The interaction of a person with the surrounding reality would be impossible without the ability of our body to perceive information about it. Manifestations of reality are diverse: we encounter some phenomena directly (such as taste or smell), while we learn about others only thanks to our ability to comprehend life experience.
To describe all the existing information, socionics uses the term “information traits”. Each property describes its aspect of reality, its type of information, which we perceive using various systems of organs in our body (for example, information from the sense organs, which describes the qualities of material objects, is sensory information). Let’s take a closer look at them:
It is no secret to anyone that the world around us consists of various physical objects. Stars, air, birds – all these are physical objects, the understanding of which is formed thanks to the ability of our body to contemplate them. Thus, we see stars with our eyes, feel air with our lungs and skin, and hear or see birds. As mentioned earlier, such information relates to the trait of Sensing – it describes the various qualities that material objects possess. It also includes our sense of strength and endurance.
Another feature of the human body is the ability to record and store information perceived by our sense organs: by comparing new and previous properties of objects, we feel the changes that occur to them, and along with them – the passage of time. Thus, we obtain intuitive information: it describes various events and transitions from one state to another.
During the perception of sensory and intuitive information, we form a representation that the surrounding world is a set of objects whose properties change over time. Any property or its change in one way or another affects us and causes a corresponding reaction, which in sum forms our attitude towards what has happened. This information is called Ethics: it describes our evaluations of the properties of objects or their changes.
Ultimately, we understand that objective reality is structured in a certain consistent way and that events do not happen spontaneously, but rather the properties of objects are dictated by some fundamental principles. Information about this is called Logic. Roughly speaking, it describes the laws of physics and how objects and events interact with each other, where properties come from, why changes occur and how they can be used.
So, we have come to the point that thanks to sensory information we perceive space and the objects filling it, thanks to intuitive information – we feel the flow of time and the events occurring in it, thanks to ethical information – we give and express our evaluations of objects and events and thanks to logical information – we understand how objects and events are structured and how to interact with them effectively. To reinforce the material, let’s consider the informational signs using an example:
Imagine that you want to drink a cup of sweet tea: you take out a tea bag and put a kettle of water on the stove. What information can we highlight in this situation? Let’s start with the fact that the tea is sweet: this is a sensory quality, as it describes a material object. Next, we see that an event occurred – the tea began to brew: this is intuitive information, it describes the change in certain properties. It can also be said that you did this because you like tea: this is ethical information, it describes an evaluation that led to the event that occurred. Finally, you applied a certain technology of preparation: this is logical information, it describes how the event was carried out.
I hope that the information presented in the article has helped you better understand how informational traits are structured. If you want to further study socionics, I recommend reading articles about information aspects and the principles of information complexification.