People who are primarily Sensates tend to live in the physical world. They seek out experiences, sensation seeking, and work best with the real/concrete. The N of “Intuitive” refers to seeing the potential in things, working with the world of ideas. For example, both my father and I love the process of planning to make something almost more than the physical act of doing it. We’re armchair artisans. When I plant gardens I end up stopping every few minutes and getting lost in the idea of what I hope it’s going to end up being. It may take me a lot longer, but it keeps the process enjoyable.
About what you found about Feelers relying more heavily on social considerations, etc.: Kinda? A psychological healthy Feeler, maybe? Jung tends to talk about root processes associated with the different functions, and the MBTI and associated websites tend to talk about surface presentation of how those root processes are potentially expressed. It’s analogous to the difference between genotype and phenotype.
So a psychologically healthy and compassionate Feeler is going to consider the feelings of others. A not so healthy Feeler is going to emotionally manipulate and choose things that feel “right” for them. A psychologically healthy and compassionate Thinker is going to choose end goals to their processes that illuminate and advance the good. A not so healthy Thinker can get pretty Machiavellian.
Briefly, the sensation function establishes that something exists, thinking tells us what it is, feeling tells us what it’s worth, and through intuition we have a sense of what can be done with it (the possibilities). Any one function by itself is not sufficient for ordering our experience of ourselves or the world around us; all four, writes Jung, are required for a comprehensive understanding:
“For complete orientation all four functions should contribute equally: thinking should facilitate cognition and judgment, feeling should tell us how and to what extent a thing is important or unimportant for us, sensation should convey concrete reality to us through seeing, hearing, tasting, etc., and intuition should enable us to divine the hidden possibilities in the back- ground, since these too belong to the complete picture of a given situation.4 “
Yeah, it appears Myers-Briggs while being based on Jung’s ideas has been interpreted and re-interpreted with a more modern idea of psychology. It makes sense that all ideally all four functions should be in balance. For example, I have tested ‘J’ and ‘P’ but never anything but INT. So, I’m guessing I’m most balance between Judging and perceiving, which would be a good thing.
I think what was tripping me up was the initial use of the word intuitive. Feelers and Thinkers can both be equally iNtuitive, but their intuition accesses different skill sets. I wonder to what extent early experience shapes personality. For example:
Yeah, I’m borderline on just the one. I’m certainly no Myers-Briggs expert, but, in the case of say blogging about Supernatural, my personality type tends to focus on the issue or problem. We’re extremely rational and analytical. We have very strong opinions and state them. It doesn’t occur to us that others might take disagreement as a personal attack on them. (It’s especially difficult online where you can’t see or hear someone to judge their reaction) I have a difficult time communicating with people who respond in a highly emotional way because it just doesn’t make sense to me. You know? Like how can we figure out the problem and come to an understanding if we don’t discuss it rationally? So if someone misunderstands what I meant or thinks I’m just plain wrong and goes off on a rant, I can’t …
Thinking-Feeling differences affect how we make decisions. Thinkers (T) make decisions objectively and impersonally using logic. Feelers (F) make decisions subjectively and personally based on what they feel is “right”. This personality grouping is the only one that shows any gender difference, with male Thinking- Feeling preferences being 60%-40% and female Thinking-Feeling preferences being 40%-60%. [X]
Does this result from boys being discouraged from showing emotion so they don’t develop this skill to the extent girls do? Our culture definitely holds logic preferable to emotion, but if someone hasn’t developed the skill, they aren’t likely to trust it. In a patriarchal culture, especially in the past, it was much more important for females to be empathetic in order to read higher status males. Even today, there’s a benefit to using that Feeling skill set when dealing with parents, teachers, and bosses. Am I completely off base here?
Theoretically, balance between the functions means you have a wider range of skill sets, and that would give you the ability to more easily adapt to a wider range of circumstances. But, personally, I think everything has benefits and costs. It would also mean that you don’t have deeply developed skills that you can bring to bear in a specialized niche. But then, if you are the kind of person who has developed one set of skills to the detriment of others, then you’re going to run into problems when you step outside of your niche. So, I don’t think there are any absolutes about what is healthy. It’s going to depend on the interaction between what you bring to the table and your circumstances. Luckily, we have the capacity to change, growing to adapt to the demands of changing circumstances. It’s the people who are too rigidly one way or the other that tend to run into problems.
I only have a passing familiarity with Jung’s work, so I don’t really know what he’d say to that. 🙂 Isabel Myer’s work tends to imply that all functions have their positives and negatives and that there are niches in which specific functions are particularly advantageous. Any work on the typologies beyond that and it gets too muddy to draw conclusions. Lots of cooks in that broth. Which is why I tend to go back to Jung, because over the years the use of the types has gotten so watered down and cookbook-y.
I would think that the functions are mutable to a great or lesser degree. Introversion/extraversion seems to arise from basic temperament, which is less easily influenced. The others, though, who knows.
Hmm, I would say that the Feeing skill set is advantageous when dealing with any human interaction that requires negotiation, whether it’s with someone with authority over you or with your 3 year old child who hasn’t made the headswitch between summer pants and the fact that it’s suddenly midwinter out there. If you can read someone in authority and appreciate their values and how yours intersect with theirs, you can use that as data for how to approach them in the best way to achieve your aims. A very necessary skill if society doesn’t give you much in the way of power. However, logic often doesn’t work terribly well with young children or people who are too distressed to think clearly. Those moments of negotiation are going to work best if you can address the emotional issues, too.
If society gives you a lot of power to wield, then you don’t have to do that kind of negotiating. You won’t be under as much pressure to be able to read the emotional environment around you with as much specificity or to read your own intuitive responses and know them for what they contribute to the situation. You can force the situation. I would think that that would leave someone more free to develop and use Thinking skills, because people actually listen to them instead of having to be negotiated into listening to them.
I think that kind of split between males and females on the T-F spectrum may very well be influenced by our societal values and how gender norms are enforced. But I get really itchy when we start looking at any research on gender differences. I think that kind of small 40-60 split more likely highlights how huge the overlap between genders is, and that there’s likely to be more variability within genders than between them. So, gender role enforcement may be a factor, but I’d be hesitant to put too much weight on it.
Hearseeno 