[Fi] Fe blindness; Fi shortsightedness

[OrangeAppled]

I've read many of the same threads you have, and given the significant numerical advantage Fi users seem to have on the site, that there is this pervasive, all-enveloping bias throughout the site seems a little strange to me.

This site is NT dominated. The positive comments come mostly from the abundant NFPs themselves, and a few NFJs.

 

[The Outsider]

I'd rather not. I'm not a fan of burning bridges.

Bugger. Here I was hoping the dancing would stop, and we could get down to the point.

 

[onemoretime]

This site is NT dominated. The positive comments come mostly from the abundant NFPs themselves, and a few NFJs.

I disagree. I'd say that among our most prolific users, ENFP is probably the #1 or #2 claimed type.

 

[teslashock]

Bugger. Here I was hoping the dancing would stop, and we could get down to the point.

Well, some of us are. Somebody should create a thread for NFPs and NTPs to argue about Fi and Ti. That way we can be more productive and on task in threads like this one.

 

[proteanmix]

It's not just this thread, but the general comments made in many threads, an example of one stated...and you haven't seen the PMs, rep comments, etc that I've received from proteanmix making bizarre accusations. All over a cognitive function.

Orange, no joke, I don't take kindly to people making accusations about me.

I have left you a total of FIVE comments in all the time you've been on this forum. Three of them occured in 2009 and two within the last weeks as specific responses to something you've said in thread and here they are:

OA, no offense but you just got through railing against tesla's Fi thread but then you tend to make posts like these...

i think i'm going to point it out to you whenever you do it..."act the martyr to get sympathy" why that?? no one else gets the fingerwagging

Those are the two comments I've left you within the last two weeks. You sent me a PM in response to the first comment, I have never sent you any PMs.

If you'd like to know what pisses me off it's this: making insinuations against me. Quit it.

I've read many of the same threads you have, and given the significant numerical advantage Fi users seem to have on the site, that there is this pervasive, all-enveloping bias throughout the site seems a little strange to me.

Besides INTP, INFP is the most numerous type on the forum. There is hardly an anti-Fi bias. Just really really sensitive people.

 

[onemoretime]

Bugger. Here I was hoping the dancing would stop, and we could get down to the point.

Unfortunately, it seems like the dancing IS the point.

 

[Stanton Moore]

Bugger. Here I was hoping the dancing would stop, and we could get down to the point.

Please. Do.

 

[teslashock]

Besides INTP, INFP is the most numerous type on the forum. There is hardly an anti-Fi bias. Just really really sensitive people.

Quantifiable evidence from a respectable mod FTW!!

 

[The Outsider]

Unfortunately, it seems like the dancing IS the point.

Haha.

As long as it's fun to watch I suppose.

 

[Scott N Denver]

Yes that claim has been made several times. I just quoted a person who made the claim. I don't think to myself hmmm, this person is tightwad jerkface with a small asshole...they must be ESTJ! I don't type by character traits. My dispute in this thread is the nature of the character traits people ascribe to types NOT patterns of behavior. Do you see what I'm saying?



Do you want me to slather some happy sauce on you or something? You're already claiming the apex of emotional intelligence: empathy. Any student of psychology or casual self-help book puts empathy at the top of the emotional food chain and evidently NFPs are naturally predisposed towards that than any other type. I can't do anything better than that! You have the golden ticket!

I just reread like 10-20 pages of Lenore thomsons's book hoping that I could quote her on Fi-doms and being predisposed or naturally adept at empathy.
Unfortunately, she kept using other semi-similar words so I can't quote her on that one, and people could debate any word-transference I pick to get from what she says to empathy.

I think she talks somewhere about Fi dom's naturally trying to see things "from other people's shoes/viewpoints" as in "IFP's are most likely to try and see something from someone else's viewpoint or to walk a mile in someone else's shoes". I'll keep looking, maybe its in the INFP section instead of the IFP section.

I'm not sure it innately qualifies as "empathy", but I think the best answer I can try to give is to say this: Fi seeks universal values, and given their universal nature they cut through or ignore societies conventions and expectations [I can find quotes for that part]. To me, I consider this "more directly interacting with a person and their internal experience" as opposed to "social bartering" or "social currency", and to someone on the outside looking at this situation they might more likely describe such a Fi-approach as "empathy"


Alright, forget Thomson, lets go with Myers-Briggs herself in Gifts Differing. Page 79 contrasts Fe and Fi. Its long and I don't want to quote it all, but personally I'd definitely attribute "empathy" to Fi over Fe based upon the descriptions on this page. Some snippets:

Fe: determined chiefly by the objective factor and serves to make the individual feel correctly, that is conventionally, under all circumstances

Fi: is determined by the subjective factor and serves as a guide to emotional acceptance or rejection of various aspects of life

my thought: I'm not sure I fully agree here, but its what she wrote. "empathy" clearly belongs to Fi here [accept what is vs making someone feel conventionally/correctly


Fe: adapts the individual to the objective situation [hello, isnt this the opposite of empathy???]

Fi:adapts the objective situation to the individual

Fe: depends wholly on upon the ideals, conventions and customs of the environment

Fi: depends upon abstract feeling-ideals...

my thought: Fi again for "empathy" unless one really trusts "conventions"

Fe: finds soundness and value in the collective ideals of the community, which are usually accepted without question

Fi: finds soundness and value inside from [personal factors]

my thought: Fi again, unless one accepts the communities expectations over one's own [as in "society says you should be feeling emotion X since you are in situation Y"]

Fe: has as its goal the formation and maintenance of easy and harmonious emotional relationships with others

Fi: has as its goal the fostering and development of an intense inner emotional life

Fe: has a tendency to suppress the personal standpoint entirely...

^ thats like the antithesis of empathy there right???

I'm not saying I fully agree with her descriptions of Fi and Fe, though I can see where each description comes from, and I think her Fe is far more ESFJ-ish than ENFJ-ish, but given the above descriptions from Briggs-Myers
its seems pretty clear to me that "empathy" is far more naturally aligned with a Fi perspective than a Fe one. IN particular, I feel like Briggs-Myers is saying "Fe tells you how you should act/feel/behave/do/be based upon the external social conventions and expectations of society", a view that I disagree with and prefer Thomson's descriptions on.

Ok, well I don't know if you agree with the above or what its getting at, but can you see how from what Briggs-Myers wrote about Fi and Fe that Fi seems more naturally empathetic? At best from the above descriptions [which again I don't agree with], the best Fe would seem to be able to do is say "I see that you fell this way, but societies social interaction expectations dictate that I will treat you some other way."

 

[OrangeAppled]

Perhaps you guys are very inclined towards empathy, but I still think it's an acquired skill, and nobody can be naturally good at empathizing. You have to ask questions from your outer world, create some sort of emotional database for referencing, and come across an array of different people before you can accurately empathize. Until you do that, the feelings that you believe you are taking in are just arbitrary hunches with nothing to back them except your own gut. I think this might be why Fi users come off as presumptuous some times, honestly. They don't ask the questions that they should ask in order to enhance their empathetic skills. I simply refuse to believe that Fi users have an innate ability to understand the emotions of others. That sounds almost supernatural. I believe that Fi users are inherently sensitive and generally place a lot of value in emotions, so they take pride in being empathetic, even when their empathy is erroneous.

Who claims there's some supernatural reading? That's practically all I do when presented with a situation where empathy seems in order: ask questions and let them describe their feeling and try to see it from their perspective. 90% of empathizing is just listening to people vent.

I maintain we do not need to directly experience something to understand it. Intuition allows for connection of seemingly unrelated events/feelings/etc. Inclination, predisposed...it means the same thing. Of course there are NFPs with crappy empathizing skills, just like there are totally illogical NTs. No one is born with much of any skill, but there can be predisposition to develop certain ones.

I don't relate to the being so affected by empathy that I involuntarily feel things all the time. Maybe I am less sensitive than some NFPs, in a bad way though. I'm not quite as sensitive to other people like NFPs are "supposed" to be.

 

[Kalach]

Claims I'm comfortable with:

Where other people are concerned, my feeling works by upsetting me at their expense. If an environment or situation comes to pass that would have, where I in their shoes, put me into some bad state, then I--assuming I care for those people in some close or distant form--act. I can't call it empathy because there is no guarantee that I am accurately predicting their state. And indeed, I'm sort of aware that when it's an Fe user I'm looking at, I probably get their state wrong (or I get it right but will naturally choose the wrong action in response). I could see people with more developed talents in this area actually having empathy. One assumes they could come from either team.

Claims that move in to weirder territory:

One assumes Fi users would be hand's-offy as far as the feeling itself goes. Technically, one assumes, they act to change environments, not people, since they're using extraverted thinking at the last "what to do now" stage of the process. Fe users--who knows? That F is directive.

 

[William K]

I've read many of the same threads you have, and given the significant numerical advantage Fi users seem to have on the site, that there is this pervasive, all-enveloping bias throughout the site seems a little strange to me.

It's like a loop actually... We (INFPs I mean) are conflict-averse and every post we make seems like we are sticking our necks out. And given the fact that we are not very good at explaining what Fi is, our positive comments either get ignored as biased or get shot down. Which would seem like a personal attack on us instead of our ideas, and we become even more cautious and defensive of what to say, and end up bottling everything up inside. Or even worse, the INFP would feel that what he/she reads is 100% true...

To me, a lot of the emo, whiny "My life sux" dump you see is caused by that bottled up stuff suddenly escaping out. You can't always keep a lid on it. It happened to me just this week and the Facebook post I made was horribly embarassing in hindsight

 

[Fidelia]

The problem with Myers description is, like Scott said, that her expression of what Fe is doesn't apply to a large percentage of Fe users.

I agree that Fi users can easily take others' emotions on as their own, just as Fe users can easily take others' needs on as their own. Both users may be incorrect about either the other person's emotions or needs, depending on their experience in using either function. In both case, they must be willing verify with the other person that their perceptions are in fact correct.

 

[William K]

One assumes Fi users would be hand's-offy as far as the feeling itself goes. Technically, one assumes, they act to change environments, not people, since they're using extraverted thinking at the last "what to do now" stage of the process.

I can agree to that. "Changing environments" sounds better than "Running away"

 

[OrangeAppled]

Orange, no joke, I don't take kindly to people making accusations about me.

I have left you a total of FIVE comments in all the time you've been on this forum. Three of them occured in 2009 and two within the last weeks as specific responses to something you've said in thread and here they are:

Those are the two comments I've left you within the last two weeks. You sent me a PM in response to the first comment, I have never sent you any PMs.

If you'd like to know what pisses me off it's this: making insinuations against me. Quit it.

I sent the PM in response to your passive aggressive rep comment, and you replied, so yes, that is a PM. There was also that ridiculous accusation in the thread about types reactioning (http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/other-psychology-topics/25855-what-different-types-look-like-when-reacting-2.html). I'd like you to stop nitpicking me.

Besides INTP, INFP is the most numerous type on the forum. There is hardly an anti-Fi bias. Just really really sensitive people.

Who is the most numerous type does not change what I said, nor does it indicate what type dominates the vibe of the board. The bias is not coming from NFPs, duh.

 

[teslashock]

Who claims there's some supernatural reading? That's practically all I do when presented with a situation where empathy seems in order: ask questions and let them describe their feeling and try to see it from their perspective. 90% of empathizing is just listening to people vent.

Seymour's suggestions in his post to which I was replying seemed "supernatural" to me. That's all I meant by that. Can you attempt to understand my words in context next time? k thx.

I'm glad that you ask questions, but I think it's safe to say that some NFPs don't. These are the types that may be "shortsighted."

I maintain we do not need to directly experience something to understand it. Intuition allows for connection of seemingly unrelated events/feelings/etc. Inclination, predisposed...it means the same thing. Of course there are NFPs with crappy empathizing skills, just like there are totally illogical NTs. No one is born with much of any skill, but there can be predisposition to develop certain ones.

Agreed. We do not necessarily need to experience something to understand it. However, if we don't experience things that we claim to understand, we need to be more open to the possibility that our interpretations and ideas about such things may be flawed and subject to correction upon further experience.

 

[Seymour]

(wait, j/k j/k!!)

Is it playing just for me?!? So sweet of you!

I have a very close INFP that says very similiar things about herself. She claims that she can't watch graphic, intense movies without taking on the emotions of the movie herself. It's like there's no barrier, and it's quite interesting.

As a kid, I had the same issue. The thing is, it doesn't matter whether the emotion we are mirroring is real or not. We can get faked out. We are really tuned into small, subtle cues but it's not magic. We can be wrong. We can be mistaken. It's empathy, but it's fallible empathy.

Perhaps you guys are very inclined towards empathy, but I still think it's an acquired skill, and nobody can be naturally good at empathizing. You have to ask questions from your outer world, create some sort of emotional database for referencing, and come across an array of different people before you can accurately empathize. Until you do that, the feelings that you believe you are taking in are just arbitrary hunches with nothing to back them except your own gut. I think this might be why Fi users come off as presumptuous some times, honestly. They don't ask the questions that they should ask in order to enhance their empathetic skills. I simply refuse to believe that Fi users have an innate ability to understand the emotions of others. That sounds almost supernatural. I believe that Fi users are inherently sensitive and generally place a lot of value in emotions, so they take pride in being empathetic, even when their empathy is erroneous.

Being accurate is an acquired skill. Being tuned into subtle cues and reading into them less so.

That why on the "pretentious Fi" thread I was trying to focus on what cues the Fi-users you were talking about were picking up on.

In some cases, like your post earlier, it will be an absence of cues plus a factual "you're wrong" content. In those cases, the ascribed emotion is likely to be either projection, or "if it were me and I responded that way, it would mean I was angry" (which is another kind of projection, in a way).

In other cases, there will be cues that have been given (word choice, body language, tone of voice) that the NFPs are picking up on. In some cases, you may have used words or other cues that were actually saying "I'm angry" or whatever. It's not always Fi-users projecting onto an emotional vacuum.

In either case, I think it's helpful for both sides to focus on the specifics, so we can figure out where miscommunication happened. One advantage of text is that we can go back, look, and be really specific. I would be nice if we could all bend over backwards to make sure that nothing was either transmitted or received that wasn't meant. That's clearly not going to happen consistently in reality, though. It seems like it we all opine on the generalities it boils "you say we suck!" "No, we didn't, but now that you mention it..."

So, I'll tell you what: I'll try to take a step back and examine things carefully if you claim I'm projecting, and you agree to re-examine language and other cues for emotional content if I claim you are coming across as expressing some emotion.

 

[teslashock]

So, I'll tell you what: I'll try to take a step back and examine things carefully if you claim I'm projecting, and you agree to re-examine language and other cues for emotional content if I claim you are coming across as expressing some emotion.

Deal.

 

[proteanmix]

Quantifiable evidence from a respectable mod FTW!!

Of Feeling users who list their type in their profile:

1362 FP
1232 NFP
848 FJ
745 NFJ

There's no mod magic; just a simple Member List search. There are more NTP users here than NFPs so they could possibly be the main source of the alleged anti-Fi bias and there are more TJs here than FJs period. The main source isn't FJs. Wonder why? The collective power of Fe hegemony should bowl over anything else.

I'm going to leave the thread for awhile. I don't think I'm contributing anything good right now.