Part I: In Which Some Common Misconceptions Are Clarified and the MBTI “Letters” Are Defined in Terms of the "Cognitive Functions"
As most of you reading this note will already know, my personal understanding of MBTI-style personality typing depends quite heavily on something called “the functional stack” that can be derived from the four letter name of each type (ENFP, ISTJ, etc.). The “functional stack” is made up of eight different styles of dealing with information: four for taking in information (the “perceiving” functions) and four for sorting and using this information (the “judging” functions). Each personality type’s “stack” consists of the same eight functions, but the order varies according to which functions represent strengths and which represent weaknesses for each type. It is my belief that these “functional stacks” do a better job of representing the complexity in the human personality, and that they offer a more useful vocabulary for distinguishing between real and consistent differences in information processing, motivation, and values between personality types, than does the mere four letter code. I have many reasons for thinking this that will perhaps one day become the subject of a different note. Here, it is my intention only to clarify what is meant by each of these eight “functions.”
First, a clarification of what the “letters” mean. MBTI proposes four distinctions to describe basic personality differences. First, Extraversion vs. Introversion. Extraversion is an orientation that directs the individual’s energy and attention outward, plunging them into the world of action and speech. Introversion, then, orients the individual’s energy and attention inwards, into the world of reflection and thought. The first letter of each personality type’s four letter code is an E or an I, representing whether extraversion or introversion is dominant in the individual’s personality, but it would be an oversimplification to suppose that everyone is either a cut-and-dried “extravert” or “introvert,” with sharp and consistent differences always noticeable between E’s and I’s. This seems a fairly obvious falsehood, and the common wisdom explains this overlap by saying that the introversion-extraversion distinction is a continuum, with some people more and some less introverted (or extraverted) than others. However, this, too, is imprecise. The reality is, the extraversion-introversion distinction is a cut-and-dried dichotomy and not a continuum, but it is not meant to describe a categorical difference between whole personalities. Rather, it indicates a categorical difference in something called the “orientation” of an individual’s dominant function. We’ll get to what that means in a minute, but for now, just realize that the “E” or “I” at the beginning of the four letter code should not be thought to describe the whole of an individual’s personality, since, as we will see later, everyone has both multiple E’s and multiple I’s in the functional stack that comprises personality.
The second distinction MBTI draws is between Sensing and iNtuition. Sensing and intuition are kinds of functions, and they are called the Perceiving functions because they have to do with the way people focus their attention when taking in information (a.k.a. perceiving). People with a more dominant Sensing function focus on concrete information when perceiving, noticing and attributing importance to the tangible details of their daily experience. People with a more dominant iNtuition function, on the other hand, tend to focus their attention beyond the concrete information that is readily available to their senses when they perceive, grasping and attributing importance to the intangible, big-picture significance of the data, the details of which become irrelevant as they rely on their intuition to grasp what the data might mean. Everybody can do both, since everybody has both a Sensing and an Intuition function in their stack, but the N or S in the four letter personality code represents which of these is “higher in the stack,” which means that the individual will be able to use either Sensing or Intuition more naturally, easily, and consistently than the other.
Next comes the difference between Thinking and Feeling, which pertains to the way in which an individual’s Judging functions sort and make use of the information that the Perceiving functions have taken in. A Thinking function organizes information according to its logical, functional, or technical content. It makes decisions and judgments based on what is logically valid, given the facts that are known or assumed. A Feeling function, on the other hand, organizes information according to its emotional, evaluative, or humane content. It makes decisions and judgments based on what is believed to be desired or valuable, given the people and feelings involved. Once again, everybody does both because everybody has both a Thinking and a Feeling function in their stack, but the T or F in the personality code represents which function is used more easily and consistently by the individual.
The last distinction in the personality code is the one between Judging and Perceiving. We’ve already talked about the Judging and Perceiving functions: an individual has Thinking and Feeling functions for Judging information and Sensing and iNtuition functions for Perceiving. What we haven’t yet explained is that all of these functions have either an extraverted or introverted orientation; that is, they can be extensive, outward-directed functions or intensive, inward-directed functions. The J-P distinction in the four letter code indicates whether the most dominant extraverted function in an individual’s “stack” is a Judging (whether Thinking or Feeling) or a Perceiving (either Sensing or iNtuition) function. This may seem like a somewhat random and needlessly complicated distinction, but in fact it gets at some pretty interesting and meaningful differences between J’s and P’s. People with an outward-directed judging function take action to enforce order on the information in their environment. Since other people constitute part of the environment, this means that J’s have a tendency to try to sweep other people up into the order they bring to the world around them. People with an outward-directed perceiving function, on the other hand, do not engage with the environment with the purpose of changing or controlling it so much as to explore and engage with the sensations and possibilities of what is already there. These explorations of P’s have a tendency to challenge and conflict with the order and control that J’s are seeking to establish, which is why the Judging/Perceiving distinction can be enlightening. However, as we will shortly see, this distinction, too, is somewhat sloppy, since everyone has an outward-oriented judging function and an outward-oriented perceiving function in the healthy range of their stack, and so will frequently display characteristics of both judgers and perceivers.