Victimity

“Cultivating One’s Own Damagedness” as the Basis of Ni Victimity - Ivan Romanov’s Hypothesis

(Averaging the profiles of 10 questions in the scale, 4044 responses in total; all profiles except the 2nd and 3rd type profiles are normalized to a unit sigma of the type profile). All profiles are given after corrective factor rotation.

Unnormalized type profile (deviations from the mean in fractions of the population standard deviation):

Approximate percentage of representatives of each type group giving, for each individual averaged question of the scale, the raw responses “YES” and “RATHER YES” (taking the sign of the question into account). For the entire scale, the contrast will be much greater because of the multiplication of the probabilities of many questions:

Contribution of traits to the variance of the property, in percent:

The hypothesis was tested by us in questionnaires f.097 (360 respondents) and f.098 (434 respondents) using a scale consisting of the following questions, whose wording was for the most part proposed by I. Romanov (after each question, the coefficient of linear correlation between its type socionic profile and the averaged socionic profile of the entire scale is indicated):

1. There is a certain brokenness in my character. 0.96
2. I often like to think about my wounds - emotional or physical. 0.92
3. I sometimes imagine myself lying in a hospital. 0.91
4. I sometimes “retreat into illness” - there is a certain sweetness in it. 0.83
5. At times I deliberately aggravate my emotional wounds so as to feel the world more acutely and be capable of something greater. 0.82
6. Even for no reason at all, I fantasize about some bodily injuries or illnesses in my body. 0.82
7. If nothing in you hurts - then you are not living either. 0.79
8. There is clearly something wrong with me. 0.73
9. I am proud of my injuries, and I will not allow anyone to treat them. 0.70
10. I feel wounded by life. 0.64

The resulting profiles of this 10-question scale are shown in the first table. The resulting profile has pronounced socionic contrast; Ni indeed sharply dominates it. In second place (although with a substantial lag) is the negative contribution of Si.

In the trait profile, most of its pronounced poles correspond to a strong contribution of Ni (namely, intuition, decisiveness, introversion, dynamics). But Aristocracy and Tactics also play a role, which additionally strengthens the contribution of types with base Ni (the Tactical types IEI and ILI), and especially the Beta-quadra IEI (a socionic Aristocrat).

It is interesting to check which other questions among those previously investigated by us are closely correlated with this scale of “cultivating one’s own damagedness”.

Among the first three dozen questions most strongly correlated with the scale under consideration, the majority are questions on masochism (indeed, almost all questions on masochism among those previously tested by us in earlier years, from a wide variety of questionnaire versions, fell into this group).

Here they are:

MASOCHISTIC TENDENCIES

(Averaging the profiles of 12 questions in the scale, 88252 responses in total; all profiles except the 2nd and 3rd type profiles are normalized to a unit sigma of the type profile). All profiles are given after corrective factor rotation.

Unnormalized type profile (deviations from the mean in fractions of the population standard deviation):

Approximate percentage of representatives of each type group giving, for each individual averaged question of the scale, the raw responses “YES” and “RATHER YES” (taking the sign of the question into account). For the entire scale, the contrast will be much greater because of the multiplication of the probabilities of many questions:

Contribution of traits to the variance of the property, in percent:

1. I sometimes like it when I am humiliated and even caused moderate pain. 0.98
2. At times I am interested in painful and humiliating sensations, and experience a certain “high” while undergoing them. 0.97
3. Sometimes it is pleasant to feel my subordination and experience humiliation. 0.97
4. At times I catch myself noticing that, in relationships with strong and aggressive people, I subconsciously like to play a dependent role, while being somewhat capricious and provocative. 0.95
5. Sometimes I want my partner to punish me. 0.95
6. Sometimes I like hurting myself. 0.95
7. There is a certain masochism in my character: at times I like engaging in self-abasement. 0.93
8. I have masochistic tendencies. 0.92
9. After experiencing pain, I almost always have a pleasantly blissful “aftertaste”. 0.92
10. I sometimes like to feel like a victim. 0.91
11. I have fantasies involving ideas of self-torture and self-destruction. 0.89
12. I like it when I am humiliated during sex and even caused moderate pain. 0.85

The profiles of this scale (masochistic tendencies) are shown in the second figure. The role of Ni is even more contrastively expressed in the profiles, but overall the profile is extremely close to the profile of the “cultivating one’s own damagedness” scale. The only difference is a somewhat stronger contribution of the Decisive pole in the case of masochism, and a slightly smaller contribution of introversion. Accordingly, although the minus for Se remains a minus in terms of contribution, it is nevertheless slightly smaller in absolute magnitude, more modest, than in the case of the “cultivating one’s own damagedness” scale.

The second group of correlates of “cultivating damagedness” is represented by questions that, in meaning, correspond most closely precisely to this same property of “cultivating one’s own damagedness”, but with an additional shade of heightened “brokenness” and suicidal urges. Here they are:

SENSATION OF ONE’S OWN BROKENNESS

(Averaging the profiles of 6 questions in the scale, 10407 responses in total; all profiles except the 2nd and 3rd type profiles are normalized to a unit sigma of the type profile). All profiles are given after corrective factor rotation.

Unnormalized type profile (deviations from the mean in fractions of the population standard deviation):

Approximate percentage of representatives of each type group giving, for each individual averaged question of the scale, the raw responses “YES” and “RATHER YES” (taking the sign of the question into account). For the entire scale, the contrast will be much greater because of the multiplication of the probabilities of many questions:

Contribution of traits to the variance of the property, in percent:

1. At least once a week I feel deeply unhappy. 0.94
2. At times I think about death, “turning” this topic over in my mind in different ways. 0.93
3. I am often drawn in my thoughts toward death and nonexistence, and I want to think about this for a long time, as a good way out and the best revenge on myself and others. 0.93
4. I have often had doubts about who I am. 0.91
5. Sometimes I get stuck for a long time thinking about various fears, while also deriving increasing pleasure from devising ways in which they could be avoided. 0.90 ---------------—
6. I am quite satisfied with life. -0.93

The profiles are shown in the third image. Among the features distinguishing the resulting profiles from the first two cases is an increased contribution of Constructivism, as a result of which the Constructivists ILI and EII become practically equal in peak height to IEI in the type profile of this entire scale, which characterizes “brokenness”.

Another, third block of correlates (profiles in the 4th image) – a predisposition to a sad-melancholic mood with a tinge of mild depressiveness:

PREDISPOSITION TO A SAD-MELANCHOLIC MOOD

(Averaging the profiles of 4 questions in the scale, 3338 responses in total; all profiles except the 2nd and 3rd type profiles are normalized to a unit sigma of the type profile). All profiles are given after corrective factor rotation.

Unnormalized type profile (deviations from the mean in fractions of the population standard deviation):

Approximate percentage of representatives of each type group giving, for each individual averaged question of the scale, the raw responses “YES” and “RATHER YES” (taking the sign of the question into account). For the entire scale, the contrast will be much greater because of the multiplication of the probabilities of many questions:

Contribution of traits to the variance of the property, in percent:

1. I am tormented by a depressive mood (melancholic thoughts, everything seems rather gloomy and hopeless, I do not feel like doing anything). 0.97
2. I am often in a sad mood. 0.96
3. I not infrequently have sad states in which everything suddenly begins to seem hopeless. 0.95
4. My self-esteem constantly fluctuates, and it is often very low. 0.94

A slight increase in the contribution of introversion and Constructivism is characteristic of this block.

The fourth block of correlates, also characterizing victim properties – consists of obsessive thoughts and mental images, ruminations. Moreover, this obsessiveness (for which dopamine is responsible) occurs against a background of difficulty concentrating and mental “fog” (which in turn indicates reduced cholinergic activity of the cortex). It is also known from medicine that this property is correlated with increased dopaminergic activity and some weakening of acetylcholine activity in the brain:

OBSESSIVE THOUGHTS AND MENTAL IMAGES

(Averaging the profiles of 9 questions in the scale, 26677 responses in total; all profiles except the 2nd and 3rd type profiles are normalized to a unit sigma of the type profile). All profiles are given after corrective factor rotation.

Unnormalized type profile (deviations from the mean in fractions of the population standard deviation):

Approximate percentage of representatives of each type group giving, for each individual averaged question of the scale, the raw responses “YES” and “RATHER YES” (taking the sign of the question into account). For the entire scale, the contrast will be much greater because of the multiplication of the probabilities of many questions:

Contribution of traits to the variance of the property, in percent:

1. Sometimes I am haunted by a visual mental image that cannot be driven away by an effort of will. 0.94
2. Often it is as though something vague is constantly “spinning” in my head - fragments of words, or thoughts, or something else; moreover, this spinning prevents me from concentrating, and in general it is intrusive, uncomfortable, and unpleasant. 0.94
3. I sometimes have a strange, unpleasant premonition that any moment, within a minute, something terrible is going to happen, such as that I will go insane or die - at the same time my heart starts beating faster and my breathing quickens. 0.92
4. Sometimes over the course of a day I call up the same thought many times in succession. 0.92
5. At times I have a strange and not very pleasant feeling that my own thoughts – are actually not mine, but as if someone had put them into my head, as if someone were dictating them to me from outside. 0.91
6. Sometimes I hear imaginary voices in my head that are difficult to drive away and silence by an effort of will. 0.88
7. Sometimes it seems to me that the people currently present in the room are behaving unusually and, perhaps, plotting something against my interests. 0.87
8. At times I “get stuck” observing the gradual change over time of some internal sensation of my own. 0.87
9. Sometimes I spend an entire evening thinking and worrying about what I need to do, what I did not do, or what I cannot do that needs to be done, or what will happen if something is not done, etc. 0.86

Finally, the fifth block of correlates (the sixth, final image with a table) – consists of derealization and depersonalization experiences, the principal cause of which, as is known, is a weakening of cholinergic activity:

DEREALIZATION AND DEPERSONALIZATION EXPERIENCES

(Averaging the profiles of 7 questions in the scale, 15760 responses in total; all profiles except the 2nd and 3rd type profiles are normalized to a unit sigma of the type profile). All profiles are given after corrective factor rotation.

Unnormalized type profile (deviations from the mean in fractions of the population standard deviation):

Approximate percentage of representatives of each type group giving, for each individual averaged question of the scale, the raw responses “YES” and “RATHER YES” (taking the sign of the question into account). For the entire scale, the contrast will be much greater because of the multiplication of the probabilities of many questions:

Contribution of traits to the variance of the property, in percent:

1. It happens that sometimes, for a few moments, I lose contact with reality and stop feeling what is happening, although at that time I am not thinking about anything else. 0.95
2. Sometimes I have a strange feeling that everything around me is not happening for real, but is make-believe, as in a theater. 0.95
3. It happens that everything around me is somewhat as if in a fog. 0.94
4. I have problems with the sense of my inner personal integrity. 0.92
5. At times I have had a strange feeling as though I had lost the sense of separateness, stability, and indivisible integrity of my human “self”, as though I were spreading into the surrounding world like butter on bread. 0.92
6. At times there are states in which the visual world seems flat to me, devoid of depth, although I am looking with both eyes. 0.91
7. Sometimes there is a strange feeling that the close people around me are some kind of soulless gray masks playing some kind of game. 0.87

It is noteworthy that, in all six properties considered that characterize victim manifestations, the EII type is invariably added to the four Victim types, and its indicators even exceed the level of expression of these properties in the LIE type.

The “cleanest” properties among those considered, from the standpoint of being as exclusively characteristic as possible specifically of the four Victim psychotypes, prove to be masochism and, following it, the property of “cultivating one’s own damagedness” proposed by Ivan Romanov.

Most of the properties considered are directly associated with increased dopaminergic activity and weakened acetylcholine activity, while the property of masochism also indicates an increased release of endorphins and dopamine in response to pain.

Thus, at the level of neurohormones, victimity is characterized by increased dopaminergic tone, weakened acetylcholine tone in the brain, and an enhanced endorphin-dopamine response to painful stimuli and unpleasant experiences.

It is precisely the endorphin-dopamine response to directly painful or simply psychologically painful stimuli that forms a chain of positive reinforcement in the subject, ensuring Victims’ constant attraction to this kind of stimulus. Increased release of endorphins in response to pain then also provokes the release of dopamine, and the latter consolidates the conditioned reflex - ultimately ensuring subsequent attraction to pain or to the constant cultivation of painful, but also “sweet”, thanks to dopamine, thoughts that constantly “chew over” fantasies of some possible harm.

V. Talanov