Podcast – Episode 0202 – Extraverted Feeling vs Introverted Feeling
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In this episode, Joel and Antonia talk the difference between the feeling cognitive functions Extraverted Feeling vs Introverted Feeling.
In this podcast you’ll find:
- Second in the series of the Judging functions
- The last one was on the Thinking functions
- This one is on the Feeling functions
- All Feelers have a Thinking process that is attached to it which creates a polarity
- Each cognitive function lives in a different “attitude” (extraverted or introverted)
- Extraverted Feeling (Fe) “Harmony” is outwardly focused
- Introverted Feeling (Fi) “Authenticity” is inwardly focused
- Decision-making criteria: what should we be doing as people?
- Feeling decision-making functions make decisions based on the impact on humans.
- Harmony – judging process for all FJs:
- Interested in creating a harmonious environment.
- What the group is feeling is more important than the person.
- Attuned to hierarchy and status of the people in the room.
- How do people get along? What are the social dynamics?
- Why are social dynamics so crucial to this type?
- It’s core foundational desire is to get people’s needs met.
- Room culture is going to impact every one of us.
- What is your status?
- What is everyone else’s status and where do you fit into it?
- What are the relationships everyone has with everyone else?
- Who is trying to hide something? Who needs their morale boosted?
- Harmony users tap into the emotional outpouring of each person and the overall feeling of the room itself.
- “I don’t know what decision I can make until I tap into the direction the room wants to go.”
- Is the vibe of the room improving? Or is there a downcycle of energy?
- The Harmony user will base their decisions on the emotional trajectory of the room.
- Extraverted Thinkers are very tapped into the end result. They want to know what works. They are always looking for better ways to get the end game accomplished.
- Extraverted Feeling also has an end game. It wants to make sure people are feeling a sense of simpatico so they can feel it.
- Getting people’s needs met makes the user feel good.
- The control of the emotion becomes about setting up a situation or context to create positive emotions.
- Harmony’s calibration can be hijacked by a tendency to follow the emotional high of a group that may run contrary to the Harmony users personal values.
- A lot of Harmony users have other Harmony users as friends to keep them accountable.
- They can also tend to do things that don’t feel good to them but is for the benefit of someone else.
- The Sacrificial lamb
- The Harmony user “takes the hit” to keep emotions even-keeled, which is an artificial way of keeping up morale.
- Extraverted Feeling can take shortcuts to make sure morale stays up.
- Unsustainable. Nobody can take emotional hits indefinitely.
- The focus needs to be on authentic, honest, true morale which happens thru conflict resolution, not conflict avoidance.
- Harmony can only come from conflict resolution.
- Many of us assume that conflict is negative. But conflict helps us create intimacy.
- Authenticity – Judging process for all FPs:
- Authenticity is introverted so it is about how info strikes individuals on a very personal level.
- Authenticity looks at the individual, contrary to Harmony which considers the collective.
- Authenticity is about personal world impact. Identity. Motivation. What did someone feel that drove them to act a certain way?
- Who am I? What is my intent?
- Introverted Thinking (Ti) looks to its own code for corrupted data.
- Introverted Feeling (Fi) does the same thing but it is less digital.
- Fi is always scanning itself to see if it is true to itself.
- We adopt a lot of the values within us from other people.
- Authenticity users are constantly searching through their motivations to make sure their ideals are theirs.
- It is such hard work for them to determine their convictions that once they do, they are unwavering.
- Anytime there is a major shift inside Introverted Feeling it has to reevaluate everything in light of that new awareness.
- It can be a very slow process because it has to sort through all the nuances and expression.
- Once Introverted Feeling finds alignment within itself it wants to share what it has found, which is why artistic expression is so important for this type.
- Just like Ti wants to share pure data, Fi wants to share pure identity – the expression of what one person can be.
- Any change for Fi is fundamental identity change.
- This can be challenging. Ego wrenching.
- Introverted Feeling (Fi) wants pure motive and intent.
- None of us have truly pure intent.
- Fi may have a harder job than Ti.
- Introverted Thinking wants to clean slice things and pull concepts apart.
- Fi doesn’t have that ability because everything is merged together. You can’t just remove some source code. If you change one thing, everything changes.
- Like most of us, FPs can become lazy and want the end result without putting in the hard work.
- If a person doesn’t want to do all the hard work they may just claim what they want, then they can’t reevaluate. Because if they did, they might find some parts of themselves that are wrong.
- So, they become protective around elements of their personality that are corrupt.
- They project the feelings that they don’t want to see on the outside world.
- They don’t want to do the work to uproot it.
- Or, the Fi user may have been raised in a religious household where they were constantly reminded how horrible they are and deserving of eternal fire.
- “Am I really as corrupt as all that?”
- The Fi user may have to completely reevaluate his belief system if he goes inside and searches for the truth.
- “The more personal something is, the more universal.”
- Just as Extraverted Thinking is more focused on the result and Introverted Thinking is more focused on the process, Extraverted Feeling (Fe) is more focused on the result (keeping up people’s morale) and Introverted Feeling (Fi) is more concerned with the process (How do I make sure I have good intent?).
- Fe and Fi need each other and work together beautifully.
- They represent two very important functions – result and process.
- Birthday Party – The Fe user was concerned with the flow of the room and how everyone interacted. The Fi was more concerned with the emotional freedom of the individual people involved.
- Fe users can think about the individual and Fi users can think about the group, but they will tend toward their strength.
- Fi users in group dynamics create an avatar for the group, a personality they can individuate from the group.
- Fi can get intimidated by a group because there are so many individuals. They tend toward one to one engagement.
- Fe also likes one to one, but they have a wider spread of attention while they stay engaged with everyone else’s needs at the same time.
- Profiler Training
- What is your experience using Extraverted Feeling or Introverted Feeling?
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INFP, Female, 36 here!
Leading with introverted feeling means the following in my life:
1. I can have a polarizing effect on people which often leaves me scratching my head.
2. If I’m running low on energy, I can get super frustrated playing patty cakes with group dynamics. (Let me speak my mind or just leave me alone people!)
3. You can trust that my feedback is my honest assessment.
4. If I don’t trust the intent of the decision makers in a group, I will leave that group and not look back.
5. I can ascertain a lot about other people’s thoughts, feelings, and motivations, and I keep this information to myself.
Joel- You were talking about how Fi means you question your own intent and that part of the growth process for Fi people involves seeing & accepting when you don’t have pure intentions. My experience was the opposite. In order to grow I had to stop playing devil’s advocate with myself. Here’s why- most other people don’t question their own intent constantly, and so in order to be more successful in groups and relationships I had to accept the basic premise that I am a noble enough person, and if another person is making problems for me, then I need to put my own needs first because that’s how everyone else operates anyway and I deserve to be successful too!
As an INFJ – abstract, deep, complicated, misunderstood, strange, different, it honestly would be great if I could really develop deep connections with friends that give me the joy I crave…. That’s the difficulty with Fe, battling with myself. I have to think I can throw off these self-limiting beliefs about myself that I am incapable and believe I can have harmonious relationships with friends. We are what we think, and if you believe, you will have it…. So I agree with Joel…how he questions his self worth….to open our minds to new information about ourselves….how difficult and vital that is, if we are to grow and expand our minds and our selves to become different people than we were. I also like the analogy of the birthday party, the two feelers focused on different things… I had a situation at work where a client was unhappy. For me developing Fe through Fi it was important to get the wholesaler to call my unhappy client to appease her OCD, to really pay attention to her feelings for the benefit of everyone in the room. That narrowing to her needs was new for me. It felt good.
As an INFJ – abstract, deep, complicated, misunderstood, strange, different, it honestly would be great if I could really develop deep connections with friends that give me the joy I need and crave for; let’s face it. That’s the difficulty with Fe, battling with myself. I have to think I can throw off these self-limiting beliefs about myself that I am incapable and believe I can have harmonious relationships with friends. We are what we think, and if you believe, you will have it…. So I agree with Joel…how he questions his self worth….to open our minds to new information about ourselves….how difficult and vital that is, if we are to grow and expand our minds and our selves to become different people than we were. I also like the analogy of the birthday party, the two feelers focused on different things… I had a situation at work where a client was unhappy. For me developing Fe through Fi it was important to get the wholesaler to call my unhappy client to appease her OCD, to really pay attention to her feelings for the benefit of everyone in the room. That narrowing to her needs was new for me. It felt good.
I am an INFP and felt disappointment in listening to this podcast. I agree with a lot that was said. And typical to my personality I was selfishly hoping to hear some benefit in having this personalality type. I didn’t hear any benefit only that it’s a hard path to determine my authenticity.
I think that the “shortcut” that infp takes to feel like I’m a good person is out of total necessity of survival. If I let my natural tendency to introspect as much as I’d like I would be so focused that I wouldn’t be able to survive in community or job, so I don’t see that as a shortcut like I’ve heard about the other processes, as much as a necessity to live in a world with others.
Thanks for giving me a space here to express my feelings.
I really learned a lot from this pod cast, thank you! I am an ENFP. In my line of work, I find myself in large groups of people often. I have noticed that I absolutely gain energy from being in this context, but I fly from small group to small group talking to the individuals within the whole group. I ask a ton of questions and am genuinely interested in how people are feeling and making sure they feel connected to what is going on around them. In my infantile knowledge of the Myers-Briggs codes, I always thought this was due to my dominant function of Extroverted Intuition. I just had a “sixth sense” idea of who was feeling left out or disconnected and was able to draw them out and plug them in. I think, however, after listening to this breakdown examination of the Fe and Fi functions, that my “sixth sense” really is drawn from my Authenticity co-pilot, if I am understanding it correctly. How I am seeing it is that I personally wouldn’t want to be left out and want to know that within a large group I am someone that is unique and valuable. So, I go from person to person making sure that they know they are valuable however large the group is. Perhaps I am missing the mark here, but that cool! I am learning and as such, I process better by talking it out or typing it out, so thank you for letting me share here.
I also resonated deeply with the birthday party prep illustration at the end. I have an INFJ friend, and when we work together, its is exactly how it goes! We do murder mystery’s with friends and she is always making sure the environment is perfect and exciting in order to help the group have a great time! I try to serve her and those she enlists to help to help them enjoy the experience personally. I find myself checking on them a lot. It was fun to see that dynamic expressed elsewhere also.
One more note and I’ll be done text vomiting here, but I noticed someone else brought this up and wanted to point this out. One of the ways I have began to help grow my Authenticity Co-Pilot that was suggested by someone here I believe, was to read Non-Violent Communication and make sure I am taking to time to process my feelings and why I feel the way I do. Reading that book helped me see that my vocabulary (if you will) for expressing feelings and needs was anemic to say the least. That coupled with taking time to process the previous day’s feelings by journaling has helped a lot by making me more balanced and not swept away in tides of feelings (or at least if I do, I come back to earth quicker!). It sucks to stop for a moment to do it, but I have been very glad that I have in the long run!
Thanks again for this extremely helpful breakdown of the specific functions of Fe and Fi. I am grateful that you guys would be doing this!
Hi Joel and Antonia!
I relate strongly with getting stuck in the weeds as an Fi user, how unwavering those convictions are (while you have them) and getting lazy and ignoring identity problems. I would really like to hear more about the Fi work that Joel alludes to doing in some podcasts.
Thanks!
Patrick
Thanks Antonia and Joel for another informative and deeply relatable podcast! As an ENFP with a few ENFJ friends, I really resonated with your discussion of Fi vs Fe. The intense work it takes to form one’s convictions as an Fi user and the zeal with which we stick to them really explains a lot in my life. I always thought it was ironic that as I matured I became more open-minded to other ethical beliefs rather than the other way around. As a college student, I basically refused to interact with anyone who did not agree with the deeply held moral beliefs I grew up with, which clearly as an extravert ended up with not so great results. As I matured, I have come to embrace diversity in opinions and really thrive on it. I do, however, still take comments involving my belief system or skill sets very much to heart and become defensive around it. Your deep dive into Fi has really allowed me to explore why this is and to formulate further paths for growth beyond my current state. I believe upward mobility is the key to happiness, and stagnancy is its enemy. Thus, self-understanding providing the solid foundation needed for authentic personal growth is key to making this happen. Thanks for providing this for so many people. What a great way to start the new year!
Thanks Antonia and Joel, I’m a total newbie to this model, which has intrigued and resonated with me, though there are also aspects which challenge and disturb me. I’m posited as INFP and there is so much that rings true, so much of myself I can see in this assessment, but to be honest I led myself here through an interest in INFJ as the rarest type, which drew me in. I guess we all want to feel special, unique and that was definitely part of the appeal, but also because I feel so different from most people, in how I think, emote, live my life. But also reading that INFJ are the only type to take on other people’s emotions, to feel what they feel, I question the veracity of this model. This is where I run into problems, and maybe it’s an issue of language, but at times there appears a rigidity to the typing that doesn’t take into account the non binary shifts in my world in particular, but also society as a whole. It’s like part of my authentic self is to be in harmony, to create harmony, to be the people pleaser and take on that role of keeping the group happy. Antonia did mention authentic harmony,(perhaps oxymoronic in this context) and that we do possess parts of the opposite polarity, but even that doesn’t quite encompass how I feel. I see the world in continuums, or spectrums as some prefer, where black and white thinking has become inadequate to explain and understand the world as it is evolving. Intersectional politics, where the intersections or interrelationships between gender, class, sexuality, race, political bent is what forms who we are and the values we hold and believe in. Identity if a fluid, shifting phenomena and I am currently in the midst of several identity shifts, some in harmony, some that cause friction with each other. To be my Authentic self, which really does resonate with me in a way harmony didn’t with it’s need for structure and product over process, I need to research further, start at the beginning to find if this model does fit with my authentic self, my integrity as I like to refer to it. I’m a deep thinker, a highly emotional person, both within myself, and expressed freely and openly, which I have found a strength in, and part of my challenge is how gender and emotion meet in the sphere of intersecting continuum that I envision when pondering these issues. It’s when my emotional response as a feeler (uncomfortable word) finally gels with my thinking self, when my heart and mind are in harmony that I feel I’ve resolved an issue till the next lot of new information becomes available to be pondered, processed, integrated, accepted and challenged again. I’m totally accepting of the introverted emotional, authentic type who seeks exploration and risk, but where’s my equally important thinker aspect. Language that says this function always uses this strategy, or that function will approach a problem in that way in any given situation that I question this model as appropriate for me. But I’m still really intrigued, so any insights would be most welcome. And now there’s work to do, research must be done, and I’ll get onto that to do list. I’m a queer, cis woman shifting to a non binary gender identity, while vehemently anti marriage in the LGBTI community where the laws have just changed in the last fortnight, so I’m being challenged by my values, my emotional response which Is the 3 year old in the back seat having a tantrum, and processing issues on non belonging – anywhere it feels sometimes, but seeking my niche belonging spots, while I’m perhaps too happy to be alone but not lonely. This is so long – apologies – but I’ve hardly started.
This was great – thank you! As an ESFP, I’ve found the more I’ve gotten in touch with my Fi, the less I like large gatherings. They overwhelm me, and you explained why in a way that is spot on. When I was in an SeTe loop (where I spent several decades!) I enjoyed “working a room” but now I only want to talk with one or two people.
Your discussion of identity also resonated deeply with me.
As always, love your podcast – this one in particular spoke to me.
Thanks, and Merry Christmas!
Growing up I was a big people-pleaser especially with my mother. The other day my daughter expressed dislike of a portrait she took with her sister and I felt so offended she wasnt staying positive because I had gone through great lengths to get the outfit she wanted at the studio she wanted at the time of day she requested. I got mad at her for how she felt. Later I apologized because I realized I was expecting her to put her feelings aside for the sake of feeling cheery and good for the family. Im so glad I apologized and its an exercise for me to realize the validity of my feelings esp. in a group of people.
Ive been wanting to learn more on the cognitive functions themselves versus just personality type and loved this podcast and related so much to it I could write a lot more.
First of all, thank you for the work you do and for the knowledge you share! The two podcasts on the judging cognitive functions have been wonderful! I have a better understanding of the exact “feel”of each function.
As I was listening, I found myself becoming increasingly curious about what these functions look like as tertiary and inferior functions. I know you tapped into some ways the functions can be inhibiting (for example, Harmony can sometimes lead to total conflict avoidance). Could this be an example of what they look like as a tertiary or inferior function? Or were those examples only in regard to an underdeveloped dominant function? Thank you in advance!
Hi Antonia and Joel,
Great fan of your content. It would be amazing if you provided the text transcript of the audio.
Haa, so is it like Martha and Mary (Martha Fe and Mary Fi)? (referring to Luke 10:38-42)