On Diagnosing Intertype Relations

When diagnosing the type of socionic relations in a pair of people using a questionnaire, the predominant relation type sometimes turns out to be not at all the intertype relation corresponding to the leading peaks of the pair members’ type profiles. Why is this so?

Let us explain the answer using the attached images of type profiles from a recent case actually submitted for diagnosis of intertype relations. The first profile corresponds to the leading type ILI (a fairly pure one), whereas the second – to IEI (already not quite so pure, with numerous accents). It would seem that, in this case, the leading intertype relation should be “Kindred”. But that is not so! According to the exact calculation, the leading relation type turns out to be Dual!

Why?

Because the type of intertype relations (and the comfort resulting from them) depends on the complete trait profile of two people, and not at all on the leading peaks of their type profiles.

For a Dual relation, the poles of extraversion, statics, intuition, logic, Questimity, tactics, constructivism, and positivism need to be opposite within the pair. The poles of all the remaining 7 traits (including irrationality and the three quadra traits), by contrast, need to have the same sign in both members of the pair.

For a Kindred relation, however, the rules governing correspondence between the trait poles are different.

Thus, for the trait profiles of the two members of the pair shown in the first figure, the condition for Duality is satisfied for 10 of the 15 traits. The trait-correspondence condition required for Kindred intertype relations is satisfied for only eight of the 15 traits (this occurs mainly because the second member of the pair has many additional accents).

This is why, in the end, the leading relation type in this pair nevertheless turns out to be Dual rather than Kindred.

And, incidentally, in statistics on romantic couples, the proportion of cases of Dual relations is greater specifically when relations are calculated using the trait-based method, rather than by the method of matching the leading peaks of type profiles.

And this indicates three important things at once.

First, types are not discrete; in psychological space, their regions are not quantized. The points corresponding to respondents are distributed continuously in this multidimensional space of psychological personality factors, with many intermediate, transitional cases between the so-called “standard” types (if it were otherwise, if all deviations of trait profiles from the standard of the classical TIM were merely noise, then the trait-based method would yield a result much more diffuse and less contrasted in terms of the proportion of Dual types than diagnosis of relations based on the leading peaks).

Second, intertype relations really should be calculated using the continuous trait-based method (which we briefly described above), rather than the method of selecting and matching only the leading peaks of the type profile.

Third, finally, the statistics of intertype relations in pairs are objective and reflect the combination of people’s true types, rather than being fitted by the members of the pair so that their types “correspond to Dual relations.” If it were otherwise, then the maximum percentage of Dual relations would be obtained precisely for the leading peaks of the type profiles (which are easier to falsify when completing the questionnaire), and not at all for the trait-based calculation (because it is practically impossible for a respondent to falsify the complete picture of their own trait profile).

Raw socionic profiles of the pair members:

Below are the individual results for your pair. In the right-hand column, each relation type is characterized by a number indicating the degree of expression of that relation in the case of your pair. In the middle column, a pink “1” marks the most strongly expressed (dominant) relation.

Below is a reference table for different relation types (averaged statistical data on their comfort).

What relation does the second member of the pair have to the first?

(the closest variant, taking into account the holistic type profiles with all their accents)

Forecast of the degree of mutual comfort for each relation type (in arbitrary units) - more comfortable relations (with higher scores) are highlighted in pink.