Type image: its perception and recognition. Difficulties in diagnosing type in socionics

Type image: its perception and recognition. Difficulties in diagnosing type in socionics

1. The situation in the diagnosis. On the difficulties of determining type in socionics

Diagnostics means recognition. For social animals, including humans, the ability to distinguish each other from individuals of their species is vital. A person even has a special area of ​​the brain at the border of the occipital and temporal lobes that is responsible for recognizing faces - a spindle-shaped gyrus (fusiform gyrus). Although the type is located inside the psyche, it is necessary to recognize it (if you do not use devices that measure the functioning of the brain) by external manifestations.

As you know, schools of socionics do not agree on the diagnostic results, which negatively affects the reputation of the whole area. The discussions between them are unproductive. Why is this so?

This happens for two main reasons: firstly, they have different types of recognition methods, and secondly, they have very different images of the types themselves. In other words, different socionics respond differently to the question: what are we looking for? and how are we looking?

If socionics want to change the situation for the better, they must either agree on the images of types or openly state that different schools see manifestations of types in life differently. It is not necessary to mislead beginners about the unity of socionics and do not give food to critics of socionics. In the second case, it must be recognized that in the framework of a broad trend called socionics, we are talking about close but still different typologies. Because they are based on different types of images.

And here we come to a fundamental issue. What process underlies type education:

1) individual functions are interconnected in a stable configuration, which is called type,

or

2) the type is indecomposable, it arises as a whole and the whole is destroyed when we try to isolate individual functions in it.

Of course, both processes can coexist. But it is important to know how they relate to each other during our perception of another person? The answer to this question depends on which methodology in diagnostics you prefer.

2. Type as gestalt. On the difficulties of determining type in socionics

The type sample we are looking for in the Humanitarian Socionics is considered not as a set of individual signs or functions, but as a gestalt. What does gestalt mean? This is the basic term of Gestalt psychology, meaning integrity, which is not reducible to a set of its parts. With this interpretation, the type cannot be assembled from separate functions, like the Lego constructor. It exists initially, and functions only fill the psychological valencies in it.

Gestalt psychology is believed to have arisen in 1912, when Max Wertheimer published a description of the effect of visual perception, in which our brain combines disparate elements into a single whole. Wertheimer found that if we observe two alternately blinking dots - two separate light sources, then we will perceive them as a continuous movement of one light source from one point to another.

This was contrary to the psychology of the time in which dominated by associationism. What we perceive, the associists thought, is obtained as the sum of all the sensations arriving in our senses for a certain time. But there were no sensations from the gaps between the two extreme positions of the luminous points. There is no fact of point movement in this experiment, but we still perceive it. In the same way, we immediately recognize a hexagonal star or other geometric shape, even where its contour is interrupted in many places.

The law of the formation of a holistic figure - the so-called law of preignity, states that any psychic organization will always strive for completeness and balance. The image of the type in socionics is just such a complete pattern. A real person, as a carrier of the psyche, can shift to one side or another from the prignant form, but in the event of removal of pressure from the external forces of the communicative field, he returns to his natural typical state.

And one more conclusion from gestalt psychology. This discipline introduced the “background - figure” dichotomy into widespread use. This phenomenon is described by the Danish gestalt psychologist Edgar Rubin on the example of a dual image - the so-called Rubin vase.

What is shown in this picture - a vase or two human profiles? It is impossible to answer unambiguously until we agree on what to consider as a background and what as a figure.

Humanitarian socionics takes into account the inevitably emerging duality of perception of complex objects by our psyche. We consider the type as a constant blurred background, which is poorly recognized, since the main attention is directed to the functional state in which you are currently immersed. Thus, diagnostics is based on the process of separating the background — the type itself from the figure — the functional state.

So, gestalt psychology has proved that perception comes from the whole (gestalt) to the part - to a separate element. If something is missing in the sensation of objects or events, then the psyche just thinks it over. This circumstance has a fundamental character when, for example, the question of a greater or lesser awareness of psychological functions is discussed.

Socionics. The recognition process proceeds from whole to part: first we perceive a holistic image, and then analyze it.

How do we define type in the Humanitarian Socionics?

And the third discovery of Gestalt psychology, which we take into account in the Humanitarian Socionics, when we are engaged in diagnostics. Experiments have shown that a new gestalt is perceived as a leap - insight. This pattern also applies to psychological types. As I mentioned, previously it was believed that the individual elements are combined in a whole step by step and this happens gradually (associationism). I get the impression that many of our school’s opponents are still guided by these ideas when they diagnose. They sequentially construct the type from individual signs, adding them one at a time, as if in front of us is a mechanical device assembled on a conveyor, and not immediately gestalt before us. They ignore the laws of holistic perception discovered by gestalt psychologists.

The position of the School of Humanitarian Socionics in this matter is as follows. The perception of information and the adoption of decisions based on it in the process of expert evaluation (for example, type diagnostics) involves both methods, but not at the same time. At the first stage, we abruptly perceive the whole holistic image, which includes the current state against a certain background, and then analyze it, exploring individual elements and relationships. That is, the natural process of recognizing a familiar image in our psyche proceeds from the whole to the part, and not vice versa.

3. How the type image is built. On the difficulties of determining type in socionics

What is a type image? - This is a generalized, but at the same time visually tangible thoughtform, which is a gestalt, in which your impressions of people with the same personality structure are stored in a concentrated form.

Compare type diagnostics with face recognition. Face recognition occurs as follows: the brain constantly compares what it sees with what is stored in its long-term memory, while our brain processes the face as a whole and is able to identify a person even by half of the face. The brain compares the resulting image with an internal sample and finds characteristic differences. Therefore, it seems to people that the representatives of another race are “all on one face”: the internal patterns of people are tuned to the facial features characteristic of their environment.

These experimentally confirmed data answer the question of why it is impossible to reliably determine the type by individual characteristics or functions, without having an initial sample . Because individual traits do not form a holistic image - gestalt. So, the study of individual ants will never give us an idea of ​​what an anthill is.

Socionics. It is impossible to reliably determine the type by individual signs or functions, since individual features do not form an integral image - gestalt.

How do we define type in the Humanitarian Socionics?

What is it for? - The type image serves us as an internal standard for comparison with specific personalities of people in order to identify them. So the creation of a full gallery of type images is a prerequisite for successful diagnosis. By what method do we teach to create an image of the type in humanitarian socionics?

First, we take four keywords and create an initial visual representation based on them. It is mainly visual, since vision is the most informative channel in humans as a species. For example, keywords for "Entrepreneur": movement + risk + success - randomness.

To create the desired image, you imagine a mobile and active person who cannot sit still, he is drawn to venturing something risky, but promising great profits; at the same time, he smiles and jokes, believes in his success, but significantly randomizes the environment around him and scares away cautious and conservative people. Well, if you recall such people among your friends. Then the image will turn out not only integral, but also alive.

The keywords for the types in the above example are selected according to the 3 + 1 formula, that is, the first three characteristics are the advantages of people of this type in society, and the fourth feature confronts them as limiting and causing the greatest problems.

This is the meaning of this formula. We set a goal (1) and implement our plan (2), while we have to connect additional resources (3), but suddenly something goes wrong (4). Then we stop and either abandon the plan (the end of the cycle), or try to achieve our goal in a different way (the beginning of a new cycle). This rhythm of life and is embedded in the quaternary formula 3 + 1.

And then we expand the compressed image to a medium-sized characteristic. The standard characteristics are based on brief descriptions of sociotypes published in my book Structurally Functional Socionics (Kiev, 1999). Many use these descriptions, translate into English, and do not always refer to the author.

To consolidate the image, it is useful to consider the type mission. Mission is the mission of people of a certain type in society. After all, socionics is not just psychology, it explores social projections. This is not a science of individual types; it is a science of socion. Therefore, it is important to see how the type mission is carried out by its representatives, not only from our midst, but also from the Western world. Still, socionics has already turned into an international trend.

And as a result, at the last stage, we enter the type into its environment closest to strategic goals. To do this, we turn to the functional group, which includes the type. What it is? This is the four types that are united by some function within the framework of their social mission. For example, intuitive extroverts. It makes sense to consider, for example, the type of Seeker for the final design of his image not in quadra, and not in the installation of the type of activity, but surrounded by other extrovert-intuitive types.

Important caution. Socionic practitioners should consider that the use of clear and visual images of types in another school of socionics (not the School of Humanitarian Socionics) will be very difficult. This is the same as translating from one language to another if they are close and have many equally sounding words. There will be many misunderstandings. For example, in Polish, the word sofa means carpet, and pies mean dumplings, the word order means prohibition, and the crypt means a store. So with type images. For example, the image of Don Quixote in non-humanitarian schools is interpreted as logical, and in the School of Humanitarian Socionics as an ethical one. You see the image of Shtirlitsa from the television movie “17 Moments of Spring” as extrovert, while in the liberal arts school he is cited as an example of introvert (closed) behavior.

4. Two systems of perception and decision making. On the difficulties of determining type in socionics

There are more modern studies that complement and concretize the conclusions of gestalt psychologists. In particular, in the 80s, a number of experiments were carried out, showing the inevitability of cognitive distortion. It turns out that when a person acts as an expert, two opposing systems of perception and decision-making coexist in him - one fast and the other slow.

This discovery made by D.Kaneman experimental psychologist (by Daniel Kahneman ) . Here is what he discovered.

The first thought system is fast, but error prone. Kahneman believes that it is based on intuition. This system perceives information and makes decisions quickly, but at the same time poorly. One of the reasons is that it acts associatively - by analogy, by similarity. It is based on personal impressions. In general, this is an irrational system, judging from the perspective of socionics.

I think that it is characteristic of initial subtypes. Especially if they are irrational. Intuitive irrationals more often than other types use heuristics in recognition of types - plausible judgments by analogy. Its value is that it many times reduces the number of options for making a decision and thereby wins time.

The second thought system is slow but thorough. Kahneman believes that it is built on logic. Although this system slowly perceives and thinks for a long time, but when making a decision it makes a minimum of errors. It acts sequentially, element by element. Such thinking is characteristic of terminal subtypes, especially if they are rational. Logical rationals more often than other types use an algorithm in diagnostics - step-by-step instructions. A tough algorithm cannot be used with free heuristics at the same time.

Thanks to Kahneman’s experiments, we can clearly explain why our diagnostic procedure is two-stage. According to the methodology of the School of Humanitarian Socionics, a fast heuristic hypothesis about the type (at the same time it is often dual) is first put forward, and then its slow detailed verification takes place. In case of detection of contradictions and inaccuracies, the original hypothesis is revised. Moreover, such a cycle can be repeated several times.

DCNH system in the work of the expert diagnostic group. On the difficulties of determining type in socionics

To increase reliability, specialization is introduced in the team - the initial types take on the initial assessment, and the terminal ones conduct a more thorough check. And there should be another third link - the most experienced member of the group, who takes responsibility when deciding if the first and second subgroups in the team have failed to come to a consensus. In other words, I recommend using the DCNH system or its analogues, which I made a report in 2016 at the previous IIA conference , to recruit the expert diagnostic group .

5. Cognitive distortion and what to do about it. On the difficulties of determining type in socionics

To be able to withstand the illusions in diagnosis, you need to learn not to trust first impressions. Even the most plausible answer may turn out to be wrong in the end. Quick thinking works on the machine, and we cannot turn it off by willpower. But you can make slow thinking always connect after (but not instead of) fast and insure it.

Hasty, intuitive conclusions can be effective if the fee for making a mistake is acceptable, and the speed of the solution will save time and energy. But in unfamiliar situations with high stakes, making such conclusions is inefficient. To avoid mistakes, it is necessary to connect slow structural-logical thinking, which will help to avoid cognitive distortions and make your judgments about the type more objective.

What kind of distortions are we talking about? There are a lot of them, but I will focus only on the most ordinary ones. First of all, I will mention the “halo" effect . This is a transfer, in conditions of a lack of information about a person, of the first superficial impression of him on the subsequent perception of his actions and personal qualities. It can come in the form of positive bias (“positive halo”) and negative bias (“negative halo”). So, if the first impression of a person as a whole is favorable, then in the future all his behavior and traits begin to be reassessed in a positive way. If the general first impression of a person turned out to be negative, then even his positive qualities and actions are either not noticed at all, or are underestimated with hypertrophied attention to shortcomings.

Objective diagnosis is also harmed by such a distorting factor as self-confidence. Belief in the diagnostician’s own rightness depends on the brightness and clarity of the picture compiled by him on the basis of what he saw, even if a little is seen. We often do not take into account the fact that we do not have the data necessary to form an unambiguous judgment, and then we decide: what you see is what it is. Or, as Kahneman says: What You See Is All There Is, WYSIATI. Our emotional function and propensity for insights suppresses doubt and ambiguity in such situations. Moreover, further fitting of the data takes place under these self-confident assessments.

6. Consideration of the perception features in the work of the team of experts. On the difficulties of determining type in socionics

So, there are two extreme points of diagnosis as pattern recognition according to D. Kahneman: irrationally-intuitive and rational-logical, if they are conveyed in terms of socionics. Two other argumentative systems that humanitarian socionics explores (rational-intuitive, as well as irrational-logical) are intermediate. Kahneman has no talk about them. I will consider them in another report. Both of these systems should work in concert as part of the diagnostic procedure. How to achieve this?

The diagnostic procedure in the Humanitarian Socionics provides for preliminary testing. At the input, it is desirable to have two types of data: firstly, analogue, for example, the figure made by the respondent, and secondly, digital, for example, the results of the test performed by him with a clear choice of yes or no. This allows you to more effectively apply heuristics to compose a first impression of a person. And only then follows the interview and observation of the respondent's reactions.

The diagnostic team of experts consists of several people, usually three, but always with distributed roles. The specialization is as follows: one expert observes, the other listens, and the third asks questions and coordinates the work. After the interview, there is a discussion of experts during which hypotheses about the type of respondent are carefully checked for compliance with the main typical groups - temperaments, attitudes, quadras, rings, as well as functional groups.

As experience shows, the most common mistake, even for those who have mastered the gallery of typical images, is to take the accentuated function for the manager. It is the correction of this error that must be worked out during the training interviews of the expert group. A turning point occurs when a creative diagnostician, for example, claims that we have a power sensor, and a normalizing one objects that we are dealing with an accentuated function. To remove this contradiction, considerable skill should be shown by the third member of the group, who must ask crucial additional questions and thereby finally reveal the type of respondent.

In conclusion, I will give an interesting analogy. It is known that presidential elections in many countries take place in two rounds. Apparently, in this way two systems of perception and decision-making in the mass consciousness are spontaneously taken into account. In the first round, voters vote with their hearts (a fast system works), and in the second round with their minds (a slow system is involved). And thus, the relative balance of fast emotional preferences with slow, but more sober decisions is respected.

So, the expert diagnostic team - an experienced team with distributed roles - you have created and ready to start work. And so she works out a full program of socionic diagnostics. What do I mean by complete, that is, completed work? The full program includes the following four required steps :

- self-assessment tests (discrete and analog) for preliminary familiarization of experts;

- conducting interviews - collecting data and generating hypotheses;

- expert meeting and decision making;

- message of the result.

Unfortunately, in practice, EDH does not always know how to bring the typological result to the respondent in such a way that he remains satisfied. And here, in the first place, is the ability to present an image of your type in simple words in your long-term memory. And it is advisable to back up your story with life examples. We devote individual lessons to this skill as part of our club meetings.

7. Clip thinking of people in the information age. On the difficulties of determining type in socionics

In recent decades, you and I have witnessed how the so-called clip thinking was formed. I decided to dwell on it especially, since I think that it represents a very serious obstacle to professional socionic diagnostics. The fact is that all vices of a fast system of perception of reality and decision making are concentrated in clip thinking.

The English word “clip” (clipping) refers us to the modern composition of advertising or music videos, where the video sequence is a weakly interconnected and quickly replacing each other scenes. The clip worldview is also built on the principle of an advertising clip, within which a person perceives the world not as a single system, but as a series of almost unconnected parts - people, situations or events.

Although there is no unambiguous definition of the term, it follows from all of the above: “clip thinking” is the perception of many different properties of objects, without taking into account the logical connections between them, characterized by fragmentation and heterogeneity of the incoming information, high switching speed between its parts, lack of a complete and stable picture the surrounding world.

The “clip” person loses the ability to hold his attention on one subject for a long time, and this affects his behavior: he switches television channels many times a minute, switches between many tabs in the browser, wanders around sites, blogs or social networks.

The reason for the appearance of clip thinking, obviously, is a large stream of information that they want to convey to us from all sides in the shortest possible time. And the main driver in this process is commercial media. On modern television, a dynamic, vibrant and therefore memorable advertising of goods is thriving, made so that the consumer does not have time to go deeper and think, but would swallow it all indiscriminately.

The concept of “clip thinking” has already managed to acquire a pronounced negative emotional coloring. Most often it is attributed to adolescents and young people who abuse smartphones and the Internet. It is believed that this type of thinking leads to degradation, as young people practicing it read in fits and starts, not plunging into the meaning of what they read, listening to music on the go from a smartphone, i.e. receives information in pieces, not focusing on semantic connections, but only on individual flashes and vivid images.

The generation of the book is a thing of the past, and a screen generation has taken its place. And we socionics have to reckon with this. But let’s be objective: clip thinking is not one continuous negative, it has both negative and positive sides.

Indeed, in the clip mode, the surrounding world turns into a mosaic of disparate, little interconnected facts and pieces of information. A person gets used to the fact that they constantly, as in a kaleidoscope, replace each other and require more and more portions of it. But there is a flip side to the coin: clip thinking is a natural defensive reaction of the psyche to information overload. If we take into account all the information that a modern person sees and hears during a day, especially from a TV screen or found on a “world dump” called the Internet, then there is nothing surprising in the fact that his thinking adapts to the new world in this way.

One cannot but agree that clip thinking, due to its superficiality, leads to simplification and does not contribute to the critical assimilation of material. But it increases the overall productivity of solving problems due to the fact that it parallelizes our attention, so that it starts to work in several threads at once, that is, in multitasking mode. Children of the mobile Internet generation can simultaneously listen to music, chat, surf the net, post photos, and sometimes still do their homework. But the price for multitasking is distraction, restlessness, lack of attention, the preference for free play of visual symbols to strict logic of concepts.

So, although clip thinking also has its positive aspects, it clearly violates the balance of introverted logic (L) and extraverted intuition (I). And all this is flavored with a fair dose of demonstrative emotions (E).

What are the implications for us? - Here is one of them. Many newly-minted socionics, embraced by clip art, offer hasty methods of type diagnostics, which do not rely on any serious research and are fueled only by the author’s self-confidence and his desire to declare himself. Such clip socionics, having acquired fragmentary knowledge, are deprived of the ability to semantic analysis and build long logical chains, they consume information as if absorbing fast food. Therefore, the result of their socionic exercises is also one-sided and unhealthy.

Adherents of clip thinking exercises in socionic diagnostics, if they are performed systemically and according to the rules, can bring undoubted benefit. Socionic diagnosis is useful in that it teaches the ability to bind fragmentary data about a person together. If a modern person prefers thinking in short fragments, then we will have to go to meet him. Given the clip format of modern media, we should saturate these fragments in all directions with well-constructed socionic images. Then, in the presence of motivation, a clip socionic is good at coping with the role of an initial expert who quickly puts forward a plausible hypothesis about the type of respondent. It's up to us, let's create high-quality, memorable and at the same time holistic images of socionic types!

When the information boom settles down and the depth of assimilation of information is again demanded, serious organizations will recall our developments, and the socionics, which are now being squeezed and forced to survive through clip forms, will be restored to their rights. The war of nations and civilizations will take place, the contradictions between liberals and conservatives will soften. Ahead of us are waiting for dynamic network communication structures and the formation of crews for new flights into space. All these forms of communication between people create a request for a deep science of man and society, which will reveal laws on how to achieve harmony between the individual and the collective in one harmonious socion.

First report by Victor Gulenko at the 33rd IIA conference

September 16, 2017