Anna Kiryanova — Should You Respond to Insult (Socionics Typing)

The combination of Rationality + Objectivism + Ethics is almost universally perceived as Logic. I hope that over time people will stop being confused by the cold, dry calculation of an ethical constructivist through which they often initiate communication.

It doesn’t help that the person responds strictly and to the point, without any batting of eyelashes, meowing, purring, or sweet-seductress performance that internet stereotypes associate with Ethics. So, unfortunately, the same explanations have to be repeated often.

Anyway, let’s dive in.

You can read the full transcript here: Anna Kiryanova — Should You Respond to Insult

Socionics Analysis:

Rational: Her train of thought follows a perfectly straight line. She takes a topic and sticks to it rigidly, bringing up example after example.

Naturally, she is an Ethical Rational. She describes the topic multidimensionally, from all sides. Not just through examples, but through a wide variety of situations. She even looked at this phenomenon in a positive light, suggesting that we can only be insulted by things we haven't resolved within ourselves.

Guardian: She highlights certain social laws and rules of conduct in society. Traditions. How people used to behave. How people reacted if someone tried to tarnish their honor and dignity.

And she is undoubtedly an Objectivist. No fantasies, no hypotheses. Everything is grounded strictly in concrete examples of historical figures. Every single one of these examples finds its confirmation in memoirs and literature—the sources she relies on. And that is Objectivism. It is a reliance on facts.

Furthermore, this is Statics. Meaning, it’s not one big, continuous story about what an insult is. No, it’s a definition that she, as an Objectivist, gives right at the beginning—and this is also important to note. An Objectivist always shows us what they are leaning on, what their foundation is. You don't have to read between the lines with an Objectivist. There is no need to reconstruct the thought to understand what the person means. So, the description is static. Even though all these examples are united by a single theme, they are nothing more than illustrations—like pictures, slides, or photographs.

Now we are left to figure out whether she is a Sensor or an Intuitive. Or, to put it more specifically, whether she belongs to the Social or Humanitarian group. Well, what she describes, she describes through the lens of a Social type. She shows what will happen and how our reputation will change if we swallow an insult. How people will look at us afterward. And how we will feel ourselves, knowing we were insulted but didn't fight back—that we just swallowed it and pretended it was fine. In other words, showing others that it's okay to treat us this way. And she calls for action; she insists that under no circumstances should an insult go unpunished if it is hurled at us in the presence of others. You need to know how to protect your boundaries. You need to know how to shut the offender down.

At the same time, she does this, again, using completely concrete, sensory examples. And the examples themselves are as mundane as it gets. For instance, the story about the boy who was mocked by his grandfather, who put a single drop of soup on his plate. The same goes for Chukovskaya and Akhmatova. That example has no hidden double meaning. It's totally concrete: for some reason, Akhmatova decided to humiliate Chukovskaya.

So, we see the combination of Ethics plus Sensing. Specifically, Fi + Se (Introverted Ethics + Extraverted Sensing). We see an expert description of how insults affect self-perception and self-esteem. And she states right away that there is no such thing as an unintentional insult. Any insult is inherently deliberate and premeditated. Its goal is to humiliate us, make us a laughingstock, and prompt us to doubt ourselves, our qualities, and our talents.

It makes sense that many traits will overlap if we compare her to EII. Both are Yielding (Accepting). For instance, she mentions that you won't necessarily be ready to fire back at the offender immediately. You might be disoriented by the suddenness and unexpectedness of the act. Just draw your conclusions and realize it's best to stay away from that person. That is a Yielding trait. Even the idea that there might be a grain of truth in the insult is also Yielding—it's a search for resources in everything. Relying on resources. It all aligns with the psyche and mindset of the Yielding type.

Of course, she is a Constructivist. A very monotonic line of speech. Intonation is completely absent; it’s as if she is reading from a piece of paper. Plus, she mentions anchors, noting that it's important not to get stuck in resentment, but to see it as a resource for inner work.

At the same time, she is a Result-oriented type, whose speech has a clear beginning, middle, and end. In the conclusion, she draws insights and summarizes:

"You must always show the envious person that you still feel excellent, that your affairs are going beautifully, and that the very thing they so fiercely envy will remain an inseparable part of your success.

So, never beat yourself up for failing to catch your bearings and respond to an insult right away. That pause a normal person experiences when confronting rudeness is a sign of a healthy brain reaction. It is protecting itself, giving you time to recover and decide whether it is even worth engaging in the dialogue at all.

As academician Dmitry Likhachev wrote, scoundrels often triumph over decent people precisely because they treat decent people like scoundrels. Decent people, conversely, try to communicate even with a scoundrel as if they were a decent person. Because of this nobility, we most often lose in the moment—we simply do not know how to sink to their level.

And yet, life always sorts things out. Trying to resist, protecting yourself, and putting anyone who rudely violates your boundaries back in their place is absolutely essential. "

Now, let's look at her Quadra values:

"if a person failed to respond to an insult when they had the chance, they humiliated themselves. Such a person could be asked to leave their regiment, barred from decent homes, or ignored at social gatherings and balls. It was seen as allowing oneself to be dishonored by failing to take action or challenge the offender to a duel. Among many peoples, an insult could only be washed away with blood. This may be a terrible custom, but there is a grain of truth to it."

You might recall that Gamma is a decisive, competitive quadra. For Decisive types, strength and fortitude of character carry immense weight. Whoever cannot withstand the blows is discarded and becomes an outcast. There is no place for weaklings in the central quadras. If you couldn't stand up for yourself, you humiliated yourself. Such is the philosophy of Se (Introverted Sensing).

"A human being is endowed with reason and speech, and is capable of standing up for his good name and defending his personal boundaries against the attacks of ill-wishers."

So, as you can see, in the eyes of a Decisive Democrat, it is irrational and absurd not to know how to defend your personal boundaries when you have the opportunity—and according to them, everyone has it. No use blaming circumstances; be so kind as to pull yourself together, fire back at the offender, and protect your honor and dignity.

"But, I repeat, this is not always possible. Often, the insulted person feels completely bewildered and empty inside because nothing comes to mind at the right moment. They cannot respond adequately, and later they suffer and overthink it."

Here, she is already justifying her one-dimensional Ne (Introverted Intuition), saying that it's not always possible to orient oneself in time and find an opportunity or the right words to reply. In other words, we can be caught off guard. There’s no need to pour ashes on your head; these things happen.

Remember, she says at the end that waiting and taking a pause is normal—what is not normal is accepting defeat.

"As a rule, they are always linked to envy and the ill will we provoke in the offender through our own superiority. Therein lies the root cause. People insult most often when we are at their mercy, when they know for certain that we cannot fire back, and they revel in it."

I slightly disagree with this part. If we are in someone's power, what is there to envy? She is looking at the social context—that there must be a reason for the insult. The person is triggered by something; they want to possess something we have, and they feel insulted by this, wanting to destroy it if they can't take it away. From a social standpoint, if we view communication as a struggle for resources through Se, that makes sense.

However, if we look at it from the perspective of Ne, a person might just be a piece of garbage by nature. Or, even so, they might not consider humiliating what humiliates us. For instance, take the grandfather example:

"His step-grandfather clearly disliked little Misha. While ladling out soup, the grandfather asked, "Should I give you some soup?" Misha replied, "Just a bit." Looking right at him, the grandfather deliberately let exactly one drop fall onto the plate and stared at the boy. It was clearly an intentional insult."

No, it's not clear! The grandfather might have been an EIE and was testing the boy's strength of character this way. Testing him on Se. The boy got offended. But he could have chosen not to. He could have answered his granddad: "Alright granddad, next time grandma pours you some moonshine, I'll splash you a drop right at the bottom. We'll have a good laugh about it together. Deal?" And perhaps then, if Mishenka had shown him his teeth, the granddad would have respected the kid—if he hadn't respected him before. And why didn't he respect him anyway? Was it really only because he wasn't biological?

This is the exact chain of reasoning that distinguishes a Humanitarian from a Social type.

Socials view the situation more locally, while Humanitarians view it more globally. I don't want to claim that one is more right than the other. I am merely demonstrating that depending on the type, we draw entirely different conclusions.

Source: S. Ionkin