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== This is Pseudoscience right? Why no mention? ==
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Listen, I'm no psychologist but this reeks of pseudoscience. It's not a widley accepted theory and it doesn't have a lot of empirical evidence to back it up from what I can tell. I've showed this to some Psychology professors at the college I attend, and they all say it's bunk.
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== Lead sentence again ==
The most obvious pseudoscientific element of socionics is that it actually holds true that a persons outer appearence can predict their personality - Sounds a bit like Physiognomy to me. http://socionics.com/advan/vi/vi.htm Here is a website that tries to explain the "Socionic Principles of Visual Identification".
I would say that, apart from the fact that the article is too long considering the its encyclopedic goal and relatively small importance of socionics, we should approach socionics more like psychoanalysis. In the article about the psychoanalysis, the dispute about its status as the field of science is moved to its proper place - to the criticism section. Similarly to psychoanalysis, socionics is based on some unfalsifiable models, but it seems to work in practice, if used to proper problems by reasonable, intelligent people. I would say it is very distant from hard science (as, for example, Jungian depth psychology is also distant from modern science). I do agree that many socionists - people who devoted their lives to building socionic models and using socionics in their psychological practice, mainly in Russia and Ukraine - present socionics as a scientific theory, especially to unsuspecting common people. Therefore, they are making pseudoscience out of it, and they are unethical. I would say that socionics per se is neither science or pseudoscience, but most people use it pseudoscientifically. Rather than labeling it pseudoscientific in the overview, I say that criticism section should be used for this purpose. Because if we label socionics pseudoscience right away, the same should be done with depth psychology and with psychoanalysis. Moreover, the article is just too long and overloaded with references from sources too closely related to the topic in question. --] (]) 14:04, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
:{{u|Pancarlos}}, Misplaced Pages-wide consensus is that criticisms should not be relegated entirely to a separate 'Criticism' section, as that causes severe neutrality problems. In the case, the fact that virtually no one outside of a few practitioners accepts that Socionics is legitimate science is extremely relevant context, and readers need to know that right away so they can understand the rest of the article. ] (]) 14:31, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
::You say that no one outside of a few practitioners accept that Socionics is a legitimate science, but have you considered that hardly anyone who is English-speaking even knows what Socionics is? Sample size is important when making statements such as this. There are only a tiny number of English-speaking psychologists who know what Socionics is, and none of them maintain that Socionics is a science or a pseudoscience. It is a philosophy that presents tool for interpretation of data, not for empirical predictions. Do you know of the School of System Socionics? Do you know of the World Socionics Society? If you do not know of groups such as these, which are well established and take a scientifically responsible approach to the use of Model A, by not trying to use it predictively, but ad hoc on information already gathered, then how can you assess whether the sources you are collating on this subject are reliable or not when speaking of Socionics as a monolith? ] (]) 02:36, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
:::Misplaced Pages follows the sources, and in this case we happen to have 10 of them. ] (]) 02:41, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
::::If that were true, the article would say both that Socionics is a science and a pseudoscience, because there are plenty of sources claiming the former, as well as the 10 claiming the latter. Evidently, someone hasn't included these sources for whatever reason. The point is, sources that support a one-sided narrative have been picked at the exclusion of other sources, whether accidentally or deliberately. At the same time, simply 'following the sources' implies that this is not an interpretive exercise, when it clearly is. After all, and if had 11 sources claiming Socionics is a science and only 10 claiming Socionics is a pseudoscience, you wouldn't say that 'Socionics is a science'. You'd still probably have the article call it a pseudoscience.
::::Of course, I'm not saying you should claim Socionics is a 'science' either, it's obviously not. There are definitely people in Russia and Ukraine who have vested interests in calling Socionics a 'science' publicly. I've had heated discussions with these people, particularly Alexander Bukalov. However, there are multiple groups such as the World Socionics Society and the School of System Socionics, and other practitioners who see the value in Socionics but don't claim that it is a science, but rather an ad hoc analytical framework for making sense of a person's values and strengths, using commonly accepted methodologies such as self-rated questionnaires and interviews. Their approaches are different and by the definition of 'pseudoscience' meaning something erroneously claimed to be a 'science' that means that these approaches to Socionics are not pseudoscientific. Now, if it's simply the case that these sources haven't been provided and taken into consideration, alright, maybe we can accumulate those sources to make the case.
::::Would you be willing to concede the point and allow the article to be made more nuanced if I provide these sources? At the moment, the article is a heavily disputed mess and will always be a mess until we work together to clear things up. It's obvious to me that no socionists are involved in the decision-making on the information available, so we have people who don't have that insight making decisions on how to present things they don't yet understand. ] (]) 12:05, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
:::::Sourcing isn't a vote. Sources written by people who are making their living off Socionics (such as the groups you mention) are weighted far below the independent sources. The independent sources are quite clear, this is pseudoscience. That {{tq|no socionists are involved in the decision-making}} is a feature, not a bug, just as it is a benefit that no flat-earthers are making decisions for the ] article. ] (]) 12:13, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
::::::There are two sets of double standards that are implicit to what you suggest here.
::::::1. Many articles are dependent almost solely on sources by people who are an expert in that field. Do you have a rule on the ophthalmology article that no sources be taken from ophthalmologists, who obviously make money from the field so cannot be trusted? Obviously you don't, because that is a science. However, you have already categorised socionics as a 'pseudoscience' in your head, so you are applying a different rule to the one that would be used for an established science. Am I right?
::::::
::::::2. It has not been established that any of these sources are 'independent' though, only that they are not socionists. They could very well be people who benefit from bringing the entire field into disrepute. Any psychologist who uses methodologies that compete with socionics will fall into that category. Have you checked for that possibility? People don't tend to just write articles saying that Socionics is a pseudoscience without some kind of axe to grind. What is the process to ensure that there is no conflict of interest on the other side? Several of the sources themselves are not substantiated by data, but are opinions, or passing remarks, rather than concerted attempts to determine if Socionics is a pseudoscience or not. So, not only are you listening to opinions by people who could very well have a conflict of interest against socionics, but you are then shutting out more informed opinions by those who have dedicated their lives to understanding this field.
::::::I don't think it's a benefit that you don't allow flat earthers to contribute to the flat earth article. It reads as a very biased article that wields the scientific consensus to obstruct an exploration of the flat earther's ideas. Just because an idea is not true, that does not mean that their perspective should not be understood as much as possible on the article dedicated to exploring them, and to do that, you actually need the flat earther's, in the same way you have ophthalmologists. The agenda of this article is to tell the reader to not believe flat earthers, rather than being to tell the reader informatively about flat earther's and what they believe. I don't like that at all, and I'm not a flat earther or a fan of flat earthers.
::::::I'll tell you what though. I actually do know some independent sources that verify what I have been saying. I'll put those in. ] (]) 00:14, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
::::::I have another question. Misplaced Pages accepts the existence of protoscience as something different to pseudoscience. Is it acceptable to link to independent sources that recognise some approaches to Socionics being protoscience, rather than pseudoscience? If so, would it be acceptable to represent that nuance in the introductory paragraph? ] (]) 01:57, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
:::::::You have an obvious ] here. You should not be writing about yourself or trying to cite your group as though it is an independent source of information. Really, you should not edit this article at all. As to your speculation that there is some secret cabal operating to bring down socionics, there is no evidence of that. There is plenty of evidence of people with a vested interest in promoting this stuff (as you well know). The 'agenda' of Misplaced Pages is to present what the best independent sources say about a topic. Proponents of fringe ideas are rarely happy with that, but it is how Misplaced Pages operates. ] (]) 02:57, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
::::::::Too few people are interested in Socionics to be both 1) independent, 2) knowledgeable about it, and 3) inclined to write and publish on it, so your priorities in this context are a recipe for a misleading picture, and will inevitably be dominated by those who are not socionists, but have a desire to publish against it for whatever reason. I never said there had to be a 'cabal', just people who stand to gain, and so go to the effort of publishing. It's too obscure to be done justice by a system of decision-making that inevitably prioritises those with a bias against X over those with a bias in favour of X by incorrectly confusing the former with the virtue of 'independence'. Not being part of the club doesn't necessarily confer objectivity.
::::::::Nevertheless, if you are depriving me of the ability to use what I know to improve the article, then I would ask you to make the edits instead, as I assume that you are independent, and therefore, will not turn away good sources of information even if they contradict what is currently argued. Evidently, if I go around suggesting that other people make edits, I cannot pay them to do so, as that would immediately become a conflict of interest. They would have to want to spend the time doing it out of a Kantian sense of duty to writing and providing good information. Hard to find such people, although you appear to be of this rare breed. If as you claim you are not biased against Socionics, then surely you will be obliging to any information I can provide you.
::::::::For example, have you looked at Pietrak K, The foundations of socionics – a review, Cognitive Systems Research 47 (2018) 1-11. DOI/10.1016/j.cogsys.2017.07.001 ?
::::::::Karol Pietrak is not a socionist. He is a good and VERY RARE example of someone interested in the theory and with enough of an academic background to write on it academically, without in any way standing to gain from it, and to do so in English. In this article, published in a peer-reviewed journal, he clearly concludes that "At the most general level, socionics may be classified as part of the cognitive sciences." (p.18)
::::::::As you say, sourcing is not "a vote". That's good, in which case, can you really say that this article in a peer-reviewed journal is the inferior of the ten sources arguing the opposite? Are the ten sources even peer reviewed? Some are clearly not, but are books, not articles. Others are in journals whose peer-reviewed status I am unsure of. If you are not already sure, you might want to check. If it's the case, that none of these ten sources are in a peer-reviewed journal, then Pietrak's article is the superior source, and therefore, you would need to remove "pseudoscientific" from the introductory paragraph. At the very least, you will need to acknowledge in the Misplaced Pages article that there are high-quality, independent sources that directly contradict the opening statement. ] (]) 11:56, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
:::::::::Pietrak is a mechanical engineer. He's an expert on heat transfer, not psychology. ] (]) 12:31, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
::::::::::Now you're contradicting yourself. Pietrak not being a psychologist means he's independent. He has no horse in the race. His writing on the subject was nevertheless authoritative enough to be accepted by a peer-reviewed journal.
::::::::::If you want an expert on the subject, I'm an expert, but I'm not good enough because I'm not independent. How can you be 1) an expert in a field, while also being 2) independent from a field?
::::::::::It's not even the case that being a psychologist gives you relevant expertise in Socionics. After all, if it is legitimately psychology, which is a science, then Socionics is a science. If Socionics is not a science, then how can it be psychology? If Socionics is not psychology, why can only a psychologist be deemed an 'expert'? It all seems like a catch-22 to me.
::::::::::Nevertheless, I am going to hold these other sources to the standards you have laid out:
::::::::::Are the writers of the 10 sources saying socionics is a 'pseudoscience' psychologists? A.G. Sergeev isn't a psychologist, he's a mathematician. V.N. Sokolchik isn't a psychologist, she's a philosopher. V. A. Zilinha, A. B. Nevelev, and A. Ya. Kamaletdinova all three are philosophers. L. A. Salpagarova? surprise surprise, ANOTHER philosopher.
::::::::::Finally we have a psychologist in Volkov, but the source is not published in a peer-reviewed journal. It's part of a collection of materials that he used at a conference. It's his opinion, without peer-review. The opinion itself is an off-hand remark and part of a list of multiple fields, showing NO expertise in Socionics. The fact he is a psychologist is more circumstantial than relevant.
::::::::::Meanwhile, although E. Ivashechkina appears to be art an historian (I'm not sure about this) G.A Chedzemov is in the social sciences, although likely not still a psychologist. The article, however, appears to be a well-researched source, based on more than a passing knowledge of Socionics. I cannot really fault this article, except that it treats Socionics as a bit of a monolith again, and evidently these people have never heard of me, despite it being 2019, which means they are not familiar with the developments in the west over the past decade and have not factored this into their analysis. However, it is clear in this article that Socionics is seen a 'science in development', rather than a pseudoscience. They do not use "pseudoscience" at all in the article. Socionics is described as going through different stages of development, and that while claims of it being a 'science' are premature, there is a trajectory of the approach becoming more scientific over time. The key criticism is that the results are currently hard to falsify. That is not an argument for Socionics being a pseudoscience, but rather a protoscience.
::::::::::Ignatyev, another philosopher (although someone of the same name appears to be an engineer)
::::::::::Abashkina's article does not seem to even be relevant to the discussion. Maybe there was a translation error. It certainly is not about psychology, but semantics.
::::::::::If your standard for accepting sources is that people have to be psychologists, you have to scrap almost every source there, except for one article where the pseudoscientific nature of Socionics is mentioned in an offhand remark in an essay that isn't even peer-reviewed. ] (]) 14:10, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
:::::::::::That's a nice straw man argument, but it doesn't have much to do with what I said. Being a psychologist is one way (but not the only way) to be reliable enough to make a determination that something is a pseudoscience. A mechanical engineer who gets an article in a low-rank interdisciplinary journal that mostly publishes articles on AI isn't a way to do that. Using the example of ] again, many people are experts in Astronomy, Geology, Cartography, Physics, Philosophy of Science, etc. They are all qualified to say that flat earth theories are nonsense for a variety of reasons. That none of them are specifically flat earth 'experts' (I feel like you really mean 'adherents' when you use that term) does not mean that they are unqualified. On the other hand, somebody like a medical doctor - though they are no doubt an expert in their own field, the human body, really aren't qualified to say much about celestial bodies. ] (]) 14:14, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
::::::::::::How does a philosopher, a non-scientist, have a field of expertise more appropriate to determining whether Socionics, a field adjacent to psychology, is a pseudoscience or not, than a mechanical engineer, who is an actual scientist? I am fortunate enough to have degrees in both philosophy and psychology, and I can tell you that philosophers don't normally receive training in what is a science or not. That comes with psychology and definitely comes with the hard sciences. Nevertheless, you are comfortable with these articles, refer to them to add weight to the position stated in this article, and yet are not comfortable with Pietrak's contribution. Why?
::::::::::::Well, I'm an expert in Socionics, but I am not an adherent to Socionics. There are a number of things in the original setting out of the theory that I disagree with and change in my application, as well as education of others. I don't adhere to the theory, I understand, practise critical thinking and develop the theory to be more accessible and aligned with what we can see and observe. That is how we do it in the World Socionics Society. A good example is getting rid of determinations of 'conscious' and 'unconscious' which are vague and either easy to disprove or else impossible to falsify depending on the parameters set. ] (]) 14:49, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
:::::::::::::I am quite surprised that a philosopher hasn't heard of ] before. ] (]) 14:56, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
::::::::::::::A branch of philosophy in which there is no consensus and which amounts to different opinions without an empirical mediator. You are now relying on something that is not scientific in order to determine what is scientific and what is not. As I said before, to be a philosopher you also do not need the remotest training in scientific methodology, and the other works of those publishing these articles do not convey an expertise or focus in Philosophy of Science as a field.
::::::::::::::The structure of your rationale for not including a peer-reviewed, independent, relevant article is arbitrary and internally inconsistent, and does not reflect well on Misplaced Pages as an institution. How can you yourself claim to be impartial with such a gerrymandered definition of source acceptability? ] (]) 15:51, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
:::::::::::::::I think, MrOllie, that your approach to this is a violation of NPOV, whether you are currently willing to acknowledge this or not. Sure, I understand the COF point, and will avoid making direct edits as a result, particularly where referencing myself. Naturally, I understand why you should have independent people making edits, while sourcing their information from experts with publications in peer-reviewed journals. However, I do not understand why you then decide to reject a peer-reviewed article from a journal with an Impact Score of 3.5, putting it in the top 20% of journals, when you have accepted non-scientific articles from journals that are less credible to the support the sentence at the heart of our debate.
:::::::::::::::The basis of your argument seems to be a hierarchy (of your creation, I cannot see Misplaced Pages spelling this out in their policy, although they do spell out a clear attachment to Neutrality, where "significant minority views" are also given weight) where Philosophers are better able to decide the status of a field as a 'science' or not than many scientists. Lots of issues here. Philosophy, even Philosophy of Science, is not a science. It does not function like a science. A philosopher cannot be an expert of anything except their ideas. Some are experts of another philosopher's ideas, largely due to closely reading that person's works. Their field does not depend on obscure facts that are only acquired by repeated opportunities to observe, but on ideas and rationales, that people are free to critique and reject with their own reasoning. That is why there is no consensus in the field on its central arguments. The merit of a philosopher CANNOT stand on expertise, and MUST stand on the strength of their analysis and argumentation. That is why it is a humanity, not a science. As already mentioned by several people here, every occasion of Socionics being called 'pseudoscience' by these sources has been done so WITHOUT argumentation. The one source there to have a clear argument does NOT use the word 'pseudoscience', and details a sequence of events that better fits a 'protoscience'. Therefore, these sources, bar the one, should be deemed a less-than-reliable source, and that one should be interpreted less extremely. The claim that a philosopher of science, or even 10 philosophers are better able to decide on the status of a field they have no demonstrable close familiarity with, than a scientist with a demonstrable close familiarity with the field (the familiarity is clear from the article itself), who happens to have a background in a very different scientific field, does not hold water.
:::::::::::::::To decide whether Socionics is pseudoscience or not, you need two parts. Yes, you need to know 1) the definition of a 'pseudoscience', which philosophers of science have already provided. However, you also need to know 2) the totality of relevant facts about Socionics to see if it meets the criteria of a pseudoscience or not. These philosophers have not made a clear argument, and have not demonstrated their knowledge of that second part. At the same time, 1) is such common knowledge that being of the field that first defined 1) should not confer any special knowledge there either. In the same way, you shouldn't need a doctor to find out if you should eat your vegetables and engage in regular light exercise.
:::::::::::::::Think this over. I'm not going to let this go while I believe the matter is not being treated fairly, and will persist until you either 1) realise that this is unfair, or 2) reassure me that your approach to this is coherent and in line with an impartial Misplaced Pages policy that I can work constructively within. ] (]) 02:47, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
:'Because if we label socionics pseudoscience right away, the same should be done with depth psychology and with psychoanalysis' -- completely agree and also the whole Medicine can be marked as a pseudoscience and not only. Sometimes it just takes time to grow into something valuable or to die but 'pseudoscience' label is more about guys who are not really in science but really want to be. ] (]) 03:57, 24 July 2024 (UTC)


== Some thoughts ==
Is there anything that can be done about this? Can someone rewrite this article? It has strong POV, and nothing in the article mentions that many people find it to be pseudoscientific.
-Anonymous User.


How can a theory be pseudoscientific?
: Socionics is not a "widely accepted theory" in the English speaking world because it is virtually unknown. Also, the site you quote -- www.socionics.com -- is not representative of the field as it actually exists in the former Soviet Union. The author overemphasizes physiognomical similarities between representatives of socionic types and uses a visually-based typing approach that is largely criticized among Russian and Ukrainian socionists. Perceptual characteristics are the basis of socionic type, not external similarities. Such similarities often exist, but they are elusive and often misleading.
In my OPINION a theory is just a theory until it can be proven by scientific methods and just then it becomes science or a scientific fact.


A theory that cannot be proven by scientific methods is not by definition pseudoscientific, it has to be proven to be FALSE by scientific methods before it can be declared to be pseudoscientific and I doubt that socionics as whole and as a philosophical concept or theory has been proven to be false by scientific methods.
: Your phrase "a person's outer appearance can predict their personality" is definitely not what socionists actually think, but, again, is an impression from the site you mentioned. Virtually all socionists, however, would agree with this statement: "states of mind and manner of self-expression are related to socionic type and hence to certain aspects of personality."


If it helps, I am trained engineer with a background in scientific research, so I should know one or two things about scientific methods, although I have no academic training in psychology nor philosophy.
:: Thanks for your reply, it cleared up a lot. I also found this site http://www.socionics.us/philosophy/misperceptions.shtml that explains alot . Still, I think the article could use some work. Maybe when more people become aware of it, a better article can be written.


…and what happened to this page? A couple of years ago it was much longer and then it was one of my favorite articles on Misplaced Pages. Can someone please restore all those sections with subgroups like Quadras, Clubs, Temperaments etc.? I think they were a helpful complement for the understanding of intertype relationships. ] (]) 11:34, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
Oct. 7th, 2006: I added a section with critical views on Socionics by referring to the critical views section of the article on MBTI, because I believe that the same critique applies to Socionics. However, it was removed by user Niffweed17, who required that I provide "evidence". This type of behavior is typical of people who are into Socionics: they themselves do not provide empirical evidence, but they do require other people to provide evidence if they don't agree with Socionic theory. Socionics is not a science, it's a believe system, very similar to astrology. It assumes the validity of Jung's Psychological Types, their "research" shows all the signs of Confirmation Bias, and all scientific knowledge that might invalidate Socionics is simply ignored or dismissed. I recommend everyone interested in Socionics to read the Critical Views section in the article on MBTI, and them decide for themselves if this critique also applies to Socionics.
:check your pms on the16types.info forum. as i mentioned, the critical views section violated ]. the critical views on the MBTI section, on the other hand, is well referenced and presents a coherent argument. ] 16:07, 7 October 2006 (UTC)


:Lots of theories are pseudoscientific. ], ], and ] just to name a few. Part of the definition of pseudoscience is that it claims to be scientific even though it is not. Some things are not well defined enough to be ], which means that they cannot be proven (or disproven) by scientific methods. That is the case here. What 'happened to this page' is that a lot of unreliably sourced material was cut. Misplaced Pages presents scientific (or pseudoscientific) topics from the mainstream view, which means that it leaves out details that are discussed by the pseudoscientists and no one else. ] (]) 18:57, 28 January 2023 (UTC)


== Semi-protected edit request on 20 January 2024 ==
There is a good german article about pseudoscience and pseudoreligion: http://www.socioniko.net/de/articles/sozionik-u-psy.htm. The article can be translated with babelfish for those who can't understand german. --] 08:36, 9 October 2006 (UTC)


{{edit semi-protected|Socionics|answered=yes}}
:If someone could post references to peer reviewed, scientific journal articles, that would go a long way toward demonstrating the empirical basis of this theory. Right now, it looks like pseudoscience. Or a throwback to old Jungian and psychoanalytic theories of psychology, which is no improvement! ] 05:30, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Adding 'is considered by some a pseudoscience' to the start of the socionics article would be more accurate. I'm still reading about it but there's definitely some areas where the scientific method is being used. ] (]) 03:29, 20 January 2024 (UTC)


:{{not done}} - Misplaced Pages follows the reliable sources, it doesn't water down their positions. - ] (]) 03:31, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
This article is in poor shape. It fails to recognize that the premise of socionics is significantly different from Carl Jung's original formulation. The similarities are only superficial, yet the the table suggests that socionics is just a different set of terminology for the exact same ideas.--] 07:29, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


== Socionics and Intertype Relations theory == == Information cut from opening section ==
I know nothing about socionics. If it were really as wonderfully powerful as advocated in this section:


I have rewritten the opening section of this article to better introduce this topic. However, this resulted in some information being cut. I'm not sure where in the article this information should go (if it should be kept at all), so I am pasting it here for future reference.
''The main advantage of Socionics is the Intertype Relations theory. Based on a person's psychological type, it is now possible to anticipate development in human relationships with incredible accuracy. This makes it a very powerful tool when dealing with problems in relationships. Generally, a minimum amount of knowledge in Socionics is irreplaceable in any field of human activity where more than one person is involved, having to work or live together.''


Socionics is modification of Jung's personality type theory that uses eight psychic functions instead of four. These ] are supposed to process information at varying levels of competency and interact with the corresponding function in other individuals, giving rise to predictable reactions and impressions—a theory of intertype relations.<ref name="socion">{{cite journal |year=1996 |title=Социон, или Основы соционики |language=ru |author=Augustinavichiute A. |trans-title=The Socion, or Socionics Basics |journal=Соционика, ментология и психология личности |trans-journal=Socionics, mentology and personality psychology |publisher=International Institute of Socionics |issue=4–5}}</ref><ref name=fink2009>{{cite journal |author1=Fink G. |author2=Mayrhofer W. |url=http://inderscience.metapress.com/content/h040q1h67200h2n4/fulltext.html |archive-url=https://archive.today/20121206034915/http://inderscience.metapress.com/content/h040q1h67200h2n4/fulltext.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=2012-12-06 |title=Cross-cultural competence and management – setting the stage |journal=European Journal of Cross-Cultural Competence and Management |year=2009 |volume=1 |pages=42 |number=1 |doi=10.1504/EJCCM.2009.026733 }}</ref>
then I'd presumably know more about it. I'll remove this unbacked advertising. ] 17:40, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)


However, the immutability of socionic рsychophysiological types is determined by the stability of their neural structures in the brain. At the same time, psychological personality traits can evolve and change throughout life.<ref name="bogomaz2000">{{cite book |last1=Bogomaz |first1=Sergey |title=Psychological types of C. Jung. Psychophysiological types and intertype relationships. Methodical aid |date=2000 |location=Tomsk |language=ru}}</ref><ref>Nesterenko, A.I., Vasilyev, V.N., Medvedev, M.A. et al. Physiological and Psychological Expression of Personality Types. Human Physiology 29, 729–734 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:HUMP.0000008846.76263.b9</ref><ref>Krivo Yu.A. SOCIONICS. PHYSIOLOGY. COGNITIVE SCIENCE. MODEL OF HUMAN FUNCTIONAL SYSTEMS FOR USE IN PSYCHOLOGY//Man, Art, Universe, №1, 2018, p.90-102, http://iidp.ru/paper/files/sbornik_2018.pdf</ref><ref>Panchulazyan, K. A. POLYGRAPHOLOGICAL PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL DETERMINATION OF TYPES CHARACTER OF ATHLETS//Electronic Journal of Natural Sciences, 2019, Vol. 33 Issue 2, p36-39. 4p.</ref>
: Well one of major achievement of Socionics comparing to Jung's theory is exactly intertype relations theory. No surprise that you didn't hear much about socionics - it is not well known outside of former Soviet Union republics. ] 07:56, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)


In the West, the term 'socionics' ({{langx|de|]}}) is used in a different sense, to refer to an interdisciplinary area of research on ] systems and their applications to ].<ref name="m+m+s">{{cite journal |last1= Müller |first1= H. J. |last2= Malsch |first2= Th. |last3= Schulz-Schaeffer |first3= I. |date= 1998 |title= Socionics: Introduction and Potential |url= http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/1/3/5.html |journal= Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation|volume= 1 |issue= 3 }}</ref><ref name="f+f+m">{{cite book |last1= Fisher |first1= K. |last2= Florian |first2= M. |last3= Malsch |first3= Th. |date= 2005 |title= Socionics: Scalability of Complex Social Systems |url= https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783540307075 |location= Berlin, Heidelberg, New York |publisher= Springer |pages= 313|isbn=978-3-540-30707-5}} </ref>
== Another Socionics ==


] (]) 12:27, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
What about socionics as a research field on the edge between sociology and distributed artificial intelligence? ] 07:31, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
<br>Some links:


:This seems like an appropriate article to replace the overview section or even replace the whole current version. This description is short enough to be an encyclopedic entry and at the same time well sourced. There is indeed a second field of study denoted as Socionics, related with distributed agents in artificial inteligence, which the current version completely disregard. Time to clean up the current version which is too long, too detailed and refers to a lot of too specialized sources. ] (]) 11:16, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
: This is completely different thing. If you want to put information about it into Misplaced Pages, please create another page as well as disambiguation page. ] 07:56, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)


{{reflist-talk}}
== External Links ==


== Too many issues ==
I've moved the following links here from the main page:
* http://www.baydy.net/forum (Socionical forum, Russian)
* http://socionika.adelaida.net (English)
* http://www.socionicsdating.com (English, Russian)
* http://www.socionics.ibc.com.ua (Russian, English)
* http://www.socionics.org (Russian, some texts in English)
* http://www.socionics.us (English)
* http://ru.laser.ru (Russian)
* http://www.socionics.ru (Russian)
* http://www.the16types.info (English, forum)
* http://soc.wavatars.com (English, wiki)


The article is a collection of quotes and subjective opinions, which makes it practically useless. After reading it, there is no understanding of what it describes. Also, it has too many issues:
Please discuss (referring to ]) prior to adding them back in.<br/>]]] 13:29, 28 July 2005 (UTC)


1) It is not specified that the term socionics simultaneously means a hypothesis about types of thinking, a phenomenon in popular culture in post-Soviet countries, and the field of activity of commercial organizations, coaches, and consultants. It is worth splitting the article into three or at least two articles.
==Category: Psychology==
] removed this page from the category on psychology a while ago. I have no idea why, but in the spirit of democracy, I would afford him this chance to respond. He required that "empirical basis be established" that this be included in the category on psychology. I don't entirely understand this requirement. Would it be fulfilled by providing evidence that socionics is indeed psychology? If so, that, I believe, is already accomplished by this article's citation of Jung's works. At any rate, I'm putting the category back. Feel free to discuss. ] 03:31, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


2) The history of socionics takes up an unjustifiably large amount of space.
:I removed it because socionics is not an accepted part of the field of psychology. You would be hard pressed to find any mention of socionics in a psychology textbook or psychology journal. I just did a search on ], the comprehensive database for scientific articles that have been published in psychology, and found ''zero'' hits. In fact, I even wonder how "notable" socionics is. I googled it and found that most of the links were to socionics websites promoting the theory, not independent sources. As a psychologist myself, I smell a strong whiff of B.S. when I look at this page. Citation of Jung is not ] evidence. I'd like to see some, any evidence that socionics has any validity whatsoever. This is why I removed it from the psychology category. That said, I recognize that I may be utterly wrong and uninformed, and therefore I will take no further actions on this subject. The psychology category is a mish mash anyway, and socionics is probably no worse that much of what is already there. I'd still like to see the evidence, if there is any. Thanks. --] 22:06, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


3) A large number of quotes and references to Ukrainian coaches selling socionics consultations. In fact, this is advertising.
:P.S. I found one book at Amazon.com with "socionics" in the title, but it's a book on computer science, an interdisciplinary work on sociology and artificial intelligence. Now according to the Misplaced Pages article, there are some online books in Russian, so maybe... Yet one wonders why Pavlovian conditioning, Marxist psychology, etc. are all quite well known and documented, and yet socionics is so elusive. --] 22:33, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


4) Misleading statements that the hypothesis about the types of mechanisms of perception and information processing allegedly links the types of thinking mechanisms with a certain social role. It is necessary to clearly indicate that the hypothesis applies only to the types of information processing mechanisms and does not describe appearance, behavior, personality traits, profession, gender, race, religious and political beliefs or anything else other than the mechanisms of information processing by the psyche.
::A fair criticism, I suppose. Unfortunately, almost all of the material on Socionics is in Russian, where Socionics is more well-known than in the West (although by no means universally acknowledged). I'm still not sure as to exactly what would constitute empirical evidence for your suggestion. However, I would agree that, as you mentioned, if numerous books, techniques, and concepts of dubious psychological value are included in the category on psychology, that Socionics probably deserves to be there as well. By the way, the field of socionics regarding artificial intelligence is an entirely different field which has by chance coined the same name. I don't know anything about it. ] 00:56, 3 February 2007 (UTC)


5) An incompetent, categorical statement that the psyche is completely changeable with reference to the Big 5 studies. Obviously, neither the Big 5 nor any other model describes the psyche completely. Besides, Big 5 is not connected with Jungian typologies, it describes completely different phenomena, and it is unclear why it is brought into such articles.
::: You will find much more google hits if you search for ''соционика'' (Russian word for socionics). The www.ozon.ru counts 34 different books on socionics (see ). Certainly, all books are in Russian. ] 22:11, 3 February 2007 (UTC)


6) Too many links, many of which are likely advertising or SEO spam.
By empirical evidence, I mean that we need to ] our variables, measure them objectively, and then find statistical relationships that support our theoretical predictions. For example, the first table on the socionics page suggests that "thinking extroverts" are highly efficient, understand technology, and are well organized at work. I would hypothesize that computer programmers should be higher on Te, because programming requires these aptitudes. The next step is to find some computer programmers, give them a personality test (e.g. the Myers Briggs), and see if are overrepresented in the Te category, perhaps using a ]. If I find that they are not any more likely to be Te, or even worse, that they tend to be "sensing introverts", that would count as evidence against the theory.


7) Since the reader most likely knows about MBTI and does not know about socionics, it might make sense to make a link to the article about MBTI, indicate that socionics is the Eastern European analogue of MBTI and briefly describe the differences.
Psychology has a long history of bad ideas. ], for example, believed that little boys have a sexual attraction to their mothers, and that, as a consequence, they have an unconscious fear of castration by their fathers. This idea is so thoroughly discredited now, that even Freud's followers have backed away from it. These days psychologists try to be more careful, so we want to see good evidence for any claim before we accept it. Socionics may not have been tested yet, but to the extent that it's based on Jung's theory (a student of Freud, by the way), it's already on shakey ground. Current research in psychology has shown that Jung's ideas are obsolete, and that "type tests" like the Myers Briggs are full of flaws. Costa and McCrae, among others, have demonstrated in numerous studies that a ] provides a much better fit for personality test data. This is getting a little long, so I better stop now, but thanks for reading. --] 04:24, 3 February 2007 (UTC)


I should also note that the article reads like a kaleidoscope of biased opinions and should be rewritten without emotion. ] (]) 20:08, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
: I believe category "Psychology" is too broad. I replaced it with category "Personality", which is a subcategory of "Psychology" and also added categories "Personality typology" and "Interpersonal relations". I hope this is fine. ] 22:00, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
:: That's probably a better fit anyway. ] 22:43, 10 February 2007 (UTC)


:Hi O. I., there is in fact a link to the MBTI here:
Jcbutler, you're taking socionics out of context. Socionics deals with information metabolism -- the perception of information. There are two types, one for metabolism and one for exertion. To date no works exist in printed form accounting for the role of exertion in personality. (although if you'll look on the internet you'll find there is active discussion of it, with the16types.info being the primary hub) Together they create an amazingly complete theory of human motive that pretty well completes all of those remaining questions out there regarding psychology; even charisma is explained. Open your mind and you'll be witness to a wealth of information beyond your wildest dreams.
:'''According to G. Fink and B. Mayrhofer, socionics is considered one of the four most popular models of personality (including cybernetic theory Maruyama, five-factor model, Big Five" and typology Myers–Briggs Type Indicator), deserving special attention because of its importance in the study of personality.

:'''
At the very least, don't call socionics psuedoscience. ...In fact, if you look closely, you'll see the interaction of your two types in your very speech. Some theories are by their nature too encompassing to be falsifiable. -- anonymous
:I'm going to add "aka the MBTI" to that link.

:Respectfully,
:the above comment was clearly added by user tcaudilllg from the16types.info forums. tcaudilllg is a resident eccentric with no knowledge of socionics whatsoever. it may be poor judgment to take his comments at face value. you have been warned. ] 03:39, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
:JL ] (]) 12:35, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

:: If being called an "eccentric" means that I have successfully challenged the perception of socionics as "labeling", then I am guilty as charged. This article does a poor job of delineating what socionics does and does not explain as regards the personality. -- tcaudilllg

==Extensive Wiki Type Descriptions and Resources==

I am possibly going to split off the socionics types from the MBTI type pages shortly. Any assistance in such an endeavor by those knowledgeable in socionics would be appreciated. Or, feel free to discuss what you think should be done with the pages. ] 03:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
:i should get around to it eventually.... maybe... ] 02:55, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

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I would say that, apart from the fact that the article is too long considering the its encyclopedic goal and relatively small importance of socionics, we should approach socionics more like psychoanalysis. In the article about the psychoanalysis, the dispute about its status as the field of science is moved to its proper place - to the criticism section. Similarly to psychoanalysis, socionics is based on some unfalsifiable models, but it seems to work in practice, if used to proper problems by reasonable, intelligent people. I would say it is very distant from hard science (as, for example, Jungian depth psychology is also distant from modern science). I do agree that many socionists - people who devoted their lives to building socionic models and using socionics in their psychological practice, mainly in Russia and Ukraine - present socionics as a scientific theory, especially to unsuspecting common people. Therefore, they are making pseudoscience out of it, and they are unethical. I would say that socionics per se is neither science or pseudoscience, but most people use it pseudoscientifically. Rather than labeling it pseudoscientific in the overview, I say that criticism section should be used for this purpose. Because if we label socionics pseudoscience right away, the same should be done with depth psychology and with psychoanalysis. Moreover, the article is just too long and overloaded with references from sources too closely related to the topic in question. --Pancarlos (talk) 14:04, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Pancarlos, Misplaced Pages-wide consensus is that criticisms should not be relegated entirely to a separate 'Criticism' section, as that causes severe neutrality problems. In the case, the fact that virtually no one outside of a few practitioners accepts that Socionics is legitimate science is extremely relevant context, and readers need to know that right away so they can understand the rest of the article. MrOllie (talk) 14:31, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
You say that no one outside of a few practitioners accept that Socionics is a legitimate science, but have you considered that hardly anyone who is English-speaking even knows what Socionics is? Sample size is important when making statements such as this. There are only a tiny number of English-speaking psychologists who know what Socionics is, and none of them maintain that Socionics is a science or a pseudoscience. It is a philosophy that presents tool for interpretation of data, not for empirical predictions. Do you know of the School of System Socionics? Do you know of the World Socionics Society? If you do not know of groups such as these, which are well established and take a scientifically responsible approach to the use of Model A, by not trying to use it predictively, but ad hoc on information already gathered, then how can you assess whether the sources you are collating on this subject are reliable or not when speaking of Socionics as a monolith? Echidna1000 (talk) 02:36, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages follows the sources, and in this case we happen to have 10 of them. MrOllie (talk) 02:41, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
If that were true, the article would say both that Socionics is a science and a pseudoscience, because there are plenty of sources claiming the former, as well as the 10 claiming the latter. Evidently, someone hasn't included these sources for whatever reason. The point is, sources that support a one-sided narrative have been picked at the exclusion of other sources, whether accidentally or deliberately. At the same time, simply 'following the sources' implies that this is not an interpretive exercise, when it clearly is. After all, and if had 11 sources claiming Socionics is a science and only 10 claiming Socionics is a pseudoscience, you wouldn't say that 'Socionics is a science'. You'd still probably have the article call it a pseudoscience.
Of course, I'm not saying you should claim Socionics is a 'science' either, it's obviously not. There are definitely people in Russia and Ukraine who have vested interests in calling Socionics a 'science' publicly. I've had heated discussions with these people, particularly Alexander Bukalov. However, there are multiple groups such as the World Socionics Society and the School of System Socionics, and other practitioners who see the value in Socionics but don't claim that it is a science, but rather an ad hoc analytical framework for making sense of a person's values and strengths, using commonly accepted methodologies such as self-rated questionnaires and interviews. Their approaches are different and by the definition of 'pseudoscience' meaning something erroneously claimed to be a 'science' that means that these approaches to Socionics are not pseudoscientific. Now, if it's simply the case that these sources haven't been provided and taken into consideration, alright, maybe we can accumulate those sources to make the case.
Would you be willing to concede the point and allow the article to be made more nuanced if I provide these sources? At the moment, the article is a heavily disputed mess and will always be a mess until we work together to clear things up. It's obvious to me that no socionists are involved in the decision-making on the information available, so we have people who don't have that insight making decisions on how to present things they don't yet understand. Echidna1000 (talk) 12:05, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
Sourcing isn't a vote. Sources written by people who are making their living off Socionics (such as the groups you mention) are weighted far below the independent sources. The independent sources are quite clear, this is pseudoscience. That no socionists are involved in the decision-making is a feature, not a bug, just as it is a benefit that no flat-earthers are making decisions for the Flat earth article. MrOllie (talk) 12:13, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
There are two sets of double standards that are implicit to what you suggest here.
1. Many articles are dependent almost solely on sources by people who are an expert in that field. Do you have a rule on the ophthalmology article that no sources be taken from ophthalmologists, who obviously make money from the field so cannot be trusted? Obviously you don't, because that is a science. However, you have already categorised socionics as a 'pseudoscience' in your head, so you are applying a different rule to the one that would be used for an established science. Am I right?
2. It has not been established that any of these sources are 'independent' though, only that they are not socionists. They could very well be people who benefit from bringing the entire field into disrepute. Any psychologist who uses methodologies that compete with socionics will fall into that category. Have you checked for that possibility? People don't tend to just write articles saying that Socionics is a pseudoscience without some kind of axe to grind. What is the process to ensure that there is no conflict of interest on the other side? Several of the sources themselves are not substantiated by data, but are opinions, or passing remarks, rather than concerted attempts to determine if Socionics is a pseudoscience or not. So, not only are you listening to opinions by people who could very well have a conflict of interest against socionics, but you are then shutting out more informed opinions by those who have dedicated their lives to understanding this field.
I don't think it's a benefit that you don't allow flat earthers to contribute to the flat earth article. It reads as a very biased article that wields the scientific consensus to obstruct an exploration of the flat earther's ideas. Just because an idea is not true, that does not mean that their perspective should not be understood as much as possible on the article dedicated to exploring them, and to do that, you actually need the flat earther's, in the same way you have ophthalmologists. The agenda of this article is to tell the reader to not believe flat earthers, rather than being to tell the reader informatively about flat earther's and what they believe. I don't like that at all, and I'm not a flat earther or a fan of flat earthers.
I'll tell you what though. I actually do know some independent sources that verify what I have been saying. I'll put those in. Echidna1000 (talk) 00:14, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
I have another question. Misplaced Pages accepts the existence of protoscience as something different to pseudoscience. Is it acceptable to link to independent sources that recognise some approaches to Socionics being protoscience, rather than pseudoscience? If so, would it be acceptable to represent that nuance in the introductory paragraph? Echidna1000 (talk) 01:57, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
You have an obvious WP:Conflict of interest here. You should not be writing about yourself or trying to cite your group as though it is an independent source of information. Really, you should not edit this article at all. As to your speculation that there is some secret cabal operating to bring down socionics, there is no evidence of that. There is plenty of evidence of people with a vested interest in promoting this stuff (as you well know). The 'agenda' of Misplaced Pages is to present what the best independent sources say about a topic. Proponents of fringe ideas are rarely happy with that, but it is how Misplaced Pages operates. MrOllie (talk) 02:57, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
Too few people are interested in Socionics to be both 1) independent, 2) knowledgeable about it, and 3) inclined to write and publish on it, so your priorities in this context are a recipe for a misleading picture, and will inevitably be dominated by those who are not socionists, but have a desire to publish against it for whatever reason. I never said there had to be a 'cabal', just people who stand to gain, and so go to the effort of publishing. It's too obscure to be done justice by a system of decision-making that inevitably prioritises those with a bias against X over those with a bias in favour of X by incorrectly confusing the former with the virtue of 'independence'. Not being part of the club doesn't necessarily confer objectivity.
Nevertheless, if you are depriving me of the ability to use what I know to improve the article, then I would ask you to make the edits instead, as I assume that you are independent, and therefore, will not turn away good sources of information even if they contradict what is currently argued. Evidently, if I go around suggesting that other people make edits, I cannot pay them to do so, as that would immediately become a conflict of interest. They would have to want to spend the time doing it out of a Kantian sense of duty to writing and providing good information. Hard to find such people, although you appear to be of this rare breed. If as you claim you are not biased against Socionics, then surely you will be obliging to any information I can provide you.
For example, have you looked at Pietrak K, The foundations of socionics – a review, Cognitive Systems Research 47 (2018) 1-11. DOI/10.1016/j.cogsys.2017.07.001 ?
Karol Pietrak is not a socionist. He is a good and VERY RARE example of someone interested in the theory and with enough of an academic background to write on it academically, without in any way standing to gain from it, and to do so in English. In this article, published in a peer-reviewed journal, he clearly concludes that "At the most general level, socionics may be classified as part of the cognitive sciences." (p.18)
As you say, sourcing is not "a vote". That's good, in which case, can you really say that this article in a peer-reviewed journal is the inferior of the ten sources arguing the opposite? Are the ten sources even peer reviewed? Some are clearly not, but are books, not articles. Others are in journals whose peer-reviewed status I am unsure of. If you are not already sure, you might want to check. If it's the case, that none of these ten sources are in a peer-reviewed journal, then Pietrak's article is the superior source, and therefore, you would need to remove "pseudoscientific" from the introductory paragraph. At the very least, you will need to acknowledge in the Misplaced Pages article that there are high-quality, independent sources that directly contradict the opening statement. Echidna1000 (talk) 11:56, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
Pietrak is a mechanical engineer. He's an expert on heat transfer, not psychology. MrOllie (talk) 12:31, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
Now you're contradicting yourself. Pietrak not being a psychologist means he's independent. He has no horse in the race. His writing on the subject was nevertheless authoritative enough to be accepted by a peer-reviewed journal.
If you want an expert on the subject, I'm an expert, but I'm not good enough because I'm not independent. How can you be 1) an expert in a field, while also being 2) independent from a field?
It's not even the case that being a psychologist gives you relevant expertise in Socionics. After all, if it is legitimately psychology, which is a science, then Socionics is a science. If Socionics is not a science, then how can it be psychology? If Socionics is not psychology, why can only a psychologist be deemed an 'expert'? It all seems like a catch-22 to me.
Nevertheless, I am going to hold these other sources to the standards you have laid out:
Are the writers of the 10 sources saying socionics is a 'pseudoscience' psychologists? A.G. Sergeev isn't a psychologist, he's a mathematician. V.N. Sokolchik isn't a psychologist, she's a philosopher. V. A. Zilinha, A. B. Nevelev, and A. Ya. Kamaletdinova all three are philosophers. L. A. Salpagarova? surprise surprise, ANOTHER philosopher.
Finally we have a psychologist in Volkov, but the source is not published in a peer-reviewed journal. It's part of a collection of materials that he used at a conference. It's his opinion, without peer-review. The opinion itself is an off-hand remark and part of a list of multiple fields, showing NO expertise in Socionics. The fact he is a psychologist is more circumstantial than relevant.
Meanwhile, although E. Ivashechkina appears to be art an historian (I'm not sure about this) G.A Chedzemov is in the social sciences, although likely not still a psychologist. The article, however, appears to be a well-researched source, based on more than a passing knowledge of Socionics. I cannot really fault this article, except that it treats Socionics as a bit of a monolith again, and evidently these people have never heard of me, despite it being 2019, which means they are not familiar with the developments in the west over the past decade and have not factored this into their analysis. However, it is clear in this article that Socionics is seen a 'science in development', rather than a pseudoscience. They do not use "pseudoscience" at all in the article. Socionics is described as going through different stages of development, and that while claims of it being a 'science' are premature, there is a trajectory of the approach becoming more scientific over time. The key criticism is that the results are currently hard to falsify. That is not an argument for Socionics being a pseudoscience, but rather a protoscience.
Ignatyev, another philosopher (although someone of the same name appears to be an engineer)
Abashkina's article does not seem to even be relevant to the discussion. Maybe there was a translation error. It certainly is not about psychology, but semantics.
If your standard for accepting sources is that people have to be psychologists, you have to scrap almost every source there, except for one article where the pseudoscientific nature of Socionics is mentioned in an offhand remark in an essay that isn't even peer-reviewed. Echidna1000 (talk) 14:10, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
That's a nice straw man argument, but it doesn't have much to do with what I said. Being a psychologist is one way (but not the only way) to be reliable enough to make a determination that something is a pseudoscience. A mechanical engineer who gets an article in a low-rank interdisciplinary journal that mostly publishes articles on AI isn't a way to do that. Using the example of Flat earth again, many people are experts in Astronomy, Geology, Cartography, Physics, Philosophy of Science, etc. They are all qualified to say that flat earth theories are nonsense for a variety of reasons. That none of them are specifically flat earth 'experts' (I feel like you really mean 'adherents' when you use that term) does not mean that they are unqualified. On the other hand, somebody like a medical doctor - though they are no doubt an expert in their own field, the human body, really aren't qualified to say much about celestial bodies. MrOllie (talk) 14:14, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
How does a philosopher, a non-scientist, have a field of expertise more appropriate to determining whether Socionics, a field adjacent to psychology, is a pseudoscience or not, than a mechanical engineer, who is an actual scientist? I am fortunate enough to have degrees in both philosophy and psychology, and I can tell you that philosophers don't normally receive training in what is a science or not. That comes with psychology and definitely comes with the hard sciences. Nevertheless, you are comfortable with these articles, refer to them to add weight to the position stated in this article, and yet are not comfortable with Pietrak's contribution. Why?
Well, I'm an expert in Socionics, but I am not an adherent to Socionics. There are a number of things in the original setting out of the theory that I disagree with and change in my application, as well as education of others. I don't adhere to the theory, I understand, practise critical thinking and develop the theory to be more accessible and aligned with what we can see and observe. That is how we do it in the World Socionics Society. A good example is getting rid of determinations of 'conscious' and 'unconscious' which are vague and either easy to disprove or else impossible to falsify depending on the parameters set. Echidna1000 (talk) 14:49, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
I am quite surprised that a philosopher hasn't heard of Philosophy of science before. MrOllie (talk) 14:56, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
A branch of philosophy in which there is no consensus and which amounts to different opinions without an empirical mediator. You are now relying on something that is not scientific in order to determine what is scientific and what is not. As I said before, to be a philosopher you also do not need the remotest training in scientific methodology, and the other works of those publishing these articles do not convey an expertise or focus in Philosophy of Science as a field.
The structure of your rationale for not including a peer-reviewed, independent, relevant article is arbitrary and internally inconsistent, and does not reflect well on Misplaced Pages as an institution. How can you yourself claim to be impartial with such a gerrymandered definition of source acceptability? Echidna1000 (talk) 15:51, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
I think, MrOllie, that your approach to this is a violation of NPOV, whether you are currently willing to acknowledge this or not. Sure, I understand the COF point, and will avoid making direct edits as a result, particularly where referencing myself. Naturally, I understand why you should have independent people making edits, while sourcing their information from experts with publications in peer-reviewed journals. However, I do not understand why you then decide to reject a peer-reviewed article from a journal with an Impact Score of 3.5, putting it in the top 20% of journals, when you have accepted non-scientific articles from journals that are less credible to the support the sentence at the heart of our debate.
The basis of your argument seems to be a hierarchy (of your creation, I cannot see Misplaced Pages spelling this out in their policy, although they do spell out a clear attachment to Neutrality, where "significant minority views" are also given weight) where Philosophers are better able to decide the status of a field as a 'science' or not than many scientists. Lots of issues here. Philosophy, even Philosophy of Science, is not a science. It does not function like a science. A philosopher cannot be an expert of anything except their ideas. Some are experts of another philosopher's ideas, largely due to closely reading that person's works. Their field does not depend on obscure facts that are only acquired by repeated opportunities to observe, but on ideas and rationales, that people are free to critique and reject with their own reasoning. That is why there is no consensus in the field on its central arguments. The merit of a philosopher CANNOT stand on expertise, and MUST stand on the strength of their analysis and argumentation. That is why it is a humanity, not a science. As already mentioned by several people here, every occasion of Socionics being called 'pseudoscience' by these sources has been done so WITHOUT argumentation. The one source there to have a clear argument does NOT use the word 'pseudoscience', and details a sequence of events that better fits a 'protoscience'. Therefore, these sources, bar the one, should be deemed a less-than-reliable source, and that one should be interpreted less extremely. The claim that a philosopher of science, or even 10 philosophers are better able to decide on the status of a field they have no demonstrable close familiarity with, than a scientist with a demonstrable close familiarity with the field (the familiarity is clear from the article itself), who happens to have a background in a very different scientific field, does not hold water.
To decide whether Socionics is pseudoscience or not, you need two parts. Yes, you need to know 1) the definition of a 'pseudoscience', which philosophers of science have already provided. However, you also need to know 2) the totality of relevant facts about Socionics to see if it meets the criteria of a pseudoscience or not. These philosophers have not made a clear argument, and have not demonstrated their knowledge of that second part. At the same time, 1) is such common knowledge that being of the field that first defined 1) should not confer any special knowledge there either. In the same way, you shouldn't need a doctor to find out if you should eat your vegetables and engage in regular light exercise.
Think this over. I'm not going to let this go while I believe the matter is not being treated fairly, and will persist until you either 1) realise that this is unfair, or 2) reassure me that your approach to this is coherent and in line with an impartial Misplaced Pages policy that I can work constructively within. Echidna1000 (talk) 02:47, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
'Because if we label socionics pseudoscience right away, the same should be done with depth psychology and with psychoanalysis' -- completely agree and also the whole Medicine can be marked as a pseudoscience and not only. Sometimes it just takes time to grow into something valuable or to die but 'pseudoscience' label is more about guys who are not really in science but really want to be. Opteamyzer (talk) 03:57, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Some thoughts

How can a theory be pseudoscientific? In my OPINION a theory is just a theory until it can be proven by scientific methods and just then it becomes science or a scientific fact.

A theory that cannot be proven by scientific methods is not by definition pseudoscientific, it has to be proven to be FALSE by scientific methods before it can be declared to be pseudoscientific and I doubt that socionics as whole and as a philosophical concept or theory has been proven to be false by scientific methods.

If it helps, I am trained engineer with a background in scientific research, so I should know one or two things about scientific methods, although I have no academic training in psychology nor philosophy.

…and what happened to this page? A couple of years ago it was much longer and then it was one of my favorite articles on Misplaced Pages. Can someone please restore all those sections with subgroups like Quadras, Clubs, Temperaments etc.? I think they were a helpful complement for the understanding of intertype relationships. 81.236.0.233 (talk) 11:34, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Lots of theories are pseudoscientific. Flat earth theory, Ancient astronauts, and Homeopathy just to name a few. Part of the definition of pseudoscience is that it claims to be scientific even though it is not. Some things are not well defined enough to be falsifiable, which means that they cannot be proven (or disproven) by scientific methods. That is the case here. What 'happened to this page' is that a lot of unreliably sourced material was cut. Misplaced Pages presents scientific (or pseudoscientific) topics from the mainstream view, which means that it leaves out details that are discussed by the pseudoscientists and no one else. MrOllie (talk) 18:57, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 January 2024

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Adding 'is considered by some a pseudoscience' to the start of the socionics article would be more accurate. I'm still reading about it but there's definitely some areas where the scientific method is being used. Goodnighthawk (talk) 03:29, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

 Not done - Misplaced Pages follows the reliable sources, it doesn't water down their positions. - MrOllie (talk) 03:31, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Information cut from opening section

I have rewritten the opening section of this article to better introduce this topic. However, this resulted in some information being cut. I'm not sure where in the article this information should go (if it should be kept at all), so I am pasting it here for future reference.

Socionics is modification of Jung's personality type theory that uses eight psychic functions instead of four. These cognitive functions are supposed to process information at varying levels of competency and interact with the corresponding function in other individuals, giving rise to predictable reactions and impressions—a theory of intertype relations.

However, the immutability of socionic рsychophysiological types is determined by the stability of their neural structures in the brain. At the same time, psychological personality traits can evolve and change throughout life.

In the West, the term 'socionics' (German: Sozionik) is used in a different sense, to refer to an interdisciplinary area of research on distributed artificial intelligence systems and their applications to sociology.

Heatedfrost (talk) 12:27, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

This seems like an appropriate article to replace the overview section or even replace the whole current version. This description is short enough to be an encyclopedic entry and at the same time well sourced. There is indeed a second field of study denoted as Socionics, related with distributed agents in artificial inteligence, which the current version completely disregard. Time to clean up the current version which is too long, too detailed and refers to a lot of too specialized sources. 37.248.175.82 (talk) 11:16, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

References

  1. Augustinavichiute A. (1996). "Социон, или Основы соционики" . Соционика, ментология и психология личности (in Russian) (4–5). International Institute of Socionics.
  2. Fink G.; Mayrhofer W. (2009). "Cross-cultural competence and management – setting the stage". European Journal of Cross-Cultural Competence and Management. 1 (1): 42. doi:10.1504/EJCCM.2009.026733. Archived from the original on 2012-12-06.
  3. Bogomaz, Sergey (2000). Psychological types of C. Jung. Psychophysiological types and intertype relationships. Methodical aid (in Russian). Tomsk.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. Nesterenko, A.I., Vasilyev, V.N., Medvedev, M.A. et al. Physiological and Psychological Expression of Personality Types. Human Physiology 29, 729–734 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:HUMP.0000008846.76263.b9
  5. Krivo Yu.A. SOCIONICS. PHYSIOLOGY. COGNITIVE SCIENCE. MODEL OF HUMAN FUNCTIONAL SYSTEMS FOR USE IN PSYCHOLOGY//Man, Art, Universe, №1, 2018, p.90-102, http://iidp.ru/paper/files/sbornik_2018.pdf
  6. Panchulazyan, K. A. POLYGRAPHOLOGICAL PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL DETERMINATION OF TYPES CHARACTER OF ATHLETS//Electronic Journal of Natural Sciences, 2019, Vol. 33 Issue 2, p36-39. 4p.
  7. Müller, H. J.; Malsch, Th.; Schulz-Schaeffer, I. (1998). "Socionics: Introduction and Potential". Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation. 1 (3).
  8. Fisher, K.; Florian, M.; Malsch, Th. (2005). Socionics: Scalability of Complex Social Systems. Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer. p. 313. ISBN 978-3-540-30707-5. Google Books

Too many issues

The article is a collection of quotes and subjective opinions, which makes it practically useless. After reading it, there is no understanding of what it describes. Also, it has too many issues:

1) It is not specified that the term socionics simultaneously means a hypothesis about types of thinking, a phenomenon in popular culture in post-Soviet countries, and the field of activity of commercial organizations, coaches, and consultants. It is worth splitting the article into three or at least two articles.

2) The history of socionics takes up an unjustifiably large amount of space.

3) A large number of quotes and references to Ukrainian coaches selling socionics consultations. In fact, this is advertising.

4) Misleading statements that the hypothesis about the types of mechanisms of perception and information processing allegedly links the types of thinking mechanisms with a certain social role. It is necessary to clearly indicate that the hypothesis applies only to the types of information processing mechanisms and does not describe appearance, behavior, personality traits, profession, gender, race, religious and political beliefs or anything else other than the mechanisms of information processing by the psyche.

5) An incompetent, categorical statement that the psyche is completely changeable with reference to the Big 5 studies. Obviously, neither the Big 5 nor any other model describes the psyche completely. Besides, Big 5 is not connected with Jungian typologies, it describes completely different phenomena, and it is unclear why it is brought into such articles.

6) Too many links, many of which are likely advertising or SEO spam.

7) Since the reader most likely knows about MBTI and does not know about socionics, it might make sense to make a link to the article about MBTI, indicate that socionics is the Eastern European analogue of MBTI and briefly describe the differences.

I should also note that the article reads like a kaleidoscope of biased opinions and should be rewritten without emotion. O. I. Mikhailov (talk) 20:08, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi O. I., there is in fact a link to the MBTI here:
According to G. Fink and B. Mayrhofer, socionics is considered one of the four most popular models of personality (including cybernetic theory Maruyama, five-factor model, Big Five" and typology Myers–Briggs Type Indicator), deserving special attention because of its importance in the study of personality.
I'm going to add "aka the MBTI" to that link.
Respectfully,
JL Jlaramee (talk) 12:35, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
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