Quite honestly, I think you can't go wrong with either of these theories if you use them right. In fact, if you can resist the urge to categorize and classify people, I'd recommend reading a bit of both. But I know that won't happen, so for typing purposes, I have to say that Socionics is better.
The most obvious reason is that Socionics is more accurate than MBTI. In short, while MBTI has its merits, it misinterprets the theory it claims to be based on. In the absence of any other control, it should at least get that right.
The other reasons stem from the fact that Socionics is focused on intertype relations. Because type depends on how people get along with one another, you are encouraged to test it out for yourself. Misunderstandings about how the theory works tend to go away when you're out testing the truth of the theory. But at the same time, you are also encouraged to introspect about how you relate to each of the types as well. Being a cognitive theory, MBTI is much more difficult to test. Quite simply, Socionics puts you into a more effective mindset.
I have studied several versions of MBTI-type theories, including Keirsey's Temperaments, Linda Berens' Interaction Styles, and PersonalityNation's JCF, and I still think Socionics is the most effective Jungian-based tool out there. However, if you do study MBTI, I'd strongly encourage you to consider the dichotomies as separate from the Jungian functions. You can learn a lot about reading MBTI personality descriptions, especially ones that describe type from the inside, but the more you take it as 'absolute truth' and dig into the matching cognitive functions, the more it falls apart.
There are a few problems with Socionics, but they have to do more with the availability of information and the multitude of poor connections rather than the theory itself. The main problem with studying Socionics over MBTI is that there's a whole lot of information about MBTI, yet there's very little about Socionics that has been translated from Russian. You have to think much more critically about the information that you read too, as a lot of the information is misleading until you've started observing the theory play out in reality. But as long as you stick to the basic idea of information metabolism (which you'll learn about in any good description of Socionics), you'll be fine. I can't recommend any books, and I would urge people to stay away from sources like socionics.com, which describes type in terms of physical traits. There is a grain of truth to visual identification, but you can't really tell the good information from the bad until you have been applying the basics for a while.
Despite its wide-reaching appeal, I really see no reason to recommend MBTI to anyone. If you want job recommendations, you are better off taking a combined career profiler as a starting point (and then taking action). If you want free job recommendations, the Holland Codes are more suited for the job. If you need a self-discovery tool, the Enneagram is far more appropriate. And for pretty much anything else, you are better off using Socionics.
Honestly, I don't really recommend you type people at all. I think people are better off considering everyone individually, taking time to understand how people really are rather than turn to a categorical approach. But it's not practical to think that everyone will take that route, or even be able to. So if you're going to take a categorical approach, go all the way and use Socionics.
Don't know where to start? Start here.
Patrick, I think I can quite confidently guarantee you that you have never "Tried Pod'Lair." Learning, or at least attempting to learn to Read People (which would be the only way one could reasonably say they have "Tried Pod'Lair" and be telling the truth) takes far more than just skimming over the theory posted on the website or forums, I imagine that must have been the extent of your effort. Pod'Lair easily trumps Socionics; Any model that can provide no physiological verification to act as a control for its theories assumptions (Ie: Both Socionics AND MBTI), is a complete joke, with no hope for growth or accuracy. It is laughable that you would even suggest that Socionics is more accurate than anything, considering there is zero evidence to actually prove that assertion right. If you had sincerely tried Pod'Lair, you most certainly wouldn't be championing Socionics anymore.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that Pod'Lair's extensive training process renders its method of verification no better than Socionics's method.
ReplyDeleteI joined the Pod'Lair forums back in January, asked their followers a few questions, and watched for physiological cues (using their list of typed celebrities as a standard) for about a week. After about 7-8 hours of watching videos looking for cues I still wasn't to the point that I could simply "see" the cues I was to be looking for. I picked up on some cues, yes, but it was no less ambiguous than reading by nuances of speech or behavioral patterns (i.e. Socionics methods).
What's ironic about all this though is that Socionics has already tried linking physiology to personality (we call it VI, short for visual identification). It's had some success, but it hasn't worked very well as a typing standard.
I'll be interested in hearing more about Pod'Lair once it has had time to develop further, but as it stands I have no reason to think it's more useful than Socionics.
Socionics, like all typology models, makes assumptions of how each type is supposed to act, and then tries to fit everyone into those boxes of limited understanding. There is no objective way to prove if any of these assumptions about how each type is supposed to act, what the cognitive functions actually look like, and how they will work for each type are actually correct assumptions or not (most of which are incorrect) you are just supposed to have faith that people work that way because they said so. It is completely unfalsifiable and that is exactly why Socionics will never be a working model for understanding the human Psyche.
ReplyDeleteIt does take much longer and requires more effort than a week or 7-8 hours of training to actually gain a proficiency in Reading People. The fact that you are unwilling to go farther than that is not a flaw in the model, just your own laziness. Most abilities that actually require that we use the human mind/body (like learning a musical instrument or a martial art) as an instrument requires self-mastery, which naturally takes time and effort and a willness to work at it and grow. The fact that learning self-awareness is not even a part of Socionics is another flaw in that of itself.
Reading People is also more than observing gear 1 and gear 2 cues, which you did not progress further than, and it does take far more training than you had to see past the ambiguity. Starting off, you are really supposed to just take in as many samples as you can, while understanding what cues you are seeing, and as you do that more and more Reading People because a Tacit skill and above, which is when one can say that are truly "Reading People"
VI actually has nothing passed facial physiology, so there is no question as to why it failed.
The Logic you are using is that VI failed, therefor Pod'Lair must have failed too. VI failed because they put too much stake in the literal physiology of people, and you need much more than that to actually have a working method of Reading People. This is why Pod'Lair has the "Five Gears of People Reading", and it essentially works as the five lenses one can zoom in and out of when Reading a Person, all of them informing on each other, and none of them complete on their own.
Socionics at best gives you a feeling of doing something useful, but that is not the same thing as actually being useful. This is exactly why Socionics is not going to be dominating the fields of Psychology or Sociology anytime soon. You can't use it as a reliable method of mastering oneself, it can't be used as a way to understand the relationships between yourself and other people. Sure "Intertype Relations" might be a part of the theory, but theory means nothing if you have no means to apply it in anyway, the biggest obstacle that it would face in application is that it has no accurate method of typing people.
Where it fails, Pod'Lair succeeds, however what Pod'Lair has to offer must be reaped by more than just skimming over articles and putting in little to no effort.
You are not actually providing any arguments why Pod lair typing system is right or what it actually reveals about people.. ?
Delete"they can type you immediately" is not an actual argument proving any validity .... What does it truly reveal ? What is the theoretical hypothesis ? What do Pod lair functions truly teach us about people ? And, what are the arguments supporting the method efficiency at revealing those hypothesis ? What are they truly measuring ? Theoretical assumption ? How does the typing method meets that hypothesis ?
Pod lair people can never give arguments or explain, they just criticize other methods and use well known communication strategies to try to indoctrinate people... Everyone wants to feel special, unique and united, that is exactly what they offer and what attracts people....Without self validation, this whole typology system and culture does not stand..
Pod lair is a cult and a business taking advantage of people naivety and need for self validation. They create an elite, an ideal then type everyone that ideal in order to make the members feel special and to create social identity and bond members together. It operates exactly like a cult..The fact that the typists are using are using a method that only they understand allows them to gain maximum power on their targets.
For a long time, I have been wondering whether they were psychotic or manipulative, I am now convinced that they are just manipulative . They use cheap Hyped psychology in order to recruit people.
They never give actual arguments but they give us political rhetoric hoping that it will work at persuading targets
DeleteWhile you took an extremely long time to figure out what type you are in Socionics, the Pod'Lair Mojo Reading Team Read you correctly as a Nai'xyy on the first try without even knowing you.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that you are going to tell me that it is no better than Socionics after we pulled off, what I imagine you very well may have never pulled off without the help of Pod'Lair is just mind boggling.
You should be dying to know how the fuck we did that.
Unfortunately even after knowing that you are a Nai'xyy, Socionics will be of little use to you for truly understanding yourself as a Nai'xyy and what that actually means. Socionics has their own ideas of what the "IEI" are "Supposed" to be based on their theoretical assumptions, but they have no way to actually observing real Nai'xyy and all of their variations, complexity, and nuance in reality. You are missing massive pieces of the puzzle, and are left with at best theoretical masturbation.
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DeleteWell, you know more about Socionics than I thought. That changes things.
ReplyDeleteI advocate Socionics more in a "stepping stone" sort of fashion, because a great deal of the information on it is rather poor. That's why when I advocate for it, I also suggest that people simply learn the basics, then watch people as they interact in reality.
However, there certainly is room for a model that can simply be taken at face value. And in the case of Pod'Lair, on a typing level you do have a point. Not only did Pod'Lair type me correctly on the first try, they also accurately hit upon the fact that I had a "Zai riff", which is something I had needed to add onto Socionics to make my type fit (of course I simply called it a strong Hidden Agenda, but same idea).
But as far as use goes, a week studying Pod'Lair seemed not to take me as far as a week studying Socionics. Naturally, having other things to do, I decided to drop Pod'Lair and invest my time elsewhere.
I'll be looking more into Pod'Lair, but I'm sure you understand that I can't advocate for it until I find value in actually using Pod'Lair. And it sounds like it'll be quite a while before that happens, even if what you say is true.
A stepping stone to what exactly? And what does that serve to accomplish if the theory isn't even correct in the first place? That's like using Astrology as a stepping stone to Astronomy. We've had Socionists come onto the Pod'Lair forum, and I literally have to act as the repair man, undoing all of the wrong ideas, false assumptions, and over-simplifications that Socionics has filled their heads with. If I had to choose between teaching a Socionist Pod'Lair or teaching someone who knew nothing about typology, I would pick the ignoramus every time. It is always much easier to work with a clean slate than someone who thinks they already know something that they clearly do not. You just cannot progress to do more advanced things if you are holding onto false ideas.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, you are saying you had to tweak Socionics theory for it to actually be inclusive enough to fit you into it. How is that not a massive red flag? If you had to fudge the theory just so it could be inclusive enough to include you as a variable, how many other people are being left behind because the Model is too primitive to understand?
How exactly do you even know how far you are going? You might feel like you have a good grasp on Socionics, but if you were to put out your typing results to be scrutinized by the Pod'Lair case study team, we would completely skewer those results. I've seen the work of the Authorities in Socionics, and I have no reason to expect your work to be an improvement if you are working with exact the same material. This is the only way you can judge the accuracy of a Model, how accurate are the results that it can produce, and if after a week, month, year, or decade of studying Socionics the results are still garbage then it really doesn't matter how far you believe you have gone.
The theoretical circle jerking of Socionics and other typology models might make you feel like you are getting a higher understanding, but at the end of the day you are just playing with purely abstract concepts that have no basis in reality.
Socionics has led you to believe that the Phenomenon out there is far simpler than it is. It is going to be very hard for me to actually get you to understand what I mean by that, because you would have to be looking at the situation from my (or any other person that is proficient in Mojo Reading)vantage point. But if you actually understood just how massively organic and complex the Psyche is, and the seemly infinite amount of variables that you must be aware of and be ready to make adjustments for. If you understood the vast complexity of the real phenomenon of the human psyche, you would drop Socionics in a heartbeat, because at that point you would see that Mojo Reading is the only way you could accurately read a person, making up assumptions on how types are "Supposed" to act and then trying to fit them into that assumption is not even close to being sufficient. And the only way you would even know about the vast complexity and massive amount of variable that can effect the mechanics of the mind is if you are practicing Mojo Reading, that is the only way to actually study the Phenomenon as it exists in reality.
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ReplyDeleteI'm not criticizing you for not advocating Pod'Lair, I am writing this in response to your disingenuous claim that you studied Pod'Lair to a point where you could accurately gauge the extent of what the theory can offer, when in reality you just dabbled a little and then balked at the first sign of having to put in effort.
ReplyDeleteI disagree that it will be a while before you find value in Pod'Lair, that is if you actually tried. It may take awhile before you gain a high level of accuracy in Mojo Reading, granted, but there is still value added and learning more about yourself and other people every step of the way. Although, you would get the most out of this if you were a bit more interactive. For some reason a lot of Nai'xyy turn to lurking when they get onto the Pod'Lair forum, and you were kind of one of those, but you'll get far more out of the experience if you are actively asking questions, taking part in discussions, or participating in quizzes.
Even if it was true that it might take time for you to find value in Pod'Lair, that is still much better than never finding value in Socionics. Again, you might feel like you are accomplishing something, but feeling like you are going somewhere is not the same as actually going somewhere.
It's the starting point of Socionics, the information metabolism perspective, that is valuable. Once you get a sense of what information metabolism is, you start seeing it everywhere: the way people talk, the peculiar way people react to others, etc. That part seems accurate enough.
ReplyDeleteOnce you're tuned into this though, you also have all this other information to make sense of. Not everything is driven by information elements, of course, so while you're making sense of the IEs, you're also making sense of people as a whole. That was the goal in the first place: to understand people. So Socionics is a stepping stone to understanding people.
For me, typing people is sort of unnecessary, so I have trouble replying to the rest of your post. I just take everything in and infer what it means about a person, based on my past experiences and informed by Socionics and Enneagram theoretical frameworks. At least, I think that's how my mind works. I just get intuitions about people and how to interact with them.
For whatever reason, my intuitions about people became much more active and precise after having studied Socionics and the Enneagram for a while. I don't even refer to the theories anymore, because my experiences have told me where they sorta break down. But they did get me thinking in the right direction.
This is probably vastly different from the typical Socionics perspective, but then again I'm not really defending Socionics per se so much as defending why I found value in Socionics over Pod'Lair. There are so many different perspectives on Socionics though that I really don't see the point in trying to argue about it further. My perspective actually is quite similar to the perspective given on the "Pod'Lair Superiority" page, and I can't even find one argument against Socionics that applies to me. Yes, I do think that MBTI was wrong to define the judging/perceiving thing, but you change this to adaptive/directive, which I agree would not fit the types at all. It's not that Judging/Perceiving is linked to something else, it's that it's not defined by Socionics at all. Rather than trying to explain those sorts of things, we explain the principles underlying intertype relations and such (and no, it doesn't mean that duality is the best romantic relation for everyone, ime). In fact, in your view, I might have even been using Pod'Lair all along, as I also read people based on expressions, not facial features, etc. etc...
So if it's okay with you, I'd not like to argue anymore about Socionics.
Okay, where do you get off with these accusations of "being lazy" or "balking at needing to put in effort?" Has it ever occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, people have things to do that are more important than studying personality theories?
ReplyDeleteIt's asking quite a lot for people to put in the time for something that they don't even know will work, and dismissing that lack of commitment as laziness is insulting and completely wrong. So please stop.