[NT] The NT Prejudice Against Feeling

[Synarch]

One of the unfortunate consequences of a classification system like MBTi is that it encourages a reactionary mindset against other types and tendencies rather than encouraging the view of there being a boundary-less, complex spectrum of behavior in which the value of each "type" expression is largely situational. Factionalism is a consequence of defining type.

One problem I have is with the NT prejudice against Feeling. As if being dispassionate is a virtue, applied generally. There seems to be this idea that being an NT means cutting loose from emotional motivations or values, as if this is even possible. Rational sense must work in concert with emotional sense to achieve wholeness as a person. There is really no division. So, why do we NT's devalue "feeling" or at least leading with a feeling orientation? How do you personally define feeling? Can you be healthy and dispassionate?

 

[nozflubber]

dude, that prejudice is there even w/o the MBTI..... if not, go to your local Uni and find the mathematics department, the raw NTJness can crush anyone with a respectable EQ. Talk about zero sympathies/empathies..... I should tell you about B**** (name edited in case USF reads this or something!), our resident slavik alcoholic math prof (brilliant in math though ) .... he's so sexist and says women don't belong in the mathematics department. I'm sure the NFs LOVE hearing that one! I think he's had sexual harassment issues in the past, too. However, I can almost guarantee you Boris would not have heard nor care about MBTI .... anything other than math is shit, anyway!


I think, if anything, that MBTI helps raise understanding about differences more than it exacerbates existing ones

 

[Totenkindly]

Actually, it's just a general sort of prejudice any human being of any type goes through. NTs often dismiss feelings because:

1. Feelings are not rational.
2. Values have no totally "objective" basis, you can't argue "down" to the basics of values, they just exist.
3. The primary strength/defense of NTs is the rational ability and it was unable to protect them from those who did not share it -- values use a different ruleset, T-style rationality had no power, so F-style values might have actually caused NTs some serious harm during childhood or even later in life.
4. Religion is usually centered around values, not Thinking with a secure foundation, and the predominate religions in the United States have been aggressive and impacted society in irrational negative ways.

The list goes on and on...

but my point is that while it's worth discussion (in order to achieve greater awareness of one's inherent biases), the thing is that the situation cannot be avoided, it can only be navigated through.

Every human being starts with a particular approach to life. Contrary approaches are at first seen as a threat and are misunderstood. Values and emotions tend to be at the opposite end of the spectrum for NTs, whose strengths do not give them power over these things. So they treat those things as an enemy. Eventually all people learn to integrate and develop lesser-preferred ways of seeing and doing things, in order to become more versatile and successful in life; hopefully, NTs develop a sense of how to exist in their bodies and thus identify WITH their emotions (rather than viewing feelings as "aliens"), as well as how to believe passionately in things they particularly value even if they cannot rationally justify those values to others.

MBTI is simply a language that puts a face on it, but the stereotypes, fears, prejudices, etc., would exist with or without the language. MBTI is not the enemy, it just is an algebra that can be used to understand how these forces interact.

...note: didn't see Noz's post before I posted... interesting.

 

[Jeremy]

Can you be healthy and dispassionate?

I think a better question is "Can you be human and be dispassionate?" Many people who use the MBTI and define themselves as T manage to convince themselves that they never make a decision based solely (or even partially) on their feelings, and that logic is the only thing they ever use. I've seen it quite often. These people are, in reality, some of the most emotional people that there are. Their reaction against what they perceive as the "weakness" of feeling is probably one of the most feeling-based judgements that one can make. "If I make decisions based on feeling, then I will be perceived as weak to others or to myself. I don't want to be perceived as weak, so I will not do so."

To be truly "rational", people need to realize that feeling is a necessary component of life - rational decisions are reached through both logic and through your values. They aren't mutually exclusive. You can use logic to figure out your values, or you can validate your values through logic, but to be a truly balanced person, both are required. The MBTI arbitrarily splits them into two categories, but even the most feeling oriented person has some sort of logical backing for who they are. The most logically oriented people still have a background of values that define who they are, not based on any rational principle.

So get it through your heads, Ts. You have just as much capacity for F-based judgements as Fs do for T-based judgements. Throwing that part of yourself into your shadow just makes it come out in immature and childish ways, which people on this forums have labeled "emotional retardedness". The MBTI doesn't only define your persona - it also gives you a path to reach out to the areas in which you don't excel, and learn how to use them effectively.

 

[Synarch]

To be truly "rational", people need to realize that feeling is a necessary component of life - rational decisions are reached through both logic and through your values. They aren't mutually exclusive. You can use logic to figure out your values, or you can validate your values through logic, but to be a truly balanced person, both are required. The MBTI arbitrarily splits them into two categories, but even the most feeling oriented person has some sort of logical backing for who they are. The most logically oriented people still have a background of values that define who they are, not based on any rational principle.

Well said.

 

[ceecee]

Rational sense must work in concert with emotional sense to achieve wholeness as a person.

I get this. The types that thing rational means you're devoid of emotion. Not true. I also dislike other types that say...how can you enjoy anything if you're always looking at things logically/rationally/analytically. How do you look at things like a flake who doesn't care what happens tomorrow? See what I mean?

I also don't feel I should conform to being a more emotional person because it's the healthy thing to be and definitely the more feminine thing, in my case. I choose who feelings and emotion are show to but I do show them. I do believe they can work together successfully though depending on the individual, maturity level, life experiences and such. Moderation yanno.

 

[Halla74]

I'm not a NT, but I am a strong "T" and feelings do take a back seat to thinking in my brain most of the time. But there are exceptions, like mode of operation, or setting.

Examples:

(1) Work / School: I am here to accomplish tasks that do not require my use of feelings.

(2) Home / Personal Life: Many of my experiences here are all about feelings, thinking takes a back seat.

 

[ajblaise]

How is this prejudice? We can't be prejudice against feelers until we observe them on a feeler-by-feeler basis, it's not like racial prejudice, where you can have an unfavorable opinion of someone beforehand without having met them, based on color.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Maybe I am completely wrong but I think that NTs don't have a problems with emotions.
They have a problem with the amount of emotion.

 

[Synarch]

Maybe I am completely wrong but I think that NTs don't have a problems with emotions.
They have a problem with the amount of emotion.

Can you develop this further?

 

[ajblaise]

Maybe I am completely wrong but I think that NTs don't have a problems with emotions.
They have a problem with the amount of emotion.

I have no problem with the amount, especially when they are displaying positive emotions. It's only a large amount of negative emotions that befuddles me.

 

[Apsaras]

dude, that prejudice is there even w/o the MBTI..... if not, go to your local Uni and find the mathematics department, the raw NTJness can crush anyone with a respectable EQ. Talk about zero sympathies/empathies..... I should tell you about B**** (name edited in case USF reads this or something!), our resident slavik alcoholic math prof (brilliant in math though ) .... he's so sexist and says women don't belong in the mathematics department. I'm sure the NFs LOVE hearing that one! I think he's had sexual harassment issues in the past, too. However, I can almost guarantee you Boris would not have heard nor care about MBTI .... anything other than math is shit, anyway!


I think, if anything, that MBTI helps raise understanding about differences more than it exacerbates existing ones

Ha. I presently live in Tampa and this is the third time I've heard people complaining about that man. Small world.

I have a tendency to few emotions in a negative light. My little sister is a big Feeler, and for better or worse, I see that as an inferior way to make decisions rather than an alternate one.

I understand that both emotion and reason are present and necessary in human interaction, but I do have a bias against strong feeling. It might be how it's expressed - a strong thinker can be reserved and hard to reach. That doesn't affect many people unless they're approached. Strong feeling can be needlessly chatty, loud and dramatic when I'm trying to work. It's not really a well thought-out argument, but it's a situationally appropriate one... I'm in a school "library" and it's too loud to think properly.

 

[Synarch]

I understand that both emotion and reason are present and necessary in human interaction, but I do have a bias against strong feeling. It might be how it's expressed - a strong thinker can be reserved and hard to reach. That doesn't affect many people unless they're approached. Strong feeling can be needlessly chatty, loud and dramatic when I'm trying to work. It's not really a well thought-out argument, but it's a situationally appropriate one... I'm in a school "library" and it's too loud to think properly.

See. I think is part of that prejudice. I don't think a Feeler like an INFJ or INFP would be loud or chatty or dramatic the way you suggest here. Jennifer did make a point earlier about rationals coming up against "feeler" types in some negative way and it seems similar in your experience.

 

[substitute]

How is this prejudice? We can't be prejudice against feelers until we observe them on a feeler-by-feeler basis, it's not like racial prejudice, where you can have an unfavorable opinion of someone beforehand without having met them, based on color.

Yes... I would tend to agree. I do try to fight what I know is my bias against particularly Fe types, but it's exactly because it's come from long experience that I find it such an uphill battle. It's not like I just read an EXFJ profile and said "hey that's stupid!" and decided there and then to hate and shun everything to do with it.

With regard to my own Feeling - I grew out of holding it in contempt or trying to erase it from my soul back in my teens. It's just a simple case for me of having to choose what it is I value more, which sorry, just is the things that T can get me to quicker and easier. And then, just a fact that I can't analyse objectively whilst also being emotionally involved in something. So for one to work, the other's got to be switched off. That becomes a habit over long years and hey presto, my T towers high whilst my F is dwarfed in its shadow (though Ne makes them all look small). I figure rather than try to become something I'm not, why not use my strengths to try to understand and minimize the damage done by my weaknesses?

With regard to others' Feeling - I find with Fi, at least you can reason with it. At least it seems to accept responsibility for its own choices and responses. With its extraverted perception partner, Fi seems to be always open to new data, new interpretations and the possibility that it might've missed something.

The problem I have with Fe is that with its introverted perceiving partner, it (edit - sorry I should've explicitly said "it SEEMS to me as if it...") believes it already knows everything it needs to and sees no reason to even listen to, let alone take on board, other points of view - it is Right (tm), period. And what's more, the pain it's feeling is all your fault. There's no reasoning with it, and since reasoning is pretty much all I can do (I'm a one trick pony like that), I'm just left helpless against the resultant drama. A few (hundred) times of experiencing the soul destruction that being on the receiving end of it brings me (and the guilt trips and public defamations for similar destruction I'm told I've wrought upon them, which I'm amazed I managed to do without intending or consciously doing it at all), and I've made a habit of running the other way as soon as it's sniffed on the horizon.

Is that so unreasonable?

 

[Misty_Mountain_Rose]

I agree with much of what has been posted so far... but I do want to clarify something.

First, there is a difference between 'Prejudice' and 'Dislike'. To be prejudice means (literally) that you are 'pre-judging' someone without any evidence to substantiate. I have lots of 'F' friends with whom I have a great time and whose company I thoroughly enjoy. I know other F's that drive me absolutely insane because they are consistently blowing things out of proportion, getting upset/angry/sad (etc etc) because of MINOR things. They are unable to step back and see that it isn't a big deal and this type of behavior makes me want to smack some sense into them. These are usually the ones to whine, whine, whine about their situation but refuse to take any action to correct it.

I don't automatically assume that just because someone is an 'F' that they're an oozing mess of hypersensitivity, but I DO alter my answers sometimes to be more sensitive and say exactly what I mean to say rather than risk being misunderstood. In this way, I am 'prejudging' from experience, knowing that if I give a curt, short answer or fail to give a pat on the back when its due I am perceived as rude, even if I don't mean to be.

In this case, I don't think it has anything to do with them, but rather with me and my own awareness of how I interact with others.

I respect someone who can make CONSISTENT decisions about their life and their values based on their feelings. The ones that baffle me are the ones who do completely opposite things every time they turn around, with no real sense of who they are or where they stand on anything. This kind of 'waffling' of emotion-based decision making is difficult to witness. They're like a bouncing ball that doesn't follow the rules of gravity or inertia. Where you think they'd turn left, they turn right, and all of the decisions seem to be done by the flip of a coin. I tend to avoid these people wherever possible. They make my head hurt trying to figure them out.


With regard to 'dismissing feelings' as invalid, I learned a long time ago not to do that. All through my childhood and adolesence I routinely hid my emotions and bottled things inside of me. In my early 20s it started to catch up with my physically, holding so much un-dealt-with tension and stress inside of me that it was making me sick.

Once I finally realized that I had to deal with the things I was feeling it was like an avalanche started. Things that I should have dealt with years and years ago but never did bubbled to the surface, and I spent a few years straightening out my hurts and motives.

Nowadays I find myself trying to reach out to people more... offering support where it is needed, or even picking up something for a stranger who dropped it. I try to call my friends more (even though I'm sure its still sorely lacking ) I ask people about how things are going in their lives and I try to share more of myself without people having to pry it out of me.

All of this has taken time, but it has been well worth it. Of all the defined MBTI functions to try to have in balance, I think that the T/F line is one that should be brought as close together as possible.

 

[Stanton Moore]

I think a better question is "Can you be human and be dispassionate?" Many people who use the MBTI and define themselves as T manage to convince themselves that they never make a decision based solely (or even partially) on their feelings, and that logic is the only thing they ever use. I've seen it quite often. These people are, in reality, some of the most emotional people that there are. Their reaction against what they perceive as the "weakness" of feeling is probably one of the most feeling-based judgements that one can make. "If I make decisions based on feeling, then I will be perceived as weak to others or to myself. I don't want to be perceived as weak, so I will not do so."

To be truly "rational", people need to realize that feeling is a necessary component of life - rational decisions are reached through both logic and through your values. They aren't mutually exclusive. You can use logic to figure out your values, or you can validate your values through logic, but to be a truly balanced person, both are required. The MBTI arbitrarily splits them into two categories, but even the most feeling oriented person has some sort of logical backing for who they are. The most logically oriented people still have a background of values that define who they are, not based on any rational principle.

So get it through your heads, Ts. You have just as much capacity for F-based judgements as Fs do for T-based judgements. Throwing that part of yourself into your shadow just makes it come out in immature and childish ways, which people on this forums have labeled "emotional retardedness". The MBTI doesn't only define your persona - it also gives you a path to reach out to the areas in which you don't excel, and learn how to use them effectively.

Brilliant, Jeremy

 

[Synarch]

All of this has taken time, but it has been well worth it. Of all the defined MBTI functions to try to have in balance, I think that the T/F line is one that should be brought as close together as possible.

+1

 

[Lauren Ashley]

The problem I have with Fe is that with its introverted perceiving partner, it believes it already knows everything it needs to and sees no reason to even listen to, let alone take on board, other points of view - it is Right (tm), period.

Wrong.

 

[juggernaut]

I don't have a problem with having feelings. What I have difficulty dealing with is people who are blindly led by them. We all come with a range of emotions, but whether you're willing to indulge them and allow them to be the basis upon which you make major life decisions is another matter altogether. I chose my field because I love it, it is my passion, and because it was something I could reasonably expect to succeed in.

When I get irritated with 'feelers' it's not the feelings themselves that bother me, but the amount of importance that is placed on them. Most of what we 'feel' is reducible to chemical processes so when I see people who just blindly follow their gut, I find myself reminded of our baseness. I see it as the animal nature taking over, and the rational part falling away. Our feelings are important, but they cannot be solely what guides us.

“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge” - B. Russell

 

[Misty_Mountain_Rose]

I don't have a problem with having feelings. What I have difficulty dealing with is people who are blindly led by them. We all come with a range of emotions, but whether you're willing to indulge them and allow them to be the basis upon which you make major life decisions is another matter altogether. I chose my field because I love it, it is my passion, and because it was something I could reasonably expect to succeed in.

When I get irritated with 'feelers' it's not the feelings themselves that bother me, but the amount of importance that is placed on them. Most of what we 'feel' is reducible to chemical processes so when I see people who just blindly follow their gut, I find myself reminded of our baseness. I see it as the animal nature taking over, and the rational part falling away. Our feelings are important, but they cannot be solely what guides us.

“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge” - B. Russell

Ahhh... but now where do we draw the line between following your gut/intuition and following your feelings? Does that make an NF more ridiculous than an SF?

Is an ISTJ more likely to make good decisions than an INTJ because they aren't relying so heavily on their instincts?

I wonder...


When it comes down to it, I think we all need to realize that we each use ALL of these functions. I can be the most outgoing, life of the party, friends with everyone woman when I put my mind to it (or more often when I have a few drinks. "Hi! I'm Misty! *hic*") but when I need to refocus, I want to be alone. I can enjoy bubble baths and delight in the smell of flowers or a beautiful sunrise... but I'm not a 'sensor'. I have emotional breakdowns even though my reason tells me that it isn't going to help the situation. Too much division is given to 'I'm this-that-or-the-other' and therefore I am NOT X'. They aren't mutually exclusive.

I'd dare say that depending on the situation, I can be whatever I want or need to be in order to deal with that situation. Knowing MBTI has only helped me to recognize more easily when I'm using one or the other, and when I may need to consciously SWITCH to a different function, if only on the outside, and if only temporarily.