Correlations of Functions of the Psyche and Poles of Socionic Traits With the Logarithm of Respondents’ Age (N=46740 Respondents)

From the results of statistical processing of V. L. Talanov’s questionnaires (V. L. Talanov, 2023):

Correlations of functions of the psyche with the logarithm of respondents’ age (N=46740 respondents)

Correlations of socionic traits with the logarithm of respondents’ age (N=46740 respondents)

The most “childlike” functions are Ni and Di, and the most “adult” - Si and Qi.

The sum of the 4 rational functions increases with age, while the sum of the 4 irrational functions decreases.

The “childlike” state corresponds to the trait poles of Decisiveness, Positivism, Process (Rightness), Intuition, and Declatimity. To a lesser extent - Irrationality, Tactics, Introversion, and Dynamics.

Due to increases in Questimity, Democracy, and Seriousness, aggregate individualism increases with age, while orientation toward the collective decreases. Skepticism, wariness, disagreement, and the behavioral self-preservation complex also increase with age - due to increases in Questimity and Negativism.

The most “childlike” functions, as we can see, are Ni and Di, and the most “adult” - Si and Qi.

The sum of the 4 rational functions increases with age, while the sum of the 4 irrational functions decreases.

The “childlike” state corresponds to the trait poles of Decisiveness, Positivism, Process (Rightness), Intuition, and Declatimity. To a lesser extent - Irrationality, Tactics, Introversion, and Dynamics.

Due to increases in Questimity, Democracy, and Seriousness, aggregate individualism increases with age, while orientation toward the collective decreases. Skepticism, wariness, disagreement, and the behavioral self-preservation complex also increase with age - due to increases in Questimity and Negativism.

It is clear that the age-related trends obtained should be treated with a certain degree of caution, since they were not obtained longitudinally (that is, in a multi-year experiment) from the same participants, but are based only on single-time age cross-sections of the entire array of respondents to sociodiagnostic questionnaires. It should be kept in mind here that, at different ages, the motives for completing psychodiagnostic questionnaires on the internet may differ, and therefore some of the trends obtained may, in principle, be related to this. In particular, among adults (who have passed the age of seeking sexual partners), interest in socionics may be sustained by scientific curiosity, with which Ne is most strongly associated. As a result, the natural decline of Ne with age may, due to this age-related group characteristic, be partially attenuated and masked.

Nevertheless, most of the presented results also correspond well to quite different observations of age-related changes in human psychology. Thus, it is well known not only from socionics that children are more prone to daydreaming (Ni) and more often have vivid dreams (again Ni). Children’s play behavior, in the course of which imagined behavioral scenarios are practiced, is also very closely associated with Ni (which underlies these scenarios). One could also expect a much stronger association of Ne with childhood than is obtained from the presented table (since Ne underlies learning by analogy, providing, on the path from the most general to increasingly specific particulars, an expansion of conceptions of the world and the properties of its things). But what was obtained is what was obtained.

Children are also much more strongly oriented than adults toward the norms of the collective (Di) and toward patterns of behavior set by older or stronger and more influential authorities (again Di).

The increase in rationality with age is also independently confirmed - namely, by the lifelong development of the functions of the anterior neocortex of the brain, which, as is well known from neuroscience, are most closely associated precisely with the provision of rational functions of the psyche (that is, functions that evaluate and control the subject’s behavior).

In evolutionary biology, there is a view that the history of the phylogenetic development of a species (in particular, from instincts to intelligent, experience-based activity) is partially reflected in the passage through analogous stages during the individual ontogeny of an organism. That is, in childhood the influence of the subcortex and the instinctive inheritance associated with it is manifested more strongly, while in adulthood - less strongly (in adulthood, the functions of the neocortex associated with the use of accumulated individual experience already dominate). We believe that there are exceptions to this rule, and the association of intuition with childhood is one of them. In phylogeny, intuition quite obviously appears later than sensing, but in ontogeny after the birth of a child everything proceeds in exactly the opposite way - at the stage of childhood, that is, the accumulation of individual experience, it is intuition that is needed and useful for ensuring this accumulation (which is also programmed in age-related neurophysiological trends).

The special role of Di in childhood, however, simultaneously corresponds both to the principle of situational age-specific utility and to the principle of reflecting sequential phylogenetic stages, if these stages are counted not from our ancient chordate ancestors, but only beginning with our primate ancestors, comparatively close to us on the evolutionary tree, who undoubtedly possessed a much more developed herd instinct than modern Homo sapiens. Individual ontogeny, that is, the process of each person’s maturation, is precisely the gradual overcoming of this gregariousness. However, this overcoming reaches completion not in the entire mass of individuals, but only in its most reasonable part. The bulk (the so-called deep people) largely remains stuck in this sense at its childhood stage, the stage of imitating authorities and the majority.

Another hypothetical conclusion can be drawn from the table. Unlike the first eight functions, the last four (questim-declatim) are calculated entirely without taking rationality/irrationality into account. However, from the results obtained one can conclude that both democratic functions (Qi and De) are associated with a reduced influence of the subcortical instinctive sphere, whereas both aristocratic functions (Di and Qe) are more strongly associated with this instinctive influence. From this, one can further suppose that rational traits should perhaps be attributed to the democratic functions, and irrational traits - to both aristocratic ones.

As for the positive association of Si with age, and hence not with the instinctive sphere but with experience, it should be kept in mind that Si is by no means associated only with food; in humans, it is also very closely associated with fine motor control and manual skills. Fine motor control - the product of the accumulation of individual experience in ontogeny. In newborn offspring of both humans and chimpanzees, it is equally poorly developed. But adult humans exceed adult chimpanzees in their fine motor control by orders of magnitude.

V. L. Talanov