[Jungian Cognitive Functions] Feeling as a rational function

[infiniterandomness11]

Hi everyone, I have always been puzzled by the dichotomy between Feeling and Thinking. I am aware of the misconception that Feeling is often associated with emotions or affect, which is actually not the case (Feeling and Thinking are both rational (or judging) functions which serve to filter information provided by irrational functions (or perception) such as N and S.

After a close inspection on a previous thread http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/the-nf-idyllic/21086-feeling-rational-thinking.html, though I personally have not read Jung and the details of Psychological Types, here are my thoughts:

Both F and T can be both driven by emotional reasons, I would associate this drive with the psychological concept of neurotiscm (measured by the Big 5 test), emotional maturity and other factors.

In my opinion, common MBTI tests are rather confusing when it comes to choosing between Feeling and Thinking.

Quoting from this article by Jesse Gerroir: Feeling as a Rational Function | CelebrityTypes

The foremost misconception about Feeling is that Feeling is somehow irrational. Indeed, when Jung wrote Psychological Types he broke with a tradition stretching back at least 250 years that tended to regard feelings as irrational impulses stemming from the heart (and this tradition is still very much alive today). For better or worse, Jung went against the grain of this tradition when he set out to craft his typology and insisted that Feeling was a rational function.

As mentioned, the view that feelings are merely irrational impulses is still very much alive today. And because a lot of beginners don’t really study Jungian typology, a lot of people end up believing that F types will act with little reason or thought, being merely bounced about by an array of irrational feelings. This is precisely the cardinal error that one falls into when one mixes Feeling (in the Jungian sense of the word) with feeling (in the everyday sense of the word).

Feeling as a Rational Function

Within the field of Jungian typology, Feeling is a rational function alongside Thinking, indeed it is just as rational as Thinking. Thinking and Feeling, be they extroverted or introverted, are rational functions because they judge and review information and come to a decision on how to make sense of the information.

However, the way Thinking and Feeling make decisions based upon the information is different. Thinking tends to make decisions or render judgment based on the impersonal, factual, and logical aspects of the information. Feeling tends to make decisions and render judgment based upon the personal, agreeable, and ideal aspects of the information, as well as the needs of the people who are involved in the situation.

Both functions are rational in the sense that they prioritize the information picked up by the Sensation and Intuitive functions and they structure that information into a judgment. While today we are very much accustomed to breaking things down into arguments and counterarguments, a substantial part of our cognition as human beings is nevertheless susceptible to appeals that come via our sympathies, or that come from someone who cuts an agreeable figure in our eyes. An appeal that engages our emotional side allows us not merely to identify the speaker’s point of view and weigh it according to his arguments, but to identify with the speaker’s point of view and to become him for a minute or two.

In this state we will feel what the other party feels. Once we are sympathetic to the other party, we are no longer dealing with the abstractions of logic where we might as well break one egg as we may break another. The internal world of the other party is now palpable and present. The values, beliefs, and understandings of the other, once we have felt them as our own, will allow us to judge and review that information, just like we could with Thinking. But by judging it with Feeling, we will evaluate the message differently than if we had merely seen his situation in terms of arguments and counterarguments. And by judging it with Feeling we will be prompted to make a different decision than we would if we had reviewed the same information with Thinking.

Feeling vs. Everyday Feeling

The example I just gave about judging with Feeling was about Jungian Feeling. And while the everyday use of the word “feeling” may have some similarities with that, there are also some significant differences.

For example, in the everyday parlance, we tend to understand feeling in the same way that we would understand emotion. The phrases “she is being really emotional”, “he is having an emotional outburst”, and “she has emotional problems,” are commonly thought of as having to do with feelings, but they need not have anything to do with Feeling as defined in the Jungian sense.

With everyday feeling, we often talk about being overcome with base, instinctual, and primitive reactions. Whereas Feeling in a Jungian sense is more concerned with a higher level refined judgment.

The challenge is therefore to figure out where the notion of everyday feeling fits into Jungian typology if it can’t squarely be grouped under Feeling. In truth, while “everyday feeling” does have some overlaps with Jungian Feeling, the two are distinct, and Jungian typology doesn’t say much about the nature of everyday feeling.

Feeling is therefore more concerned with ideals, morality, ethics, value systems and how they could be applied to improve things.

Thinking, on the other hand, is more likely to analyze, more centered on the efficiency and the utility and the evaluation of a thought system (social or not).

I am sorry if this thread is too long, but I hope that you would find it interesting.

 

[á´…eparted]

Yes this is well known.

 

[reckful]

In 1931 Jung said, "I freely admit that this problem of feeling has been one that has caused me much brain-racking" — which isn't likely to come as a shock to anyone who's read Psychological Types, since his characterizations of the feeling "function" aren't exactly a model of consistency. On the one hand, as you've noted, he characterized feeling as a "rational function," and wrote that both thinking and feeling "function most perfectly when they are in the fullest possible accord with the laws of reason."

Buuut on the other hand... in the same 1931 article where he confessed to all the "brain-racking," Jung also summarized the difference between thinkers and feelers in these terms:

I was struck by the fact that many people habitually do more thinking than others, and accordingly give more weight to thought when making important decisions. They also use their thinking in order to understand the world and adapt to it, and whatever happens to them is subjected to consideration and reflection or at least subordinated to some principle sanctioned by thought. Other people conspicuously neglect thinking in favour of emotional factors, that is, of feeling. They invariably follow a policy dictated by feeling, and it takes an extraordinary situation to make them reflect. They form an unmistakable contrast to the other type, and the difference is most striking when the two are business partners or are married to each other.

In any case, whatever Jung thought, it's fair to say there's been something of an evolution over the years (since Jung) about what the T/F dimension is really about, from a more Jungian perspective — T's making decisions based on principles/logic and F's based on values/emotions — to viewing the essence of T/F more in terms of the F's people/relationship orientation. And I think that evolution has been a good thing, but I think it's at least part of the reason that there's arguably more inconsistency among different sources concerning what T/F is about than any of the other three MBTI dimensions. Modern MBTI sources always retain the "Thinking" and "Feeling" labels, and generally pay at least some lip service to the notion that T's are somehow more "logical" about their decision-making while F's make greater use of "feeling" (as some kind of alternative rational process) and/or "values" and/or "emotions." But if you look at the actual examples they give of T's and F's making decisions, the differences tend to hinge on the F's people orientation. The relevant "emotions" coming into play for the F (that make the difference) are generally emotions that involve people/relationships and/or concerns for other people's emotions and, similarly, the "values" that play the greater role for the F than the T are generally values relating to people/relationships.

As one example, Lenore Thomson is an MBTI theorist whose work is focused more on the cognitive functions than the MBTI dichotomies — making her more Jungian (at least in some people's eyes) — but Personality Type: An Owner's Manual includes half a chapter on Thinking vs. Feeling. Not surprisingly, Thomson's discussion of how the Feeling preference develops starts out with a Jungian-sounding paragraph or two about a child exploring her world and, in addition to exercising logic and learning to put things in impersonal categories (her T side), developing her capacity to decide what's good and bad, and what's important (her F side). But, lo and behold, by the time we get to the table where Thomson sums up the qualities that tend to characterize an adult with an F preference, it turns out that an orientation toward people and relationships is really the heart (no pun intended) of the F preference. Here's the F side of Thomson's table, in its entirety:

Feeling gives us:

the ability to make decisions personally, based on shared values and relationships

an interest in how people feel

a reliance on consensus, morality, mercy and loyalty

a commitment to social obligation, empathy, and responsibility to others

the ability to anticipate people's needs and reactions

an interest in human relationships and the values they illustrate

a good sense of body language and vocal intonation — how something useful was said and why

David Keirsey also emphasizes the people/relationship aspect of an F preference, and here's part of his description of the difference between NTs and NFs:

As with the NT, the NF is future-oriented and focused on what might be. But, rather than thinking about the possibilities of principles as does the NT, the NF thinks about the possibilities of people, "actualizing the potential" of others and of himself. As with his perception of himself, so it is with the NF's perception of others: Whatever is, is never quite sufficient. The thought that the visible is all there is is untenable for an NF. ... [NFs'] hunger is not centered on things but people. They are not content with abstractions; they seek relationships. Their need does not ground in action; it vibrates with interaction.​

 

[infiniterandomness11]

Thanks! That was a very clear explanation

 

[OrangeAppled]

In 1931 Jung said, "I freely admit that this problem of feeling has been one that has caused me much brain-racking" — which isn't likely to come as a shock to anyone who's read Psychological Types, since his characterizations of the feeling "function" aren't exactly a model of consistency. On the one hand, as you've noted, he characterized feeling as a "rational function," and wrote that both thinking and feeling "function most perfectly when they are in the fullest possible accord with the laws of reason."

Buuut on the other hand... in the same 1931 article where he confessed to all the "brain-racking," Jung also summarized the difference between thinkers and feelers in these terms:



In any case, whatever Jung thought, it's fair to say there's been something of an evolution over the years (since Jung) about what the T/F dimension is really about, from a more Jungian perspective — T's making decisions based on principles/logic and F's based on values/emotions — to viewing the essence of T/F more in terms of the F's people/relationship orientation. And I think that evolution has been a good thing, but I think it's at least part of the reason that there's arguably more inconsistency among different sources concerning what T/F is about than any of the other three MBTI dimensions. Modern MBTI sources always retain the "Thinking" and "Feeling" labels, and generally pay at least some lip service to the notion that T's are somehow more "logical" about their decision-making while F's make greater use of "feeling" (as some kind of alternative rational process) and/or "values" and/or "emotions." But if you look at the actual examples they give of T's and F's making decisions, the differences tend to hinge on the F's people orientation. The relevant "emotions" coming into play for the F (that make the difference) are generally emotions that involve people/relationships and/or concerns for other people's emotions and, similarly, the "values" that play the greater role for the F than the T are generally values relating to people/relationships.

As one example, Lenore Thomson is an MBTI theorist whose work is focused more on the cognitive functions than the MBTI dichotomies — making her more Jungian (at least in some people's eyes) — but Personality Type: An Owner's Manual includes half a chapter on Thinking vs. Feeling. Not surprisingly, Thomson's discussion of how the Feeling preference develops starts out with a Jungian-sounding paragraph or two about a child exploring her world and, in addition to exercising logic and learning to put things in impersonal categories (her T side), developing her capacity to decide what's good and bad, and what's important (her F side). But, lo and behold, by the time we get to the table where Thomson sums up the qualities that tend to characterize an adult with an F preference, it turns out that an orientation toward people and relationships is really the heart (no pun intended) of the F preference. Here's the F side of Thomson's table, in its entirety:

Feeling gives us:

the ability to make decisions personally, based on shared values and relationships

an interest in how people feel

a reliance on consensus, morality, mercy and loyalty

a commitment to social obligation, empathy, and responsibility to others

the ability to anticipate people's needs and reactions

an interest in human relationships and the values they illustrate

a good sense of body language and vocal intonation — how something useful was said and why

David Keirsey also emphasizes the people/relationship aspect of an F preference, and here's part of his description of the difference between NTs and NFs:

As with the NT, the NF is future-oriented and focused on what might be. But, rather than thinking about the possibilities of principles as does the NT, the NF thinks about the possibilities of people, "actualizing the potential" of others and of himself. As with his perception of himself, so it is with the NF's perception of others: Whatever is, is never quite sufficient. The thought that the visible is all there is is untenable for an NF. ... [NFs'] hunger is not centered on things but people. They are not content with abstractions; they seek relationships. Their need does not ground in action; it vibrates with interaction.​

Meh, this understanding would make me & many self-identified INFPs to be INTPs, but there is a clear contrast between us and self-identified INTPs (because there are pretty decent patterns in types even when dealing with self-identification, which certainly can be flawed). The over all point is good - that both feeling & thinking types reason but deal with different "realms", true, but I still think they use different forms of reasoning/logic that are equally valid (in their respective realm), but are not just about applying things TO human relations. It can be about understanding these without social application.

What you note about Thompson's assigned traits to Feeling types are all common RESULTS from the Feeling process, which are obviously going to involve people and relationships since it's determining value from the standpoint of being human (as opposed to being a pet rock). That doesn't mean those results do not come from a reasoning process, nor does it mean this reasoning process always results in those skills. We know the feeling conclusions are not instincts or perceptions that arrive as a whole, which are more of what sensing and intuition do (knowing things as "evident truths" in a whole manner either because of concrete experience/data or insights - not arriving at conclusions by dissecting or building with lines of reasoning). So for a Feeling type to develop such skills requires they focus on application over perfecting concepts - which is far more Fe than Fi.

For example, take this: "a good sense of body language and vocal intonation — how something useful was said and why"
This is not instinctual. As a Fi-dom, I have no instinct for this, something I see far more often in P-dominants. I do have a lot of data (from my perception, more Ne than Si) that I order to arrive at meaningful conclusions. I reason that X tone in Y situation tends to affect people in Z way, and so that makes X tone have N value in Y situation. This is more Fe, really, because they focus on creating constructs for how to act in the best way, so as to maximize the human experience for most people. They are more pragmatic, as Je tends to be. Fi types tend to go deeper instead of seeking wide application - WHY does X tone affect people that way? What basic aspect of being human is it touching on to consistently have that effect? How does this basic aspect come to light in other contexts? Etc. We deconstruct things to get to the core meaning, which then forms a premise for devising ideals (which are more concepts than strategies). No, it's not that linear in reality, but when necessary, it can be translated into that language.

Regarding this quote from Jung:

I was struck by the fact that many people habitually do more thinking than others, and accordingly give more weight to thought when making important decisions. They also use their thinking in order to understand the world and adapt to it, and whatever happens to them is subjected to consideration and reflection or at least subordinated to some principle sanctioned by thought. Other people conspicuously neglect thinking in favour of emotional factors, that is, of feeling. They invariably follow a policy dictated by feeling, and it takes an extraordinary situation to make them reflect. They form an unmistakable contrast to the other type, and the difference is most striking when the two are business partners or are married to each other.


It's important to understand this by using Jung's definitions of the functions. When he says "thinking", he does not mean rational cognition, as if only thinking is rational cognition, but he specifically means the forms of rational cognition that he has labelled "thinking". When he says "feeling", he does not mean emotional affect, but he means the forms of rational cognition he has designated as "feeling". Otherwise, he would not note that feeling types favor emotional factors, but rather, their reasoning would be wholly comprised of them. What is a factor? Something that goes INTO a product, but is not necessarily all of the parts that comprise the product. Because of the realm feeling deals with (ie. the human condition & what is valuable in relation to it), it makes sense to use emotions as a factor, but that doesn't mean it is the only factor, and it certainly doesn't mean the emotional reaction alone forms the conclusion in itself (as if an emotional reaction goes straight to a conclusion with no analysis or reasoning between). It's simply some of the "data" considered in the Feeling process, which is one of rational reasoning. Since emotion is very much a part of the human condition, it would be irrational in a sense to leave this data out.

However, Thinking is not seeking to order experience from the human standpoint - it's seeking to classify things separate from "humanness", which means removing the human factors (i.e. emotion). This doesn't make it more rational or logical, only more so in the areas it focuses on, but in areas where the human factor is highly relevant, then Thinking can prove itself quite illogical, IMO. The same is true of Feeling when applied outside of its realm, and this is why to the Thinker, the Feeler seems illogical, but it's really that the Feeling type's reasoning is not applicable in the same area, and this makes it appear as though Feeling types adopt existing thought which agrees with their Feeling premise instead of creating their own lines of reasoning (i.e. they go along with existing definitions, arguments or procedures for technical things). The reality is, the line of reasoning went into the Feeling premise (which did not arise only from an emotional affect), which the Thinker experiences as irrational because their own is inferior (arising mainly from emotional affect) and so they project this onto the Feeler. From the Feeling perspective, Thinking types do the same with human relational matters - misapplying "thinking" and/or adopting trite, overly simplistic and often childish "feeling" policy to deal with those matters.

So when understood properly, I don't find that much contradiction in Jung's ideas, although I see him put a stronger emphasis on feeling being rational and logical over time, when he started from a place of skepticism about feeling being rational at all (which I find as evidence of him NOT being INFJ as many suggest, but that's a tangent).

 

[INTP]

This explains the emotion/feeling thing:

By the term affect we understand a state of feeling characterized by a perceptible bodily innervation on the one hand and a peculiar disturbance of the ideational process on the other. I use emotion as synonymous with affect. I distinguish — in contrast to Bleuler (v. Affectivity) — feeling from affect, in spite of the fact that no definite demarcation exists, since every feeling, after attaining a certain strength, releases physical innervations, thus becoming an affect. On practical grounds, however, it is advisable to discriminate affect from feeling, since feeling can be a disposable function, whereas affect is usually not so. Similarly, affect is clearly distinguished from feeling by quite perceptible physical innervations, while feeling for the most part lacks them, or their intensity is so slight that they can only be demonstrated by the finest instruments, as for example the psycho-galvanic phenomenon. Affect becomes cumulative through the sensation of the physical innervations released by it, This perception gave rise to the James-Lang theory of affect, which would make bodily innervations wholly responsible for affects. As opposed to this extreme view, I regard affect as a psychic feeling-state on the one hand, and as a physiological innervation-state on the other; each of which has a cumulative, reciprocal effect upon the other, i.e. a component of sensation is joined to the reinforced feeling, through which the affect is approximated more to sensation (v. Sensation), and differentiated essentially from the state of feeling. Pronounced affects, i.e.. affects accompanied by violent physical innervation, I do not assign to the province of feeling but to the realm of the sensation function (v. Function).
....
When the intensity of feeling is increased an affect (v. Affect) results, which is a state of feeling accompanied by appreciable bodily innervations. Feeling is distinguished from affect by the fact that it gives rise to no perceptible physical innervations, i.e. just as much or as little as the ordinary thinking process.

Feeling can be conscious or unconscious ofc. An example of unconscious feeling process is fight or flight reflex, you dont stop and evaluate the situation, the answer just comes and you either run or fight. Example of conscious(i.e. rational) feeling process would be when you are thinking about whether or not you should leave your SO after s/he cheated on you; processing whether or not the person is still worthy of relationship with you, evaluating all the good things and how much the cheating hurt you etc. and coming up with a judgment about this not based on logic, but based on how you feel about all this stuff. Now ofc evaluation about that sort of topic can be done via logic, but doing it purely based on thinking would require some seriously fucked up and cold mind, however most likely there will be some form of thinking mixed in this, except if cheating is something that is against your values so much that you dont even need to start to think it further..

 

[reckful]

Regarding this quote from Jung:

I was struck by the fact that many people habitually do more thinking than others, and accordingly give more weight to thought when making important decisions. They also use their thinking in order to understand the world and adapt to it, and whatever happens to them is subjected to consideration and reflection or at least subordinated to some principle sanctioned by thought. Other people conspicuously neglect thinking in favour of emotional factors, that is, of feeling. They invariably follow a policy dictated by feeling, and it takes an extraordinary situation to make them reflect. They form an unmistakable contrast to the other type, and the difference is most striking when the two are business partners or are married to each other.

It's important to understand this by using Jung's definitions of the functions. When he says "thinking", he does not mean rational cognition, as if only thinking is rational cognition, but he specifically means the forms of rational cognition that he has labelled "thinking".

I agree with you, on the one hand, that it would be somewhat of a mistake to interpret that 1931 Jung quote as if "thinking" and "feeling" simply meant what they mean in ordinary lay terms. Buuut, on the other hand, when you say he's "using Jung's definitions of the functions," I'd disagree with you if by that you mean to suggest that the 1931 statement ought to be given a strained interpretation that makes it pretty much non-problematically consistent with the passages in Psychological Types where Jung's characterization of the "feeling" function makes it sound the most in tune with deliberate conscious reasoning. For one thing, the 1931 statement was part of a stand-alone article (A Psychological Theory of Types) intended to pithily summarize the essential nature of extraversion and introversion and the four functions for the benefit of an audience that wasn't familiar with Psychological Types. And for another thing, I'd say that Jung's 1931 characterization is pretty emphatic when it comes to the notion that an F-dom's use of the feeling function tends not to involve much in the way of deliberate conscious reasoning. You say:

When he says "feeling", he does not mean emotional affect, but he means the forms of rational cognition he has designated as "feeling". Otherwise, he would not note that feeling types favor emotional factors, but rather, their reasoning would be wholly comprised of them. What is a factor? Something that goes INTO a product, but is not necessarily all of the parts that comprise the product. Because of the realm feeling deals with (ie. the human condition & what is valuable in relation to it), it makes sense to use emotions as a factor, but that doesn't mean it is the only factor, and it certainly doesn't mean the emotional reaction alone forms the conclusion in itself (as if an emotional reaction goes straight to a conclusion with no analysis or reasoning between). It's simply some of the "data" considered in the Feeling process, which is one of rational reasoning. Since emotion is very much a part of the human condition, it would be irrational in a sense to leave this data out.

But, contrary to your statement that Jung was just saying F-doms "favor emotional factors" rather than their reasoning being "wholly comprised of them," Jung actually said that they "invariably follow a policy dictated by feeling," and that "it takes an extraordinary situation to make them reflect." And it seems to me that, unless you're going to put a strained reading indeed on what it means for a person to "reflect," that statement by Jung — which clearly contrasts people who "reflect" (or, as he put it earlier in the paragraph, "subject ["what happens to them"] to consideration and reflection"), on the one hand, with people who only "reflect" in "extraordinary circumstances" and who otherwise unreflectively follow the "dictates" of "emotional factors," on the other hand — seems pretty inconsistent with your description of an F-dom engaged in a conscious, reflective reasoning process in which the "emotional factors" are "simply some of the 'data' considered."

I don't consider our disagreement about the proper perspective on that Jung quote particularly important/interesting, though — and I've certainly never endorsed that quote as being a particularly accurate or insightful take on the difference between MBTI T's and F's.

To me, the bigger issue is whether the core difference between T's and F's is properly framed in terms of T's and F's making use of an essentially different "cognitive process" when it comes to making decisions. And I think that's a bad framing, and I also think, more generally, that's it's a mistake to essentially frame S and N as "perceiving" tools and T and F as "judging" tools.

The next two spoilers have some (slightly tweaked) recycled reckful (from other forums) on how I think T's and F's tend to differ in terms of their relation to "emotional factors," and how I think an F's "people/relationship" orientation can end up leading to different "judgments" and "decisions" without really involving a separate cognitive decision-making process.

T/F and emotions.

I'm inclined to think that, when it comes to someone's attitude toward their emotions, a typical T and a typical F tend to differ in at least a couple of noteworthy ways. First, I think an F is more likely than a T to feel that experiencing emotions — especially relationship-linked emotions — is a huge part (maybe the greatest part) of what life is all about. As one common example: all other things being equal, I think an F is more likely than a T to feel like not having kids will mean missing out on an aspect of life that nobody should miss — and there have been quite a few INTJforum threads over the past five years asking, "Do you want kids?" where I think you can see quite a lot of that T/F distinction at work. And there are certainly reasons people have kids that aren't "emotion"-related (at least not directly) — and having something like a core drive to serve others (also associated with an F preference) comes to mind — but I also think that an F is substantially more likely than a T to feel that a life that lacks all the emotional richness of a parent's love for their children is a life with an essential hole in it.

And it's not that I think a typical T father isn't likely to love his children to distraction, but I also think "distraction" may be an especially apt word for the T. I think a T father is more likely than an F father to feel like his love for his children, and all the time/energy he puts into his children — emotionally rewarding though it may be — involves a substantial loss in terms of taking him away from other activities that feel, in some ways, "higher" or more meaningful to him, or that he identifies with more. I think a typical F father is more likely to not only love his children, but feel like experiencing that love, and putting time/energy into his children, is one of the most personally rewarding things (if not the most rewarding thing) he could be doing, and to identify more strongly with his "father" role.

Looking back on any given week, I think an F is more likely than a T to feel that the times when they were engaged in the most meaningful activity — the most "life well lived" moments — were the times when feelings of love or other strong positive emotions were actively stirred up. A T (and maybe especially an NT) is more likely to feel that, while experiencing feelings of love or other positive emotions can be rewarding and very nice in its own way, the most meaningful times in their life happen when their emotions are settled down and they're engaged in less emotional pursuits — e.g., a scientist or scholar/academic who's "passionately" (but not "emotionally") engaged with their work.

Somewhat consistent with the foregoing, the T/F items on the official MBTI include "Is it a higher compliment to be called a person of real feeling or a consistently reasonable person?" and "Are you inclined to value sentiment more than logic or value logic more than sentiment?" and "Which word appeals to you more: objective or passionate?"

And a second (although not unrelated) way in which I think a typical T and a typical F tend to differ in terms of their attitude toward emotions is that, with respect to emotions that have what you might call a conceptual component (as many do), I think an F is more likely to identify with the emotions and/or take them seriously. An F with any degree of maturity will understand that it's possible for emotions to be goofy and/or otherwise steer a person wrong but, depending on how strong their F preference is, they may find themselves fighting a strong temperamental tug that says that strong feelings (especially) that they experience must mean something. Think of a woman whose boyfriend treats her abusively. She knows what he's doing isn't right. At least a part of her is likely to realize he's not likely to change (or change enough, or soon enough). But if she's a strong F, and her feelings for him are strong, there's a significant chance she'll end up rationalizing staying in the relationship well past the point where most of her friends have lost patience with her — because, if they weren't meant to be together, dammit, she wouldn't have those strong feelings.

And it's not that T's aren't capable of doing foolish, emotionally-driven things, but I think a T is more naturally alienated from his emotions. I'd say I tend to feel somewhat like my emotions are something outside of me, that happen to me — like a rainstorm I got caught in — rather than being a core part of who I am, whereas I think an F, as I said, has a greater tendency to identify with their emotions. And that makes a T more naturally skeptical of their emotions, with the result that, all other things being equal, squelching a strong but goofy passion is likely to be somewhat less of an uphill battle.

Just like N's are said to be inclined to trust their intuition as a truth-guide while at the same time understanding it isn't always right (while S's are said to be more inclined to distrust intuition), I think F's tend to have at least some significant inclination to trust their emotions as, at least to some extent, a truth-guide while at the same time understanding they aren't always right — while T's are more inclined to distrust and/or dismiss their emotions. It's not uncommon, in American culture anyway, for people to speak in terms of experiencing strong and/or consistent emotions that they haven't really come to grips with yet, and feel like they need to spend time "processing" those emotions — attending to them and introspecting about what they're about — and I'd say that a person with a strong tendency to view their emotions in those terms is significantly more likely to be an F than a T. (As a caveat, though, NFs tend to have a significantly stronger psychological and self-explorational bent than SFs, so that's a complication with respect to this particular F characteristic.)

Somewhat consistent with the foregoing, the T/F items on the official MBTI include "Do you more often let your heart rule your head or your head rule your heart?" And probably needless to say, this second aspect of how I see typical T's and F's differing in their attitude to their emotions is the one that Jung was arguably the most focused on in characterizing an F preference in terms of a tendency to use some kind of "feeling" function — which he viewed as "rational" in its way but also tied into (as he put it) "emotional factors" — for purposes of making judgments and decisions.

T/F and decisions.

If you ask someone who knows a thing or two about the MBTI to describe what T/F is about in 50 words or less, they may well end up saying something like "T's tend to make decisions based primarily on logic (and/or 'principles' and/or objective consequences), while F's tend to make decisions based on values and/or emotions" — and I think that's a somewhat misleading perspective.

There's no question that there are plenty of real-world decision scenarios where T's and F's will make different decisions (or the same decision but for different reasons) in such a way that "T=logical/objective and F = values/emotions" ends up being a reasonable sloppy shorthand for what happened. But I think that, overall, using the logic/objective vs. values/emotions frame as the basis of your T/F analysis will often distort what's really going on more than it sheds light on the situation.

It seems to me that, as a general rule, T's and F's both make decisions using logic. It's how people think! Speaking very broadly/schematically, you could say that any significantly involved decision that anybody (T or F) makes is likely to involve what could fairly be characterized as a cost/benefit analysis among possible acceptable outcomes, and that anybody's "values," to the extent that the decision-maker has values that are relevant to the decision, are going to be brought to bear both in terms of deciding what possible outcomes would be acceptable (since some values are sufficiently absolute to effectively trump cost/benefit considerations) and deciding what the nature and magnitude of the relevant costs and benefits are.

I already talked about a couple of differences between T's and F's in terms of how they're likely to relate to their emotions — with F's placing a somewhat higher value on emotions in and of themselves, and also tending to find emotions more meaningful as guides to the truth (to what the relevant facts are, to some degree) and/or to what matters (i.e., to some extent, to what is valuable).

Consistent with those differences, I think the better way to frame "how an F makes decisions" is to think of the F sitting there using logic and weighing values and facts — pretty much just like a T would — but to also understand that, to the extent that there are emotions that relate to the decision in one way or another, they are likely to play a greater role in the F's logical analysis. So, for example, if the issue is whether somebody's daughter will be spending the summer at a camp she's excited about, an F mother's logical decision-making might differ from the T father's logical decision-making in ways like these:

(1) If, when the family visits the summer camp to check it out, Mom gets a vague "bad feeling" about the people who run the camp, she may be more likely to trust that that bad feeling means something, even if she can't exactly explain it. And there's arguably nothing "illogical" about that. She may be wrong about the camp staff or right — both T's and F's often make decisions based on incorrect or misunderstood facts — and she may be wrong about how meaningful or reliable her vague impressions were. But again, that's another factual error, and reasonable people can disagree about the extent to which you should trust those kinds of feelings as guides to people. (You have to base your decision on something.)

(2) If her daughter will be heartbroken if she can't go to the camp, Mom may consider that heartbreak a more important negative cost to take into consideration than Dad, whose attitude may be more along the lines of everybody has plenty of disappointments to deal with, and it's important for children to learn you can't have everything you want, and a parent's primary responsibility is to teach his kids life lessons, not make sure every day is happy, and so on. There's nothing more or less "logical" about the mother's or father's viewpoints with respect to the relative value of the daughter's short-term emotions. In doing their respective rational cost/benefit analyses, Mom's just treating the daughter's emotional ups and downs as a more important benefit/cost to weigh in the balance.

And so on.

If somebody said Mom made her decision based more on "emotions," you can see how, in some sense, that could seem to be a reasonable shorthand way of looking at the situation.

But, given the way the T/F dimension is often framed — as if T's and F's went about the overall decision-making process using entirely different "cognitive functions" — it's not hard to imagine someone with an F preference who's trying to figure out their type sitting there thinking, hmm, when there's an important decision to be made, I think I tend to be rational and use logic. I don't think I tend to get carried away by my emotions and let them override my rational thinking — or let some blindly held "value" override a logical analysis. And in a case like that — and I'd say that's how the majority of INFJs (and probably INFPs as well) are likely to view their decision-making tendencies — I think the logic/consequences vs. values/emotions way of framing T/F is more likely to mislead somebody (and maybe especially an INF) than help them determine their type.

Here's part of the post INTP just made:

Example of conscious(i.e. rational) feeling process would be when you are thinking about whether or not you should leave your SO after s/he cheated on you; processing whether or not the person is still worthy of relationship with you, evaluating all the good things and how much the cheating hurt you etc. and coming up with a judgment about this not based on logic, but based on how you feel about all this stuff. Now ofc evaluation about that sort of topic can be done via logic, but doing it purely based on thinking would require some seriously fucked up and cold mind, however most likely there will be some form of thinking mixed in this, except if cheating is something that is against your values so much that you dont even need to start to think it further.

My reaction to that is that I think that, all other things being equal, the "cognitive processes" (using that phrase in a non-Jungian sense) that a typical T and F are likely to bring to bear in deciding what to do about a cheating SO are much the same. My recycled post on T/F and decisions noted that "you could say that any significantly involved decision that anybody (T or F) makes is likely to involve what could fairly be characterized as a cost/benefit analysis among possible acceptable outcomes, and that anybody's 'values,' to the extent that the decision-maker has values that are relevant to the decision, are going to be brought to bear both in terms of deciding what possible outcomes would be acceptable ... and deciding what the nature and magnitude of the relevant costs and benefits are." And INTP talks about the cheated-on SO "processing whether or not the person is still worthy of relationship with you, evaluating all the good things and how much the cheating hurt you etc." — so far, so good — but then he goes on to suggest that the F will "come up with a judgment about this not based on logic, but based on how you feel about all this stuff." But that's where I say, wait a minute, I think both the T and the F are generally going to apply logic to the analysis where appropriate, and also that neither the T nor the F is going to leave out the values and "emotional factors" that are absolutely and unavoidably essential aspects of what you aptly referred to as "the data being considered."

As I pointed out in that recycled stuff, I don't disagree that the logical cost/benefit analyses that a typical T and F are likely to perform in that situation are somewhat different, and that there are at least two different ways that an F's emotions may tend to play a more substantial role than they do for the T. But it seems to me that it's quite a different thing to say that, in deciding what to do about their cheating SO, the T and the F will tend to basically use entirely separate "cognitive processes" as the decision-making mechanism — and that those two processes are both fundamentally different from each other ("different forms of reasoning/logic," as you put it) and, in some essential way, the opposite of each other.

I believe this may be the second reply in a row to you where I took your post as an excuse to do some longform recycling. As always, no pressure to reply unless you're otherwise inclined — and if you want to give me some feedback on any of the recycled stuff, no rush.

What I'd be most interested to hear from you is this: Imagine a typical INTP and a typical INFP, each of whom has just learned that their SO has been cheating on them and each of whom is deciding whether to end the relationship. Can you describe their different decision-making processes in a way that captures, as best you can, the "different forms of reasoning/logic" that you think would be involved?

 

[INTP]

... but then he goes on to suggest that the F will "come up with a judgment about this not based on logic, but based on how you feel about all this stuff." But that's where I say, wait a minute, I think both the T and the F are generally going to apply logic to the analysis where appropriate, and also that neither the T nor the F is going to leave out the values and "emotional factors" that are absolutely and unavoidably essential aspects of what you aptly referred to as "the data being considered."

What I'd be most interested to hear from you is this: Imagine a typical INTP and a typical INFP, each of whom has just learned that their SO has been cheating on them and each of whom is deciding whether to end the relationship. Can you describe their different decision-making processes in a way that captures, as best you can, the "different forms of reasoning/logic" that you think would be involved?

a thinking attitude is oriented by the principle of logic; a sensation attitude is oriented by the direct perception of concrete facts; intuition orients itself to future possibilities; and feeling is governed by subjective worth.

Nuff said, thinking is logic, feeling is rational as logic is, but it weights on what things are worth, not whether or not it follows some path of logic. Ofc F types will also be using T=logic as well. When evaluating worth, you are using F function, and evaluating worth = evaluating how you feel about it. Evaluating worth of a thing is a precursor of how you feel about it, or should i say that the answer is what you feel about it. Or it can go another way around where you are looking at ho you feel about a thing and then make a decision about its worth. Its all F baby