The paper presents results of an experiment conducted by a group of socionists, who have set a task of checking the possibility of falsification by interviewees of their IM functions’ dimensionality in the course of a verbal TIM identification.
Socionics, TIM models, communicative models, “masks”, TIM identification, typing, TIM falsification, A-model, dimensionality, convergence of typing.
The paper presents results of an experiment conducted by a group of socionists, who work at the internet site of the School of System Socionics (http//www.socionicasys.org), who have set a task of checking the possibility of falsification by interviewees of their IM functions’ dimensionality and hence deceiving typing experts in the course of a verbal TIM identification.
The need to investigate the possibility of falsification by an interviewee of his/her TIM and the need for an identification expert to be able to detect such a falsification exists because of vide spread phenomenon of communicative models (“masks”) which people are inevitably forced to use in conditions of contemporary social reality.
By falsification we understand the following:
- Intentional misleading of the typing experts by an interviewee in regard to his TIM (intentional creation of a communicative model or “mask” corresponding to another TIM.
- Unintentional actions of an interviewee aimed at presenting information which corresponds to a communicative model (“mask”) produced by interviewee’s attempt to correspond to some social approved pattern or correspond to some “good” TIM (according to the interviewee’s own opinion).
This experiment was prompted by the current situation with socionics Internet forums. The number of such forums is growing. Many forums are used for TIM identification. However the level of experts leaves to desire. Many experts are self-teach amateurs who did their studies on the same forums. As a consequence, many people wander from forum to forum, get identified as different TIMs, “try on” these TIMs. Consequently many of those who wishes to undergo a TIM identification at our Internet site (http//www.socionicasys.org) are people who have already got their TIM “identified” (and sometimes just imposed!). They have some notion about TIMs (mostly based on descriptive features) and they often wear a “mask” of a certain TIM. This influences their interview’s responses and most probably creates additional difficulties for experts, and we have set out to investigate it.