# Gender and Feeling: What traits describe a Feeler?



## Meadow (Sep 11, 2012)

Teybo said:


> @_Loupgaroux_* .... *I was interested to see that you identified with the male Feeler's self-selected descriptors, and that you see yourself as having a bit of a "typically male" attitude toward life (same for @_Meadow_). I feel like it is pointing toward something, but I'm not sure what.


I've wondered if it points to T, but haven't been sure. I've never identified with either male or female and think of myself inwardly as just "person." I was raised to be mildly female but never took it seriously, and as soon as I left home I ignored male/female roles and did what I wanted, such as not waiting for men to ask me out but calling and asking them, and my interests and attitudes toward life rarely align with those of typical females.

I'm part way through the thread you linked on the INTJ forum and so far I identify quite a bit more with reckful's version of T, rather than his F, but the way he's describing NF seems more along the lines of Keirsey. If people agree he's describing an MBTI F, then I'm more likely T. So many books and posters make T sound rude, thoughtless, uncaring and immature, and reckful is describing himself as a more mature T. I'm either a half-assed somewhat self-centered F or a more mature T along the lines of reckful. Maybe that's why I'm having trouble letting go of T lol.


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## Teybo (Sep 25, 2012)

@_OMG WTF BRO_

I don't think this is a "Fi/Fe" thing we're looking at. The correlation is purely for gender and "F" preference, not for "FJ" or "FP" preference. There is an imbalance between men and women with regard to T/F, but J/P is roughly equal, so there is no reason to think that the gender association here is related to the J/P dichotomy (and thus related to some distinction between introversion or extroversion of Feeling). There's not even really very good statistical evidence that the cognitive functions are measurable entities, especially not with regard to the orientation of the auxiliaries, which is still a point of theoretical contention.

@_Meadow_

I don't think it points to "T", if by "T" you mean a preference for Thinking as measured by the MBTI. I could be persuaded, especially if the distribution shows some particular skew. But it really doesn't seem like we're looking at Thinker men who were accidentally categorized as Feelers. You could consider me an "anti-example", a man who tested as a Thinker on the MBTI but identifies very strongly with the traits that men (but not women) who tested as Feelers chose as self-descriptions. These are men who test as Feelers off the bat, and I don't think we should discard that. Instead, I think we should be skeptical or questioning of two primary things: the way that T and F are divided on the MBTI, and the role gender plays in self perception.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

Meadow said:


> @Teybo, do you have a link, such as to Amazon, where I could order the MBTI manual or wherever it is the studies are from? Also, do you have descriptive traits for male vs. female T's?


My information on those studies comes from the 1985 edition of the MBTI Manual, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were also described in the 1998 edition. Unfortunately CAPT, in their infinite wisdom, charges a small fortune ($130) for the Manual, and I've never seen it for less than around $70.

As a point of clarification, what I refer to as "ACL-a" results (the 200-person study) involved self-assessments. The ACL-b and Q-Sort results (the 400-person study) involved third-party assessments ("based on observations by at least five staff members"). The 200-person study was reported in Psychological Reports (Brooks & Johnson, 1979), but the 400-person study was just reported at a Stanford MBTI conference (before the Manual).

Here are the corresponding results for male and female T's from the same two studies:

For the ACL-a results:
Male Ts: Alert, logical, assertive.
Female Ts: Defensive, hurried.

For the ACL-b results:
Male Ts: Conventional, conservative, moderate, interests narrow, steady.
Female Ts: Hard-hearted, fault-finding, logical, ambitious, opinionated, severe, cold, intolerant, suspicious, hostile.

For the Q-Sort results:
Male Ts: Prides self on being objective, rational; judges self and others in conventional terms; favors conservative values.
Female Ts: Prides self on being objective; critical, skeptical, not easily impressed; basically distrustful of people, questions their motives.

And again, the thing that makes those ACL-b and Q-Sort T/F results (the 400-person study) the most striking to me is the fact that, on all three of the other MBTI dimensions (E/I, S/N and J/P), the male and female correlations with each preference were very similar.


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## Meadow (Sep 11, 2012)

@_reckful_, thank you! I spent quite a bit of time googling, trying to find the information. $130! No thanks, lol. I thought it was bad enough when I paid $70 for a used copy of Thriving in Mind, by Katherine Benziger. Also, it was great being able to read through all the info you posted to Mogura.

It's interesting that T, above, is described so negatively, such as defensive, suspicious, hostile. I was hoping to see myself clearly in female T so my confusion would be cleared up, but the words describing male F fit much better than the other 3 categories.

The way you described your ethics and attitudes toward the world in the INTJ forum thread describe the way I look at and deal with the world, which makes sense from your TeFi perspective and my supposed FiTe perspective but doesn't make sense when I identified strongly with your general T perspective over Mogura's F. I'm like the OP of the INTJ thread, having read so much about functions and type that it all seems to overlap and not make sense anymore. 

@_Teybo_, I think I do have a problem confusing gender issues with T and F. Siding with the "male" perspective so often makes me seem like a T, especially since I'm more straightforward and less angsty, sentimental and nurturing than typical F females I've known. I've also wondered if N rather than T could be what sets me apart and allows me to stand back and observe, then choose a different path from the losing situations I see females so often engaging in, such as the birthday issue brought up in Mogura's thread. I'm sticking with F for now, but it's strange that reckful's T-type attitudes toward life, as expressed many times throughout the thread, are so much mine as well. I don't know what to think of it, but it's all very interesting.


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## Dragearen (Feb 2, 2012)

Teybo said:


> Male Feelers tend to describe themselves as: *curious*, *having wide interests*, humorous, unselfish, despondent, artistic, *original*, enjoying aesthetic impressions, *tending towards rebelliousness*, and *having insight into motive and character.*
> 
> Female Feelers tend to describe themselves as: *sympathetic*, *soft-hearted*, *forgiving*, *trusting*, *affectionate*, *pleasant*, *having warmth*, *capable of close relationships*, tending to arouse acceptance in people, and personally charming.
> 
> ...


Hmmmm. But then I pretty much knew this already. Still, I think this is mostly social conditioning. I have a hunch that the same study done among, say, the J'hoansi, would turn out much different results.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Julia Bell said:


> Yes, that's the problem I have as well. You see, it's almost like in MBTI they want me to choose which I value more: understanding/caring for people or rationality/logic. To which I'd say, "Both, of course!" And I'd almost actually answer rationality and logic, because they serve as a basis for so much.
> 
> I also relate more to curious, many interests, artistic, insightful as words that describe me. But I don't think being any of those things = Feeler (which I guess you weren't trying to say anyways).


The words I relate (also, all from the men) are: artistic and original and that's pretty much it. If I were to describe myself though, I'd pick these words: 

Intelligent
Nerd/geek
Honest
Loyal
Reliable 
Philosphical
Inquisitive
Questioning
Logical
Competitive
Aggressive
Thinker

And so on lol. I also tend to score predominantly masculine on that test that measures your gender identity based on word choices.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

JungyesMBTIno said:


> I honestly don't really know what to make of it - I mean, a lot of what that study is describing is merely persona (and not really a person's cognitive fixations when it comes to justifying their ego - aka functions), which in that context might only very loosely relate to their perceptions of their feeling function (but doesn't necessarily have to).





Teybo said:


> @_JungyesMBTIno_
> 
> On one hand, I'm tempted to have a conversation with you about the point at which "persona" is no longer persona, but real, genuine, self-perception. On the other hand, I feel like you missed the train already because the thread is literally about the MBTI and correlations between the indicator and other personality inventories. And on my phantom third hand, I feel like having a conversation with you is difficult because I seem to need to translate too many things into your language. I don't know what to think, in other words.


Well, I agree with Jungyes that they're describing persona (I mean, I'm the perfect counter-example) but what they are describing is some kind of what to say, external output of function use. Maybe in another time and life and I'm still FiNe but not enneatype 5 with what I presume, ridiculous levels of testosterone for my sex, I'd relate more to the male/female descriptors, who knows, especially if I didn't Te so much. I mean, I Te more than I Fi. 

It doesn't mean the functions will always create this kind of output because I think other things play a large role here one of them being enneagram, but as a generalistic whole, I could potentially buy the idea that the output tends to describe dominant and auxiliary Jungian feelers more than thinkers.


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## Lotan (Aug 10, 2012)

What I find most interesting is that both male Fs and female Ts tended to describe themselves as being much more rebellious than male Ts and female Fs. Female Ts didn't actually use the word rebellious like the male Fs did, but did say things like opinionated, skeptical, distrustful, hostile which suggests a tendency to go against the group.

Given the stereotype that women will be Fs and men will be Ts (a gender divide I really don't see in any other dimension of the MBTI) I can't help but think that there's a predisposition to male Fs and female Ts being seen as and seeing themselves as rebels or as counter-culture, which might account for some of the differences between the ways they described themselves. I've never been a rebel in the "rah rah fight the system" sense (except when I was a teenager) but I've always considered myself somewhat rebellious because I don't follow a lot of gender norms.

And on female Ts specifically: I don't think they are on average more opinionated, disagreeable, hostile, etc than male Ts, but in general women are considered bossy/hostile/defensive/etc for the same behavior men would be considered assertive go-getters for. Note that the female Fs describe themselves as defensive rather than assertive, and the third party observers describe the male Ts as "rational", but the female Ts in much less level-headed terms like critical, skeptical, distrustful...basically another way of saying hostile and defensive rather than rational. I don't know the people studied, but I can't help but think there may have been some gender bias on the part of the observers...

EDIT: If I could bring in SLOAN, the calm-limbic dimension is the one not well-represented by the MBTI. There seems to be an underlying bias in these studies to see men as strongly "calm" and women as strongly "limbic" regardless of whether they are T or F. According to this, defensive, suspicious, doubtful, etc are common descriptors of the limbic type. This page uses a lot of the adjectives male feelers were described as: positive, builders, freedom-seekers, etc. Not that being limbic is superior to being calm (or the other way around), but there seems to be a definite tendency to see men as calm and women as limbic regardless.


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

Teybo said:


> @_JungyesMBTIno_
> 
> On one hand, I'm tempted to have a conversation with you about the point at which "persona" is no longer persona, but real, genuine, self-perception. On the other hand, I feel like you missed the train already because the thread is literally about the MBTI and correlations between the indicator and other personality inventories. And on my phantom third hand, I feel like having a conversation with you is difficult because I seem to need to translate too many things into your language. I don't know what to think, in other words.


Oh no, don't feel obligated to work toward my understanding. My point is, basically, what this topic is talking about has more to do with common personas (by persona, I literally am referring to the social mask, fake outer appearance a person puts on to fit social expectations of them - temperament stereotypes would fall into persona as well) than anything related to cognition, the latter being what type actually deals with. I mean, as long as you can acknowledge that, then basically, this is just an open field for pure speculation (from preconceptions of personas that are thought to have anything to do with type - I mean, that's the issue with Kiersey and MBTI, especially Kiersey, because there's this mix of temperament and all that into cognition which is, at best, reflective of cultural archetypes and nothing particularly real outside of what the culture emphasizes as the assumption - that's all good-and-fine for its own discussion, but its not really related to type outside of the context of discussion being generated around it). On the other hand, you might get some John Wayne kind of man who may surely be an F dominant as well (I've known some southerners kind of like that).


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

Like, when I think female feeling type to female thinking type, the general archetype that pops into my head pretty quickly would be, with the one who plays up feeling, they often don't speak their minds as much (there are a ton of cultural stereotypes around this, especially in the older media) - they might seem a little motiveless at times or oversensitive (although, under the surface, they aren't - they might be some real bulldogs on issues as well, but just not really in a "I'm going to fight this with facts" kind of way). With the person who plays up thinking, there's usually a more classification-oriented fascination these types bring with them (like, the tendency to have to make a determination/decision about everything - sort of speak their opinions brashly or can state the obvious facts of the matter with ease and amusement). A ton of people are pretty intermediate though (especially if you're an aux/tert F/T type, you probably won't get stereotyped as specifically one or the other - you're just prone to react to whatever you think/feel will impact the perception of the situation - it might get viewed a million different ways by different people - might sometimes seem a little "cute" or "naive" if it's verging into defiance of the general feeling/thinking atmosphere being promoted - other times, it might seem kind of easy to take the wrong way, or maybe just be thought-provoking - and then, you also get the "cool" perception domination as well, among just a billion different possibilities, I guess, especially with intuition, which is a very human attribute).


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

Yea, Jung actually said that thinking is a far more dominant function in males than females (not as in, males are smarter whatsoever, but that on the personality level, it influences their decisions more strongly).


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

I just think those adjectives can apply to thinking females as well. Just why I was emphasizing context for this discussion (I hate how your relationship to the feeling function gets equated with having a "personality" to MBTI and Kiersey - Jung would whole-heartedly disagree with that). You may get some very boring, "personality-less" feeling types as well.


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## Old Intern (Nov 20, 2012)

*@Teybo* If this is MBTI to begin with, in the study, are we putting Fe and Fi in one group?
It is interesting to me that "persona" keeps being introduced by someone who opperates with Fi preferred over Fe. An Fe user could be using a persona and not feel like that is what it is - because they are . . . . whatever the Fi user wants to fill in the blank with?
The Fi user would be more likely to feel imposed upon from percieved social roles. I'm not saying anything wrong with that, just that Fe tertiary (my experience) would not assume any imposition, only choices.

If a person feels forced to skip an important function or exaggerate things they honestly don't belive to the point that they could be two different people and not know which one is real - that would be my definition of persona. Is that technically accurate? I don't know.

For Genders to choose the adjectives about themselves that coordinate or mesh well with expected social roles doesn't surprise me and I don't think it implies a persona? People can be who they are and they still have choices about how they express themselves within that selfhood.

@*JungyesMBTIno *This wasn't about thinking females. Was it? This was about how people testing with a preference for feeling, have a wide range of how they see that feeling preference being displayed or excercized in their own life.

If there is any antagonistic seeming tone in this, that's not what I posted for. It just seems like the point is being missed? I took occasion with recent posts to explain, but more than a few people not hearing what OP was?


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Old Intern said:


> *@Teybo* If this is MBTI to begin with, in the study, are we putting Fe and Fi in one group?
> It is interesting to me that "persona" keeps being introduced by someone who opperates with Fi preferred over Fe. An Fe user could be using a persona and not feel like that is what it is - because they are . . . . whatever the Fi user wants to fill in the blank with?
> The Fi user would be more likely to feel imposed upon from percieved social roles. I'm not saying anything wrong with that, just that Fe tertiary (my experience) would not assume any imposition, only choices.
> 
> If a person feels forced to skip an important function or exaggerate things they honestly don't belive to the point that they could be two different people and not know which one is real - that would be my definition of persona. Is that technically accurate? I don't know.


This isn't about Fi versus Fe. This is about enneagram 4 in my case.


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## Teybo (Sep 25, 2012)

@Old Intern @JungyesMBTIno

Yes, this is just people who have a measured preference for Feeling over Thinking. And to be completely clear, I misinterpreted what @reckful posted. There were two studies, one which was "self-description" and one which was "research staff" description. I think there's a much, much larger case to be made for the influence of cultural mores on the results in the case of the third-party "research staff" descriptions.

Or even going toward the general point of persona, as mentioned by @JungyesMBTIno. I think you make a valid point, @Old Intern, about the perception of Fi and Fe. In my own life I think part of the reason I struggled with identifying as a Feeler in some respects was because my "examples" of Feelers were Fi-dominants, some of which actually told me that the were surprised when I ultimately identified as an Feeler. I think there's a tendency for FP's to believe that they are "true disciples" of Feeling, and that FJ's are insincere imposters, but I really strongly believe that this is a yin-yang, two-sides-of-the-same-coin kind of deal. I don't think introversion lends feeling any greater importance than extraversion. Somehow, FP's in my life are reluctant to see it this way. I wonder if there is a similar relationship between TP's and TJ's? (Tangent: I find it interesting that Isabel Myers, as an INFP, would be the one to develop the MBTI. Surely she believed she was measuring something genuine! But then again, the MBTI is about dichotomies over Jungian functions, and so this thought kind of wraps around on itself in an unsatisfying way.)

But to circle back around to persona: Excluding the "third party rater" results, at what point do we say "these people are answering the questionaires to the best of their ability, and we should take the results as reflecting their genuine self perception"? I am 100% behind putting questions to the psychometric validity of personality tests, but at some point, don't we have to say, "This is what it is". When do we discard the "hidden variables" theory? If for all intents and purposes, you project an "F" persona, and everyone who has ever known you says that you fit the idea of a Feeler, and if, when asked, you give answers consistent with a Feeler, are you not, at the core, a Feeler? It seems a bit like a cop-out to say, "Oh, that's a persona."

(Complete side note, @JungyesMBTIno, I really wish you had a different username, if for no other reason that your current one evokes a persona that is so tragically one dimensional!)


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

Lol, well, I'm just not really a fan of MBTI (that's not to say I'm gung-ho Jung only, but I dunno, he was a serious psychologist with some accurate ideas - I frankly love how much he departs from social conceptions of personality/persona - makes understanding people realistically so much easier). I think if I were on a different site, I probably would have a different username, but just for the sake of not having to always explain my position (since this site is full of tons of conflicting positions and non-theory all mixed together), I have the one I do.


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

Yea, I get this post, but I just don't know how anyone can conclude anything about it. I mean, someone calling himself/herself "adventurous" is someone calling himself/herself "adventurous" - like, maybe there's a gender divide, I dunno, but I find the study vague in specifying how feeling in males/females would really affect this - I mean, feeling is basically evaluation and evaluation does not necessarily at all relate to what adjective choices a person will choose to label themselves with. It's also a situational persona (like, how some people will call themselves "shy," but this is only really situational - no one is always shy). It might be a fine study of temperaments (of the Kiersey variety), but I really don't know about linking it to the feeling function as a mechanism of cognition...Like, if someone wants to create a construct for the "feeling persona," by all means they could, but in all honesty, it really has nothing to do with anything intrinsic to the psyche (you might in actuality have a thinking dominant with this feeling persona).


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

I mean, take the example of Sigmund Freud: his colleagues seemed to think he fit the Fi dominant mold (due to inferior Te), but in MBTI, there's no way he's an INFP, even though that's what he fit in Jung (in MBTI, he would probably be like ENTJ or something). He had the "gentlemanliness" associated with dominant feeling in men (so they said), but also had a wacky and tyrannical thinking side that was quite cold, dark, and reductionist. Jung, imo, from the persona perspective, probably looks more like a feeling type than Freud, but in his own conceptions, he was obviously a self-confessed thinking dominant with (imo), noticeably repressed feeling (I mean, if you read enough of his works, he is kind of a negative evaluator and often limits the human factor from his reasoning enough that his theory really doesn't sink in immediately - sort of has the kinds of opinions people might easily balk at and find very irritating - I know I took him the wrong way quite a few times when reading him).


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## Teybo (Sep 25, 2012)

I guess if you don't believe that a person's cognitive preferences will influence their personality and self-perception, then you wouldn't feel like there's a whole lot of "meat" here, but really, this is exactly the kind of study (at least the parts we aren't focusing on here regarding the other dimensions, I/E, S/N, J/P) that should dissuade you from that belief. Then again, if you don't think the MBTI measures anything real, then maybe not, but then you'd be at the point where I'd have to wonder if _any_ amount of evidence could persuade you otherwise, especially given all the research that's been done with the MBTI and the Big Five factors. I mean, why even be interested in Jungian typology if you think it's just a bunch of hidden variables that have no relevance on how people understand themselves or each other?


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## Donovan (Nov 3, 2009)

i think what Jungyes is saying is that trying to find (or create) patterns from tangible factors and results can give the semblance of discovery. there's an idea and then there's "proof", but there isn't anything that would counter it that could be used to rule out false-positives and allow the evidence to stand on its own.

really, that's the only way to create a standard that can be accurately applied to a large group of people--otherwise it's like we're taking a two-sided coin and assuming the image on the bottom side from what we can see on the top side, and then basing a theoretical construct on that assumption, and designing studies that all suffer from the same flaw. if you're right the first time around, great, but if not, then no matter the train of reasoning following from the idea to the theory to the results, the study itself has really become some sort of mental exercise more so than anything that actually relates to reality--only because there's no cheat-sheet or way to flip that coin and potentially realize that while the dynamics/principles holding our conception of the personality are clear and obvious, the why's and the details may be getting smudged over in favor of dealing with something that we can physically track. 

i'm convinced that it takes a good deal thought and "cross-examination" to figure out one's type, because again, all we have is what we can see and then what we think that means--and MBTI paints the picture that only a fixed amount of motivations can cause the visible reaction when in reality anything in the world could have given that reaction--even the very same reaction in people of two completely different types in very similar situations. 

now, even though that sounds like i'm nay-saying your post, i'm not--i actually haven't even read through the study. i'm only posting to kind of give credence to the other side of the argument (because it is definitely valid) while also adding this in (because i can't stand seeing it's opposite spouted out constantly): just because it may be "impossible" or hard to liken behavior to cognitive functions due to variability doesn't mean that our functions don't influence our behavior and that the link from our unconscious to our actions can't be found. it can be, but since that path or link will bend and twist to the subjective and unique nature of individuals, you can't create a system that will at once account for everyone's "path" while also failing to contradict itself. i mean, you'd have to create a system that accounts for a differing in perception itself, and that allows something--let's say A--to be viewed as B-Z and still be correct, not because A is truly any of those other things, but because in another's head A may appear as B, or C, or D, but still be recognized in a fashion that allows for a complete transfer of meaning from reality to that person's mind. (if that doesn't make sense, i can clarify). 

in any case, good thread .


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

Teybo said:


> I guess if you don't believe that a person's cognitive preferences will influence their personality and self-perception, then you wouldn't feel like there's a whole lot of "meat" here, but really, this is exactly the kind of study (at least the parts we aren't focusing on here regarding the other dimensions, I/E, S/N, J/P) that should dissuade you from that belief. Then again, if you don't think the MBTI measures anything real, then maybe not, but then you'd be at the point where I'd have to wonder if _any_ amount of evidence could persuade you otherwise, especially given all the research that's been done with the MBTI and the Big Five factors. I mean, why even be interested in Jungian typology if you think it's just a bunch of hidden variables that have no relevance on how people understand themselves or each other?


Well, that's just it - the cognitive preferences don't influence their perceptions of themselves much at all (I might argue that the inferior influences a person's perception of themselves more than anything, because it is the only function that cannot be abstracted away from the self to begin with - the tert. is similar, although can be abstracted and adapted normally enough - even the aux. touches the self as well, although it can be highly adapted) - I mean, that's why probably everyone has mistyped at some point or another to begin with and cannot really confidently settle with a type (type is inherently variable). It's cognition - I can bet most of the time, the average dominant intuitive doesn't really even notice the impact of their intuition on them at all or not without vague acknowledgement that it was merely the intuition was lighting the way for them (Jung noted that some of these tend to not even identify with their intuition, even though they obviously lead with it). This issue is, MBTI is NOT measuring persona and temperament, even though it throws these things in there just to pretend to apply this to real people as a kind of concrete representation of how to try to place this stuff on reality. I never said a thing about this stuff not being real, but it's all 100% a matter of knowing what to look for and knowing what's irrelevant and misleading if you want to learn to nail down the concept of type (if we are to mix temperament and persona into the jamboree of reasoning, we're talking temperament theory, not anything about how the functions influence perceptions - personally, I think that study means nothing, to put it bluntly, because it did not account for the unrelated variables at work - it should have tested so-called thinking types as well if it can even assert that there is anything to male/female differences between types in general - in the temperament field, sure, cultural arguments can be made, but in the field of cognition, it's useless - persona perceptions can be determined by so many things no matter how you spin it - some people might just say stuff without any real self-awareness at all of why they're saying it, which means that you cannot nail a type to it). Jung himself never said that type takes on any kind of definitive concrete molds (that was his heuristic model to work his way into the psyches of other people - MBTI is a bit messed up in that department, even if it manages to pull in results that work toward things like people's interests or abilities - it's a valid approach in *its own right*, but it's not accurate, nor was it ever intended to be accurate or concerned with capturing anything other that how well you can crudely stereotype someone for their own benefit in the workforce), but they will abstractly conform to archetypes (not stereotypes, but more like associations with, say, communication styles, intentions, approaches people have that more-or-less fit their temperament/attitudes/individual qualities about them that might look familiar, etc.). I'm fine with discussing the study (not to sound like a world-class prick), but you can't mix/match theories. They have nothing to do with each other, it's just a waste of time (there REALLY isn't anything in ANY of the theories that says that a function has anything to do with individualistic self-perception - quite the contrary - the functions, from the standpoints of MBTI and Jung, were very much how you deal with the collective on your own terms - they get employed for reasons of adaptation, not reasons of identity formation - they adapt your ego to the outer world and inner ideas (E/I, respectively) based on your own ideas of yourself - describing yourself a certain way is not an adaptation, so in all honesty, you cannot say that the feeling function is a valid causal influence for a person to view themselves as any given adjective, because that heads into individualistic self-perception - one person's "adventurous" is not another person's (at least the reason they choose to view themselves that way will not originate from the same premises as another person). It's also very situation dependent and relative. Functions, on the other hand, really have little influence on how people share experiences with each other (that would be "participation mystique," aka "projection" - and at best, the feeling function will be your best friend in dealing with this - people can definitely relate based on complexes, temperament similarities, etc., but it really has little to do with cognition, other than it's obviously likely that people who understand or have similar motives to others will get along, although it's very complicated and depends on a lot of other things and personal influences, etc. Intuition will definitely be a person's salvation when it comes to relating to and understanding another person, probably much moreso than feeling, which is just how you evaluate - intuition will pretty much pull you in-and-out of projections very effectively - sensation might help you just deal with the relevant factors at play in a situation and deal with the inevitable, while thinking is the function that generally keeps people at enough of a distance, for better or worse). All Jung says about functions is that people will tend to assume that others think like them when it comes to orienting their motives and cognition (and MBTI obviously capitalizes off of this with their statements about how "all types are equal," "learn to see that not everyone thinks like you, but can be equally valid in their approach," etc.). Sure, it's obviously common for anyone with a similar type to get along (and for other obvious reasons, you'll get some who don't - it can't really be explained by scientific reasoning, that would be misleading), but to Jung, that was obvious (because it leads into the question of why they defend their ego ideas about themselves a certain way cognitively to begin with - the person might've been influenced by other people who do this in a positive way (probably on no kind of "rational" ground), there might be biological imperatives that Jung nor anyone in the present day can or has attempted to explain, etc.).


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

Like, to Jung, the real reason a person could claim a type is because they are trying to avoid something else - it's just a characteristic (more-or-less, no one was a pure type to Jung to begin with) ego defense mechanism. For instance, with thinking dominants, you might get the person who has a tendency to force-fit all of experience into an intellectual framework (intellectual ideas with Te of a more generalistic nature, such as a person rationalizing their views as compatible with the laws of Darwininan selection, or something) - it somehow represents who they are trying to be. This usually is not apparent to the outside world in an introverted thinker, so it has to be inferred often through the inferior function (extraverted feeling) - the person might just not evaluate normally ever (depends on how adapted they are around the inferior or how much of a "thinking type" you can really call them - some may certainly look normal around feeling relative to others, but still fit the classification regardless). The person might show a disdain for people/stupidity (well, most people outside of a select few who "understand them"). The person might always do anything to avoid having a discussion based on evaluation or justification of another person's views, ideas, etc. There are tons of archetypes on this that Jung could have covered, but didn't find necessary to.


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## Donovan (Nov 3, 2009)

JungyesMBTIno said:


> Like, to Jung, the real reason a person could claim a type is because they are trying to avoid something else - it's just a characteristic (more-or-less, no one was a pure type to Jung to begin with) ego defense mechanism.


this is something that i've been thinking about. it really makes types seem as if they're just fleeting spurts of growth/"humanistic development"; something that waxes and wanes as it needs to, and that a pure type may not actually be a good thing--i think Jung says something similar to (and it makes complete sense) "the greater the person, the more terrible the shadow". 

i don't know though... looking at it that way, it seems more like responses we're programmed/inclined to have that help us to survive, like a complex avenue of evolution more than anything spiritual--or anything that you were "born into", or a "truer self", or even something that is potentially stable enough to even be recognizable ten years from now; but of course i guess that part would be beneath all of the above, right?


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## Old Intern (Nov 20, 2012)

For there to be a corollary found and described, for persons of cognitive function F preference in one gender, vs findings (response to questions) in the other gender of the same function preference (according to how all participating individuals chose to identify, categorize and respond) is all a waste of time?

*@JungyesMBTIno* maybe I've not fully understood the above longer post, but I did read it, and it still seems like a gap in communication with thread readers more than about the study? The example that jumps out about the purposes of the study, as I understand it: nobody gives any whoopie-do about what adventurous *really* means. It's not relevant. The study by itself, might not be conclusive, but it has nothing to do with any comparison regarding thinking preference either.

Cognitive preferences have nothing to do with how a person perceives themselves? I agree, or understand about being Ne, and not considering what that really means in the sense that I don't live inside someone else's way of being (in the sense that I didn't have words for the difference, or any deep understanding about it). However, even the most introverted introvert doesn't live in a vacuum, and even the most extroverted extrovert notices what works or doesn't work in life and makes choices that form experiences and sense of self (with some level of reflection even if uncomplicated). 

Wouldn't it be more valuable to see the study in terms of what could have been chosen, or not, in response to questions in the study?
Was everyone told to choose a specific number of options? What were all the options that could be chosen from? What about exactly where participants came from? Age? Commonalities in the whole group? Diversity in the group? etc. Could "thinkers" serve as a control group, or would inferior functioned feeling be better?


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## Inveniet (Aug 21, 2009)

I'm wondering more and more if I should just drop the label ISFP and just use the Fi label.
I think MBTI has outplayed it's purpose in my development.
Off with the training wheels. :kitteh:


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

celticstained said:


> this is something that i've been thinking about. it really makes types seem as if they're just fleeting spurts of growth/"humanistic development"; something that waxes and wanes as it needs to, and that a pure type may not actually be a good thing--i think Jung says something similar to (and it makes complete sense) "the greater the person, the more terrible the shadow".
> 
> i don't know though... looking at it that way, it seems more like responses we're programmed/inclined to have that help us to survive, like a complex avenue of evolution more than anything spiritual--or anything that you were "born into", or a "truer self", or even something that is potentially stable enough to even be recognizable ten years from now; but of course i guess that part would be beneath all of the above, right?


He seemed to think an extreme type meant a pretty black shadow. I mean, he acknowledged that you can get some very ordinary and lazy people who obviously have some messed up shadows (then again, he might have been referring to inferiority complexes)...If you can verify the claim, that would be great, I'm just not really sure how to take that or what is meant by this (my guess is he was just referring to an egotistical person-in-charge's self-perception of the forces against them, but I'm not sure). I do agree that it makes sense. His ideas were highly influenced by evolutionary thought (e.g. adaptations in the struggle to survive and keep going on your own path).

On a random side note, I love how Jung considers ideas like "telepathy" meaningless. I totally agree, I always thought that kind of stuff was a bunch of nonsense that says nothing about anything. Testing it is impossible.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

JungyesMBTIno said:


> On a random side note, I love how Jung considers ideas like "telepathy" meaningless. I totally agree, I always thought that kind of stuff was a bunch of nonsense that says nothing about anything. Testing it is impossible.


As usual, your knowledge of Jung is highly impressive.

Well, actually... In On Synchronicity (1951), Jung noted that J.B. Rhine, in a series of experiments involving cards and dice, had established that a person as far as 4,000 miles away could correctly guess which card the experimenter had chosen with a frequency that, as far as Jung was concerned, made it pretty darn clear that ESP existed. As Jung explained, "the Rhine experiments have demonstrated that space and time, and hence causality, are factors that can be eliminated, with the result that acausal phenomena, otherwise caused miracles, appear possible."


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## Donovan (Nov 3, 2009)

if it interests anyone--in regards to ESP and the like--look into edgar cayce (there may still be a history channel special on him). 

he would go into trances and read minds, predict horse races, read someone's prescription in their medicine cabinet hundreds of miles away, etc. the trance itself was described as if one's mind were to spiral to a place that contained every thought and action of mankind, as well as geographic changes/etc. what's interesting though, is that in other cultures certain items were said to hold the same information as this other place, but depending on the time-line of that specific culture the item would be a scroll, or chiseled into stone, etc. it's called the akashic records... or something similar. 

it's just interesting to think about the potential capabilities of the human mind, and what these cultures and cayce himself described as possibly, symbolically relating to the collective unconscious...?


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## Teybo (Sep 25, 2012)

So, as I see it, there could be two or three "camps" on this issue: One camp that leans toward this effect of gender on perception of Feeling/Thinking traits being reflective of social constructions and expectations regarding men as "thinkers" and women as "feelers", a second camp that leans toward this effect reflecting a problematic definition of Thinking and Feeling in the first place, and possibly a third minority camp that says that type has nothing to do with self-perception let alone perception by third parties. Of course, these camps are not mutually exclusive.

It seems undeniable to me that one's psychological preferences will have an effect on one's self perception, so I don't fall into that third camp. But I think I have one foot in the first camp and one foot in the second camp.


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## daringcherry (Apr 23, 2013)

Teybo said:


> Male Feelers tend to describe themselves as: curious, having wide interests, humorous, unselfish, despondent, artistic, original, enjoying aesthetic impressions, tending towards rebelliousness, and having insight into motive and character.
> 
> Female Feelers tend to describe themselves as: sympathetic, soft-hearted, forgiving, trusting, affectionate, pleasant, having warmth, capable of close relationships, tending to arouse acceptance in people, and personally charming.


Male words: 6 out of 10
Female words: 6 out of 10

Neither of the sets of words describes me perfectly. Ten words I would choose for myself right now are:
artistic, intelligent, rebellious, approval-seeking, caring, volatile, curious, wide interests, well-mannered, dreamy.

But oh well, I'm a feminist. I believe the differences can be explained completely culturally.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Teybo said:


> So, as I see it, there could be two or three "camps" on this issue: One camp that leans toward this effect of gender on perception of Feeling/Thinking traits being reflective of social constructions and expectations regarding men as "thinkers" and women as "feelers", a second camp that leans toward this effect reflecting a problematic definition of Thinking and Feeling in the first place, and possibly a third minority camp that says that type has nothing to do with self-perception let alone perception by third parties. Of course, these camps are not mutually exclusive.
> 
> It seems undeniable to me that one's psychological preferences will have an effect on one's self perception, so I don't fall into that third camp. But I think I have one foot in the first camp and one foot in the second camp.


My view on this is that there's a discrepancy between how Jung used the word thinker and feeler and how people understand these terms commonly, given the cultural bias where femininity is seen as emotional and caring and thus diametrically opposed masculinity so men are uncaring and unemotional. There's also the bias where if one is emotional, one cannot be rational. 

So in a sense, yes, type is unrelated to gender and sex and while I do think Jung mentioned that women are more likely dominant Fe types, one ought to wonder if that's just Jung projecting his anima complex onto women. If we go by the logic that we are all thinkers and feelers since we all exhibit the four functions, then the claim that women are feelers and men are thinkers is quite useless even if we look at it from a dominant perspective, since function use isn't necessarily related to dominant preference in such a sense. Mature and developed individuals can for instance express themselves more through their shadow than their dominant. 

I also think there's an even distribution between dominant thinking and feeling among men and women because I rationally cannot see why this would not be and because I have not observed a tendency which would suggest otherwise. 

So I think the real problem is that people think feeling = irrationality and thinking = rationality, and since gender posits that men are more rational as a whole than women one could perhaps argue that Jung would see this as a typical example of complexes being projected from the collective unconsciousness. 

So I think perception and understanding oneself as feeling or thinking and emotional or unemotional has part to do with gender, part social upbringing, part personality in a general sense (e.g. enneagram for instance) and then perhaps part cognition in that we can over-identify with our shadow for instance, which ties back to our gender identities. I have for instance noted that many IxFJs who see themselves as intellectual tend to think of themselves as INTPs.


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## Pelopra (May 21, 2013)

Green -- yes
Red -- no
Yellow- ambivalent/it depends/unsure/might be my insecurities talking/etc



Teybo said:


> For the ACL-a results:
> Male Fs: Curious, interests wide, humorous, unselfish.
> Female Fs: Sympathetic, soft-hearted, forgiving.
> 
> ...


[/QUOTE]



reckful said:


> For the ACL-a results:
> Male Ts: Alert, logical, assertive.
> Female Ts: Defensive, hurried.
> 
> ...


what the heck is up with how out of the ballpark negative the T descriptions are? "intolerant, suspicious, hostile"???


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