Celebrity Benchmark List

The following is the result of a grandiose study undertaken recently by Oleg Khrulyov, author of www.Socionic.ru. This project involved processing long lists of celebrities and their types from many different prominent socionists and typologists (37 sources) to study their convergence and to establish a list of famous people whose types could be considered to be correctly identified. The resulting list, presented below, has 160 celebrities, mainly from the former Soviet Union and Europe (including a few not-so-famous socionists). Along with each person are shown the number of socionists who provided versions of the person's type and the degree of convergence between them — i.e., of those who typed the person, what percentage agreed with the prevailing version? Only celebrities with convergences above 75% who were typed by four or more socionists are included in this benchmark list. While there is no guarantee that the prevailing version is correct — especially when only four socionists gave their versions — we can safely assume that a large majority of them are. Socionists submitted versions only for famous people they had studied and felt sure of.

This is one of the most significant studies in socionics to date. Not only do we have a list of people whose types socionists more or less agree on, but we get a picture of how close individual socionists are to the benchmark list and to each other. This information is presented in graphs on Oleg's site (in Russian). This chart has been translated and published here with Oleg's permission*.

* In addition to type info, I have added to the chart links to pictures (from images.google.com) and biographical data (from Wikipedia) of every single person in the list. This makes it an unparalleled resource for learning more about socionic types.

Meyers-Briggs typologists and socionics
An important finding is that the sources with the lowest convergence with the benchmark list and with socionists taken individually were David Keirsey and Typelogic.com, which base their typing on the Meyers-Briggs typology. This confirms quantitatively what we have known intuitively all along; MBTI typologists see different types than socionists and have different criteria for identifying type.

Benchmark list statistics
The statistics below show that socionists see types as being more or less evenly distributed between quadras and between the four dichotomies. The only significant exception is logic and ethics. However, the discrepancy here can be at least partially explained by the fact that men outnumber women in the list 7 to 1, and men are known to more often be logical types. In fact, the percentage of logical types in the list is exactly 60%. However, irregularities in type distribution are probably due to chance (the numbers are too small to be representative). For example, it would be unreasonable to suppose that there are actually three times as many ILI's as SEE's. Most or all socionists would dispute this based on personal practice.

Other conclusions
The benchmark list should dispel common stereotypes about what types are able and not able to do well. Every stereotype has plenty of exceptions. We also see that what made these people famous was not their type, but their unique energy and talents. These qualities, as you shall see below, are evenly distributed among the types.

Socionics papers on famous people
A number of papers have been published on the socionic types of people in this list. In addition, reports on the types of famous people are given regularly at socionics clubs. Unfortunately, all of this material is in Russian only, but you can click on the links below to view machine-generated translations that will at least give you a good idea of the content.

Niels Bohr (ILE) and Albert Einstein (ILE)
Anton Chekhov (LII)
Immanuel Kant (LII)
Joseph Stalin (LSI) - http://www.socioniko.net/ru/celebr/stalin-antosh.html
Sergey Korolyov (SLE) - http://www.socionics.ibc.com.ua/t/chyky195.html
Julius Caesar (SEE)
Mikhail Gorbachev (SEE) and Eduard Shevardnadze (ILI)
Bill Gates (LIE)
Lev Landau (LIE) - http://www.socioniko.net/ru/gazeta/2002-1-visual/landau.html

An increasing number of the people on this list I have studied personally and have confirmed their types with some degree of certainty. These are marked in light green. Occasionally I may disagree with the common consensus; these people are marked in dark pink. Links under people's names are provided to people I have included in my own collection of famous people (together with photos and commentary). Here are my "Guidelines for Typing Famous People."

Alpha Quadra

Beta Quadra

Gamma Quadra

Delta Quadra