Thanks for the help, BlackCat.
Well the social instinct has to do with being affected and/or knowing what other people's expectations and how to appeal to people in general with what you say. To social people these things come naturally. This is weird for me to describe because it's my worst instinct.
That comes kind of naturally, though not wholly comfortably. In work situations for example, I notice that I'm not completely natural. I'm too aware of my rank and role to relax and be myself. Sticking to models of behaviour that are definitely acceptable feels safer. Although I'd prefer to relax like everyone else, I can't make myself do it. It happens automatically. That might be due to anxiety though, mightn't it? Or maybe sp/sx types wouldn't manifest anxiety that way, I don't know.
Most social people that I know get depressed when they don't associate with people. But I can withdraw and be in my lala land for weeks and not be bothered at all.
I start to go a bit mad if I don't talk to anyone for more than about a week. Is that due to instincts though, or just degrees of introversion? Surely extroverted social lasts will experience a need to associate with people too.
People tire me, social people enjoy people's presence and are good with the dynamics in groups. But I'm totally clueless about these things. When I speak, I don't try to appeal to everyone, I appeal to the person I'm talking to (sexual first). When I post here, I don't really think at all how it will affect any random guest who is reading or people other than who I'm addressing.
I usually prefer group dynamics to one-to-one dynamics, unless the subject is quite personal or delicate or I want to explore a subject more deeply than is easy in groups. There are more people to express themselves and so more chance of interesting conversation developing, and there's less pressure on me to keep that conversation flowing at all times. Within that setting though, I will often end up having one-to-one chats with someone who's as interested in something as I am, and that can be the most stimulating part (according to enneagraminstitute.com, even social first types may enjoy one-to-one interactions more, it's just the desired intensity that's different). I'm not sure quite to what extent I 'do' socio-emotional intensity. How intense is intense?
Something that seriously puts me off being around someone, even if they intrigued me at first, is when they seem to want to spend a party or lunchbreak or something attached to my hip and focus intently on interacting with just me, especially in personal conversation that makes us have to withdraw from everyone else. I like teaming up with a person or two who I'm comfortable with, for moral support, a guarantee of good company and someone to get involved in different things with, as long as we're both free to keep separating without rejection, jealousy or abandonment feelings getting involved. Just as toddlers see their mothers as a safe base from which to explore. It's not exclusive and so doesn't smother or trap you.
I don't need a lot of good friends by any stretch of the imagination, more than a few and I'd fear having too many demands made on my time, but if I had to socialise every day, I prefer it to be with a variety of people than one person exclusively, even if I liked them very much. I'd start to feel bored and resentful of them otherwise.
The use of fora is an interesting subject. I think for me, this is probably an expression of my self-pres and social instincts, though in the past when I was lonely it probably served as an outlet for my sexual one very much too. Currently though, I am able to socialise with people I like, when I like, and I have people I can talk to personally who understand me.
My interest in this forum is most often sp-oriented (learning and talking through something interesting and potentially helpful to me) or socially oriented. Although I'm sometimes helping a specific person with something because I'd like to help them, I do think about the impact of many of my posts on 'the group' and don't have much interest in forming more personal friendships through the Internet as this seems like a poor and currently unnecessary substitute I don't get much out of any more (whereas it still seems like a reasonable source of a sense of community).
Perhaps the reason my social instinct manifests itself more visibly online is that as a Five I find it much easier to find groups which I fit in to and understand and participate in fluently here, rather than a sign that my social instinct is relatively trivial to me. I'm not sure.
I remember growing up I never understood why people wanted to appeal to people in general with their clothing. It all seemed so pointless, like appealing to people in general was such a waste of time. I still am that way. But yeah if you didn't get the gist of that we aren't affected by society's expectations in general and don't value appealing to the masses.
I relate to this too, but it depends on which group or mass we're talking about. I do want to be accepted by people I might depend on for something, whether it's friendship, employment, help or just for not physically assaulting me for looking weird. That's probably the sp instinct in disguise. But I do also like feeling a part of a group for pleasure rather than plain security as long as I don't have to
contrive fitting in, which I'm poor at anyway and is more trouble than its worth. I'll either find somewhere I fit in naturally, or I'll do without it.
Sexual last people have a really awkward time with intimacy. Sexual is all about one to one interactions; and one thing I've noticed in sexual last people is that they seem to present themselves the same way to everybody; all the time. They don't adjust for one to one interactions very much.
I adjust in the form of anxious self-censorship, as I explain above, but not differently for specific people and their personality. Just for the role I feel is safest, usually the 'non-threatening, rank-accepting, inoffensive person there's nothing more to see of so stop looking before she Fs up in front of you and you decide to sack her'. I'm guessing that's not quite what you're talking about. I'll also not say things that I think the other person will have no interest in, even when socialising casually, because there's no point. That's as far as one-to-one adjustment tends to go for me, that I'm aware of. I'm not sure though, I might change more than I think I do. It's not easy for me to see myself through others' eyes so I'm not sure. Are you talking about self-adjustments in response to the emotion or energy level of other people? Because I don't think I do them very much. The content of my speech changes but not the manner, really. I'm outwardly quite unresponsive to the states of other people, as I said before.
Also here are some descriptions of sp/so and sp/sx type 5's-
sp/so-
sp/sx-
I'd not seen that before. I'm leaning more towards the sp/so now, but I'll give myself longer to think about it because I tend to come to new conclusions too impulsively, as frequenters of this section may have noticed.
