16 Personality Types

© Text: Dmitri Lytov, 2002—2005.
© Portraits: Ye.Filatova, Personality in the Mirror of Socionics, 2001.

Important note

The meaning of three socionic criteria, extroversion/introversion, logic/ethic, sensation/intuition is almost the same as in MBTI for E/I, T/F and S/N criteria. There are only slight (but sometimes important) differences. For example, socionics does not associate extroversion with sociability but rather with initiative. Neither socionics associates introversion with intellectual independence. Another difference is that MBTI does not associate control of personal space and imposing of own wishes and will on others with sensing, while socionics does.

The criterion of rationality/irrationality deserves a special remark.

The meaning of "rationality—irrationality" in colloquial language is somewhat different from the original Jung's (and socionic) understanding of this term. The colloquial meaning of this word pair should be attributed rather to another dichotomy, logic-ethic (or T/F in the Myers-Briggs theory).

Although the J/P criterion in the Myers-Briggs theory resembles rationality-irrationality by its description, it's not the same. As it was proved by Gregory Shulman, J/P is not dichotomy (i.e. it does not split the 16 socionic types into 2 equal parts). It is a pseudo-dichotomy that represents two poles with multiple transitional options; in other words, one or two types in socionics may be called "super-J", and another one or two types "super-P", while other types tend more or less to one of these poles. This explains, for example, why ENFP or ENFJ in socionics may both get scored ENFP according to MBTI, etc.

One more remark: according to I.Myers' hypothesis, rationals correcpond to EJ and IP, while irrationals to EP and IJ. However, Isabel Myers herself wrote that her hypothesis somewhat contradicts to the result of her test, i.e., the J/P description does not work well for introverts. On the other hand, statistical researches of parallel testing of people by socionic methods and by Keirsey Temperament Sorter (online version) does not agree with her hypothesis and speaks rather in favor of identification of J/P with rationality/irrationality (although not 100%, as it was said above).

Such nature of J/P criterion sometimes causes funny mismatches. For example, the descriptions of ESFP and ESFJ according to D.Keirsey match well with the corresponding socionic types, while their descriptions according to Kroeger and Thuesen match rather reversely: i.e., Kroeger's ESFP correlates better with the socionic ESFJ, and Kroeger's ESFJ with the socionic ESFP.

If you find any contradiction between the descriptions of socionic types and/or those proposed by MBTI authors, do not hesitate to discuss them in one of the forums (see the top left menu).

Another problem is that MBTI adherents rely too much on verbal testing and only in recent years began to develop methods of objective verification of types. By contrast, while socionists developed a lot of methods of determining types without tests (by interviewing, observation etc.), only in recent years they began to develop good tests (among them—the Multifactor test you can find at the start page of the English section). Twenty and even ten years ago socionists used very primitive tests (like this one), just because they did not believe in tests. It was difficult to believe in tests in the former Soviet Union—living under the ideological pressure, people used to lie or at least hide their real thoughts or to speak about them vaguely, and this can partly explain why good tests appeared so late in socionics. This may also explain the difference between the socionic and the MBTI type descriptions: MBTI describes types through their behavior, while socionics describes types from the viewpoint of their appearance, motivation and style of thinking.

Synonyms of Jung's scales

C.G.Jung's terminology and socionic terminology is not widely known in psychology. On the other hand, we can refer to the theory of cognitive styles that uses several empirically proven scales. At least two of them definitely have their analogs in socionics:

Who are on the portraits?

Visitors of our site often ask us whether the people whose pictures are placed together with type descriptions have been “typed” correctly. OK, we answer.

These portraits have been photographed by Yekaterina S. Filatova, a socionist from St. Petersburg, since 1991. She gave us her permission to place some of her pictures at our site. She did not use any “visual identification” methods – she is rather much critical towards such methods, and never wants to “type” pictures which some people send to her. On the contrary, she first determined the type of the person (by interviewing, in course of long contacts, etc.) and only then, when this person expressed his/her agreement with the type description and his/her permission for being photographed, she made his/her pictures in several standard perspectives (which allowed comparing pictures of different people with each other). In addition, she often received feedback from these people and kept contacts with them, since many of them were her former students, colleague professors or even practicing socionists. If anybody later expressed his doubts about the correctness of his/her type identification, then his/her pictures were removed from the collection to a separate folder marked “dubious” for future verification. The total number of portraits made by her exceeds several thousands, and the most reliable of them have been published in her books.

Later she compared her pictures, and discovered so-called “quasi-twin” series within each of the 16 types. However, they were similar not as much by facial traits (form of nose, lips etc.) as by their characteristic mimicry (facial expressions). For this reason, we strongly disagree with the approach of Sergei Ganin, the owner of www.socionics.com, who determines types of celebrities using the method 'he/she facially reminds me a person whose type is XYZ". As a part of psychology, socionics should use scientific approach of studying people characters, instead of physiognomics and other pseudo-sciences.

In addition to the portraits made by Filatova we have also added some portraits of some socionists we have known for years.

Model A

This model shows balance of psychological functions in the type and explains its relations with other types. Read more...

Pseudonyms (aliases)

Types are often referred to by aliases, which make it easier for beginners to memorize the types (by association) while you learn the terminology. Each type has two aliases: one is a name of a celebrity of that type (Zhukov, Robespierre, Dostoyevsky etc), the other is a type's characteristic trait (Seeker, Criticist, Politician etc). While socionic terminology is very strict, aliases may vary depending on locality and culture. You may after having acquired certain experience in "human studies", invent your own system of pseudonyms.

Recommended reading:

1. D.Lytov. Methods of determining personality types.
2. D. Lytov. Model A.
3. D.Lytov, M.Lytova. Introduction into Socionics (draft). Part 2.
4. D.Lytov, M.Lytova. Introduction into Socionics (draft). Part 3.
5. R. McNew. Visual Identification: Intuitive vs. Sensibility.