Result / Process
Result / Process (also known as Right / Left or Evolutory / Involutory) is one of the 15 Reinin dichotomies. It is a third-tier dichotomy derived from the combination of the Intuitive/Sensing, Logical/Ethical, and Rational/Irrational foundations.
Process types: ILE, SEI, EIE, LSI, ILI, SEE, LSE, EII Result types: ESE, LII, SLE, IEI, LIE, ESI, IEE, SLI
Note on naming: A naming reversal introduced by V. Gulenko has caused persistent confusion in socionics literature. In Augustinavichute's and Reinin's original work, this dichotomy was called "Left/Right" — with the Leftist types being ILE, SEI, EIE, LSI, SEE, ILI, LSE, and EII. Gulenko later renamed these Leftists as "Result" types and Rightists as "Process" types — the opposite assignment to what one might expect. Wikisocion and most contemporary sources follow Gulenko's naming, which is used here: Process types are the original Leftists.
What the Dichotomy Describes
The Result/Process distinction concerns how a person positions themselves relative to ongoing activity — whether they experience themselves as inside the process, embedded in it, or outside it, managing it from a removed vantage point.
Process types experience themselves as part of an ongoing process — they are "within" it. Because of this immersion, switching between processes is difficult: for a Process type, returning to an interrupted task is effectively starting over, since they were embedded in the flow and must reconstruct that embeddedness from scratch. Process types tend to treat a process as a whole that should run its course; fragmenting it or interrupting it before completion is experienced as losing something. The word "process" appears frequently in their speech.
Result types experience themselves as external to ongoing activity — they manage processes from outside them, which allows them to oversee multiple processes simultaneously and track the beginning and end of each. Because they are not embedded in any one process, they can step in and out of activities without losing their orientation. Result types are naturally oriented toward the endpoint — they experience discomfort when a task has no clearly delineated result, because they have no internal signal for how the process is progressing without such markers. Their speech frequently includes words like "beginning," "end," "stage," "interval," and "result."
Behavioral Observations
The 2002–2003 IBPCH study characterized the fundamental difference as the direction from which a person approaches a situation: Process types from within, Result types from without. Orientation toward "process" or "result" as such is described as secondary — a consequence of this more basic positional difference.
Result types are inclined to make intermediate and final estimates — summing up results as a way of tracking what they cannot feel directly from within the flow. Process types, who are embedded in the flow, do not need these external markers and may find the Result type's constant tracking of stages and outcomes distracting or beside the point.
Process types can have difficulty managing multiple concurrent tasks — each process demands embeddedness. Result types may find it relatively easy to maintain multiple tasks in parallel, since they remain external to each and can switch vantage points readily.
Theoretical Basis
The Result/Process dichotomy corresponds to the NTP combination — dependent on Intuitive/Sensing, Logical/Ethical, and Rational/Irrational foundations.
Notes on Contestedness
The naming history of this dichotomy makes it one of the more confusing in the socionics literature. Anyone cross-referencing older sources should verify which naming convention is being used before assuming correspondence between type lists. The behavioral distinction itself — inside/outside the process — is considered one of the better-characterized of the Reinin traits by the IBPCH researchers.