assessment on questionnaire answers, because it is associated more not with the predominantly non-socionic and acquired during life (not innate) level of self-assessment of one’s success, but - with control of one’s behavior conditioned by socionic rationality (that is, not with any social lying at all, but with a thoroughly socionic, temperamentally conditioned, and innate personality property).

Above we noted that the property of inflated self-assessment nevertheless also has certain socionic projections (which is why, as we also wrote above, the correlations of questionnaire items with this property have to be modified slightly, so that when they are used as weights in calculating the magnitude of the property of self-assessed success, any socionic projections are ultimately excluded from the level of this self-assessment, leaving in it only the non-socionic component actually needed to correct the answers).

So, after all – what specific socionic correlations are exhibited by the UNMODIFIED property of the level of self-assessment?

The attached table shows that the greatest tendency to inflate the level of their self-assessment is found among people whose type profile is dominated by peaks of the properties of the SEE, LIE, ESE, and IEE types (all Extraverts, three of whom predominantly have Emotivist traits, and three – Declatim traits). Correspondingly, the tendency to underestimate their self-assessment is found among people whose type profile is dominated by the traits of the Beta Questims IEI and EIE.

As for the traits, the greatest contribution to high self-assessment is made by the poles of Declatimity, Emotivism, and Statics. To a lesser extent – Extraversion and Seriousness.

Taken together, all 15 socionic traits account for approximately 70% of the variance in the “level of self-assessment” (because the sum of the squared correlations of the 15 mutually orthogonal socionic traits with this property equals 0.7). Thus, as we can see, this property is to a considerable extent socionically determined (although to a lesser extent than the Maudsley “social lie” scale). To correct a respondent’s answers for the influence of the remaining “non-socionic” 30% of differences in the level of self-assessment, the entire socionic component must first be removed as fully as possible from this self-assessment indicator (as we wrote above). For this purpose, the previously known correlation of the corresponding questionnaire item with the non-socionic part of the respondent’s scale of self-assessment of their level of success in life is removed from each raw answer of the respondent (by the standard method generally accepted in mathematical statistics).

V. L. Talanov, Jan. 2022

HOW THE PROPERTIES OF THE 16 SOCIOTYPES AND 15 SOCIONIC TRAITS CORRELATE WITH THE AVERAGE SELF-ASSESSMENT OF ONE’S SUCCESS AND OF ONE’S ABILITIES AND CAPABILITIES