Frequency of Intertype Relations in Different Samples

Continuation of our review of the results of the year-long study of intertype relations (ITR) - the frequency of representation of different socionic intertype relations in pairs of people depending on the same-sex and opposite-sex, blood-related, purely friendly, or romantic relationships connecting the pair (results of V. L. Talanov’s 2019-2020 study, data from sociodiagnostic questionnaires)

All results are presented in this preprint in the attached images.

What should be noted?

1. Although in socionics business and especially kindred relations are considered comfortable and frequent by most authors, in practice they prove to be among the least frequent (especially kindred relations!). Mirage, conflict, and supervision relations in practice surpass kindred relations in popularity. Among other things, this fact shows that the results of the study, with the ITR statistics obtained in it, cannot be explained either by respondents “fitting” their contacts with other people to “socionically correct relations” (by excluding from their contacts people with types “unsuitable” according to socionics), much less by fitting (unconsciously falsifying) their own types in questionnaire diagnostics to the “correct” relations that are supposedly meant to be comfortable in socionics. We believe that such doubts about the objectivity and validity of the results obtained, and attempts to explain them by effects of suggestion and autosuggestion, can be dismissed on this basis alone.

2. The validity of the results as characterizing, quite objectively, the differing comfort of different intertype relations is also confirmed by ITR statistics in blood-related pairs. Although in this case respondents cannot have any motives arising from socionic theory to “portray” particular relations (except, perhaps, identity, kindred, and business relations, which may in fact follow from the genetic similarity of the pair members), in fact the statistics turn out completely different – again with a predominance of duality and even supervision relations (which runs counter to the genetic hypothesis, but is fully explained by the fact that it is easier for duals, even if they are blood relatives, to agree to undergo joint typing). Unfortunately, for the same reason, the resulting statistics for blood-related pairs can provide nothing for testing the genetic hypothesis of socionic traits – for this, what is needed is not selective-voluntary but exhaustive socionic testing of blood relatives.

3. In romantic pairs, dual intertype relations in fact turn out to be the most popular (about 20% of all pairs), followed in popularity by activation relations.

4. Among friendship pairs overall, identity relations (rare among romantic pairs) dominate, followed by duality relations; among same-sex friendship pairs, identity relations clearly dominate, whereas among opposite-sex friendship pairs duality and mirror relations have the advantage (among all romantic pairs, mirror relations, by contrast, are among the rare ones)

A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE CALCULATION METHOD:

To diagnose intertype relations in a pair, the tables presented here use not the leading types of the pair members (the highest peaks of their type profiles), but the full trait profile of each of the two pair members. These trait profiles are compared with one another, taking into account whether the polarity of each of the 15 traits should match or not match for each of the 16 ITR types. As a result, the scalar product of three vectors is computed – namely, two vectors composed of the trait profiles of the pair members and a third vector consisting of signs of matches-mismatches between trait poles for each of the 16 ITR.

Ultimately, each ITR for the given pair of respondents is characterized by a certain algebraic number capable of taking both positive and negative values.

The maximum of these numbers indicates the type of intertype relation (ITR) that corresponds most closely to this pair of respondents.

This number is retained, while all the other (smaller) numbers characterizing the other 15 ITR types are replaced by zeros. After this, its mean score in the sample is calculated for each ITR. Then the sum of these mean scores for all 16 ITR is found. Each previously obtained mean score is divided by this sum, and as a result we obtain the weighted shares of ITR in the sample that are given in Tables 1-1 and 1-2.

If the calculations are performed not on the basis of trait profiles, but on the basis of the leading peaks of type profiles, all tendencies in the results are retained, but ultimately they are less contrasting (less accurate).

Incidentally, this also indicates an absence of influence of suggestion effects on the results. If the observed nonuniformities in the representation of different ITR in pairs (shown in our tables) were explained by effects of suggestion and autosuggestion among respondents, then the nonuniformities in ITR shares obtained not on the basis of comparing trait profiles, but on the basis of comparing leading types, would be more contrasting, and with even greater contrast – when based on declared types. However, neither the first nor the second assumption turns out to be correct - it is precisely and only the diagnosed trait profiles that ultimately yield the best and most contrasting results (in subsequent parts of the publication we will show this in more detail). Consequently, effects of suggestion and autosuggestion cannot be invoked to explain the results obtained, which indicate differing attractiveness of different types of intertype relations.

Table 1-1

Shares of intertype relations (what relation the second member of the pair has to the first) depending on the type of actual relationship connecting the pair. ITR are determined by the maximum product of the vectors of the pair members’ trait profiles and the vector of signs indicating the correspondence of these traits for each of the 16 ITR (see Table 2).

Strictly ordered pairs (in opposite-sex pairs, the first member is always the man). The nality of the first member of the pair is determined by the sign of their nality trait.

Table 1-2

Shares of intertype relations (what relation the second member of the pair has to the first) depending on the type of actual relationship connecting the pair. ITR are determined by the maximum product of the vectors of the pair members’ trait profiles and the vector of signs indicating the correspondence of these traits for each of the 16 ITR (see Table 2).

Strictly ordered pairs (in opposite-sex pairs, the first member is always the man). The nality of the first member of the pair is determined by their maximum-valued function among the 8.

Table 2

What relation the second member of the pair has to the first, and the corresponding relation between trait poles (+1 - matching, -1 - opposite poles)