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Thinkers, Feelers, and Emotions

Qlip

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It's said time and time again that Feeling is not the same as emotions, but instead a rational decision process. And it is also said that Thinkers are not without emotion. But it seems apparent that Feelers tend to be more comfortable with emotion than Thinkers are. And some Thinkers going as far as to vehemently reject their own emotions. Can someone explain their view of the F/T dichotomy with respect to emotion?
 
A

Anew Leaf

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Some brief thoughts:

Feelers: I am extremely comfortable with my own emotions and how I am feeling. I am also very comfortable in dealing with other people's emotions*. (*Couple of caveats: I can't be currently overwhelmed by my own emotions, and the other person has to be sincere in their expression.)

However, I don't just steer myself willy-nilly through life based on the fluidity of my ever changing emotions and moods. If I am in Fi-mode, I am usually weighing my emotions against careful analysis. What I decide has to "feel right" to me, but there is a definite process that I go through that has its own logic to it.

In external expression of emotion I am not always the best. The more I feel, the harder it can be to fully express. I saw a lovely quote in entropie's signature that says something along the lines of "If I felt less, I would have said more." (Paraphrasing because I am too lazy to look him up.)

Thinkers:
The more I learn the more pleasantly surprised I am by how much depth of emotion thinker types have. (Especially the ones who have Fe.) My viewpoint is that thinkers feel just as much emotion as feeler types do, but they are going to process and express it differently than feelers. Emotions simply won't have as high a priority as they would have within feelers. So outwardly it may seem that they are a robot, but inwardly they are not.
 

rav3n

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We all have the same emotions whether thinker, feeler, sensor, intuitive. It's how we address them that might be different.

If I'm experiencing any strong negative emotions, I tend to analyse it. Am I entitled to feel this way from an objective perspective? Sometimes Fi gets loose and decision makes using subjective references. More often than not, when Fi gets loose, it's with some post regret.
 

Qlip

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I guess my question could be rephrased as.. why would how people handle emotion be different if Feeling and Thinking are both rational processes with different ends?
 
R

ReflecTcelfeR

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Just because they're both rational doesn't mean they'll handle them in the same way. It just means that when others examine our actions they will understand them.

I'm struggling on a better explanation, but that's what I have thus far.
 

CuriousFeeling

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From my perspective, here's how it would work:

Te: Emotions are on the basis of their own personal reactions to various stimuli including art, people they love, and their inner values they uphold. The emotions are under the surface and ebb and flow like water. When they genuinely feel something, they will express it on a given moment.

Ti: Similar process to Te people, but the emotions have to be logically consistent. They tend to have a very low tolerance to emotional drama and will prefer people to keep in a calm and cool state. But every now and then, a Ti oriented person will have a moment of softness when they are with people that they care about. They tend to dislike it if the emotions seem too over the top or if the emotions are off in a fantasy dream world. They prefer real emotions.

Fe: Fe-based rationale is the "tend and befriend" and "what is appropriate" kind. When Fe-based people want to bond with another human being and find common ground, they will express emotions. Essentially Fe-based people freely express their emotions as a way to make the environment for the other person more inviting to their emotional expression, and to feel a connection between each other through those emotions. The thing is, some feelings in Fe-based people may not be expressed if they think it is in conflict with what is polite to say in a given situation.

Fi: Fi oriented people tend to be a bit more protective of their emotions, for a lot of their emotions are tied to their deep-seated values of what they believe is truly good or truly bad in a given situation. It is a subtler expression in comparison to Fe-dom or Fe-aux. Fi oriented people tend to feel their emotions quite strongly though, and are quite sensitive if someone challenges their beliefs.

If anyone would like to add onto these, or make corrections, feel free to do so! :)
 

Qlip

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^^^ This makes some sort of sense. For F users, emotions are tools of the trade, and for T users emotions are incidental.
 
R

ReflecTcelfeR

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I don't think incidental is the best word, because all emotions are inherent. They would be considered just no more than any other fact that may come into play. That's the usual definition anyway.
 

Thalassa

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Gak. This topic is so complex, IMO. Feelers are usually more comfortable with emotions and trust feelings more, but that doesn't mean that they're necessarily more "emotional." You'll have someone like me, who is openly emotional, and then you'll have an INFJ or INFP who seem fairly stoic in terms of emotional expression.

Also, I know someone who self-types as ISFJ, and I continue to call him an ISFJ although I've honestly suspected him to be ISTJ because of his vocalized discomfort with emo stuff, and also the fact that he seems to fit Beebe's 8 function model for ISTJ, not ISFJ. I think sometimes he thinks he's ISFJ because he's very in touch with his Fi and has strong feelings about things, and values relationships.

I don't think F/T is as simple as "emotional" and "not emotional."
 
R

ReflecTcelfeR

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I think it may be about how broad your values are and how diverse they reach out to. It seems Ti still has a value system, but it isn't as encompassing as an INFP's would be and couldn't hope to be really.
 

funkadelik

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I would say my (Ti) "value system" would be better put as a "system of principles." There are a few things that I am pretty adamant about because I've reasoned it time and time again and it just makes sense. I can see how this would be similar to, say, an ENFP's value system. They feel their values as much as I feel my principles. But perhaps it's not as...logical?...for them. If someone were to ask my why I believe what I believe, I'd be able to provide a well-reasoned argument for why it makes sense to me. I don't know if Fi in ENFPs works the same.

But I do feel things...very deeply sometimes. But I only give time to things that seem, objectively, to be weighty: worthy of emotion. It's all about perspective. I have very little no patience for emotional drama (and there is a LOT that strikes me as emotional drama), but if someone is going through a tough time and seems genuinely affected and is trying their best to keep on keeping on, they will have 100% of my emotional support. If you can face serious situations with a level head and calm demeanor, I will respect you greatly. And that's how I treat my own emotions as well. So sometimes it looks like I'm always a joker, always laughing, never taking things seriously, never "giving in to or acknowledging my feelings" but there's a whole other world deep down that's quite different.

Anyway, complex question! Of course, I can only speak for myself. And I had more to say than I expected. :laugh:
 
R

ReflecTcelfeR

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We must all not forget that we do use all eight functions.
 

Seymour

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I think this is an interesting topic.

i think a lot of the type-related differences in emotion center around how much of our emotional state we perceive, and how much weight and meaning we give to those perceptions. I think we all have the same kinds of emotional reactions.

I think it's good to note that our perception of emotions is closely tied with our perceptions of our physical state. From Mindsight, by Daniel Siegel:

Mindsight said:
Our awareness of another person’s state of mind depends on how well we know our own. The insula brings the resonating state within us upward into the middle prefrontal cortex, where we make a map of our internal world. So we feel others’ feelings by actually feeling our own—we notice the belly fill with laughter at the party or with sadness at the funeral home. All of our subcortical data—our heart rate, breathing, and muscle tension, our limbic coloring of emotion—travels up the insula to inform the cortex of our state of mind. This is the brain reason that people who are more aware of their bodies have been found to be more empathic. The insula is the key: When we can sense our own internal state, the fundamental pathway for resonating with others is open as well.

So, for Fi-doms, a lot of our early challenges center around learning not to be overwhelmed by our emotional perceptions (and other physical perceptions, for that matter). Because we tend to be unable to ignore our emotional states, we tend to come across as being self-centered and having an ego-centric view of reality. In a sense, that's true... because we haven't learned how to manage our emotional states or detach from them.

Also, our own awareness of our internal emotional state can also lead to feeling overwhelmed by the emotional states of others, as mediated (perhaps) by mirror neurons:

Mindsight said:
The internal maps created by mirror neurons are automatic—they do not require consciousness or effort. We are hardwired from birth to detect sequences and make maps in our brains of the internal state—the intentional stance—of other people. And this mirroring is “cross-modal”—it operates in all sensory channels, not just vision—so that a sound, a touch, a smell, can cue us to the internal state and intentions of another. By embedding the mind of another into our own firing patterns, our mirror neurons may provide the foundation for our mindsight maps.

Clearly the above process is not unique to any particular type... but I suspect the feeling types are more likely to place more weight on emotional perceptions and processes.

Thinking types, on the whole, are less likely (especially when young) to see emotions as having as much inherent worth as other factors (such as truth, accuracy and consistency). They tend to see emotions as something whose influence one should intentionally exclude (or place less emphasis upon) when making a decision.

Of course, it's not such a simple dichotomy since factoring in the emotional reactions of others (and oneself) has very practical benefits. So even if one doesn't see emotions as much more than noise, there can be benefit in factoring the emotional reactions of others into the decision making process.


Another interesting aspect is the side effect that emotional awareness goes hand in hand with physical awareness. Those who seek to downplay emotional awareness (either because it is painful or merely distracting and irrelevant) run the risk of also dampening their physical awareness.

My dad, a fairly extreme ESTJ, has had very little physical awareness. He destroyed his knees jogging because he just ignored the pain. His dentist had to get him to stop flossing because he flossed too hard into his gums. Now, at the age of 75, he's taking pilates—mom badgered him into it! He's struggling with learning how to feel the muscles in his body stretch and work, and how to engage only the muscles needed. His whole life he's tended to give everything 100% and clench every muscle in his body when exerting himself in any way.

Now, most ESTJs are not anywhere near that extreme, but I do think it's more likely for an ESTJ to dampen their emotional and physical awareness than for many another types.

So, my guess for the general valuation of emotion would be (least to most): Te Ti Fe Fi


Fe/Fi and Brain Hemispheres

Also, in the same vein, there is some intriguing evidence for Fe mapping reasonably well to the more left hemisphere sorts of emotional processing, and Fi mapping more to right hemisphere emotional processing (from The Developing Mind, also by Siegel):

Developing Mind said:
In contrast, the right hemisphere is proposed to be more “acceptive”—that is, receptive and self-regulatory-as evidenced by the infant’s left handed self-touching and the right hemisphere’s being better developed than the left and responsive to the prosody of “motherese” (nonverbal, sing-song quality of tone of voice). These findings are supported by the notion that the left hemisphere is more active in motor expression and “approach,” mediated by activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine. The right hemisphere, in contrast, mediates “withdrawal” in social situations and is more involved in attentive and reflective states, mediated by activity of the neurotransmitter noradrenaline.

Which maps fairly neatly to the Fi tendency to do emotional processing internally. Also:

Developing Mind said:
The right hemisphere, via the orbitofrontal cortex, also appears to be more capable than the left hemisphere of regulating states of bodily arousal.This suggests that whatever factors directly impinge on right-hemisphere processing, such as bodily input or nonverbal emotional expressions in the voices, body signals, and facial reactions of others, may have a direct impact on a person’s own emotional state before the involvement of a linguistically based consciousness or a rational, linear analysis of an ongoing experience.

Which maps both to the Fi tendency to focus on non-verbal communication and have trouble expressing the kinds of processing involved when making decisions.

Developing Mind said:
Of note are findings suggesting that the left hemisphere plays a more significant role in the communication of emotions that conform to social rules.

Which maps well to the "external harmony" focus of Fe, vs Fi's "internal harmony" focus.

(BTW, I don't think that any particular Jungian function resides entirely in some small area of the brain. However, I do suspect there are patterns such that people of a given type tend to rely more on specific areas of the brain.)
 

OmarFW

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emotions are not a part of cognition, they are part of being human.

they are something that can be triggered by cognition but are not an inherent or direct result of cognitive preferences like F or T.
 

Asterion

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Emotions always come from the past (even when thinking about the future), so they're going to be different for everyone. I think I/E would have an effect on it, introverts being in their heads might focus on it more intensely, extraverts might express it more thus appearing more emotional. Feelers prefer to think about and deal with people more, and people are emotional, so they are more likely to be empathetic, whereas a thinker might not concern themselves with the emotions of others as much.
 

wolfy

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Isn't it just that F types use their emotions as valid information source in a rational decision making process?
 

rav3n

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Isn't it just that F types use their emotions as valid information source in a rational decision making process?
Or are many values created through emotional experiences and when triggered, evoke the emotional reaction of the time?
 

wolfy

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Or are many values created through emotional experiences and when triggered, evoke the emotional reaction of the time?

It doesn't feel like that in my head. Making decisions from values seems more abstract to me. Relatively free from emotions.
 

rav3n

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It doesn't feel like that in my head. Making decisions from values seems more abstract to me. Relatively free from emotions.
Say you see someone being cruel to a puppy, it evokes anger or outrage, right? Wouldn't this be your mind going directly to a value that pertains to "protect the weak and defenseless", hence creates the anger and outrage? Kind of chicken or egg.
 

kyuuei

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The way I see it.. and this could be total bullshit.

Thinkers just have a tendency to not express the emotions.. processing them inwardly is fine, but feelers just seem to deal with emotions better outside of themselves.. where as thinkers tend to make it a deeper thing. :shrug:

For me, emotions are what keeps my feet on the ground. Without them, I'd be a cold-hearted ice-woman.. While I am not the most openly emotional person out there, it is easy to tell how I am feeling and what is going on with me once someone knows me. I'm like a book, whether I want to be or not. My boyfriend knows right away when he's irked me, even if I don't feel it a big deal and think it should be ignored and cast aside.. I can't help but convey that. Because I seem to throw my emotions outside of myself whether I want to or not, I have to spend more time thinking about them and figuring them out..

.. I think thinkers just tend to not have to deal with those extra steps. They can keep them inside, and just figure out a way to express them when the time comes that they must. :shrug: Just the way I see it..
 
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