State of Sociotype 2025
Information Society and Differential Psychology
Modern Socionics, Quantitative Approach
Knowledge-first, Evidence-led Models
New Focus - Dichotomy as a More Important Element of the System
The Current State
Underlying Mechanism
The Accuracy, Self-Reports
Differences from Other Advanced Psychometrics
New Measurement - Function Inertness
How to Get an Accurate Result
What to Do About Result
New Concept - Accentuation of Dichotomies
New Concept - Development Measure, Latent States
Personality, Traits, Adaptations, Changes, Bimodality
Purposeful Personality Change
New Addition - Spectra Type
New Addition - Spectra Relations
New Concept - Personality Adjustment Protocols
Cybernetics
Big Five
HiTOP
Personality Dysfunction, Rethinking Mental Illness and Treatment
New Addition - Psychopathology Factor
New Concept - Psychopathology Spectra
New Concept - Ineffective Adaptations, Reconditioning
New Concept - Communicative Therapies
How to Diagnose People's Personalities Accurately
New Revision - Innate/Core Type Understanding
New Concept - Settings, Setting Shifts, Setting Spectra
Rationality as a higher order Social Progress Factor
Biological Foundations, Psyche-Energy Bridge
New Concept - Dichotomy Hierarchies
New Concept - Sociotype Inheritance
Political Coordinates, Left/Right Axis
Policy Changes
Upcoming Year Themes
Information Society and Differential Psychology
In differential psychology, the goal is to deduce as much as possible about a person's motivations, behavior, values, physiology, relationship compatibility, and potential success in various professional fields using minimal information. What, in essence, resembles the aspirations of a data-driven world.
One of the starting points of the information society began with people hiding information from others. When you simply hide something in a place unknown to someone else, there is always a chance that the place will be discovered, and your secrets will be revealed. Moreover, if you take no additional measures, you might not even know that someone else has uncovered your secrets. To prevent such situations, you must either have no secrets at all or make your secrets such that when someone else learns them, they gain no advantage. This is the foundation of all security in the world.
Today, the most critical asset is information, how it is formed, how it flows, how it spreads. And the person who understands how information works, and who controls it is effectively the gray cardinal of society.
At the core of theories about how information is structured in the world, there's a principle: the more you can convey using fewer words, the more valuable it becomes. If we equate words to bits, we can say that the fewer bits you use to express an idea, the greater its value. This allows you to store it in a smaller safe compared to having a massive amount of information. If there's a body of information and I can devise a better way to compress it than you can, I have the advantage — my algorithm will have lower complexity. And the drive to reduce algorithmic complexity of information is a fundamental goal in many fields of the information society.
If we add biological limits, and consider the idea that, due to human physiology and the limitations of the current state of brain development, there is a physiological limit to the number of stable social connections a person can maintain , the emergence of a direction like socionics as a discipline in the information society, in one form or another, was inevitable — as a need to represent everything in the form of maximally compact structures, including human psyche, relationships, bio-societal dynamics, and others. There are other factors driving this as well as we need to systematize and pass on knowledge, and also purely pragmatic-rational dimension – you don't start interacting with every new person by learning a new language from scratch. You already have some set of standardized tools and concepts that have been learned in advance, which help you interact more efficiently with the world and people.
Modern Socionics, Quantitative Approach
In socionics (especially true for the approach we consider), instead of studying each of the 8 billion individuals separately, we distill those to the optimal cognitive number limit, by finding general patterns and correlations on different levels of personalities and packing everything into a structured system. Standard socionics started with 16 discrete types, which were qualitatively developed over several decades through the efforts and observations of many people and represented distinct and broad personality archetypes (which are still being refined today). This foundation allowed for further advancement.
In recent times, a significant problem in pop psychology, of which classic socionics is a part, has been the growing number of branches and schools that continue to multiply and diverge from each other, despite attempting to represent almost the same framework for understanding of the same subject. This created a demand for adopting an approach and methodology that would prevent moving in cycles, and instead use all these branches in a more constructive way—as leverage and fuel for the benefit of a new meta-system.
By using modern technology and statistical methods it became possible to quantitative extract 16 consistent interconnections of global type images, to fold and analyze them more scientifically and mathematically.
The essence of scientific statistical approach in socionics was pioneered by works of Viktor Talanov, who laid the foundation for it. And which is used as a core basis in this specific, and some other applications.
The good part is that the approach, while giving clarity and simplicity on top of high scientific rigor, still does not go against any of the existing (or upcoming) alternative developments in this field. Additionally, allowing the construction of new meta-frameworks on top of it.
Compared to theories of personality that address philosophical questions of value and the subjective complexities of human existence, the biological and psychometric approaches rely more heavily on scientific methods. These methods include experiments, precise measurement, and the use of reliable and valid tools to quantify personality and psychological characteristics, yielding evidence-based findings, helping fill gaps in traditional psychology, which is criticized—often with good reason—for its lack of scientific character and the conceptual clarity of a unified science. The goal is to develop measurements in psychology that are both reliable (produces consistent results across multiple instances) and valid (ensures that the measurement truly assesses what it claims to measure).
Knowledge-first, Evidence-led Models
The overarching aim of scientific inquiry is to understand, predict, and control phenomena. Much of what we know about personality and psyche from a scientific standpoint has developed in a largely atheoretical manner. Rather than emerging from a preexisting theoretical model, most scientific understanding of this area and insights have arisen from statistically rigorous observations and empirical findings.
All existing models in classic socionics are conditional schemes that try to integrate functions into a cohesive system. However, none of them has ever been proven, nor has any been experimentally verified or validated through research. And it's not very realistic to assume that in such purely hypothetical way any model can be developed to an adequate level of accuracy. Therefore, maybe a more rational approach is to selectively leave mainly working parts. Then build scientific models based on empirical data, experiments, and observations.
This is how modern socionics can operate and be more robust — not on the wheels of artificially constructed speculative models, but through its ability to predict new experimental facts and the objective world.
New Focus - Dichotomy as a More Important Element of the System
Until more fundamental patterns emerge, dichotomies serve as a clear, unambiguous, and most convenient component of this (meta-) system, from which we can derive everything else, including functions, types, small groups — in the most straightforward way. Which also aligns closely with modern scientific frameworks. And with more fundamental ideas, such as potential difference and homeostasis.
The Current State
As of the beginning of 2025, the website provided one of the most accurate, efficient and differentiated personality measurement instrument available on the internet in the field of personality and differential psychology.
The application has a fairly simple appearance, which might unintentionally give users the impression that it's just as simple on the inside. Also because it is:
- free,
- completely transparent,
- requiring no registration,
- starting the test takes just 1 second and a single button click, with no limits, for anyone.
However, thanks to modern technologies, it's possible to create simple and functional interfaces that pack considerable hidden complexity internally.
The questions themselves are public access. The initial bulk of them was derived from Talanov's questionnaires. Then consequently filtered to define a set of phrases that most comprehensively and also most concisely captures the variation in human personality, and processed in other ways and on top of them testing logic and everything else was implemented.
Underlying Mechanism
In the interval between the user pressing the purple button and the start of the actual test, the generation process is taking place. After iterating through combinations of ~4–8 million questions, it selects the set that best meet the necessary criteria for a well-balanced questionnaire. Then the user sequentially responds to statements depending on how much they agree or disagree with them.
After completing the test, a mix of statistical analyses and operations is performed, and the resulting sociotype profile is displayed. The test does not rely on any functional definitions and is not based on any specific socionics models. It extracts from the collective type images the most consistent interconnections and based on that forms stable correlations. The relationships between functions, dichotomies, and types are purely mathematical, with descriptions provided as supplementary information, which continues to evolve, becoming more clarified and improved to align with factor-analytically derived data.
The Accuracy, Self-Reports
In the beginning (before the test app appeared), we thought that the issue of the field was in the accuracy of personality assessments. But in reality, it is not as a big of a problem, especially considering modern opportunities. Moreover, counterintuitively, the accuracy of a test is inversely proportional to how much demand there will be for the test (a similar pattern is found with all advanced psychometrics).
People usually like MBTI or much simpler pop psychology tests. And these tests are good if you want to get people to talk about the fact that there are individual differences in personalities. They don't offend anybody, don't reveal points where people don't do well, allow space for role-playing and live in a fantasy world, and don't require for people to have any amount of statistical reasoning. Unlike scientific disciplines, they not constrained by reality; they can say whatever they want, and it doesn't have to be scientifically supported.
These tests have 0 predictability with regards to performance prediction, and has all the lacks you'd expect from systems which were not generated with modern statistical technology. Perhaps they did a fine job for the 1930s, but now we have powerful computational devices that we can use to sort out the structure of personality properly and make valid and reliable tools.
Nowadays, apart from hard biological end of psychology (where certainly some solid work done), psychometric data is the most reliable, valid part of social science, which is able to predict how people's life transform and change across time and what level of achievement they manage.
There were attempts to come up with some complex set of tasks and invite people come into the lab, videotape them and extract all the information about their personality by a carefully chosen set of different things that people go through. And the outcome of this huge amount of work was that it gave orders of magnitude less to learn in general, than just asking people a bunch of questions, despite all the difficulties with self-reports, which includes biases, motivation to think of themselves as being more desirable in various ways than they are from a social desirability perspective, and others.
Reconfirmation through reports from others (cross-reference testing, where different people who know you well answer test questions about you) demonstrates a high convergence of results. Which links internal experiences with external perspectives on personality and points to high validity, reproducibility, and, accordingly, a high level of scientific rigor, indicating that the assessment is well-designed and its results are credible. The metrics also serve the function of this third-person feedback.
We are open to all other observational, behavioral, physiological, and conceptual measures. But here, we need to be more picky with each point.
Currently, such set of methods provides valid, effective, and scalable results for most cases:
Self-report using a standardized scientific questionnaire with robust feedback accuracy metrics.
Observer-report using the same methodology.
Re-assessment following the same methodology, with a new set of questions.
Longitudinal or repeated observations. Which can also be covered to some extent with the analysis of publicly available information about a specific person.
Additional methods: cognitive tests, computerized tasks, MRI.
Video interviews are rarely the primary tool in fields like neuropsychology and personality psychology for good reason. The goal is to identify stable patterns that manifest consistently over time, which is difficult in a brief, situational interaction. People can easily mask or adapt their behavior when aware of being observed. Interviews of this nature tend to capture a narrow range of traits—like social skills, verbal communication, and emotional expressions—while deeper traits, such as rationality, may go unobserved. Furthermore, the lack of standardization and replicability makes them prone to capturing state-like, situational behaviors rather than enduring personality characteristics.
Another common myth is that psychometric frameworks which rely a lot on self-reports are just about how people perceive themselves or about how people perceive other people. In reality, the existence of personality is not dependent on the existence of qualia. And these systems describe patterns of behavior that exist regardless of whether people are accurately aware of them or not. And you can take different kind of objective measurements of a particular trait (assuming it has validity), and confirm that it's not just about 'I think I talk a lot' - the person actually do so (which would also correlated to Extraversion). And the above has a fair amount of evidence.
Differences from Other Advanced Psychometrics
Account for up to x40 more precision in answering question, which significantly reduces the noice and improves accuracy.
Questions automatically receive weights based on their performances, eliminating bad and ineffective ones, making each question contribute the most to the accuracy of the result.
Can generate any amount of questionnaires on demand. Thought manual composition might have certain advantages if min-maxed properly.
Can process any amount of filled questionnaires on demand.
All filled questionnaires filter for a set of multiple biases.
There is a set of public feedback accuracy metrics, which helps to avoid deception and self-deception.
6 additional metrics hidden since 2025.
From other personality assessments, for now, we can recommend only two - the original Talanov questionnaire, which he occasionally opens temporary several times a year. And the Big Five Personality Aspects by Emily Willoughby (simpler than socionics, but one of the better ones among personality psychology space).
New Measurement - Function Inertness
Inertness — function's sensitivity, stubbornness, principledness, and subconscious depth.
From now on it will be calculated as tiny bars near strength-values of functions.
How to Get an Accurate Result
If you are not as honest as you can be when taking a personality questionnaire, it will not accurately represent you, and you won't learn as much about yourself. People can also accidentally or subconsciously distort their personalities, but this is usually less of an issue than commonly assumed. Additionally, there are answer quality metrics that can help assess it.
Answer based on how you typically are, not how you wish to be. Doesn't mean that you can't behave completely different depending on infinite number of different factors, but you likely did in the past in a way that was more of the case. Strive for balance—don't be too hard or overly generous with yourself.
The more nuanced your responses, the more precise the results will be. Avoid defaulting to a simple '100% yes' or '100% no' for all questions, as this reduces the overall accuracy.
This will reduce the accuracy of the result. Be yourself.
If you're experiencing depression (e.g., your past, present, and future seem bleak or negative, you struggle to find joy in things, you feel bad about yourself, or can't see any light in your life), it can significantly skew your personality scores as a result. Take this into consideration.
Avoid taking this when you're angry, tired, feeling down, overly self-critical, or in a bad mood.
Avoid doing it when you're likely to be interrupted or distracted. It's important to approach this seriously and thoughtfully.
Providing accurate and honest responses will ensure you get the most valuable feedback.
What to Do About Result
No one typically takes the time to help you understand your identity, and purpose. Taking the time to explore these aspects can provide valuable insights that may be beneficial in various areas of life.
Your very perceptions are dependent on the variability in your personality. It constitutes a kind of template or filter through which you organize your perceptions. So it's important to understand that there is substantial personality variability in the world, or you're often talking with people who see things differently. People differ in how they see the world.
One of the most fundamental ingredients to being happy in life and being successful is to be realistic about yourself, your preferences, your strengths and weaknesses. If you can understand what you are like, then you can understand the path in your life that is going to suit what you're like and also be able to overcome your obstacles and be successful, as yours potential allows.
Knowing your clearer personal portrait, a good first step is to ensure that you are in a position that capitalizes on your traits. It's really difficult to work contrary to them. As long as you're capable of finding the place where your particular filters, temperament and behavioral proclivities match the demand of the environment, it will fit into a successful adaptation and work good for you.
Another more specific advice - it doesn't hurt to expand your temperament. And you can develop the aspects where there are imbalances. Your profile put you in a certain place in the distribution. And it isn't so much that you want to move the place. It is that you want to move the variability, so that you can be what you need to be when situation demands. And it doesn't mean to blow in the wind, it means to be adaptable instead of constrained tightly by your biological predisposition.
Understanding how people work can hopefully lead to more fulfilling lives and help people clinically. Additionally, it can provide a new perspective on one's own personality, helping to navigate life more effectively, informed by psychological research and neuroscience.
High in Concreteness, and moderately high in Self-Regulation: you're more practical and concrete, also less flighty and less prone to creative error (e.g. often very creative people are fonts of ideas that won't work and that will occupy a tremendous amount of counterproductive time in their implementation). You're not gonna be interested in ideas to that graded degree. Probably going to be happier if you take more conservative path in life.
High in Extraversion, Constancy, Emotional Flexibility, Competitiveness: you're going to have to find a job where stress levels can be higher, compared to regular person.
High in Introversion: you want to find a place where you could work and spend fair bit of time by yourself.
High in Logical Precision: you will find yourself more interested in things- and task-oriented environments.
High in Emotional Insight: you will find yourself be more interested in people-oriented environments.
Very high in Emotional Rigidity, Malleability - there are things you can do about that (if it's really out of hand). Either from self-help (e.g. meditation, learning to control your breathing, etc) or via talk to someone if there's some physiological reason for that.
High in Cooperativeness: learn how to negotiate for yourself, in a tough-minded manner. You might need to figure out what it is that you want, what you're resentful about, and what you need to negotiate about on your own behalf.
High in Competitiveness: learn to take other people into consideration more. You might want to think hard about consciously deciding that once a week or so you're going to try to do something for someone else (which is particularly important for people with high Competitiveness because it doesn't come to them naturally, and there are research that suggest that doing something altruistic on a regular basis does seem to improve overall well-being 1 2).
High in Spontaneity: it wouldn't hurt to have a schedule to start working on that, because otherwise it is going to interfere with your long-term success.
High in Self-Regulation: you might need to learn to relax a little bit and to make that a priority.
High in Imaginativeness: try to focus on one thing and get good at that, and not flying out all over the place laterally, develop true expertise in at least one place, commit to something.
High in Concreteness: open yourself up a little bit.
High in Introversion: you can develop social skils. But you have to do them one at a time, because it's not something that comes naturally to you, and it might not be something that you developed as a child. You have to consciously plan a social strategy (SMART).
High in Extraversion: you might practice being alone a little bit. So that you can learn how to spend some quality time on yourself and not be so dependent on the company of others.
New Concept - Accentuation of Dichotomies
An accentuated dichotomy's pole gives a person uniqueness and distinction from others, while at the same time increasing their chances of maladaptation.
Since dichotomies are considered independent of each other and align with many factors from personality psychology, noticing the accentuation of them may be meaningful addition, particularly in some applications. As they reflect the direct magnitude of deviations in distinct traits that are highlighted in a particular individual.
New Concept - Development Measure, Latent States
High personality ranges can be a sign of development. An important aspect of personality development might be in the capacity to transcend the constraints of one's biological temperament. For instance, an individual who is naturally introverted can learn to engage in more extraverted behaviors, thereby expanding their repertoire of competencies and adapting to a broader range of social contexts.
In modern society, unleashing of human potential is inefficient. The self-actualization of each individual and a systematic approach to harnessing that potential will become even more relevant in the future. When a person engages in what is innate (what they want) and what is developed and acquired (what they can do), they become happy, in the broadest sense of this word.
Personality, Traits, Adaptations, Changes, Bimodality
Personality refers to probabilistic tendencies for relatively stable patterns of cognition (how people processing the world), evolutionary, biological drive, behavior, and emotion, shaped by evolutionary pressures and responding to culturally recurring classes of stimuli. Which also has a certain amount of predictability. It doesn't mean that it manifests in every situation, but it means that a in particular person, relative to someone else, it is most likely to be manifested and experienced more often, more intensely, in more situations.
Personality traits - persistent patterns of cognition, behavior, motivation. Relatively stable over time. And characterizes the way somebody behaves or experiences the world. They are persistent averages, universal, and non-specific.
Personality adaptations - relatively stable interpretations, strategies, and goals that are shaped by an individual's specific life circumstances and experiences. These adaptations are distinct from universal human traits, as they reflect personalized responses to unique environmental and social contexts.
Personality traits are not neatly divided into separate groups; instead, they exist along a continuum. All personality traits are best understood as spectra, typically distributed in a bell curve. If binary categories was how personality really worked, then you would expect to see is the scores from those questionnaires distributed bimodally. Means that you would see a bunch of people score at high, and a bunch of people score at low, and very few people who score in the middle. But In reality it's in a way the opposite. Most people cluster near the average, with relatively few at the extremes. And if you one of those who score near the average in these binary systems, your results will be permanently unstable - it can't account for your ambiversion and forced to put you into either A or B category, creating artificial distinctions. A modern scientifically valid approach is to measure personality traits on a continuous scale, providing scores that reflect a range from one end of the spectrum to the other.
This means that on average, across large spans of time, there have been environments that match every single position on that distribution, with most of the environments matching the center, because otherwise we wouldn't have evolved that way. So sometimes being really Introverted is going to work well for you, in a minority of environments, a minority of niches, and sometimes it's just going to be a catastrophe.
Personality traits can change (accordingly, the sociotype profile), even in adulthood. While they are not entirely fixed, they tend to be quite stable and strong over time, making significant changes challenging. That said, dramatic shifts—such as transitioning from being a complete introvert to a complete extravert, or vice versa, in a reasonable timeframe—are unlikely.
Personality traits represent variations in universal psychological mechanisms shared by all humans, they are enduring qualities that can describe people across different cultures and historical periods. While both traits and adaptations can change, adaptations are much easier to alter.
Purposeful Personality Change
From a research statistics virtually everyone has at least one personality trait that they would like to change. And things like therapeutic interventions change personality traits. Next stages would be trying to develop systematic, programmatic interventions to help people to adjust different personality traits.
First of all, if you want to work on your personality, the first thing you have to do is to figure out who it is that you want to be and then you have to make a plan.
In general, if you want to change your specific traits, you need to change your adaptations first (habits, strategies, goals). And as you become better at these particular domains you may actually find that broader parameters of these mechanisms are starting to shift (a feedback loop forms), and you're consequently shifting your broader personality traits. Example: improving in sales can lead to an increase in Extraversion.
To change your personality, it might be also important to consider changing your relations. Because likely you can't change your general role if you are already invested heavily in many relations where your role is quite differ from wishful one.
New Addition - Spectra Type
Often, a person is a mix of 2-3 standard socionics types. Introducing a compositional metatype system can bring clarity in personality profiling, as it considers the profile entirely and approach it more granularly, not just picking from 16 limited options. Which also provides no ambiguity, as it shows explicit, general, long-term, stable patterns and characteristic tendencies of an individual.
Problems with socionics subtypes:
-not accounting for ambiversion (the most common position in many traits for most people, inherently anti-scientific);
-considering only a small set of symmetric variants;
-doesn't work well in practice (scientifically unquantifiable);
-creating unnecessary entities (instead of pointing out that a person has increased Extraversion, one should pile on a huge theory on top, which still fails to account for the specific accentuation of Extraversion).
This system allows representations of 15,625 personality combinations in a compact way. By using first 6 strongest dichotomies, which accounts on average for 70–80% of a contribution to the characteristic of the sociotype profile.
If a pole in a person is not prominent and lies near the center of a normal distribution (its value is less than 1/16 of the scale), it need not be included in the notation, as mentioning it serves no purpose.
If a pole in a person is notable (its value exceeds 1/16 of the scale), it makes sense to indicate it, denoted by a lowercase letter or word.
If a pole in a person is highly prominent (its value exceeds 1/4 of the scale), it should be emphasized, denoted by an uppercase letter or word.
Takes all 15 dichotomies and the entire sociotype profile into consideration. Which accounts for ~30.5 billion discrete combinations.
New Addition - Spectra Relations
Utilizing the entire sociotype spectra of each person for relation calculation has much higher accuracy and predictability for real life applications. Available on the comparison page of two results.
New Concept - Personality Adjustment Protocols
Quantitative and reproducible methods of targeted personality adjustments.
How to Diagnose People's Personalities Accurately
Personality traits and descriptions inherently involve probability, (on average you tend to act more/less this way than somebody who has a different level of the same trait). That's the important thing to know for people who interested in personality, and who tries to understand what the personality is. If we say somebody is high in Extraversion it doesn't mean that they are going to be acting highly extraverted in every situation all of the time. There are some situations where there aren't particularly good cues for extraversion. When you're alone in your house you're probably not talking as much. So there are some limitations on how it might be expressed and there's kind of distribution in the way that we behave over time. Extraverts act more extraverted on average than introverts, not all the time. And can act introverted sometime.
Despite situational variability, Individuals average level of a specific behavior tends to remain remarkably stable over time. For instance, if you track someone's behavior over a week, their actions may fluctuate considerably day-to-day. However, when averaged, a consistent behavioral pattern emerges.
These average behavioral tendencies strongly correlate with the results obtained from personality questionnaires, which appear adept at capturing these general, stable patterns. Such questionnaires are particularly effective at identifying an individual's characteristic tendencies, even though their moment-to-moment behavior is influenced by situational factors and internal goals that shift in response to changing circumstances.
New Revision - Innate/Core Type Understanding
The idea may add some depth to the system, accounting for person's personality progress and adaptation vectors. Although still being speculative.
General notion is that a person is assigned to one of 16 types, which are unchangeable since birth. Subtypes and accentuations reflect later changes. While this approach is clear, it might oversimplify current scientific understandings and developments.
But there is a much broader range of distinct characteristics, which likely cannot be strictly confined into 16 categories. From these broader ranges, we then can account for the entire vector of changes—from the broadest innate spectrum to their broadest present state.
Definition of this can be a highly-genetic set of characteristics, which is unlikely to change within one's lifetime, despite learning, system of values, attitudes, and will. On top of that we'll have a highly-epigenetic relatively flexible part of the psyche.
A: Sociotype (stable and unchangeable) → Subtype (stable and changeable) → ...
B: Genotype / Neurotype (stable and unchangeable) ← Sociotype (stable and changeable)
New Concept - Settings, Setting Shifts, Setting Spectra
Individual personality is context-dependent, and it can vary across different settings. Each setting shifts the entire personality spectra of a particular person in a particular direction. The sum of the differences by which it shifts the average participant can represent the setting's profile.
Similarly, different organizations have their own settings, which influence the dynamics within them.
Settings can also be divided into categories. One is an Organic (a natural environment where changes occur without prior preparation, simply influenced by the surroundings). The other — Curated. Where we can adjust it in a deliberate way to shift the sociotype in a specific manner. E.g. Revitalizing Setting.
Cybernetics
One of the fields that has significantly influenced socionics formation was cybernetics. And it might worth to bring more attention to it again, as it permeates many layers of the modern society, and might give insights, by going above personality into more fundamental evolutionary behavior patterns.
Cybernetics theory was developed by MIT cognitive scientist Norbert Wiener, an early AI researcher. He proposed that intelligent entities are goal-directed, and organize their behavior around reducing deviations from a goal as they approach it, once they have decided on that goal. Cybernetic systems are self-regulating systems, via feedback mechanisms. And all organisms try to pursue their goals to allow them to survive and reproduce.
The goals set the frame. They also need to be well-integrated across conscious and also unconscious experience (as it processes are much more extensive than our conscious ones) of the world and relation to it, be viable (realistically possible for you), and sustainable (things that work for you in a long-term or at least relatively long-term).
Big Five
The Big Five is one the most scientifically robust frameworks in personality science, grounded in decades of research. During the 80s and 90s the field solidified around the consensus that five personality traits known as the Big Five could be well used to describe the major dimensions of personality. This is still the most widely used consensus system for personality traits in the field today. High compatibility with it (which is already there) is advantageous and proves the quality and accuracy of this new quantitative socionics framework.
The latest developments in Big Five, such as the introduction of Aspects (ten-factor system), indicate that in some sense 5 factors were not enough and a more complex system is preferable to view personality in a more granular way and get more utility. Interestingly, some of these developments suggest that certain broader understandings present in socionics from its outset are now being examined more in personality psychology.
Detection of correlational and sensory patterns.
The degree to which people are prone to detecting patterns in their environment (appreciation of art, the enjoyment of sensory information, the ability to construct scenes). Automatic detection of patterns in sensory experience. Implicit learning (an automatic statistical process of detecting patterns in our environment, in perception and learn them, how good a person at picking up unconsciously on statistical regularities and having that guide their future behavior).
Openness predicts creative achievements in Arts (visual arts, writing, music, theater, creativity, etc.). Correlation is 0.4
People who are more creative in visual arts are more likely to be more creative in writing, music, theater, and vice-versa.
Correlates with IQ at 0.1
Correlates with Verbal abilities at 0.25
reasoning about the similarities or analogies between different things
Correlates with Nonverbal abilities at 0.0
ability to think logically about various systems, about mechanics, about structures that expressed not in terms of words, mathematical abilities
Detecting causal and logical patterns.
Conscious manipulation of abstract information, allowed by working memory. Connected to functions of brain regions associated with some of the most abstract processing the brain does, integrating multiple cognitive operations that might be taking place at other parts of the brain, integrating the output of those operations. Associated with analogical, abstract reasoning between parallel structures.
Intellect predicts higher achievements in sciences (basic science, inventions, engineering). Correlation is 0.3
People who are more creative in basic science are more likely to be more creative in inventions, engineering, and vice-versa.
Intellect correlates with IQ at 0.3
Intellect correlates with Nonverbal abilities at 0.3
ability to think logically about various systems, about mechanics, about structures that expressed not in terms of words, mathematical abilities
Intellect correlates with Verbal abilities at 0.25
reasoning about the similarities or analogies between different things
The tendency to perceive meaningful patterns and causal connections where none in fact exist. Extreme apophenia - hallucinations and delusions. But everyone experiences milder forms. E.g. a shape in the cloud, a face in some random pattern, hearing somebody calling your name in a crow, believing in luck or astrology.
Apophenia correlates with Openness Aspect at 0.3
Apophenia correlates with Intellect Aspect at -0.1
Balanced Openness to Experience Trait: Automatically detecting patterns (related to Openness), and using reasoning capacity to figure out what patterns real and reasonable (related to Intellect).
HiTOP
The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) is a modern, dimensional, evidence-based model that classifies mental disorders by symptom patterns, focusing on spectrums rather than rigid categories—an evolution from DSM/ICD, mirroring the shift from narrow old typologies to advanced frameworks.
For many practitioners, it is often observed that individuals with more 'pathological markers' are still able to function effectively, achieving their life goals and leading fulfilling lives. Conversely, individuals with fewer such markers, though considered healthier, may still struggle. Such indistinctness is greatly helped to be eliminated by more granular approaches like this one.
Internalizing Spectrum: (~ Emotional Rigidity + Malleability). General risk factor for mood disorders, anxiety, depression.
Though Disorder Spectrum: (~ Imaginativeness).
Detachment Spectrum: (~ Introversion). Detachment from other people. Detachment from various goals. Low motivation. Anhedonia. Social difficulties, social withdrawal, loneliness. Low extravesrion is about not experiencing much excitement, engagement, and often having difficulty having the energy or desire to connect with other people. Not about turning inward and being more interested in your inner life the way Jung thought (that's Imaginativeness + Introversion).
Low Detachment Spectrum: (~ Extraversion) - risks with excitement seeking or sensation seeking.
Disinhibited Externalizing Spectrum: (~ Spontaneity). Impulsivity, difficulty in self-regulating, not getting distracted, not acting on impulse; compulsivity, tendency toward compulsive problems.
Low Disinhibited Externalizing Spectrum: (~ Self-Regulation). Rigid perfectionism that can't let people finish things because they're so detail-oriented and they cant' let anything go until they feel it's totally perfect.
Antagonistic Externalizing Spectrum: (~ Competitiveness + Ambiguity). Antagonism (inability to get along harmoniously with other people, engagement in aggressive behavior, unable to empathize with other people). Psychopathic traits - degree of callousness, inability to care about other people, willingness to exploit them, difficulty in feeling any kind of negative emotion around hurting other people. In the extreme that would be associated with a lot of behaviors and characteristics that get described as psychopathy, also narcissism (the sense of entitlement, the sense that only thing that really matters is that I get what I want, willingness to exploit other people and use them in various ways, even if it's not fully conscious). Dark triad traits are facets of pole (machiavellianism, psychpathy, narcissism - these are one of the best indicators of this general dimension). So there is a tendency for people to be cooperative and altruistic, versus belligerent and exploitative.
Personality Dysfunction, Rethinking Mental Illness and Treatment
A comprehensive, cybernetic-evolutionary understanding of the psyche and personality, combined with advanced psychological frameworks, could offer new perspectives and potentially solve previously unsolvable problems.
From that perspective psychopathology can be understood as a form of dysfunction, which arises when an individual's current understanding of the world, set of goals, or strategies for transforming the world from its present state to a desired state fail to work effectively. Moreover, in such cases, the person is unable to generate new goals or strategies. When individuals find themselves trapped in this state—where their approaches are ineffective, and they cannot adapt or escape—it often leads to mental illness. They become stuck in a dysfunctional, entropic state. And psychopathology, in this sense, reflects a failure of the individual's cybernetic system to function properly.
Pharmaceuticals are often not the most effective way to treat mental illness. Research into treatment is shockingly underdeveloped, partly due to the financial incentives tied to pharmaceutical solutions. For long-term well-being, individuals need to learn to explore different ways of thinking, identify meaningful goals, and develop effective strategies to achieve them. This process includes reevaluating how they perceive and interpret the world, as well as how they assess and prioritize their goals. Ultimately, this approach is key to fostering mental health — addressing these deeper issues is what ultimately enables recovery.
New Addition - Psychopathology Factor
Inability to maintain stable goal pursuit is one of the main components of the psychopathology.
The risk factor for psychopathology can be described using a formula:
p-factor ≈ Emotional Rigidity + Imaginativeness + Spontaneity + Passionarism + Complexification + Malleability + Differentiation + Discontentment + Ambiguity + Field-independence + Introversion
h-factor ≈ Introversion + Malleability + Emotional Rigidity + Cooperativeness + Differentiation + Hierarchy + Complexification + Discontentment.
New Concept - Psychopathology Spectra
The way mental illness manifests—through an array of symptoms that tend to cluster together—mirrors the patterns seen in personality traits. The structure of psychopathology and the symptoms of mental illness closely parallel the structure of personality itself. In essence, mental disorders represent extremely dysfunctional manifestations of normal personality traits. Accordingly, it can also be presented as a distinct profile.
New Concept - Ineffective Adaptations, Reconditioning
Some personality manifestations can act as ineffective adaptations to the environment. Identifying these points and addressing them might help a person switch to a more effective and healthy state.
New Concept - Communicative Therapies
For example, a way to strengthen a function within yourself is to immerse yourself in an environment where people exhibit this function in their behavior and imitate them.
Given the fact that the presence of overly pronounced traits (especially particular ones) might increase risk for dysfunction, increasing the likelihood of psychopathologies, and knowing that the increase (or decrease) of certain characteristics can be significantly altered through communication with individuals who use particular characteristics (functions / anti-functions), it is reasonable to assume new therapeutic approaches, which will might arise and could become effective for more targeted work on changing specific mental, psychological, personality factors and helping to leave dysfunctional states.
Rationality as a higher order Social Progress Factor
In attempts to find a more accurate name inline with factor analytically derived meaning of Rationality pole, in one way or another it still comes out as Conscientiousness akin to Big 5 factor. The pole itself is interesting and may take a far from insignificant place in the system. As it is also might be another one which is related to Social Progress (S > F > N > T). And not only that.
A lot of traits are universal across species. On the other hand, Rationality is a dimension which doesn't seem to appear in most others (but it does clearly appear in bonobos and chimps). It is related to organizing behavior around abstract future-oriented goals, and most species don't coordinate toward goals sufficiently far in the future. Here we don't see this overarching set of capacities for planning, for avoiding distractions, the ability to effectively prioritize goals and then guide actions. Rationality is also about suppressing impulses. And impulsivity coheres with more basic level systems in general. It is also matters in the setting where you have the freedom to prioritize your own goals, which are not heavily determined by your current environment and where goal priorities are not already scaffolded.
This pole is a good predictor of life-long success, especially in academic attainment. And also in managerial and administrative jobs that require a fair bit of responsibility, and routine work.
Rationality is connected with prefrontal cortex, which over the course of evolutionary time grew out of the frontal cortex, more specifically out of the motor cortex. It generates potential abstract patterns of action, in abstraction so that they can be assessed before they're implemented, generating potential future selves.
It is also related to the concept of order. Order is when you aware what you are doing is producing what you want to have happen. It's orderly because you can predict it. You do A and you want B, and B happens. Means you know where you are, you know what you're doing and things are working.
Biological Foundations, Psyche-Energy Bridge
When we talk about a function being psychic energy, it is likely that this is the concept where a connection between the more humanitarian side and the more scientific side is possible. In a clearer understanding of what energy is.
Energy arises from contrast, from difference. A difference in potential (a lot in one place, little in another) creates stored energy—potential energy. Blood rushes more, more oxygen, higher electrical potential.
On a more basic and physical level, it is the electrical activity of neurons in the cerebral cortex and the electrochemical tactility between them. This is what provides perception, the functioning of the psyche, at its most fundamental level. A bit higher up are instincts and reflexes, physiological needs related to survival and reproduction, which manifests through behavior. Then, there are the subjective forces of attraction and repulsion between people. You are drawn to some, repelled by others, and indifferent to yet others. Living beings feel emotions, they desire, they strive toward something, they have wants. And having dimensions of what could be, duration, cyclicity, and information.
New Concept - Dichotomy Hierarchies
There are a few implicit hierarchies in the system that are not explicitly defined, and some outdated ones which require reevaluation or supplementation. We can choose different criteria and sort dichotomies based on them for various valuable purposes.
1. Extraversion/Introversion
2. Logical Precision/Emotional Insight
3. ...
15. Ornamentation/Essention
1. Emotional Rigidity/Emotional Flexibility
2. ...
15. Extraversion/Introversion
New Concept - Sociotype Inheritance
Sociotype has a significant genetic component, meaning it is partially inheritable. The more precise mechanisms still need to be understood, but it can already be assumed that inheritance likely follows a homeostatic principle — roughly, there is a higher chance that a child of two Ethical types will be a Logical type, not Ethical.
Political Coordinates, Left/Right Axis
INFP, Cooperativeness, Malleability <-> ESTJ, Competitiveness, Constancy
Policy Changes
The assessment can now be taken only once every 3 months.
Removed: Public Database.
Removed: 6 Additional Public Accuracy Metrics.
Removed: DCNH.
Removed: Behavior Prediction Tool.
Removed: Dichotomy-Trait Correlation Tool.
Upcoming Year Themes
Psychology + Technology
PsyTech Economy, Self-Sustainability
Interdisciplinary Applications
Sociotype Development
Personality Science / Neuroscience
Personality-Optimized Flows
Directed Personality Adjustments
Sociotype-based Multi-Agent Systems / Digital Socion
Quantitative Models
Metatype Systems
Predictive Organizational Management
AI Sociotype Diagnostics
Less explored Dichotomies and Small groups
Sociotype Agents
Synthetic Participants (Agent-reports)
TBD