# The dynamic in groups of 3 or 4.



## Captain Mclain (Feb 22, 2014)

Intertype relations only cover the relation between 2 types but in reality many times there are groups of people that spend many hours with each other. So some examples I been thinking of.

2 duals, lets say 2 IEI and 2 SLE. Would this be the ultimate group of 4? I do not see a place for jealousy or any losers within this dynamic. 

If there is a supervisor couple of LSE and ILI, what influence would a IEE have? A very positive one? Which other type could be replaced with the IEE to achieve a more harmonies group dynamic? 

In groups of 4 different types, one of each within a quadra seem to be a obvious answer. But what have most potential of 1: SEE, SLE, IEI, ILI and 2: SLE, ILE, IEI, SEI?


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## Zamyatin (Jun 10, 2014)

There's no one answer because there are many variables that would interfere. 

"If there is a supervisor couple of LSE and ILI, what influence would a IEE have?"

There are so many variables it's not possible to predict without more information about the individuals. For example, what are the genders of the people involved? Are any of them sexually attracted to each other? What are their DCNH types? Do they share common values? Are they from the same culture, or different ones? How well is the relationship between the couple going? Etc etc etc

For example, let's say the LSE-ILI couple is Muslim and culturally Libyan. If the IEE is a Christian from America, the couple will probably exclude the IEE somewhat due to cultural and religious differences that make it hard to communicate. If all of the people are of the same culture and religion, but the couple is having difficulty, the IEE may be an attractive outsider to the LSE -- but if the couple is doing well, the IEE may feel like a third wheel, the single guy/girl awkwardly hanging around a happy couple.

The question is a bit too what-if to really answer. These sorts of things are very contextual and depend a lot on the individuals in question. The group could be divided by political views if they're highly political, or united through a social organization like a labor union that gives them a sense of camaraderie with each other, or a million other different outcomes. If you want to predict the behavior of a group, there's really no substitute for detailed, personalized information on that group. There's a reason market researchers spend so much money and effort studying the unique preferences of their customers.


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## Captain Mclain (Feb 22, 2014)

Zamyatin said:


> There's no one answer because there are many variables that would interfere.
> 
> "If there is a supervisor couple of LSE and ILI, what influence would a IEE have?"
> 
> ...


Same age, same sex, same religion. same same. The ILI and LSE got a long relationship. It lead to some difficulties in the way supervisor relations usually do. The 3 person do know them semi-well but not more then so. 

Its a theoretical question and these pieces of information could be applied to make it easier to deal with it.


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## Zamyatin (Jun 10, 2014)

Captain Mclain said:


> Same age, same sex, same religion. same same. The ILI and LSE got a long relationship. It lead to some difficulties in the way supervisor relations usually do. The 3 person do know them semi-well but not more then so.
> 
> Its a theoretical question and these pieces of information could be applied to make it easier to deal with it.


Again, it depends on a lot of details we don't have. Is the IEE physically attractive to either of the people in the couple? Is the ILI a domineering person, or a pushover? What are their enneagram types? (Yes, that will make a huge difference.) What does the IEE want out of this relationship?

You can't put people together in groups and expect them to behave in a specific way -- that level of prediction only works on a statistical level, with large samples and all the biggest influences identified and accounted for, and even then only with a certain confidence interval. People vary a lot within a single type (that's the problem that DCNH and the various subtype theories attempted to address), and that variance is compounded when you start mixing in other types.

The only way you'd be able to accurately predict what an ILI, an LSE, and IEE will do when together is if you actually know those people and you know how they normally behave and what they expect from each other.


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## Captain Mclain (Feb 22, 2014)

Zamyatin said:


> Again, it depends on a lot of details we don't have. Is the IEE physically attractive to either of the people in the couple? Is the ILI a domineering person, or a pushover? What are their enneagram types? (Yes, that will make a huge difference.) What does the IEE want out of this relationship?
> 
> You can't put people together in groups and expect them to behave in a specific way -- that level of prediction only works on a statistical level, with large samples and all the biggest influences identified and accounted for, and even then only with a certain confidence interval. People vary a lot within a single type (that's the problem that DCNH and the various subtype theories attempted to address), and that variance is compounded when you start mixing in other types.
> 
> The only way you'd be able to accurately predict what an ILI, an LSE, and IEE will do when together is if you actually know those people and you know how they normally behave and what they expect from each other.


I do not think you understand or want to put your head to what I try to accomplish with this. Which is fine.


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## Zamyatin (Jun 10, 2014)

Captain Mclain said:


> I do not think you understand or want to put your head to what I try to accomplish with this. Which is fine.


I understand perfectly well what you're trying to accomplish. You want to find the rules of social interaction, which if applied correctly will allow you to predict how people will behave. The thing is people in advertising, social science, philosophy, religion, and a bunch of other fields have been attempting that for hundreds of years and they still don't have a good answer. There are trends, but no trend is ever precisely replicated across time. We can't even predict the weather, so why would we be able to predict people?

The only thing socionics could really contribute to your hypothetical situation is to describe how each of these individuals will get along one-on-one (mirage, activity, supervisor) and even then, only to a certain extent. How that will affect the group is almost entirely unpredictable without information that is so personalized you're not really dealing with Socionics any more.


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## Captain Mclain (Feb 22, 2014)

Zamyatin said:


> I understand perfectly well what you're trying to accomplish. You want to find the rules of social interaction, which if applied correctly will allow you to predict how people will behave. The thing is people in advertising, social science, philosophy, religion, and a bunch of other fields have been attempting that for hundreds of years and they still don't have a good answer. There are trends, but no trend is ever precisely replicated across time. We can't even predict the weather, so why would we be able to predict people?
> 
> The only thing socionics could really contribute to your hypothetical situation is to describe how each of these individuals will get along one-on-one (mirage, activity, supervisor) and even then, only to a certain extent. How that will affect the group is almost entirely unpredictable without information that is so personalized you're not really dealing with Socionics any more.


We do predict weather, just not very precisely always. And at the core it is cold in winter and hotter during summer. 

I would argu that the dynamic in a group of ILE, SLE and IEI is way better then the dynamic in a group with IEI, ILI and LSE. When you lock at factors such as harmonious group, freedom of expression of feelings and thoughts. Not being restraint. Motivation levels.


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## Captain Mclain (Feb 22, 2014)

@Zamyatin Always when I discuss with you I get the feeling you do not get the extension of type and how it influence. Your tiny pretty black box of yours. :/


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## Zamyatin (Jun 10, 2014)

Captain Mclain said:


> @Zamyatin Always when I discuss with you I get the feeling you do not get the extension of type and how it influence. Your tiny pretty black box of yours. :/


That's funny, because to me you seem like someone who is trying really, really hard to put people _into_ boxes. 

But you're right, I don't see intertype descriptions as an absolute _influence_ on behavior (which sounds a lot like a beta preoccupation with rules and whatnot, "this is how things MUST be"), I see them as probabilistic _descriptions_ of tendencies, repeating patterns that show up again and again in different settings at different times. That is, they describe how people will end up more often than not, but they're still wrong far too often to be particularly useful in individual cases. Maybe that's my type, or maybe I just have a better grasp of probability than you and too much of a background in quant research to think otherwise. Plus, you know, I actually have social experience so I don't rely on Russian pseudoscience to predict how people will behave.


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## Captain Mclain (Feb 22, 2014)

Zamyatin said:


> That's funny, because to me you seem like someone who is trying really, really hard to put people _into_ boxes.
> 
> But you're right, I don't see intertype descriptions as an absolute _influence_ on behavior (which sounds a lot like a beta preoccupation with rules and whatnot, "this is how things MUST be"), I see them as probabilistic _descriptions_ of tendencies, repeating patterns that show up again and again in different settings at different times. That is, they describe how people will end up more often than not, but they're still wrong far too often to be particularly useful in individual cases. Maybe that's my type, or maybe I just have a better grasp of probability than you and too much of a background in quant research to think otherwise. Plus, you know, I actually have social experience so I don't rely on *Russian pseudoscience to predict how people will behave.*


Its like this, every post you make is offensive and you are a very hateful person judge from your posts here. About the bolded part, maybe it is time for you to leave this forum all together since you feel that way.


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## Zamyatin (Jun 10, 2014)

Captain Mclain said:


> Its like this, every post you make is offensive and you are a very hateful person judge from your posts here. About the bolded part, maybe it is time for you to leave this forum all together since you feel that way.


Man, you literally _just_ made a passive aggressive post saying I don't understand type and that I'm stuck in a "tiny pretty black box". I was being perfectly straightforward with you in this thread, pointing out that you were asking a question that is too vague to answer specifically (you can't accurately predict what 3 specific individuals will do in your scenario without having a _ton_ of information on the personal characteristics of those people), and we don't have the empirical data necessary to predict the "most likely" outcome across hundreds or thousands of groups with that type composition. You asked people to discuss your topic. I did.

You've been poking at me for a while now across multiple threads, and it's starting to get old. I get that you don't like me, but let me warn you right now, your opinion of me has precisely 0 influence on my forum behavior here, and that's not going to change. If you want people to discuss Socionics with you, you should probably start by not poo-pooing people for discussing the things you bring up simply because you don't like their answers.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Captain Mclain said:


> @Zamyatin Always when I discuss with you I get the feeling you do not get the extension of type and how it influence. Your tiny pretty black box of yours. :/


You know, this is kind of old, this need for you to structurally define socionics to this degree when it comes to social relationships. Socionics can hold proper predictive ability if we would make large scale studies to validate the observations, but at this rate in time we cannot. 

You often seem to have an idealized idea of what socionics can or should be like that is very far removed from the actual. Having a utopian vision is perfectly fine if this is what we seek to strive towards, but you expect everyone to adhere to this vision and apply it before it is even applicable. There is as such a huge disconnect between what you think socionics is or should be to what it really is. 

The only way one could even begin to reasonably map out complex group dynamics would be to try to match the individual ITR of each individual and do some weighing scale based on how easy or difficult that ITR is supposed to be like for each person and come up with some total sum value for that particular group which may work fine in theory but it entirely breaks down because group dynamics are too complex to only be viewed through this lens of factors. 

You keep claiming ITR is much bigger than it is and that people are dismissing it's relevance; no, it's not that people are dismissing its relevance but it's that you play up its importance and how able it is to make sense of human interaction to such a degree that it should be the main way to understand our relationships overlooking numerous and arguably much greater factors. Life values, for example, or lifestyle preferences. If you read up a bit on psychology you see that lifestyle and personal values are two of the biggest deal breakers in any relationship, intimate or platonic, as to why people get a long. Intelligence also plays a huge factor. All these are fairly unrelated to socionics. 

This is actual science done on the study of relationships. I mean, try to put two duals together in a room and one is a staunch atheist and another a fundamentalist catholic. Do you think they'll get along? Probably not. Especially if they also have very different lifestyle preferences. Now add in a huge discrepancy in intelligence and that gap widened even further. And these are just _three_ factors to consider in any relationship and whether it'll work out or not.

IME can play a role in how two people can understand a subject for example, but if you already have clashes on a much larger scale like personality values, then no favorable IME is going to salvage that relationship. 

I think a huge mistake people do in general is that they believe that ITR has much more explanative power than it really does and people often use ITR to try to justify as to why they get along or don't get along with someone else. It may seem sound in theory but is usually faulty in practice, because it overlooks all other major factors that could lead two people to having constant misunderstandings. 

You really have to understand the conceptual core as to why someone does not get along with someone else if you want to apply it to ITR, and even then, it may not at all be ITR related, for example assuming that because someone else took offense to what you said or did meant unfavorable ITR resulting in an unfavorable IME. All this without understanding why they took offense because maybe they didn't take offense due to ITR but simply because you were offensive. Explaining it via ITR actually makes it more convoluted than it really need to be, attempting to justify their reactions using theory when the cause could be much fundamentally simpler than that. It is easy but fundamentally a cop-out to attribute type to people in order to explain your relationship with them and how well you get along or don't get along. 

If you want to type your interactions in terms of ITR, you first need to be able to categorize how an IE manifests in a person when expressed and whether it is at all relevant in your IME with this person. If you cannot do that, you are not properly applying ITR. ITR does not work on a sense of like or dislike, even though it can seem nice to want it to be that way.


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## Captain Mclain (Feb 22, 2014)

Entropic said:


> You know, this is kind of old, this need for you to structurally define socionics to this degree when it comes to social relationships. Socionics can hold proper predictive ability if we would make large scale studies to validate the observations, but at this rate in time we cannot.
> 
> You often seem to have an idealized idea of what socionics can or should be like that is very far removed from the actual. Having a utopian vision is perfectly fine if this is what we seek to strive towards, but you expect everyone to adhere to this vision and apply it before it is even applicable. There is as such a huge disconnect between what you think socionics is or should be to what it really is.
> 
> ...


Tbh, I just think we look at different variables when approaching this topic. I just try to see it from pure IE standpoint and not anything that have to do with memory or lifestory. I do belive to some degree that the story of the person will sound very different regard to what set of function that person have. for example some types might totally reject Te therefor will never identify self with that kind of information. I see myself as the same person no matter what my hobbies are or my religion because I would never identify myself with it. Im nor atheist, agnostic or religious in my book. Therefor those things does not even play a part. Therefor I will never really get that close connection with for example LSE that basically define him or herself and others on those 'facts'.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Captain Mclain said:


> Tbh, I just think we look at different variables when approaching this topic. I just try to see it from pure IE standpoint and not anything that have to do with memory or lifestory. I do belive to some degree that the story of the person will sound very different regard to what set of function that person have. for example some types might totally reject Te therefor will never identify self with that kind of information. I see myself as the same person no matter what my hobbies are or my religion because I would never identify myself with it. Im nor atheist, agnostic or religious in my book. Therefor those things does not even play a part. Therefor I will never really get that close connection with for example LSE that basically define him or herself and others on those 'facts'.


And the entire point is that we cannot look at it from a pure IE viewpoint and extrapolate in a meaningful way because there are too many factors involved. It becomes a bubble thought experiment that ultimately holds no bearing nor cannot match the observable reality you actually claim you want to understand.


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## Captain Mclain (Feb 22, 2014)

Entropic said:


> And the entire point is that we cannot look at it from a pure IE viewpoint and extrapolate in a meaningful way because there are too many factors involved. It becomes a bubble thought experiment that ultimately holds no bearing nor cannot match the observable reality you actually claim you want to understand.


well, I think I have the same relation with the objective reality as you just by looking on type. 

Ill consider what you wrote, but I still feel you did not really get it the way I have observed it in reality and want to communicate. IE are very real, people react to it and depending on type they can absorb it or get a headache from it.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Captain Mclain said:


> well, I think I have the same relation with the objective reality as you just by looking on type.
> 
> Ill consider what you wrote, but I still feel you did not really get it the way I have observed it in reality and want to communicate. IE are very real, people react to it and depending on type they can absorb it or get a headache from it.


I never said IE aren't real, but I claimed that if you really want to understand people and people relationships, you need to allow for more structural factors in that analysis than just IE. It reduces a complex phenomenon in a way where you are looking at two different things.


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## Captain Mclain (Feb 22, 2014)

Entropic said:


> I never said IE aren't real, but I claimed that if you really want to understand people and people relationships, you need to allow for more structural factors in that analysis than just IE. It reduces a complex phenomenon in a way where you are looking at two different things.


So while you listed many facts that tend to be a factor at relationships there are Fe also that play a factor. There seem to be this thing when you trade with someone, information, that build trust. Like you trade and shop from the same person and after some time you might get discounts and such because of this relationship. I strongly believe trading information back and forth create exactly this. A relationship, and the best kind build on trust and essentially a love for the other person. Basically, by this logic, it will be almost impossible to create such a loving relationship with an conflictor for example. Unless you are family or of the same church or something and are forced by such to be in a 'positive' relationship it will not happen. Put trust in one axis and time in an other.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Captain Mclain said:


> So while you listed many facts that tend to be a factor at relationships there are Fe also that play a factor. There seem to be this thing when you trade with someone, information, that build trust. Like you trade and shop from the same person and after some time you might get discounts and such because of this relationship. I strongly believe trading information back and forth create exactly this. A relationship, and the best kind build on trust and essentially a love for the other person. Basically, by this logic, it will be almost impossible to create such a loving relationship with an conflictor for example. Unless you are family or of the same church or something and are forced by such to be in a 'positive' relationship it will not happen. Put trust in one axis and time in an other.


Yes, I agree that is also a factor in building relationships, but then these things obviously complexify, rather than making things simpler. The focus isn't so much that I'm listing facts, but it's that facts or feelings can complexify our understanding of whether a certain relationship between two people will follow a predictable pattern or not.


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