IEI

This page is marked for revision because the material seems incomplete or limited in scope, and should address a broader range of concepts.

The IEI, or Intuitive Ethical Introvert, is a socionics type corresponding to the IP temperament and the Beta quadra.

Some typical manifestations of IEI information processing are described on this page.

   

IEIs typically have richly developed mental landscapes. They are highly attuned to trends, patterns, and conceptual connections of past behaviors, experiences, relationships, and their role in the world. They are often highly reflective and imaginative, and the fantastic tendencies of IEIs are often vivid and complex. Many IEIs find an inner calling to express their unique perspectives, and often find ways to make use of a myriad of expressive forms, sometimes including poetry, novels, storytelling, photography, or other media.

IEIs may also demonstrate their phrenic activities by assessing connections, patterns, and implications of events in their experience, often with a human slant. They may seek to understand the dynamics and mechanisms of people, groups, relationships, situations, or experiences. They make judgments and assessments of others based on past trends and behaviors and seek to explain what makes others tick.

IEIs not infrequently may appear to tend to exhibit a mystical and intangible quality to their insights, and may base their ideas on observations that are not readily apparent to others. This causes the ideas of IEIs to be sometimes frustrating and confusing for more practically minded individuals. IEIs sometimes exacerbate this problem by getting lost in their thoughts, and are often prone to having difficulty expressing their inner perceptions to others effectively.

Often IEIs exhibit a dreamy and gentle demeanor. They can come across as fickle, indecisive and vapid, and their fantasies can be often esoteric; they often may seem idealistic and focused on unrealistic or other-worldly utopias. They also can demonstrate a lack of attentiveness to daily affairs, and sometimes a generally withdrawn, inactive deportment. At the same time, they sometimes can be prophetic, prescient, and profound in their visions, and sometimes reflect a far more rebellious, aggressive, or outspoken demeanor.

   

IEIs naturally conceptualize the people around them in terms of the emotional energy that they give off, and the way that they interact with the mood and energy around them. They are often especially sensitive to how others around them react to their own energy.

IEIs are generally very sensitive to the emotional atmosphere around them. They are often good at recognizing and influencing the moods of others, and at communicating the depth of their feelings or experiences. They tend to be adept at reading the reactions that others have to them and are often quick to make use of emotional cues in interaction. They frequently feel a need to look after the mood of those around them, and characteristically seek to awaken or innerve others' emotional energy. They may exhibit a propensity for good-natured, friendly, lighthearted banter and try to promote good will and inclusiveness. On the other hand, IEIs can also direct their emotional influence through a mode of expression that limits their affable levity; they may take on a formal, toxic, serious, or even shock-jock emphasis as situations require.

IEIs may feel the need to express the nature of their inimitable mental landscape and insights, and may feel a greater calling to make a difference in the lives of others. This is often manifest by championing intellectual, moral, social, or personal causes. IEIs may feel strongly about these types of causes and some may expend considerable effort towards expressing their avidity towards them, even posing toxic criticism to those that do not share these deep moral callings. However, many other IEIs may lack the impulse or motivation to take this type of action at all.

The emotional energy of IEIs can sometimes appear restless, moody, or gregarious, but much of the time it is inwardly-focused and self-contained. IEIs are often highly introspective and often have a rich and vibrant array of emotional experiences, which they may dwell over and seek to display to others.

This section is marked for revision.

   

IEIs often exhibit a modest lack of attention to their surrounding physical environment. Often IEIs will place some attention to their physical comfort and physical needs, but are not always aware of the extent of their importance. Though some IEIs may place an extensive focus on their appearance, in the interest of producing an emotional affect (ie seeming elegant, unique, unusual, attractive, or otherwise), most IEIs pay little attention to their surroundings and may persist in disorganized or disheveled living conditions. They may have varyingly large or minimal appreciation for aesthetic concerns, and may range from squalor to a mildly obsessive zeal with regards to their aesthetic preferences.

IEIs may be overly diffident about matters pertaining to their health. Overall, they may have difficulty interpreting the signals of the body and may be inclined to focus excessively on them, possibly leading to alarmist self-diagnoses. They may perceive caring for one's body as a chore rather than a fulfilling activity.

   

When confronted with a large body of factual information with which they are unacquainted, IEIs will often hesitate and refrain from saying anything so as to avoid appearing unknowledgeable or potentially embarrassing themselves. They may feel threatened and vacillate if pressured into producing critical evaluations of factual information or statistics; they may feel as though they do not know what to do with this type of information, and often prefer to rely on their internal conceptual framework use their understanding of the relevant processes to evaluate a situation. They may also be wary of basing their beliefs or actions on facts from outside sources, instead preferring to rely on their own insights. These behaviors can sometimes lead to confusion and lack of clarity, as they may have difficulty clearly explaining and underscoring the information pertinent their ideas.

They are often unconcerned with optimizing productivity or efficiency. They may generally try to avoid evaluating cost-effectiveness of resources, and are often not apt at making such discriminations. They may see persons who focus extensively on practical matters as boring and inanimate. They deeply dislike and can avoid tedious and disinteresting tasks that involve attention to detail and pragmatic focus, such as managing one's finances. They usually are exhausted by these tasks; they have no interest in and little idea how to do them, and often find it difficult to focus. They may be petulant and unresponsive in encounters with individuals who try to mobilize them into productive tasks, and may feel that such individuals are bossy and contemptible.

They may seem overly dreamy, lost in their own enterprises, and generally oblivious to the nature of the mundane tasks that surround them.

   

IEIs are often relatively inactive and indecisive. Many IEIs may be relatively immobile and hesitant to interact with the outside world. IEIs can withdraw from action in many social or working situations, and may come across as inhibited or shy. They may feel as though trapped in their own thoughts and dreams. Some IEIs, however, are generally less reclusive and more comfortable in social situations, but even they may feel as observers and unable to mobilize themselves spontaneously.

IEIs may tend to be stimulation seekers. This does not necessarily mean that they seek to surround themselves with alcohol, members of the opposite sex, and debauchery, but rather that they often seek some form of mental, social, or other stimulus. Often, however, they are not very skilled at spontaneous self-stimulation. They may seek to reproduce previous mental themes or past experiences and may have a deliberate, deadbeat attitude towards new events. They tend to only escape this cycle of inertia when impelled by another with stronger initiative. Some IEIs may be especially prone to enjoy such adventuresome sensations as lighthearted mischief or playful aggression.

IEIs tend to have indecisive or even fickle air about them, and often give others the impression that they do not know exactly what they want. They have a tendency to vacillate on important decisions or establish clear goals in situations with some ambiguity. In the presence of others who make decisions quickly and assertively, the determinations of others may be accepted easily and relieve the IEI's confusion.

IEIs tend to admire and gravitate towards individuals who are decisive, assertive, and inclined to energically defend their beliefs and opinions in discussions with others. Conversely, they tend to show little interest in individuals who they see as lacking those qualities.

   

IEIs often have a keen interest in interpreting their surroundings in terms of logical categories. They may be drawn to descriptive logical systems and models, which ground IEIs' oft-scattered thought processes and help them to focus on somewhat more tangible ideas. IEIs' often exhibit a tendency to organize their thoughts in a deliberate, methodical manner -- though they rarely are inclined to regiment their lives in this way, their ideas are often subject to systemic associations, sometimes extensively so.

IEIs may tend to brood and dubitate over logical categories rather than generate their own; their intellectual musings are often more observational, causal, and open-ended than those of     ego types. IEIs' insights are highly internal, and frequently prove difficult to disambiguate and elucidate properly. They may be inclined to circumlocutory tangents and lengthy illustrations that fail to address the intended point completely, sometimes presenting information in an overly vague and ambiguous manner. Many IEIs do not naturally think in a structured fashion, and the introduction of clarity and consistency helps to organize and refocus their jumbled cogitations.

Many IEIs suffer from hesitation and uncertainty about the ultimate accuracy of their views. They also may be inclined to assimilate information indiscriminately from an eclectic and sometimes unreliable range of sources, which can in the long run serve to further their confusion. They appreciate a sense of certainty in others; they may appreciate the unfailing assuredness of the beliefs of their SLE duals, whose tenacity and confidence free them from their plaguing doubts.

   

IEIs are capable of generating a large number of possibilities and ideas, but are likely to view such an exercise with disinterest as opposed to their more natural process of developing explanatory insights about the dynamics of a situation. They may be inclined to continually revisit and expand upon or better organize their existing areas of intellectual interest or mental concoctions instead of moving on to new ideas.

   

IEIs not uncommonly apply their cogitations to topics pertaining to morality, ethics, and relationships. They have a strong understanding of the breadth of their inner emotional responses and dispositions to others. However, they may be inclined to treat their internal ethical sentiments somewhat passively; instead they are often more concerned with the energy and emotional responses of others around them. They are more interested in the dynamism of their emotional surroundings and often are inclined to adapt their behavior or even their persona to fit the situation.