Benchmark lists

A benchmark list in socionics is a list of people whose types socionists more or less agree on. The first benchmark list was created in 2006 by Oleg Khrulev (Moscow) and can be viewed at www.Socionics.us.

A similar project was suggested by Rick DeLong at the16types socionics forum in May, 2007. Here you can view the results of the first benchmark list among English speaking socionists.

Benefits

Given that there are no objective methods of proving someone's socionic type, a benchmark list is probably the only way of establishing an objective view of how socionists diagnose types and, consequently, what characteristics the community as a whole tends to associate with which types. Benchmark lists describe the prevailing view and show the relative distance of each socionist from the "mainstream." Resulting lists of famous people provide a focal point for discussion and analysis of typing criteria.

Criticism

Critics of the Russian language benchmark lists cite the problem of "groupthink" in socionics and the powerful influence of early typings by Augusta and other socionists. They are skeptical that participants put independent thought into many or most of their typings. Some socionists have gone so far as to say that other socionists have been "brainwashed" by these early stereotypes.

As a rule, people with a high convergence with benchmark lists tout them as being important and accurate, while those with a low convergence criticize them for being nothing more than a poll and do not consider majority opinion to be an accurate estimation of socionic type. Indeed, from a methodological standpoint, a socionic type benchmark list is the same as a survey of what a group of specialists think about a set of issues. Is the majority opinion or the most common opinion always correct? In the case of types of celebrities or historical figures, this is enhanced by the two kinds of specialist knowledge required, namely of socionics typing and of the individual being typed. Does everyone have the knowledge necessary to determine the types of such figures as Caesar or Napoleon? And so on.

One criticism is that people's types can be accurately diagnosed without knowing them personally. This is less of an issue for Russian speaking socionists, who have a long tradition of typing famous people. In addition, the participants of the English benchmark project were significantly less experienced than those of the Russian project.

Finally, the practice of creating benchmark lists can lead to the isolation of outsiders whose convergence is low. Whether this is a bad thing or a good thing probably depends on each individual case.

Support

The view that benchmark lists are of no more worth than a poll of scientists may be somewhat incorrect. In the first place, socionics is not a hard science, and the terms and concepts used are established in the first place by agreement, not by experiment. A benchmark list tells us what types people most likely are, based on the conceptual understanding held by a majority of socionists. To say that most or all people in benchmark lists are typed incorrectly is to say that the conceptual understanding held by most socionists is incorrect. However, there is no way of proving that their conceptual understanding is incorrect, since it is not based on empirical data.

Despite this shortcoming of socionics, it seems likely that the conceptual understanding held by the majority of socionists is the most coherent of available socionic paradigms. Those with a high level of disagreement with benchmark results do not seem to have a complete socionics paradigm to replace the majority understanding. Rather, they use most of the standard socionic concepts by default, adding a relatively minor amount of new elements or concepts of their own. It could be argued that if a more coherent, intellectually satisfying version of socionics were proposed, it would be recognized as such by a large number of the more progressive socionists.

Support of benchmark lists basically implies a view that the mainstream conceptual understanding of socionics is on the mark, whereas a rejection of the lists implies fundamental disagreements with mainstream socionics.