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Does anyone else reject the cognitive functions?

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In my own experience, learning about the functions have helped me understand myself and other people better, and overcome a lot of communication gaps. I have my own model and I'm happy with it. For me, the MBTI is a self-help tool, not science.
 

Polaris

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If you regard the cognitive functions as descriptions of behaviors, and leave it at that, there really isn't much to reject about them. They describe behaviors that people really do engage in, and being familiar with them enriches your psychological vocabulary. Whether these behaviors interrelate with each other and correspond to the four dichotomies in the way that the MBTI claims they do is a different question. In my own case, there is a strong correlation, but many people report inconsistencies.
 

Pionart

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If you regard the cognitive functions as descriptions of behaviors, and leave it at that

But cognitive functions are supposed to be cognitive. Behaviour stems from cognition (doesn't it?), and surely there is good correlation, but I don't think then identifying a CF with a behaviour makes much sense.
 

INTP

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The so-called "cognitive functions" are what James Reynierse (in an article I talk about in that INTJforum post) has rightly called a "category mistake" — and are also, in the form that you generally encounter them at MBTI forums, a long way from being Jungian. The Harold Grant function stack (the one that says INTJ=Ni-Te-Fi-Se and INTP=Ti-Ne-Si-Fe) is a model that has no respectable validity, wasn't Jung's or Myers' function model, and has never been endorsed by the official MBTI folks.

Its been quite a while since i read that article by Reynierse, but its just complete bullshit and it clearly shows that the guy has no idea what he is talking about. What comes to Grants model with the tert, it is actually endorsed by MBTI folks, some of the official guides say that tert is same as dom, others say that aux tert and inferior are opposite to dom, but often tert is left without I or E, because the MBTI folks cant agree which one it is and because its bit unclear.
What i have observed in myself and in all people i know well enough to type them properly, observing their tert clearly shows its same as dom. I can see this online as well and it makes sense when you know Jungian theory of type(and whole model of psyche) well enough.

But cognitive functions are supposed to be cognitive. Behaviour stems from cognition (doesn't it?), and surely there is good correlation, but I don't think then identifying a CF with a behaviour makes much sense.

Exactly. 2 + 3 = 5, but so is 1 + 4 or 12 - 7, same outcome from different numbers. And this is pretty much why academia has rejected behaviorism ages ago and moved to stuff like what motivates the person or just general descriptions about people like big 5 gives.
 

GarrotTheThief

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I'm just curious. Are there any other MBTI enthusiasts out there who think that the cognitive functions are malarkey? I reject them for several reasons

1) Easily projected onto yourself and others

2) No one can seem to agree on their definitions of them (I mean, unless you want to accept the "Fi-users are independent; stay true to their selves" "Fe-users are submissive; incapable of being their own person" set of definitions.)

3) They're unobservable and subjective

4) In spite of being a non-behaviorist attempt to understand personality, they're used and interpreted in a behavioristic way.

5) They have no verifiable existence outside of Carl Jung's imagination (artificial constructs which he, Myers, and her followers read into the personalities of other people, much as Marx and his followers interpreted human history to support their philosophy)

I just stick with the MBTI preferences. They're simple, straightforward, and more compatible with my common-sense and life experience

Cognitive functions are actually biologically rooted as opposed to mbti which is more psuedoscientific (a combination of science and self-observation which is never fundamentally sound nor objective).

We can map parts of our brains that are used for observation(SE), we can map parts of our brains that trigger deep memories when presented with a stimulous such as a painting(SI), we can map parts of our brains used that build connections between external objections NE, we can map parts of our brains used in imagination or the image making function (NI), etc....etc...

But we cannot figure out if there is indeed an 8 fold hierarchy. That is speculation but it seems to be true at times.

What is more plausible is a process/order/frequency theory in which we exhibit some sort of wave function, or series of wave functions according to each. If this is the case then such a theory would provide for an infinite number of permutations regarding the functions and a theory of personality would not be possible until maybe the year 3030.

EDIT: Cognitive functions are also self evident. We have five fingers and we can see them. It is self evident we observer, sensing, it is self evident we think, it is self evident we have an internal image making function which is developed next to our instincts(intuition), and it is self evident that we develop value systems (feeling function).....

There is no reason to deny something that is self evident.

The idea of introversion and extroversion, however, is not a matter of self evidence. Someone can seem extroverted to you, but their attitude may be introverted. The idea of introversion and extroversion is subjective and can never be known to another. It is "your" attitude which governs it and not anything else.
 

highlander

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I'm just curious. Are there any other MBTI enthusiasts out there who think that the cognitive functions are malarkey? I reject them for several reasons

Since I've learned about functions after joining this site five years ago, I've come to conclude that the functions make more sense to me than the four letter type. They are very concrete.


1) Easily projected onto yourself and others

Anything can be projected. Not sure what you mean there

2) No one can seem to agree on their definitions of them (I mean, unless you want to accept the "Fi-users are independent; stay true to their selves" "Fe-users are submissive; incapable of being their own person" set of definitions.)

As [MENTION=7595]INTP[/MENTION] stated, Jung defined them. If that's too inaccessible for you, there are a number of books and resources out there that provide quite a bit of good detail describing them - Nardi, Beebee, Hartzler, Thompson, etc.

3) They're unobservable and subjective

They are very observable. You can see evidence of them in the words that people use.

4) In spite of being a non-behaviorist attempt to understand personality, they're used and interpreted in a behavioristic way.

There is a lot of that going on with respect to personality type in general. If you think in terms of preferences and tendencies, it is a useful model. I'm not sure how this comment applies to functions more than any other personality typing mechanism.

5) They have no verifiable existence outside of Carl Jung's imagination (artificial constructs which he, Myers, and her followers read into the personalities of other people, much as Marx and his followers interpreted human history to support their philosophy)

Is it impossible to prove their existence? I'm not sure. I believe the evidence will mount as time progresses but who knows.

I just stick with the MBTI preferences. They're simple, straightforward, and more compatible with my common-sense and life experience

I used to do this and feel that now, I have a much richer understanding of type. Without understanding and focusing on the functions, you understand things in a lot less depth, so I don't think this is the best way of approaching things.
 

GarrotTheThief

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LEt me give you an example of self evident cognitive functioning too...

You saw (observed, sensed) a man getting hurt by another in public.

You saw that the two men were fighting and one of them was the aggressor the other defender...because you (thought) an aggressor has these attributes and a defender has those attributes (and you thought or conluded) that one was classified as an aggressor and the other a defender.

Then you made a value judgement(feeling.) You said that the aggressor was bad, and the defendor was good...which is not logical but rational...because something that is logical is based only on logic and issues of good or bad are based on values...both used to make judgement, in fact a judgement requires both...they are complementary...the product of the opposites in tandem is judgement.

So then you decided to anticipate (intuition) which way the aggressor would strike and stop his blow....

And since that day you were a superhero.

Now did you inherit your values from an external thing? such as a society, family, religion, culture (FE)?
Or did you inherit your values from some inner reflection and soul searching? (FI)?

In truth, no one is only FE or FI...FE and FI are opposites too, in that E and I are opposites...and complementary. One cannot be without the other...they are two tracks on the same railway.

Same with Thinking....TI and TE work together...they modulate...you cannot classify external objects without understanding the system of classification.

You cannot form your own inner contracted range of possibilities (ni) without considering the external possiblities (ne). For example you may intuitively know how to implement a business plan (NI) based on your companies facts and details(SE) but you cannot do it unless you anticipate the actions of your competitors (NE) based on historical data and your impression on it (SI).
 

GarrotTheThief

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the problem with many people and cognitive functions by the way is that personality theory tends to draw self absorbed individuals who like to overcomplicate things.

If you see something that is sensing.

If you think something that is logic

And if you value something that is feeling...

And if you consider time, possibility, outcome, that is intuition.

No one function operates in itself...in every action or behavior all four are at work.

What the theory states, which is unproven, is that one to three of these functions is conscious ( you are aware of it) and the others are submerged.

That part is entirely religious and unproven if we assume everyone is like that. Someone can be using all 7 functions and only have 1 unconscious for example...no one knows for sure...but based on a Jungian analyst who as been typing people for forty years, and what he told me, is that some people have different models...not everyone has a four fold model...but he said most people do.

That is the guy who typed me as an ENTJ. The reason I am typed as an entj...is because my value system is based on the social hierachy. My emotions, my equillibrium is entirely contingent on the external environment. I think something is good if it gets me more and better and faster because logically, I know that doing x gets y and that y is good...that is just the way I am to the core....it doesn't matter really...it's not that I am superficial or machivalian....my experience precludes that sort of generalization.

I know that...money(x) gets healthy food(y) and I know healthy food is good because I reflected on how unhealthy food makes me feel and for me personally, (fi)...I need it to be happy. I am going against the grain of society (FE) because society, at least in the west, loves to eat, drink, and sleep pure sludge hence we have fast food, beer, and other crap to kill yourself with.

But I am a judger...I think logically and then I say to myself good or bad...then I observe and I re-evaluate...that is HOW I work...only you can know how YOU Work...someone can guide you but no one can ever know what type you are except for yourself.

You can tell right away if you are a thinker by observing yourself in the morning.
 

GarrotTheThief

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let me also reiterate how behavioural approach to typing will never work from a scientific point of view. You cannot observe what someone does and say that they are this type or that type.

Many athletes are mistyped as sensors because they are good at dealing with sensory data, but this is not necessarily a matter of preference....someone could approach boxing as if it were a science. Most boxers in fact are intj's...yet when we think of intj's based on behaviour we don't think that...because we are biased and making a huge mistake and assuming that an action does not incorporate all four functions.

So we say the boxer with tatooes is an estp...stupidly of course, when in reality, everything he says about himself is intj.

In order for me to shoot a basketball I have to see, think, feel, and inuit.

In order for me to do anything I must do all four. There is not way to do anything without using all four equally...the only variable is what I am self aware of....that is where theory comes in and that is something no one can measure and only you can know...

You can't use language to type people either. Someone may say they feel something when they actually think it. Culture, family, heritage, random happenstance all causes language to diverge from actual meaning. Most of us do not know the true definition of words we use therefore we never use them right.

I say I saw when I really mean I felt....there are certain cultures that have no words for either, or have 1000 words for one and only 2 for another...giving false examples here to demonstrate a point...the point that the culture preloads the words a person will use so they are no indication of some universal inner state or even outer state...they are rough sketches...

in one culture the color blues is happiness and in antoher sadness...in one culture feeling means thinking and in another it means thought...no way to tie it all together...and even growing up in a different suburb is enough to completely change everything about the dialogue you use...

if you were living on the south side of chicago you would have hard time understanding someone from the north side in truth.
 

reckful

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Cognitive functions are actually biologically rooted as opposed to mbti which is more psuedoscientific (a combination of science and self-observation which is never fundamentally sound nor objective).

Wow. You have that entirely backwards. The MBTI can actually lay claim to quite a lot of scientific respectability in the reliability and validity departments, but that really only applies to the dichotomy-centric MBTI — and not the "cognitive functions."

Carl Jung — mystical streak notwithstanding — was a believer in the scientific approach, and Myers took Psychological Types and devoted a substantial chunk of her life to putting its typological concepts to the test in a way that Jung never had, and in accordance with the psychometric standards applicable to the science of personality. Myers adjusted Jung's categories and concepts so that they better fit the data she gathered from thousands of subjects, and by the start of the 1960s (as the leading Big Five psychologists have acknowledged), she had a typology that was respectably tapping into four of the Big Five personality dimensions — long before there really was a Big Five. And twin studies have since shown that identical twins raised in separate households are substantially more likely to match on those dimensions than genetically unrelated pairs, which is further (strong) confirmation that the MBTI dichotomies correspond to real, relatively hard-wired underlying dimensions of personality. They're a long way from being simply theoretical — or pseudoscientific — categories with no respectable evidence behind them.

And on the other hand, and as Reynierse notes in the article with the "category mistake" verdict, the so-called "cognitive functions" have barely even been studied. And the reason they've barely been studied is that, unlike the dichotomies, they've never been taken seriously by any significant number of academic psychologists.

Anyone interested in reading about the validity of the dichotomy-centric side of the MBTI — and about several other issues often raised by people claiming to "debunk" the MBTI — will find a lengthy two-post discussion starting here, and further discussion of the scientific respectability of the MBTI in this post (also linked to in the first linked post).
 

GarrotTheThief

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Wow. You have that entirely backwards. The MBTI can actually lay claim to quite a lot of scientific respectability in the reliability and validity departments, but that really only applies to the dichotomy-centric MBTI — and not the "cognitive functions."

Carl Jung — mystical streak notwithstanding — was a believer in the scientific approach, and Myers took Psychological Types and devoted a substantial chunk of her life to putting its typological concepts to the test in a way that Jung never had, and in accordance with the psychometric standards applicable to the science of personality. Myers adjusted Jung's categories and concepts so that they better fit the data she gathered from thousands of subjects, and by the start of the 1960s (as the leading Big Five psychologists have acknowledged), she had a typology that was respectably tapping into four of the Big Five personality dimensions — long before there really was a Big Five. And twin studies have since shown that identical twins raised in separate households are substantially more likely to match on those dimensions than genetically unrelated pairs, which is further (strong) confirmation that the MBTI dichotomies correspond to real, relatively hard-wired underlying dimensions of personality. They're a long way from being simply theoretical — or pseudoscientific — categories with no respectable evidence behind them.

Anyone interested in reading about the validity of the dichotomy-centric side of the MBTI — and about several other issues often raised by people claiming to "debunk" the MBTI — will find a lengthy two-post discussion starting here, and further discussion of the scientific respectability of the MBTI in this post (also linked to in the first linked post).

Your entitled to your opinion of course and I respect that but my views are not open for debate with you. I'm just letting you know because I don't want you to waste your time again replying to me when I'm not even going to read what you've written since I can directly observe what I wrote as true as the law of gravity.

Time is too valuable for me to debate....time is money.
 

highlander

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Wow. You have that entirely backwards. The MBTI can actually lay claim to quite a lot of scientific respectability in the reliability and validity departments, but that really only applies to the dichotomy-centric MBTI — and not the "cognitive functions."

Carl Jung — mystical streak notwithstanding — was a believer in the scientific approach, and Myers took Psychological Types and devoted a substantial chunk of her life to putting its typological concepts to the test in a way that Jung never had, and in accordance with the psychometric standards applicable to the science of personality. Myers adjusted Jung's categories and concepts so that they better fit the data she gathered from thousands of subjects, and by the start of the 1960s (as the leading Big Five psychologists have acknowledged), she had a typology that was respectably tapping into four of the Big Five personality dimensions — long before there really was a Big Five. And twin studies have since shown that identical twins raised in separate households are substantially more likely to match on those dimensions than genetically unrelated pairs, which is further (strong) confirmation that the MBTI dichotomies correspond to real, relatively hard-wired underlying dimensions of personality. They're a long way from being simply theoretical — or pseudoscientific — categories with no respectable evidence behind them.

Anyone interested in reading about the validity of the dichotomy-centric side of the MBTI — and about several other issues often raised by people claiming to "debunk" the MBTI — will find a lengthy two-post discussion starting here, and further discussion of the scientific respectability of the MBTI in this post (also linked to in the first linked post).

So you are advocating a dichotomy based approach vs. cognitive functions?

I agree that Myers added a lot to the system. Anyone can see that. Jung had no such concept as a four letter type.

This is one of the most confusing things about the MBTI. The test focuses on dichotomies. However when you read the manual, it includes the ordering of the functions. One can read Gifts Differing through the lens of dichotomies but reading between the lines, it is obvious that the functions and their ordering is the underpinning of the whole system.

The test doesn't work that way though. It seems like a flawed approach to assessing a person's type. It works better than it seems it should. Why not improve it though by adding an additional layer that tests for the functions? Why focus on facets instead? I kind of think that the thing should be overhauled.
 

reckful

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This is one of the most confusing things about the MBTI. The test focuses on dichotomies. However when you read the manual, it includes the ordering of the functions. One can read Gifts Differing through the lens of dichotomies but reading between the lines, it is obvious that the functions and their ordering is the underpinning of the whole system.

You have that backwards. As discussed at length in this long INTJforum post (which I've already linked to), if you read Gifts Differing with any care, and you read the MBTI Manuals and other official MBTI materials, and you look at the decades of MBTI studies that have centered around the dichotomies and ignored the cognitive functions, and you look at the more recent "Step II" version of the MBTI — which divides the dichotomies into facets and continues to all but ignore the functions — you'll realize that, after putting Jung's original type concepts to the test, Myers came to the conclusion (correctly) that the dichotomies were the true building blocks of type. Myers essentially did nothing with the purported "tertiary" and "inferior" functions, and mostly just gave lip service to the dominant and auxiliary functions. Not only the test, but the MBTI itself, is really built around the dichotomies.

And the dichotomy-centric version of the MBTI doesn't exclude the many aspects of personality associated with preference combinations — e.g., things that NFs or NPs or FPs tend to have in common. And there's no question that descriptions of, say, "Fe" can actually have validity as well as long as they don't go beyond what you might call the piggybacked validity that they get from lining up with the additive effects of the two (or three, as applicable) corresponding dichotomies — e.g., FJ (or EFJ, depending) for "Fe" descriptions.

But it's also worth noting that Myers believed that NF/NT/SF/ST were the most significant preference combinations — more than any of the combinations associated with the functions. And the second edition of the MBTI Manual (which Myers co-authored) had a brief description of characteristics associated with every one of the 24 possible two-letter preference combinations.

---------------------------------------------

Links in INTJforum posts don't work if you're not a member, so here are replacements for two of the links in the post linked above:

McCrae & Costa article (click on the pic on the right to access the full article)
Reynierse article
 

reckful

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Your entitled to your opinion of course and I respect that but my views are not open for debate with you. I'm just letting you know because I don't want you to waste your time again replying to me when I'm not even going to read what you've written since I can directly observe what I wrote as true as the law of gravity.

Time is too valuable for me to debate....time is money.

Your misunderstandings don't stem from the fact that your "direct observations" are hallucinations. They stem from the fact that, as your posts make clear, you know fuck-all about the dichotomy-centric version of the MBTI — and the ways it does and doesn't relate to Jung's original type categories, and the Harold Grant function stack, and etc. — and accordingly think that your "direct observations" somehow validate the "cognitive functions."

But by all means, ignore my posts. You're free to stay as ignorant about the underlying theories as you wanna be.

But meanwhile, if you're going to be posting stuff like "Cognitive functions are actually biologically rooted as opposed to mbti which is more psuedoscientific," you should be aware that the science of personality — although it's one of the soft sciences — is based on studies and data, and whether a typology has established a respectable level of validity and reliability depends on generally-agreed-on psychometric standards, and not whether some individual forum poster in lala land has read about the "cognitive functions" and "directly observed" that they sooooooo capture his, like, psychological reality, man.

Look, reckful! I have five fingers! And I can "see" my five fingers! They're like fooking "gravity," those "cognitive functions."

Carry on, Garrot. :alttongue:
 

Cygnus

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On another note, I'd say it's probably a better idea to use functions to type yourself, dichotomies to type other people, as you yourself don't always see the traits you quite plainly exhibit.


But it's also worth noting that Myers believed that NF/NT/SF/ST were the most significant preference combinations — more than any of the combinations associated with the functions. And the second edition of the MBTI Manual (which Myers co-authored) had a brief description of characteristics associated with every one of the 24 possible two-letter preference combinations.

I'd completely agree with this as well.


There's no logical way, reason, or excuse to split SP/SJ with the Sensors when you split the Intuitives by NF/NT, plain and simple, period. Functions or no functions. Nothing but deliberately attempting to assign desirable or undesirable traits to certain types that don't correspond with any one single preference. Making connections that don't exist, trying to see correlations where there are none. Like Gerrymandering.
 

Stephano

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It's true that Jung was biased towards certain types, though he himself pointed out biases in other personality systems (e.g. James' types). He had a bad impression of Fe Doms imho.
However, the letters alone are too superficial. Whether someone is perceived extroverted or not for example is dependent on so many things - social anxiety, life problems, depression, etc. Jung's psychological types is still the best personality theory we have today.
 

highlander

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You have that backwards. As discussed at length in this long INTJforum post (which I've already linked to), if you read Gifts Differing with any care, and you read the MBTI Manuals and other official MBTI materials, and you look at the decades of MBTI studies that have centered around the dichotomies and ignored the cognitive functions, and you look at the more recent "Step II" version of the MBTI — which divides the dichotomies into facets and continues to all but ignore the functions — you'll realize that, after putting Jung's original type concepts to the test, Myers came to the conclusion (correctly) that the dichotomies were the true building blocks of type. Myers essentially did nothing with the purported "tertiary" and "inferior" functions, and mostly just gave lip service to the dominant and auxiliary functions. Not only the test, but the MBTI itself, is really built around the dichotomies.

For some strange reason, I can't find my copy of Gifts Differing at the moment but I have actually read it four times. If I recall correctly, the type profiles are organized by dominant function. Introverted Intuitives (INTJ and INFJ) are described together. Dominant Thinkers (INTP and ISTP) are described together. Dominant Extraverted Thinkers (ESTJ and ENTJ) are described together. I recall a particular quote in the INTJ/INFJ profile description that speaks to the importance of developing an auxiliary judging function (Te or Fe) because of the introverted intuitive's confidence in the validity of their intuition and the need to counterbalance that. That hardly illustrates a mindset that ignores the cognitive functions.

I have the Step 2 Manual. On page 9, Table 1.5 Dynamic Characteristics of The Sixteen Types, it lists the dominant, auxiliary, tertiary and inferior functions of each of type. The manual is obviously focused on the facets thing but the cognitive functions are there. Finally as one can readily observe by reading Was That Really Me?, it seems quite obvious that Naomi Quenk believes in the inferior function's relevance. I mean she wrote a whole book about it. She was one of the three authors of the MBTI Step 2 Manual.

So I'm confused by your comments.

Yes, the MBTI instrument is built around the dichotomies. What I'm saying is that it seems like that's the wrong way to approach it because the cognitive processes are the underlying foundation of the system. I can think of one example of an INFJ on this forum who recently took the MBTI Step 2 test. It incorrectly gave her an INTP result. It was widely discussed that this was an incorrect result by people that know her here. I came to the conclusion that it was in fact wrong by thinking through the cognitive processes that she appears to demonstrate. That is an example of where a test based on dichotomies resulted in an incorrect conclusion. I know an INTJ at work who took the Step 2 it and got ISTJ. He knows it's wrong just by reading the description. I know it's wrong because I work with him and can see what he's like.

Edit: Oh and counting the number of pages that are attributable to one topic or another doesn't seem like a sound way to determine the importance of a concept or topic.
 

reckful

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For some strange reason, I can't find my copy of Gifts Differing at the moment but I have actually read it four times. If I recall correctly, the type profiles are organized by dominant function. Introverted Intuitives (INTJ and INFJ) are described together. Dominant Thinkers (INTP and ISTP) are described together. Dominant Extraverted Thinkers (ESTJ and ENTJ) are described together. I recall a particular quote in the INTJ/INFJ profile description thaat speaks to the importance of developing an auxiliary judging function (Te or Fe) because of the introverted intuitive's confidence in the validity of their intuition and the need to counterbalance that. That hardly illustrates a mindset that ignores the cognitive functions.

I have the Step 2 Manual. On page 9, Table 1.5 Dynamic Characteristics of The Sixteen Types, it lists the dominant, auxiliary, tertiary and inferior functions of each of type. The manual is obviously focused on the facets thing but the cognitive functions are there. Finally as one can readily observe by reading Was That Really Me?, it seems quite obvious that Naomi Quenk believes in the inferior function's relevance. I mean she wrote a whole book about it. She was one of the three authors of the MBTI Step 2 Manual.

So I'm confused by your comments.

Yes, the MBTI instrument is built around the dichotomies. What I'm saying is that it seems like that's the wrong way to approach it because the cognitive processes are the underlying foundation of the system. I can think of one example of an INFJ on this forum who recently took the MBTI Step 2 test. It incorrectly gave her an INTP result. It was widely discussed that this was an incorrect result by people that know her here. I came to the conclusion that it was in fact wrong by thinking through the cognitive processes that she appears to demonstrate.

There's no question that Myers and the official MBTI folks have always given a certain amount of what I already characterized as "lip service" to the cognitive functions, but there's also no question that the dichotomies have always been, and remain, what the official MBTI is really all about. To quote from the linked INTJforum post that I'm guessing you didn't read:

Meanwhile, for anyone who thinks that the rejection of the functions that Reynierse advocates would represent a revolutionary shift as far as the "official" MBTI is concerned, I'd argue, to the contrary, that the MBTI has essentially been centered around the dichotomies from the beginning. Aside from the test instruments themselves, the analysis in Myers' Gifts Differing focuses substantially more on the dichotomies than the functions. Myers was a nobody who didn't even have a psychology degree — not to mention a woman in mid-20th-century America — and I assume that background had at least something to do with the fact that her writings tend to somewhat disingenuously downplay the extent to which her typology differs from Jung. So it's no surprise, in that context, that the introductory chapters of Gifts Differing, besides introducing the four dichotomies, also include quite a bit of lip service to Jung's conceptions — or, at least, what Myers claimed were Jung's conceptions — of the dominant and auxiliary functions. But, with that behind her, Chapters 4-7 describe the effects of the "EI Preference," the "SN Preference," the "TF Preference" and the "JP Preference," and those four chapters total 22 pages. Chapter 8 then describes the eight functions — and that chapter consists solely of a half-page table for each function, for a total of four pages. What's more, those four pages were simply Briggs' summaries of Jung's function descriptions, and Myers ignored (and/or adjusted) substantial portions of those in creating her own type portraits. (As one example, Myers' IS_Js bear little resemblance to Jung's Si-doms. [See this TC post.] And for a detailed discussion of the surgery Myers performed on Jung's conception of Te, see this post.)

But most tellingly, following Myers' introductory and portrait chapters, the second half of Gifts Differing — covering a variety of topics, including "Use of the Opposites," "Type and Marriage," "Learning Styles" and "Type and Occupation" — focuses almost exclusively on the dichotomies, both singly and in combinations that don't correspond to the functions. She talks about introverts and extraverts, thinking types and feeling types, intuitives and sensing types, judging types and perceptive types, "INs," "ESs," "NF types," "STs," "introverts with thinking" (i.e., ITs), "EF types," "ESF types," "ISTs" and on and on. At one point in the Type and Marriage chapter, "FJ types with extraverted feeling" are mentioned, but that's very much the exception that proves the rule. References to the functions (and the dichotomy combinations that correspond to them) are almost entirely absent from the book's second half, and on the rare occasions when she refers to one of the two-letter combinations that corresponds to a function — e.g., SJ (Si) — she most often makes no reference to the function. At one point, for example, she notes that "Judging types, especially those who prefer sensing (the –S–J types), like their work to be organized, systematic, and foreseeable." I'm not suggesting that this means Myers didn't really believe in the functions (necessarily, anyway), but she was certainly not a theorist who thought the functions were anything like the main event.

Five years later, the 1985 edition of the MBTI Manual, co-authored by Myers, was even more lopsided in favor of the dichotomies. In a 1990 article ("Review of Research on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator." Perceptual & Motor Skills, 70, 1187) in which John B. Murray concluded that the MBTI's "indices of reliability and validity have been extensively investigated and have been judged acceptable," Murray noted that over 1500 studies were included in the 1985 Manual — many of them either discussed in the text or included in one or more tables of statistics. And good luck finding any results in that manual that are framed in terms of the cognitive functions. The 1985 Manual is full of statistics correlating type with interests, occupations, scholastic achievement, other personality measures, etc. — and the reported correlations almost exclusively involve the four dichotomies, the sixteen types and/or dichotomy combinations with no meaningful function correspondence — with the combinations most often included (by a wide margin) being ST, SF, NT and NF. So, on top of the fact that Myers and the rest of the official MBTI establishment were predominantly dichotomy-focused, it's also clear that the independent psychologists conducting many of those studies weren't laboring under any misconception that the MBTI dichotomies were relatively superficial indicators (convenient for testing and/or labeling purposes) while the cognitive functions were what the typology was really about.

The third edition of the MBTI Manual was published in 1998 and, according to the Reynierse article I linked to above, it cites a grand total of eight studies involving "type dynamics" (i.e., the functions model) — and Reynierse summarizes them as "six studies that failed, one with a questionable interpretation, and one where contradictory evidence was offered as support." He then notes, "Type theory's claim that type dynamics is superior to the static model and the straightforward contribution of the individual preferences rests on this ephemeral empirical foundation."

And finally, I think it's also worth noting that the 17-page report that an ENFJ (for example) receives after taking the relatively recent MBTI Step II test includes page after page of dichotomy-based analysis (including five separate subscales for each of the four dichotomies) and not a single mention of "extraverted feeling" or "introverted intuition" other than a diagram near the end that shows that "ENFJs like Feeling best, Intuition next, Sensing third and Thinking least," and one brief note about tending to use Feeling in the "outer world" and Intuition in the "inner world." All the rest of the ENFJ descriptions in the report — after the brief initial profile, which isn't broken down by components — are descriptions of N (not Ni or Ne), F (not Fi or Fe) and so on, and they're the same descriptions of N and F (and the five subscales of each) that ENFPs receive in their reports (notwithstanding the fact that ENFJs are Fe-Ni and ENFPs are Ne-Fi). And Nancy Harkey has pointed out that "there is no discussion in the Step II manual of applying type dynamics (dominant, auxiliary etc.) to the overall preferences. I really don't know what that means at the moment, but it is curious."

The more I reread Psychological Types, the more I appreciate the extent to which getting from Jung to the Myers-Briggs typology involved substantial adjustments and additions. I think the formidable job Briggs and Myers did in separating the Jungian wheat from the chaff and modifying and supplementing Jung's theory is grotesquely underappreciated by many internet forumites. Myers may not have been as smart as Jung, and she may not have had a psychology degree, but she and her mother had the benefit of standing on Jung's shoulders, and Myers then spent many years, as a labor of love, designing and refining her test instrument and gathering data from thousands of subjects, leading her to conclude — among other things — that the four dichotomies (as she conceived them), and not the functions, were the main event. I think Myers' conceptions of the dichotomies and the types still leave plenty of room for further improvement but, fifty years later, the results of many more studies — and, in particular, the correlation of the MBTI dichotomies with the Big Five — suggest that, in terms of the basics, Myers pretty much got it right. If Jung were still around, I think he'd mostly approve.​

In light of all that, to say that "the cognitive processes are the underlying foundation of the system" is, not to put too fine a point on it, just silly. That's the mythical version of the MBTI that the likes of Quenk, Berens and Nardi have been peddling for years now — where the "dichotomies" are mostly just "letter codes" that lead you to the more significant "cognitive functions." But Myers and the official MBTI materials have always been heavily dichotomy-dominated and, as Reynierse (among others) has rightly noted, there's now lots of respectable data in support of the dichotomy-centric MBTI, and virtually no respectable body of support for "type dynamics."
 

BadOctopus

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The more I read this thread, the more I think, "Why does this even matter?"
 

highlander

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There's no question that Myers and the official MBTI folks have always given a certain amount of what I already characterized as "lip service" to the cognitive functions, but there's also no question that the dichotomies have always been, and remain, what the official MBTI is really all about. To quote from the linked INTJforum post that I'm guessing you didn't read:

In light of all that, to say that "the cognitive processes are the underlying foundation of the system" is, not to put too fine a point on it, just silly. That's the mythical version of the MBTI that the likes of Quenk, Berens and Nardi have been peddling for years now — where the "dichotomies" are mostly just "letter codes" that lead you to the more significant "cognitive functions." But Myers and the official MBTI materials have always been heavily dichotomy-dominated and, as Reynierse (among others) has rightly noted, there's now lots of respectable data in support of the dichotomy-centric MBTI, and virtually no respectable body of support for "type dynamics."

Hm. Well as someone who was a dichotomy based thinker for a very long time (because I didn't know about cognitive functions), I have come to believe that a functions based approach provides a much richer understanding of personality.

As to the the "lip service" by the "official MBTI folks", I think there is truth to that. I think the official MBTI folks are wrong though. That's my point.

Gifts Differing is a very good book in my opinion. The third or fourth time I read it, I began to see the depth of understanding of the system that the authors had. I believe they wrote it the way they did because they wanted something that could be understood by the masses. They were simplifying a complex thing. The first couple of times I read it, I missed the functions part entirely but it is very much there at the heart of the system.
 
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