Socionics - The 16 Types

The 16 Types

Socionics divides people into 16 different types, called sociotypes. They are most commonly referred to by their two strongest functions, which in socionics are called the leading function (Jung's dominant) and the creative function (Jung's auxiliary). The creative function is opposite to the leading function in extraversion and rationality. For example, if the dominant function is introverted logic (a rational and introverted function), the secondary function must be irrational and extraverted, which means it must be either extraverted sensing or extraverted intuition.

Aušra Augustinavičiūtė usually used names like sensory-logical introvert (SLI) to refer to the types. In SLI the leading function is introverted sensing and the creative function is extraverted logic. She also introduced the practice of referring to types by the name of a famous person of the type (although types of these persons are not universally agreed upon, especially about "Napoleon"). For example, she called the SLI Gabin and the SEI Dumas. Also sometimes names such as Craftsman or Mediator are used to express the social role of the type—a convention introduced by socionist Viktor Gulenko in 1995. Given the formal similarities present between Socionics and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) abbreviations frequently used in English, some prefer to distinguish socionic type names from Myers-Briggs' names by writing the last letter (J or P) in lower case (for example, ENTp, ESFj) -- a practice introduced by Sergei Ganin. This is because the relationship between socionics and Myers-Briggs and so the difference in terminology helps to differentiate the two.

In dividing the socion according to the four Jungian dichotomies, from this is formed 16 socionic types. The following tables provide a list of types with the names most commonly used in socionics:

Among socionists, the prevailing view is that sociotypes are inborn and genetically determined, although the content of different functions and dimensions may vary. Some socionists believe that sociotypes may temporarily change while in altered states of consciousness or under great stress.

Vladimir Ermak first introduced two important concepts of modern socionics further confirmed by Elena Udalova research. The first one is the growth dynamics which means that every horizontal block of two functions (see below) is filling in the certain age, from bottom to top, with the roughly 7 years interval, so that the lowest block is done before 7, the next is complete before 14, the weak part of the mental track is done before 21, and the top block finally leads after that. Due to this process, a child, or a teenager, may demonstrate faces of other sociotypes according to the active horizontal block. Besides, being introduced to the unknown people, or in stressful situations, people again may demonstrate adaptive or protective behaviour directed by the appropriate blocks (see below).

The second concept is so called functional dimensions. It was introduced by Aleksandr Bukalov. He define the first dimension as the personal experience (Ex), the second dimension as social norms (No), the third dimension as the current situation (Si), and the fourth dimension as the globality, or time perspective (Ti). This concept is useful because it best illustrates the difference in cognitive power (imagine measuring capability of 2D vs 3D measuring tool) and roughly describes abilities of each function to process and generate information. Still, definitions of dimensions require further research and clarification. For example, the vulnerable function tends to lose knowledge which haven't been used.