What is socionics and does it work

How Socionics appeared

Socionics is the concept of types of Augustinavichute A. Socionics: An Introduction. SPb. 1998. personality and relationships between them. According to her, there are criteria by which you can divide people by character into clearly defined groups - types. Also, some representatives of socionics believe that it can serve as the basis for the typology of not only individuals, but also their associations.

Carl Jung and his typology of temperaments

Throughout history, attempts to understand the human person have been the focus of philosophers and scientists. Even ancient authors tried to find criteria by which to determine the character of a person.

For the first time, the concept of character types was introduced into wide circulation by Carl Gustav Jung, a student of Freud and the founder of the direction of analytical psychology. In 1921, his book Jung K. G. Psychological Types was published. SPb. 2001. Psychological Types. In it, Jung summarized the previous experience of researchers in this field, and also set out his observations.

Jung based his typology on the four functions of the psyche that he singled out: rational (thinking and feeling) and irrational (sensation and intuition). Jung also identified the concepts of extraversion (concentration on external objects) and introversion (focus on internal mental activity) as mental attitudes. In his opinion, each person was dominated by one of the functions and attitudes, although he believed that, for example, “pure” introverts or intuitions did not exist. In this way, Jung received eight types of personalities.

Socionics: classification of psyche functions by Carl Jung

Aushra Augustinavichute and the creation of socionics

In the 1970s, the Lithuanian (Soviet) researcher Aushra Augustinavichiute developed her own typology of human characters and a theory of relationships between them on the basis of Jung's concept.

Augustinavichiute was not a psychologist by education, but an economist. She announced Augustinavichiute A. Socionics: An Introduction. SPb. 1998. his theory by a new science, which was named "socionics". The researcher created a special terminology and was confident that her work would be very useful to society.

In total, she identified 16 socionic types, which, for simplicity, were named after famous personalities: "Napoleon", "Dostoevsky", "Balzac", "Don Quixote", "Dumas" and so on.

Interestingly, Western science has Müller H. J., Malsch Th., Schulz-Schaeffer I. SOCIONICS: Introduction and Potential. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation. an interdisciplinary field of expertise of the same name - sozionik in German and socionics in English. She is exploring the possibilities of using artificial intelligence in sociology.

The development of Jung's ideas and the Myers-Briggs typology

Augustinavichiute was not the only researcher to create her own classification of characters on the basis of Jung's typology. In the 1940s, American Catherine Briggs and her daughter Isabelle Briggs-Myers formed An Overview of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. verywellmind. own system, which was called the Myers-Briggs typology.

The researchers also identified 16 types of character, but did not go deeper, unlike Augustinavichiute, into the issue of the relationship between them. They also created a test to determine the type of personality - MBTI (Myiers – Briggs Type Indicator). It is widely used in the United States and Western Europe, especially in the areas of career guidance and employment.

Socionics and the Myers-Briggs typology are often compared: they distinguish the same number of types, are based on Jung's theory and operate with similar terms.

One way or another, the authors of the presented concepts tried to understand the diversity of human personalities and find objective criteria that explain our behavior.

What is the theory and practice of socionics based on?

Information metabolism

Ausra Augustinavichiute borrowed this concept from the Polish psychiatrist Anton Kempinski. She understood by it the ways in which people exchange information with the world. In simple terms, they can be reduced to logic and feeling - rational and irrational ways of knowing.

The creator of socionics paid special attention to human speech. She believed that speech turns are the main criterion by which a person can be attributed to one of the types of information metabolism (TIM).

Mental functions

Augustinavichiute suggested by Augustinavichiute A. Socionics: An Introduction. SPb. 1998. that each of Jung's functions (thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition) allows a person to perceive information in only one way, being dominant and suppressing others. In addition, also in accordance with Jung's ideas, for each main function it was assumed the presence of an additional one - rational (thinking, feeling) or irrational (sensation, intuition). For example, the main rational function of a person is thinking, and it may have an additional irrational function - intuition.

So Augustinavichyute received 16 socionic types, forming an integral system - socion. Also Aushra Augustinavichiute changed the names of three functions: “thinking” became “logic”, “feeling” became “ethics”, and “sensation” became “sensing”.

Augustinavichiute believed that socionics can help a person in everyday life. For example, to find the most suitable sociotype partner - "dual" and avoid the most inappropriate - "conflict". Also in socionics, there are many intermediate options for interaction. For example, the researcher wrote to Augustinavichiute A. The dual nature of man. Vilnius. 1994. about the possibility of cooperation between the types "Balzac" (intuitive-logical introvert) and "Don Quixote" (intuitive-logical extravert). Socionists consider the Tables of intertype relationships to be a conflict for "Balzac". Research Institute of Socionics. type "Hugo", and dual - "Napoleon".

Why socionics is a pseudoscience

In modern science, any concepts of personality types are questionable, since they oversimplify the understanding of human character and are inapplicable in everyday life - despite the claims of their supporters. In particular, this is due to the development of differential psychology, which studies the individual differences of people.

Scientists insist that a person can correspond to several types at once and not have all the characteristics of one of them, which happens much more often than a complete coincidence. Also, the human psyche changes over time, and socionics insists that personality types are unchanged.

There is simply no statistical data confirming the effectiveness of socionics, and the results of socionic research are not reproduced when repeated.

It is also alarming that socionics is hardly studied outside the former Soviet Union. The philosopher Artemy Magun connects this with the general crisis of post-Soviet science due to the lack of mutual criticism and isolation from the experience of foreign scientists.

The very concept of Anton Kempinsky about information metabolism, which is the basis of socionics, is considered controversial, since some of its elements cannot be verified empirically. Among them is the thesis that any creature is driven by two main attitudes: the preservation of life and the preservation of the species.

In addition, the formulations in the descriptions of socionic types are too general and can be applied to anyone. For example, here is a phrase from the description of the type "Don Quixote" from the site of the "Research Institute of Socionics":

Do not feed them with bread, let me read about something mysterious and mysterious. ILE strive to immediately apply the acquired knowledge in practice, but at the same time they are rarely interested in receiving real benefits from their discoveries.

If you think about it, then almost any person is interested in the mysterious and enigmatic. And very many of us tend to try to immediately apply the knowledge gained. Psychics and astrologers like to use such general statements, and this phenomenon itself is called the Barnum effect.

All this, according to the mathematician Armen Glebovich Sergeev, a member of the special commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences, makes socionics related to frank pseudosciences, such as astrology and homeopathy.

The followers of the Myers-Briggs theory, in contrast to the socionics supporters, pay much more attention to the proofs of the existence of the types presented in the concept. But this does not save their theory from criticism either.

So, independent researchers call the work proving the effectiveness of MBTI unreliable, and the results of the test itself are non-reproducible, even in the same people. Also, scientists did not find a significant predominance of some functions of the human psyche over others (for example, thinking over feeling).

Jung himself, although he did not abandon his concept of personality types, was disappointed with Jung CG Psychological types. SPb. 2001. Its popularity, and the practices based on it called "salon children's game" and "hanging labels". Jung saw his theory as a tool for the psychologist to begin work with, rather than making an accurate diagnosis with it.

Scientists have much more confidence in the five-factor model of the human personality ("Big Five"), which Western researchers have been developing since the 60s of the XX century. This concept does not single out character types, but assesses a personality according to five criteria:

extraversion;
benevolence (the ability for friendship and consensus-building);
conscientiousness (conscientiousness, hard work, decency);
emotional stability (neuroticism);
intellect (openness to new, creative abilities).

At first glance, socionics is a fairly harmonious, clear and logical system. And an appeal to Jung's authority in psychology and an almost mathematical model for defining personality create a sense of its scientific nature. But in fact, socionics oversimplifies the concept of personality and is unable to explain the "dropout" of the characters of many people from its typology. It may be fun, but not science.

At the same time, socionics does exactly what Jung did not expect from his classification, and even goes further. She not only labels people, but also suggests building relationships based on vague descriptions, similar to astrological ones. In addition, socionics sells well: these are books, and paid trainings, and even services for the "optimization" of the work collective. Here are just the benefits of them, most likely, will be near-zero.

Therefore, you should not limit yourself to the framework of socionic typology and extend such stereotypes to other people.