On Sex Differences in Socionic Indicators

(Sex differences between women and men in a sample of 365 mixed-sex pairs of people connected by romantic or friendly relationships)

Comparing the average values of socionic indicators of women and men is usually methodologically complicated by the fact that the motivations to participate in socionic testing can differ significantly between men and women. This, in principle, can explain many sex differences that appear in such comparisons. In other words, the method of comparing average socionic indicators in combined samples of individual women and men who resort to questionnaire-based socionic testing does not allow one to separate the factors of truly physiological and temperament-psychological differences from the role and influence of the socio-psychological factor. However, if one compares men and women in a sample in which subjects undergo typing simultaneously as mixed-sex pairs (connected by friendly or romantic relationships), then the role of the socio-psychological factor in influencing the resulting differences is minimized. This is due to the fact that the member of the pair who is less inclined toward typing from the socio-psychological standpoint is “pushed” toward typing by the other member of the pair who is more interested in socionic diagnostics. And conversely—the activity of those psychotypes that are particularly inclined toward sociodiagnostics in each sex is restrained by the other member of the pair, who in this case also has to fill out the questionnaire. Below we present tables of sex differences for a number of socionic indicators obtained by comparing 365 women and 365 men who jointly (as pairs) filled out sociodiagnostic questionnaires. We believe that these results are maximally indicative of the true (i.e., physiologically and temperamentally conditioned) differences between women and men. In other words, we believe that the influence on these differences of heterogeneities in the type composition of male and female samples—caused by the specifics of the motivations of men and women of different psychotypes to undergo testing—is quite minimal. The colored bars in all the tables show the difference between women and men in fractions of a standard deviation (standard scatter) of the corresponding indicator.

Table 1. Sex differences in a sample of 365 men and 365 women, connected by either romantic or friendly relationships. The main indicator (delta) is equal to the difference between the corresponding mean raw scores in the female and male subsamples, divided by the averaged standard deviation of this indicator across both subsamples

Initially, correlations with 16 types are measured; traits and functions are calculated in conditional units based on them	Male mean	Female mean	(W-M)/(mean sigma)	Initially, correlations with 15 traits are measured; types and functions are calculated in conditional units based on them	Male mean	Female mean	(W-M)/(mean sigma)
ILE	0,015	-0,039	-0,325	ILE	-0,008	-0,087	-0,167
LII	0,040	-0,033	-0,419	LII	0,119	-0,098	-0,473
SEI	-0,019	0,034	0,373	SEI	-0,041	0,069	0,300
ESE	-0,037	0,040	0,423	ESE	-0,075	0,103	0,370
SLE	0,062	-0,082	-0,765	SLE	0,157	-0,193	-0,716
LSI	0,055	-0,068	-0,650	LSI	0,117	-0,172	-0,584
IEI	-0,052	0,070	0,638	IEI	-0,132	0,149	0,565
EIE	-0,083	0,078	0,767	EIE	-0,224	0,191	0,740
SEE	-0,014	0,008	0,136	SEE	0,017	-0,014	-0,070
ESI	-0,031	0,034	0,443	ESI	-0,073	0,068	0,357
ILI	0,054	-0,029	-0,472	ILI	0,149	-0,056	-0,418
LIE	0,019	-0,032	-0,346	LIE	0,027	-0,064	-0,223
IEE	-0,033	0,050	0,484	IEE	-0,048	0,094	0,315
EII	-0,037	0,074	0,615	EII	-0,057	0,166	0,455
SLI	0,040	-0,047	-0,434	SLI	0,044	-0,073	-0,218
LSE	0,024	-0,052	-0,472	LSE	0,026	-0,083	-0,267
extraversion	-0,006	-0,004	0,024	extraversion	-0,014	-0,010	0,022
irrationality	0,006	-0,005	-0,211	irrationality	0,018	-0,013	-0,206
statics	0,007	-0,007	-0,760	statics	0,041	-0,044	-0,763
intuition	-0,010	0,017	0,341	intuition	-0,025	0,044	0,337
peripheral	-0,001	0,003	0,098	peripheral	-0,004	0,011	0,107
tactics	-0,001	0,000	0,123	tactics	-0,006	0,003	0,120
carelessness	-0,005	0,001	0,459	carelessness	-0,035	0,005	0,460
logic	0,039	-0,048	-0,907	logic	0,090	-0,111	-0,909
ascending	-0,003	0,000	0,071	ascending	-0,012	-0,003	0,069
constructivism	-0,002	0,003	0,348	constructivism	-0,014	0,020	0,350
yielding	-0,003	0,001	0,271	yielding	-0,021	0,005	0,279
questimity	-0,008	0,002	0,359	questimity	-0,038	0,009	0,359
democracy	0,003	-0,002	-0,362	democracy	0,022	-0,016	-0,365
positivism	-0,002	0,000	0,121	positivism	-0,010	0,002	0,137
process	-0,001	0,001	0,073	process	-0,003	0,002	0,045
Ni	-0,018	0,048	0,227	Ni	-0,074	0,138	0,266
Ne	-0,028	0,044	0,264	Ne	-0,041	0,098	0,186
Si	0,029	-0,035	-0,225	Si	0,055	-0,057	-0,141
Se	0,042	-0,076	-0,398	Se	0,131	-0,232	-0,438
Ti	0,116	-0,145	-0,818	Ti	0,270	-0,365	-0,790
Te	0,103	-0,136	-0,786	Te	0,233	-0,275	-0,659
Fi	-0,103	0,148	0,846	Fi	-0,194	0,322	0,703
Fe	-0,142	0,152	0,836	Fe	-0,379	0,371	0,818
Qi	-0,006	-0,001	0,040	Qi	-0,011	-0,043	-0,057
Qe	-0,039	0,012	0,444	Qe	-0,220	0,097	0,623
Di	0,032	-0,006	-0,290	Di	0,121	-0,026	-0,261
De	0,013	-0,006	-0,124	De	0,109	-0,028	-0,230
age group (from 1 to 5)	2,596	2,403	-0,163
level of familiarity with socionics (from 1 to 4)	2,179	2,460	0,313
probability of the declared sociotype based on self-assessment (in %)	73,958	74,077	0,006
level of familiarity with PY (from 1 to 4)	1,782	1,969	0,208
probability of the declared PY type based on self-assessment (in %)	66,829	68,774	0,083
response acquiescence (preference for answers shifted toward “five”)	-0,166	0,238	0,200
social dissimulation (aggregate self-assessment across questionnaire items of one’s “correctness,” as well as talents and abilities)	0,903	-0,109	-0,514
5 – sigma of the resulting raw typological profile of the respondent under direct measurement of correlations between their responses and typological diagnostic vectors	0,167	0,179	0,219
f = (h1 − 0.425·h2 − 0.353·h3) / h1 — an indicator characterizing the “purity” of the sociotype, its distance from the central (ambiverted, mixed) zone	0,506	0,531	0,197

RESULTS: Among the 15 socionic traits, women, compared to men, show (on average) substantial shifts toward ethics and dynamics (these shifts almost reach the size of one standard deviation), as well as weaker shifts toward carefreeness, intuition, constructivism, questimity, and aristocracy. By functions, the most pronounced shifts in women are toward strengthening Fe, Fi, and Qe, as well as weakening Ti, Te, and Se. For additional indicators accompanying socionic questionnaire diagnostics, noticeable shifts are revealed in women toward higher scores for their level of familiarity with socionics and toward lower indicators of social dissimulation (that is, women’s self-assessment turns out to be lower than men’s, while the sincerity of their answers is, on the contrary, higher). Conditionally, the most “masculine” psychotype is SLE, and the most “feminine” is EIE (see Table 1). This, incidentally, can explain why among same-sex romantic couples (see another publication vk.com/wall-168821911_14595), among which lesbian couples predominated in the previously examined statistics, the pair of psychotypes SLE+EIE is represented at a frequency significantly higher than expected—because of which, in these couples, activation relations rise to first place statistically (instead of dual), and the trait of nullity in same-sex romantic couples becomes complementary (instead of matching, as is statistically typical in opposite-sex romantic couples).