# Have you read the socionics description of the ENFP?



## StaggerLee (Jan 8, 2012)

ENFp/IEE


Well, have you? I know a lot of people don't like or avoids the Socionics, and most of the times it's because going to MBTI to Socionics can be very confusing. But I like socionics a lot, just as I like MBTI. One of the things about it that pleases me is how it's material is written, the tone of it. Sometimes MBTI sounds like it was written 'for woman'. :b 
(don't take this personally).

Here's the description of the Si in the ENFp/ENFP/IEE:
(I choose to post this because I laughed a lot when I read it.)



> Introverted Sensing
> The IEE tends to be chronically unaware of his own bodily processes, including physiological sensations and a sense of balance and alignment with one's true desires. He sometimes has peculiar preferences or tastes, which he himself is unable to understand or fulfill. In terms of physical sensations, an IEE will almost always choose the familiar over the novel, because they know that the familiar is reliable in the positive sensation it delivers. An IEE will typically have a single item he orders at certain restaurants without fail; if he isn't in the mood for that item he doesn't eat there. He will stubbornly refuse to eat anything that he knows he does not like, refusing to try a "new recipe" of anything that he did not like before. The IEE would much rather sleep in his own bed than anywhere else as a matter of familiarity, but this preference never enters his mind when a friend invites him to stay the night, sometimes resulting in a lack of quality sleep that the IEE will forget about the next time around. IEEs almost never emphasizes his attractiveness or sexuality overtly and publicly, but dreams of being pleasing to the senses to at least a small circle of trusted friends and partners who are able to develop and enhance his sexuality and attractiveness in a trusting atmosphere. He often will obsess about his looks in front of the mirror, trying to get the right combination of preparedness and liberated comfort. It is embarrassing to come to an event overdressed, as the IEE would rather look like they simply came on a whim rather than over-prepared. They will usually undermine the time spent in preparation and will avoid speaking on the topic altogether. When getting sick, the IEE may stubbornly refuse or "conveniently forget" to take any sort of medicine. Their chosen method of dealing with sickness and physical discomfort is ignoring it until it can no longer be ignored. An IEE will frequently forget meals and sleep when excitedly working on a new project or in some sort of social gathering. Exhaustion, hunger, thirst, and full bladders will be ignored until the need is overwhelming and affects the IEE's concentration.


(I really think MBTI and Socionics aren't conflicting theories, and if you're willing to read about both of them you're going to have a even greater understanding of types)


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## chickydoda (Feb 12, 2010)

I haven't, but I would like to at some point.


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## Alysaria (Jul 7, 2009)

I'm not really a fan of socionics....not because it conflicts with MBTI, but because the descriptions sound like one guy knew a handful of people of each type and endeavored to describe them in an amount of detail far beyond what the type itself should define. >.> There are some MBTI descriptions that I don't bother with because they're that way.....but it seems like every socionics page I've visited has the same kind of limited information. I'm sure bits and pieces of it can fit into the whole, because the personality is not a single facet (there's environment, experience, motivation, etc), but I take almost any description that goes into too many specifics (especially body type and physical appearance) with a grain of salt, because they don't account for the other facets.


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## 3ggminey (Jan 26, 2012)

Sounds interesting. I never taken a look at Socionics, I consider myself a "master" of MBTI, because i practically teach it..


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## musicalmeggie (Sep 26, 2011)

That does sound a lot like me, actually... I don't know a lot of Socionics, but that is dead on, especially about preferring the familiar. I reread books and rewatch movies all the time. It takes me a long time to warm up to something. The stuff about looks and the mirror is very much like me as well =P


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## StaggerLee (Jan 8, 2012)

Alysaria said:


> I'm not really a fan of socionics....not because it conflicts with MBTI, but because the descriptions sound like one guy knew a handful of people of each type and endeavored to describe them in an amount of detail far beyond what the type itself should define. >.> There are some MBTI descriptions that I don't bother with because they're that way.....but it seems like every socionics page I've visited has the same kind of limited information. I'm sure bits and pieces of it can fit into the whole, because the personality is not a single facet (there's environment, experience, motivation, etc), but I take almost any description that goes into too many specifics (especially body type and physical appearance) with a grain of salt, because they don't account for the other facets.



That's true, they do get too specific. But behaviour is a 'sympton' of the type, it doesn't happen the same way to everyone, but they're not saying "the ENFp IS like this" they're saying "ENFp's often behave like this due to this and that". It's like saying _People who likes the color red will probably own a red shirt. _Which is a lot different from saying that _Everyone who likes red owns a red shirt_. You can't say ENFPs are social butterflys, but you can say they tend to be.
I agree sometimes it sounds like they go too far, especially when it comes to appearance. But the thing is that socionics is treated a lot more like science than MBTI, so most of the information you read about it probably comes from observation, not guessing. (not that MBTI doesn't),

(And I'd like to add, as though I don't agree with most of the things they say about appearance and type, I can very often just look at a person for the first time and guess the Leading function. There's a kind of "game" somewhere on the socionics pages, where they show you picture of faces and you try to guess their types, and there's something on those people eyes that really says "Te+Si" or "Fi+Ne" and so on...)


EDIT: Reread the quote I posted on Si, up there, notice how many times they use words like "tends", "sometimes" or "almost". They really try to make it sound like they're not saying it's definitively like the way they're saying.


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## Alysaria (Jul 7, 2009)

@_StaggerLee_ Socionics is a combination of Carl Jung's psychological theory (which is the basis of the MBTI as well) and "information metabolism." Basically it's the idea that concepts are absorbed and metabolized by the brain the same way that food is by the body....only instead of energy, the end product is information. 

The MBTI is a basic subsection of functions that define preferences for how a person takes in and processes information. 


Neither one of these descriptions lends itself to crazy detail. Yes, tendencies can come with how you perceive the world, but 2 people with similar life experience are going to be more alike than 2 people who share the same functions. 

>.> I kind of cringe a little when "scientific" is applied to personality theory. Psychology is a different beast because it's the study of the individual (social psychology being the only exception), and as such, it's harder to approach in terms of behavior analysis. It's one thing to approach it with anecdotal evidence and state it as a personal experience - but anecdotal evidence is not scientific evidence. It's just personal experience. They are not interchangeable. 

1. How do you know your observations are accurate if the initial typing is a self-assessment? There's a good chance the test was incorrectly understood, a bad test (happens often), or the person chose answers based on mood instead of their stable personality. 

2. How big of a study group was observed? The more subjects, the more accurate the results....there's a difference between "a few ENFps I happen to know," "20 ENFps that I typed just by looking and interviewed on the street," and "100 ENFps drawn at random from 1000 name list of accurately typed ENFps who were observed for X length of time." >.> Is there a published study or is it all anecdotal? 

3. What kind of control group could you even assign? You can't observe a person interacting in their daily lives who lacks a personality.

4. Observer bias? Type bias? It's very difficult to objectively and scientifically assess a person's actions. Your own personality, experiences, and perspective are going to play a part in how you define another person... One observer might see a friendly, social butterfly....and another could see a manipulative social leech based on the same observation. You can't see the other person's motivation....which brings me to...

5. Motivation is not part of either theory - that's covered more by enneagram. 2 people of the same enneagram can look more alike than 2 people of the same type at times. 

The only really specific, somewhat scientific scale for determining personality is not within either of these limited concepts - it's the Minnesota Multiphashic Personality Inventory. Over 500 questions and used to assess people for top secret and high security jobs (and even that doesn't really define them into a small 4 letter package....it's a pretty individualized result). 
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Zeptometer (Dec 5, 2010)

@StaggerLee

What I don't understand, is that Socionics even exists. I mean, I can easily find a type for myself in MBTI, but I read the socionics descriptions and I just think, wtf? Did somebody just want to discredit MBTI when they made this?

@Alysaria says it better. It's just too damn specific, and every time I see someone who believes in Socionics, they act like there is no fucking way they could be wrong.

IMO, personality types are like electrons. The closer you study them, the less scientific they get.


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## StaggerLee (Jan 8, 2012)

Alysaria said:


> @_StaggerLee_ Socionics is a combination of Carl Jung's psychological theory (which is the basis of the MBTI as well) and "information metabolism." Basically it's the idea that concepts are absorbed and metabolized by the brain the same way that food is by the body....only instead of energy, the end product is information.
> 
> The MBTI is a basic subsection of functions that define preferences for how a person takes in and processes information.
> 
> ...



I never said socionics was scientific. What I said is "socionics is treated a lot more like science than MBTI". That is, it's treated more seriously than MBTI (My opinion, let it be clear). Like I've said, MBTI sounds like it was written for girls, or with commercial and selling intentions. "How can we expand Jung's work enough to call ours so we can sell it." (my opinion, again) (and I'm not saying MBTI isn't good, I like it a lot) And also, I couldn't say for sure, but I don't think the socionics people even see it as scientific. 

I also would like to say that, most things we read about socionics are that which is written for the layman, not the real works of socionics, and they're most of the times translated from russian. And of course personality is a lot different and subjective, that's exactly why socionics is subjective in everything they say. A lot more than MBTI. They can't talk about every single different combinations of life experiences, so they talk about the most common ones, or the ones they could actually observe. And I think that if MBTI was really worked on just as much as those Russians work on socionics, MBTI would be much more deeper and cover a lot of things that may or may not be case specific, just as socionics does.

I disagree with you when you say two people with the same life experience are more alike than two people of the same type. Even if two people of the two different types had the exact same set of experiences, they were still going to process it differently. Each would learn different things from each experience. That's one of the things that makes psychology so hard. If everyone whose parents died reacted the same way, therapy would be a lot easier. 
Neither theory tries to say "these people here are just the same" what they try to say is "These people here have this way of thinking, and this way of thinking *tends* to manifest itself like this, when they have these life experiences, it *tends* to affect them like this". 

And, I'm sorry, but you're making the whole Information Metabolism thing sound really stupid, which it's not. 



> According to Augustinavičiūtė, humans can be classified in terms of types of information processing, or "information metabolism". Psychological features such as attention, interests, memory and *motivation* are components of this theory of information metabolism. *This theory of information metabolism is built upon an analogy to biological metabolism*. [....] metabolism of input signals results in the production of output. Just as enzymes can constructively interact only with structurally specific substrate molecules [...]




The point you focused your post isn't aimed against socionics, the thing you don't like, but aimed against me and my post, and come on! YOU'VE GOT TO LIKE ME! :tongue:


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## WindowLicker (Aug 3, 2010)

Its a product of generalization brought on by incompetent psycho analysis. The first 3 lines of that can be disproven by any single person, ranging from normal to extreme mental retardation.

"It is embarrassing to come to an event overdressed, as the IEE would rather look like they simply came on a whim rather than over-prepared"

Wrong. I went to a political fundraising event and got really mad at my mom for letting me come causually when I was asking if I should wear a dress. There were important politicians there, and I won a raffle and collected my prize in front of everyone wearing their ball gowns, I was in jeans and a jacket. So awkward.


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## StaggerLee (Jan 8, 2012)

WindowLicker said:


> Its a product of generalization brought on by incompetent psycho analysis. The first 3 lines of that can be disproven by any single person, ranging from normal to extreme mental retardation.
> 
> "It is embarrassing to come to an event overdressed, as the IEE would rather look like they simply came on a whim rather than over-prepared"
> 
> Wrong. I went to a political fundraising event and got really mad at my mom for letting me come causually when I was asking if I should wear a dress. There were important politicians there, and I won a raffle and collected my prize in front of everyone wearing their ball gowns, I was in jeans and a jacket. So awkward.



I'll say again. The quoted part is written for the layman. And that's a specific case, pay attention to the tone of the text you quoted, they really make a effort to make it sound like EVERYTHING said there are tendencies, and people just ignore it.

And man, look what you just did! You said something is wrong just because it doesn't apply to you! That may be not a generalization, but it's worse than it!


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## WindowLicker (Aug 3, 2010)

The original quote is a generalization that according to the four letters applies to me, so it is wrong, at least in my case.  I'll be waiting to see an ENFp who is not a complete submissive claim this description. Technically speaking you're refering to a specific type of ENFp, so why would this generalized crap be marketed as an ENFp description for ENFps.


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## StaggerLee (Jan 8, 2012)

WindowLicker said:


> The original quote is a generalization that according to the four letters applies to me, so it is wrong. I'll be waiting to see an ENFp who is not a complete submissive claim this description.



Again AGAIN, they're saying ENFPs TEND to do it. TEND. They may or may not do it. 

And not a complete submissive, what do you mean by that, and what does submission or dominance has to do with anything?


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## WindowLicker (Aug 3, 2010)

I suppose a submissive is someone who will let something define them without having a basic understanding of who they really are as a person, or who other people really are. Also being easily influenced by information without questioning its logic. I like typology don't get me wrong, but I don't have a tendency to do any of those things because that description has nothing to do with "ENFps" It may be about some guy the author of that article knows who has certain tendencies that is an ENFp (other factors he's a guy, hes rebelling against social norms, he's an enneagram #whatever... what does that have to do with typology, where is the line. Its all these descriptions based on "tendencies" that pervert typology into meaningless junk.


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## StaggerLee (Jan 8, 2012)

WindowLicker said:


> I suppose a submissive is someone who will let something define them without having a basic understanding of who they really are as a person, or who other people really are. Also being easily influenced by information without questioning its logic. I like typology don't get me wrong, but I don't have a tendency to do any of those things because that description has nothing to do with "ENFps" It may be about some guy the author of that article knows who has certain tendencies that is an ENFp (other factors he's a guy, hes rebelling against social norms, he's an enneagram #whatever... what does that have to do with typology, where is the line. Its all these descriptions based on "tendencies" that pervert typology into meaningless junk.


I understand what you mean, you don't identify yourself with the description, and don't like the description itself, and that's okay. I don't agree with you, but that's okay. I'll stop arguing with you. 

But just don't keep say only people who "will let something define them without having a basic understanding of who they really are, or who other people really are. Also very easy to be influenced by information without questioning its logic." will identify with the socionics description. That's not nice.

EDIT: Actually, no, I'll try one more argue. :b

Are you sure you don't identify even a bit with the socionics description? Look at this, it's irrefutably similar to any MBTI description :




> IEEs easily become enamoured with new ideas and prospects and tend to start working on them immediately, almost impulsively. The tendency to be preoccupied with yet unrealized potential makes it hard for them to bring existing projects and situations to full completion and materialization. It is easier to start something new than finish something old. When instilled with a sense of opportunity and novelty, the pace at which IEEs begin new undertakings can be almost frightening.IEEs need to have quite a bit of free time available to investigate new opportunities, ideas, insights, and people that come along their way. Somehow they manage to keep pursuing these things even when they are overloaded with work and responsibility.
> IEEs are "big picture" people: they easily grasp large concepts and effortlessly translate their observations into generalizations and trends. When learning a new subject, understanding the basic principles and how they fit together is more important than rote memorization of facts. They like to combine multiple things and ideas, rather than follow one thing to a logical conclusion. IEEs hate missing opportunities of any sort. They typically love irony because unforeseeable things can puzzle and excite them at the same time.


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## WindowLicker (Aug 3, 2010)

You found something that matched me based on your own basic understanding of me. Nicely done.  I like to follow things to a logical end, so about that part, eh. I can't say all those things have always been true, but I am an impulsive project starter.


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## StaggerLee (Jan 8, 2012)

WindowLicker said:


> You found something that matched me based on your own basic understanding of me. Nicely done.  I like to follow things to a logical end, so about that part, eh. I can't say all those things have always been true, but I am an impulsive project starter.


Haha! 

Actually, no, I don't remember reading anything of you saying those kinds of things about yourself, I just took one part that really sounded like the MBTI description. But I'm really glad I could at least do something in this argument where it doesn't end up with me feeling like I couldn't convince other people, be it a little bit, of my point. :~


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## StaggerLee (Jan 8, 2012)

And excuse me now, it's time to go to bars and get drunk. 

Tomorow I'll return to the thread.


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## WindowLicker (Aug 3, 2010)

@StaggerLee Sorry about that. When I enter an arguement my mode is usually set to full annihilation, you found a bit of description that I think applies to me, whether it has to do with the ENFp functions I'm still not sure what, the E and P maybe? I haven't discovered the connection with compulsion and functions yet.


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## Alysaria (Jul 7, 2009)

@StaggerLee The only reason I didn't use the wikipedia description of Information metabolism is because it's "dubious" and "under discussion" 



> As far as I know, A.Kepinski alone created theory of information metabolism. Many terms and ideas adopted to socionics, but information metabolism is not very familiar with socionics. Part about socionics should be much lesser (in fact, only a note), because information metabolism is independent theory (note about MBTI removed, because it absolutly has no relation with it). I think this arcticle is at least very inaccurate and would be great if someone would expand it essentialy (we are probably not able to do anything without Polish-speaking users help, because most of the information is in Polish).One could read prof. dr. A.Kokoszka's publications about information metabolism in Medline. Unex 02:15, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
> I moved the article to Energy (esotericism) on account of the fact that Kepinski borrowed his whole of the information metabolism theory from the esoteric basis of tattwas, chakras, and psychic energy. --Rmcnew (talk) 19:45, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
> [edit]Cognitive researchThere are a number of persons who are investigating information metabolism using empirical studies. (I've seen several peer reviewed articles). We need to mention those here because IM really is an emerging field in cognitive science.Tcaudilllg (talk) 20:54, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
> Information metabolism is solely based on esoteric understandings of psychic energy. In fact, both Jung and Freud also had theories about psychic energy. It just happens that Kapenski's theory formed the basis behind socionics. Although, it would be interesting to see how these empiracle studies attempt to disassociate esoteric ideas from the research. I don't really think it is possible without forming pseudoscientific speculations. --Rmcnew (talk) 18:44, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


>.> If I really wanted to make it sound stupid, mentioning chakras and psychic energy would have done it.


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