I'd like feedback on the practice of typing people on-the-spot, based on the energy they emanate...

In talking to people in this Socionics community, I haven't found a lot of support for this... I understand the reticence of people to endorse anything done quickly, and thus perhaps hastily... Also, the reticence of people to place faith in typing by reading energy -- it sounds new-agey, kinda hokey and fortune teller-ish.

Please hear me out on this...

This is how it works, really briefly... When I meet someone new, a lot of times the energy they project reminds me of someone else... In my mind I'll think, "oh, he reminds me of [someone]." (This doesn't have anything to do with VI, or how someone looks.) In conversation, the Fe feeling I get will be very similar to the Fe feeling I got when I talked with that other person. In my mind, I remember that, connect, and compare the two people.

Do you think that this comparing is Ni related?

I've found that this 'connecting' gives me an educated guess as to the person's type... It happens almost instantaneously.

This is not to say that I always get the typings right--I don't, and sometimes I'm in the completely wrong quadra... However, I believe that I've gotten better with practice at it... So that a lot of times my first guess (which is what this energy typing is, just a first guess,) is increasingly accurate in the final account... (That account involves researching a person's close inter-type relations, which I've found are almost always indicators as to quadra and type.)


I'm wondering:
* What do you think the pros and cons of this are?
* Do you think that this is a skill anyone could acquire w/ practice?
* Do you think that an EIE would be more predisposed to be accurate with this kind of typing than another type..?


P.S. I'm sorry for posting this in What's my Sociotype.

what you describe to me sounds like a mixture of meaningless and obvious points. it is an obvious strategy to use comparisons and similarities in behavior and outward attitudes in making sense of type. beyond that, nothing that you enumerated as a methodological strategy means anything to me.

Isn't that called intuition?

It's a common way of typing people and it's often referred to as 'typing by comparison'.

It works great and very effecient IMO.

I think this kind of typing is a good starting point. The best way to use this strategy is to guess someone's type based on the "vibe" they give off and then work backwards, figuring out why they give off a certain energy. If two people give you the same vibe, it's important to figure out if this reveals similar underlying motivations and approaches to life, or if the traits they have in common are tangential to their sociotypes.

Of course, this typing method isn't very scientific, but it's true that socionics is somewhere between an art and a science -- maybe even closer to the former. Typing people is a weird mixture of experience, theoretical understanding, and intuition. Besides, sometimes trying to break down someone's behavior logically and trying to type them based on fragments of their personality can just make things more confusing.

I think that's a normal side-effect of learning socionics. Every socionist develops a set of rough unconscious criteria for identifying people's types quickly based on association. Sensing types tend to use more visual association, ethical types more personality association, types may pay more attention to talents and interests, etc. I think the ability to learn more about people more quickly than before is one of the positive effects of learning socionics. It can be a really useful skill. For instance, I was able to correctly guess that some potential roommates of ours were SEE and ILI during our first meeting, and this combined with some training about people's "energy" and how I react to it allowed me to make a choice and accept the offer with little worries of interpersonal conflict.

Typically, after gathering first impressions socionists then use logical constructions (take your pick!) to see if everything fits.

I don't think EIEs are inherently better at this, but they are typically capable of developing very good skill at correctly accessing people's personalities and character, regardless of whether they know socionics.

The words "energy" and "vibe"...can someone explain to me what these words mean? Perhaps it's my own deficiency, but I find it difficult to imagine that associations can be this vague and abstract without reference to clear physical comparisons. Like, do you not understand what's giving you these impressions?

Sorry if that was just as confusing.

Well, when I said "energy"/"vibe", I was referring to the general feeling they give off when you interact with them -- sometimes, it feels like their internal attitudes, values, and insecurities are seeping out through the way they conduct themselves, but it's hard to put your finger on the exact reason. Of course, below the surface of consciousness there are specific reasons people give off a certain "energy," concrete behaviors that tie them to the subconscious memory of other people we've known. But they're "vibes" and not just "traits" precisely you aren't immediately aware of what they are. Yeah, this is really subjective and I agree that it seems fuzzy, which is why I think it's important to try to tie the "energy" you feel to more specific actions once you realize "I'm getting a vibe from person A that reminds me of person B or type C" -- otherwise, there's no way of knowing whether these intuitive associations are relevant or tangential to socionics type.

Oh, ok, that makes sense. I originally thought you guys were talking about just a "vibe", and that's it; no qualifiers or anything.

Personally, I pick up on physical traits the easiest, I think. Not stuff like "he's left-handed" or "she's got a aquiline nose" or whatever, but rather stuff like "he moves like this other guy I know" or "their eyes are exactly alike", in a dynamic way. So when I first came to Socionics (a godawful long time ago...), that's what I depended on mostly. Actually, nowadays too, but I hope my methods are at least more mature now.