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."