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I know a fair bit about Personality Typology and the 16 types. I know a fair bit about the functions, the MBTI letters. I know which functions I use and which are the stronger ones. But when it comes back to that basic question of "introvert or extrovert?" I'm still at a crossroads.
So I have Fe and Ti as my two judgement functions. My expressionism tends to be aimed at others, whereas my conceptualism tends to be down in the background. I know I'm FJ not TP, despite perhaps seeming very poker-face, and effected in my own way by the whole "females are emotional, males are not" stereotype sexist racist homophobix bullshit, so I can come across as very Thinker like. But when it comes down to it, I operate more on a basis of Feeling, and I just need to be able to open and up more and trust my radar as to who I can or cannot trust with what.
I have Ni and Se as my perception functions. My intuition tends to come from within, and inner vision of change, of personal transformation, symbolism. I can move into the present, pay attention to the details around me, the action of the present. It seems very Buddhist to me and I respect that. I know I'm Ni over Se, due to my open mindedness to ideas, my strangeness, my separation from the majority. I'm NJ not SP.
So that narrows it down pretty well, but dangnabbit am I an introvert or an extrovert? I always took for granted that I was an introvert. I'm an observer, I'm quiet, I don't let much show. But gosh, if I'm ENFJ it makes sense that I would be like that. A dominant Fe would make one very prone to social anxiety, overly concerned with what others think that they just decide that maybe they are better off staying in the background, out of people's way. And with the peculiarities of Ni shining through everything the Fe does, you're going to run into awkward situations all the damn time, and prolonged exposure to negative social circumstances is going to wear someone down.
So, any advice or thoughts as to finding out which I am? Am I really an introvert, or am I a shy extrovert?
Btw, I'm a Highly Sensitive Person, if y'all know what that is.
I always took for granted that I was an introvert. I'm an observer, I'm quiet, I don't let much show. But gosh, if I'm ENFJ it makes sense that I would be like that. A dominant Fe would make one very prone to social anxiety, overly concerned with what others think that they just decide that maybe they are better off staying in the background, out of people's way.
Look, it's not your fault that you're so confused. The Cognitive Functions Kids who rule the Great Internet Forum Echo Chamber have grabbed you and spun you around to the point that you've totally lost sight of the dichotomies.
FYI, Jung spent more of Psychological Types talking about the things he thought all extraverts and all introverts had in common than he spent talking about all eight of the functions put together, and I've put a little bit of what he had to say about introverts and extraverts in the first spoiler.
Jung said:
[Extraverts and introverts] are so different and present such a striking contrast that their existence becomes quite obvious even to the layman once it has been pointed out. Everyone knows those reserved, inscrutable, rather shy people who form the strongest possible contrast to the open, sociable, jovial, or at least friendly and approachable characters who are on good terms with everybody, or quarrel with everybody, but always relate to them in some way and in turn are affected by them.
[The introvert] holds aloof from external happenings, does not join in, has a distinct dislike of society as soon as he finds himself among too many people. In a large gathering he feels lonely and lost. ... He is not in the least "with it," and has no love of enthusiastic get-togethers. He is not a good mixer. What he does, he does in his own way, barricading himself against influences from outside. He is apt to appear awkward, often seeming inhibited, and it frequently happens that, by a certain brusqueness of manner, or by his glum unapproachability, or some kind of malapropism, he causes unwitting offence to people. His better qualities he keeps to himself, and generally does everything he can to dissemble them. He is easily mistrustful, self-willed, often suffers from inferiority feelings and for this reason is also envious. His apprehensiveness of the object is not due to fear, but to the fact that it seems to him negative, demanding, overpowering or even menacing. He therefore suspects all kinds of bad motives, has an everlasting fear of making a fool of himself, is usually very touchy and surrounds himself with a barbed wire entanglement so dense and impenetrable that finally he himself would rather do anything than sit behind it. ...
For him self-communings are a pleasure. His own world is a safe harbour, a carefully tended and walled-in garden, closed to the public and hidden from prying eyes. His own company is the best. He feels at home in his world, where the only changes are made by himself. His best work is done with his own resources, on his own initiative, and in his own way. ...
His relations with other people become warm only when safety is guaranteed, and when he can lay aside his defensive distrust. All too often he cannot, and consequently the number of friends and acquaintances is very restricted.
Extraversion is characterized by interest in the external object, responsiveness, and a ready acceptance of external happenings, a desire to influence and be influenced by events, a need to join in and get "with it," the capacity to endure bustle and noise of every kind, and actually find them enjoyable, constant attention to the surrounding world, the cultivation of friends and acquaintances, none too carefully selected, and finally by the great importance attached to the figure one cuts, and hence by a strong tendency to make a show of oneself. Accordingly, the extravert's philosophy of life and his ethics are as a rule of a highly collective nature with a strong streak of altruism, and his conscience is in large measure dependent on public opinion. Moral misgivings arise mainly when "other people know." His religious convictions are determined, so to speak, by majority vote. ...
The actual subject, the extravert as a subjective entity, is, so far as possible, shrouded in darkness. He hides it from himself under veils of unconsciousness. The disinclination to submit his own motives to critical examination is very pronounced. He has no secrets he has not long since shared with others. Should something unmentionable nevertheless befall him, he prefers to forget it. Anything that might tarnish the parade of optimism and positivism is avoided. Whatever he thinks, intends, and does is displayed with conviction and warmth. ...
The psychic life of this type of person is enacted, as it were, outside himself, in the environment. He lives in and through others; all self-communings give him the creeps. Dangers lurk there which are better drowned out by noise. If he should ever have a "complex," he finds refuge in the social whirl and allows himself to be assured several times a day that everything is in order. Provided he is not too much of a busybody, too pushing, and too superficial, he can be a distinctly useful member of the community.
The MBTI dichotomies, which substantially line up with four of the Big Five dimensions, now have decades of studies in support of their validity and reliability, while the "cognitive functions" — which James Reynierse (in the 2009 article linked below) refers to as a "category mistake" — have barely 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. Going all the way back to 1985, the MBTI Manual described or referred to somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 MBTI studies and, as I understand it, not one of the many study-based correlations reported in the manual were framed in terms of the functions. And many more dichotomy-based studies have been done in the years since. The third edition of the MBTI Manual was published in 1998 and, as Reynierse notes in the linked article, it cited a grand total of eight studies involving "type dynamics" (i.e., the functions model) — which Reynierse summarizes as "six studies that failed, one with a questionable interpretation, and one where contradictory evidence was offered as support."
If you're interested, you can find out quite a bit more about the place of the functions (or lack thereof) in the MBTI's history — and the tremendous gap between the dichotomies and the functions in terms of scientific respectability — in this long INTJforum post.
Links in INTJforum posts don't work if you're not a member, so here are replacements for the two links in that post:
Assuming you have reasonably well-defined preferences, I think you're more likely to correctly type yourself using dichotomy-based tests than tests (or analysis) based on the "cognitive functions." And if you've got one or more preferences that are in or near the middle, I think dichotomy-based tests are more likely to correctly indicate that situation as well. Even cognitive function aficionados generally don't claim that there's any test they can point you to that's particularly likely to give you results that place your dominant function in first place and your auxiliary function in second place — never mind ID-ing your tertiary and inferior functions in any easy-to-spot way.
If you want to see how you come out on the official "Step I" MBTI, it's here.
Whatever your MBTI type might be, it sounds to me like you may also be Limbic on the Big Five temperament dimension that isn't included in the Myers-Briggs typology and is often referred to as "neuroticism" (although it isn't a psychological disorder). The Big Five/SLOAN typology labels it Emotional Stability and refers to the two poles as Calm and Limbic. Being Limbic on that dimension tends to be associated with, among other things, anxiety/worry-proneness; emotional sensitivity/volatility; proneness to annoyance/irritation; self-consciousness; and (sometimes) depression. I'm Limbic, and it makes me less of a cucumber than some of my fellow INTJs.
If you're interested, the Big Five test I generally point people to is this similarminds Big Five/SLOAN test, which will (purport to) type you on the Emotional Stability dimension (in addition to the four Big Five dimensions with substantial MBTI correlations). And I've put some more information about the Big Five and that similarminds test in the next spoiler.
Here's a table that shows which Big Five dimension essentially corresponds to which MBTI dimension:
SLOAN dimension
SLOAN poles
corresponding MBTI poles
Extroversion
Reserved vs. Social
I vs. E
Emotional Stability
Limbic vs. Calm
n/a
Orderliness
Unstructured vs. Organized
P vs. J
Accommodation
Egocentric vs. Accommodating
T vs. F
Inquisitiveness
Non-Curious vs. Inquisitive
S vs. N
I kind of like the linked Big Five test both because I think it does an OK typing job and also because, unlike the official MBTI and many of the online type tests, it's not "forced choice." It gives you five choices for each question — an "in the middle" choice as well as mild or strong in each direction. For that reason, it's reasonable to expect the SLOAN percentage scores to have something to say about the strength of your preferences. With a forced choice test, that's not really true. Somebody with, say, a mild S preference could easily take a forced choice test and, assuming they knew themselves well and interpreted the questions properly, end up choosing the S response for almost all (or all) of the questions, with the result being a very high S score. (That said, I think scores that are close to the middle on forced choice tests tend to be some indication that your preference on that dimension — in whichever direction — is probably on the mild side.)
BUT NOTE: Although I kind of like the similarminds SLOAN test, I don't think much of the corresponding personality type descriptions at the similarminds site, for a number of reasons, one of which is: Most MBTI sources reflect the perspective that it isn't better to have one preference rather than its opposite on any of the four MBTI dimensions. The descriptions at the similarminds site, on the other hand — somewhat consistent with Big Five sources generally — definitely favor Accommodating over Egocentric (F over T) and Organized over Unstructured (J over P). And if you're Limbic (even mildly), that earns you a negative-adjective bonanza. So I recommend using the similarminds test as a sort of double-check/quantifier for the MBTI dimensions, but I think the personality descriptions in a typical MBTI source are better.
Finally, in case they're of any use to you, I've put profile roundups for the four IN types — plus ENFJ, just for lulz — in the next spoiler.
I enjoyed reading through your post; you're obviously knowledgeable on the subject. However, I thought Dario Nardi had gone some way to giving further credibility to the existence of cognitive functions?
Even Dario Nardi doesn't claim that his study was anything more than a tentative, exploratory one. It involved 60 people and didn't come close to providing sufficient data to respectably validate any of the functions. And it's also been criticized on the grounds that EEGs are too crude a tool for this kind of stuff. Here's most of Wikipedia's list of "disadvantages" of EEG-based research:
Wikipedia said:
Relative disadvantages
Low spatial resolution on the scalp. fMRI, for example, can directly display areas of the brain that are active, while EEG requires intense interpretation just to hypothesize what areas are activated by a particular response.
EEG determines neural activity that occurs below the upper layers of the brain (the cortex) poorly.
Unlike PET and MRS, cannot identify specific locations in the brain at which various neurotransmitters, drugs, etc. can be found.
Signal-to-noise ratio is poor, so sophisticated data analysis and relatively large numbers of subjects are needed to extract useful information from EEG.
Welp, a lot of your OP resonates with me. I've been hung up on the I/E in the past as well, too.
If I had to choose one of the 16 cognitive function stackings, it'd be FeNi. .. reluctantly. Others peg me that way, too.
In dichotomy tests such as the official MBTI and Big Five, I score only slightly on the extraverted side, and I see myself as such. (Like [MENTION=18736]reckful[/MENTION], I'm more of a fan of the dichotomy model. He covered exactly why.)
Despite the typical perception of extraversion, I don't unconsciously but constantly show my cards to everyone I meet. I tend to be more calculating, picking and choosing when to play them. That gives off an introverted vibe quite often, even when I'm consciously attuned to the outside world and to people-situations.
I'm also lost in my own head quite a bit. When I am, I also think a lot about people, especially in the abstract--psychology, sociology, lessons-learned from others' relationships as well as my owned, and so on.
I don't exactly send off Christmas cards or get pissed off when people don't open doors for me. Fe descriptions
I used to have a 'love/hate' relationship with people in general, too. It's still a relationship with them, though--a thing that was quite often on my mind. (Now I have a more positive attitude toward them.)
Welp, a lot of your OP resonates with me. I've been hung up on the I/E in the past as well, too.
If I had to choose one of the 16 cognitive function stackings, it'd be FeNi. .. reluctantly. Others peg me that way, too.
In dichotomy tests such as the official MBTI and Big Five, I score only slightly on the extraverted side, and I see myself as such. (Like [MENTION=18736]reckful[/MENTION], I'm more of a fan of the dichotomy model. He covered exactly why.)
Despite the typical perception of extraversion, I don't unconsciously but constantly show my cards to everyone I meet. I tend to be more calculating, picking and choosing when to play them. That gives off an introverted vibe quite often, even when I'm consciously attuned to the outside world and to people-situations.
I'm also lost in my own head quite a bit. When I am, I also think a lot about people, especially in the abstract--psychology, sociology, lessons-learned from others' relationships as well as my owned, and so on.
I don't exactly send off Christmas cards or get pissed off when people don't open doors for me. Fe descriptions
I used to have a 'love/hate' relationship with people in general, too. It's still a relationship with them, though--a thing that was quite often on my mind. (Now I have a more positive attitude toward them.)
I can relate 100%. I get more enraged by a lack of follow-through on what I deem as "important" (meeting a big deadline, doing something that has an impact on what others are going to do), unfairness, or incompetency.
Dude, in many ways, you're like the male version of me. I think it's the ENFJ 3w4-ness. 3w2s seem a bit foreign to me. lol
It seems I am an introvert. And an intuitive, maybe I'm a feeler or maybe not. I'm probably a J. The more I learn about each pair of a given function, the more I think only one of the two exists anyway, and the other one is just made up for people who are confused. I was spun around a lot, but probably not in the usual way. Trolls turn to stalkers turn to sociopaths and their lackies. I will say though, this whole introverted-perception/extroverted-perception thing does take my fancy.
Big 5, I score reserved, open, and balanced on the rest. Sometimes I show a more marked preference for one or the other. I tend not to score as egocentric even though I score as a Thinker. Peronsally I would put my big 5 as Reserved, Open, Conscientious, Agreeable, Limbic. From the profiles, INTP and INFJ sound more accurate than the other two. INTJs are too hard, INFPs are too soft.
I'm playing around with some other theories. I think Big 5, like MBTI, is not really a valid way to measure a person as it is all based in language, and depends on the language structure and dimensionality we happen to be operating in. We could probably change our language and change the number of types. I personally think a more neurological/biological approach is needed if we're to get any where. Choose your own adventure option A or option B.
Really, I barely question my introvertedness. But then again, it is:
I think it's the ENFJ 3w4-ness. 3w2s seem a bit foreign to me. lol
