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Talk:Socionics

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This is Pseudoscience right? Why no mention?

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.

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".

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.

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.
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."
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.

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 WP:NOR. the critical views on the MBTI section, on the other hand, is well referenced and presents a coherent argument. Niffweed17, Destroyer of Chickens 16:07, 7 October 2006 (UTC)


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. --Gronau 08:36, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

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! Jcbutler 05:30, 7 December 2006 (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.--yiliu60 07:29, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Socionics and Intertype Relations theory

I know nothing about socionics. If it were really as wonderfully powerful as advocated in this section:

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.

then I'd presumably know more about it. I'll remove this unbacked advertising. Martijn faassen 17:40, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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. Andreas Kaufmann 07:56, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Another Socionics

What about socionics as a research field on the edge between sociology and distributed artificial intelligence? Yuunli 07:31, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Some links:

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. Andreas Kaufmann 07:56, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

External Links

I've moved the following links here from the main page:

Please discuss (referring to Misplaced Pages:External links) prior to adding them back in.
brenneman 13:29, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Category: Psychology

Jcbutler 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. Niffweed17, Destroyer of Chickens 03:31, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

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 PsycINFO, 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 empirical 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. --Jcbutler 22:06, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
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. --Jcbutler 22:33, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
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. Niffweed17, Destroyer of Chickens 00:56, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
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 this link). Certainly, all books are in Russian. Andreas Kaufmann 22:11, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

By empirical evidence, I mean that we need to define 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 Chi-square test. 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.

Psychology has a long history of bad ideas. Freud, 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 five-factor model provides a much better fit for personality test data. This is getting a little long, so I better stop now, but thanks for reading. --Jcbutler 04:24, 3 February 2007 (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. Andreas Kaufmann 22:00, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
That's probably a better fit anyway. Niffweed17, Destroyer of Chickens 22:43, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

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.

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. -- tcaudilllg

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. Niffweed17, Destroyer of Chickens 03:39, 20 April 2007 (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. Niffweed17, Destroyer of Chickens 03:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

i should get around to it eventually.... maybe... Niffweed17, Destroyer of Chickens 02:55, 2 May 2007 (UTC)