# Difference Between INFJ and INTP



## ascii (May 3, 2012)

Could someone please explain the differences between these two types? I'm looking for a cognitive functions analysis. I haven't seen these two types contrasted before (I guess they're considered pretty different), but I'd really like an explanation of their habits, motivations, etc.

Thanks,
ascii


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## TrailMix (Apr 27, 2011)

For a while, I honestly thought I was an INFJ, but I'm definitely an INTP. For the record, these are just my ideas, and I havent done too much research. This is from my personal experience so here goes:

INFJ leads with Ni, so they're bound to be more "mystical" than your average person, but depending on how an INTP's Ti/Ne works together, they can appear the same way, but an INTP will tend to be more random/sporadic than an INFJ will. 

I feel like Ne and Fe are both VERY extroverted functions, and both can appear extroverted at times, sometimes being loud etc, but the way this excitability will be directed is very different. INFJs get more excited about people, and INTPs get more excited about ideas. For example, and INFJ could be gossiping with an INTP friend about some guy who did something seemingly random. The INFJ will be more concerned and get more excited about how he was feeling and what made him do that and more with the person himself, while the INTP would also be interested in that, but probably be more concerned with theorizing how it came about, what chain of events brought him to that point, and what the next move is going to be.

I've also read somewhere that INFJs tend to be the most rational/logical-minded of the NFs. They use their Ti well on average and tend to think things through very well, analyzing things much like NTs do, but within different contexts. However, I also feel like NTPs in general have good use of their Fe function, and can sometimes even appear as NFs if this is particularly well developed. I for one, have a very well developed Fe, which caused me a lot of trouble in determining my actual type because my Ti, Ne, and Fe are all almost equally well developed.

As far as I have observed, INFJs dont really appear as strong judgers either. They are often disorganized and scatterbrained, but that is just on the surface, I feel like for the most part, with the help of Ni, they develop quite intricate structures in their minds, and find some way to fit everything into that structure of understanding the world. INTPs on the other hand, or at least for me, tend to be somewhat disorganized in this aspect, seeming to have concrete ideas one second, then radically changing them the next when new information comes in...

I dont know how much Im helping, but these are just some of my observations, feel free to critique me haha


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

ascii said:


> Could someone please explain the differences between these two types? I'm looking for a cognitive functions analysis. I haven't seen these two types contrasted before (I guess they're considered pretty different), but I'd really like an explanation of their habits, motivations, etc.
> 
> Thanks,
> ascii


In the most stupidly simplistic way, INFJs are Intuitives. Looking at things from the standpoint of hunches, notions, gut-feelings, reading between the lines, insight, etc. INTPs are dominant Thinkers looking at things from the standpoint of conceptual coherency. 

As @TrailMix pointed out these types are really not much alike, if for no greater reason that INFJs are often heavily Fe-oriented which will be the Achilles' Heel of INTPs. Because INTPs are Thinking types their Feeling ends up being consciously repressed whereas the INFJ uses Feeling as an aid to their more hero Intuition (you can think of it that the INTP 'saves the day' with Thinking and the INFJ 'saves the day' with Intuition). 

The reason for the mistypes is that people often approach Thinking too narrowly or too broadly. Many people who see themselves as intellectuals or identify with NT temperaments conclude that they must be INTPs or similar, but any type can be intellectual (Freud was an Introverted Feeling type according to Marie Von Franz). So we're not necessarily trying to measure smarts because being a Thinking type does not automatically make you smart, or your intelligence applicable. A person who has no education at all can still be a Ti-dom, even if their ideas make no sense practically. That brings me to the second reason is that Ti, being subjective coherency (how you understand a concept not how it is externally defined) can often get mixed up casually with Introverted Intuition. Because Intuition is so difficult to quantify and nebulous a lot of what people think is Thinking is really Intuition. Especially for Ne/Ni-doms what passes for smarts may actually be insight or clairvoyance and often the two are not delineated enough even in casual parlance. You may often hear smart people referred to as insightful, when really they are just well researched, and many insightful people referred to as smart, when really they are just shooting from the hip.


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## Eleventeenth (Aug 24, 2011)

Some obvious commonalities:
1. Both use intuition as their primary method of perceiving the world around them.
2. They both share Ti and Fe as their judging function "pendulum".

Some obvious differences:
1. Ne and Ni usually "manifest" quite differently to observers. As many people on the forums will attest to, Ni often seems/appears more "mysterious" because it largely lies below the surface - that is, it's less "visible" to onlookers. This makes sense because the orientation, or direction, of introverted intuition is "inward". Ne, on the other hand, often manifests itself as more "zany", in your face, even "scattered" at times, because it is making connections in a more external, extroverted way (others can "see it" more easily). My personal opinion is that Ni tends to have deeper insights, while Ne tends to have broader insights. Ni tends to make connections/observations leading _toward _a conclusion/closure, Ne tends to make connections/observations _going away from _a conclusion/closure. As Ni moves toward a conclusion, it is making connections that tie in, and corroborate with, the direction in which it is going. It starts scattered and moves toward and endpoint, making connections along the way. Ne starts at a single point and moves outward into new connections - building from one to the other in a way that seemingly moves away from an endpoint. The Ni'ers can correct me if they don't experience Ni in this way.

So, while they are a bit different in how they actually function for the user, the real observable difference to outsiders will usually be that Ne tends to be more "out loud", while Ni tends to be more "internal". 

2. F > T, vs. T > F (no, this is not a true/false question). Basically, to frame it in a very simplified way, the way I experience this inner push/pull, is almost like two different opinions or "courses of action" in my head, but the voice of Ti is louder, and tends to drown out or override the voice of Fe in many instances. For instance, in a situation that calls for either truth or mercy toward another person: As a youngster, I was much more critical and I favored justice over mercy in just about every situation. Now, I see that the F voice in my head, if you will, has gotten stronger. I used to be more blunt and abrasive with people and I used to favor technical concepts over people and relationships. Now, as I continue to mature, I place more emphasis (and try harder) to not be so blunt/abrasive (when it could hurt or alienate others), and I realize more that relationships should have more importance in my life than concepts, ideas, or even knowledge. The INFJ's I've known (a very good friend, and my father) place more emphasis on relationships. Fe "wins out" more often than Ti, if you will.

3. The whole Pi/Je vs. Ji/Pe thing. A lot of people question this and that's fine. Basically, INFJ's are perceivers first, while INTP's are judgers first. However, it often manifests (or appears) in the opposite way in interactions with others due to the direction/orientation of the first two functions of each type. Much like the Ni of INFJ's, the Ti of INTP's is somewhat "invisible" or "unseen" (compare the outspoken nature of Te with the rather quiet nature of Ti). So, while Ti dominates the psyche of the INTP, people may "see" more Ne than raw Ti. They'll get glimpses of Ti for sure, but the INTP extroverts himself via Ne, which makes him appear "open-ended", nebulous, free-flowing, etc (almost appearing like an ENTP). The INFJ often appears (relative to the INTP) to be very structured and decisive in the outer world (Fe, extroverted judging), but they are in fact dominant perceivers. Their psyche is led by the nebulous, free-flowing nature of intuition.


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## Eleventeenth (Aug 24, 2011)

Also I'd add this regarding the difference between the nature of Ni and Ti:

LiquidLight touched on it a bit already, but Ni is more nebulous/vague, deeply insightful, and about perceptive "hunches", etc. This is not what Ti looks like at all. My insights, hunches, and perceptions come from Ne. Ti is very "clear" to the person using it. It is not vague. You'll sometimes see Ni users say that they experience Ni in the form of "mental images". They also sometimes say that if they are in deep Ni-mode and they get interrupted, that the images are sort of "gone", and it's very hard for them to return to the exact thought process that they were interrupted from. This is not how Ti works. Ti is highly structured in a way that if you were interrupted, you could easily return to your previous thought process. If an Ne observation is interrupted, then yes, that particular stream of thought can easily be short-circuited and impossible to return to (hard to remember where you left off). But, the observations/perceptions of Ne that are fed to Ti...they get incorporated into a "structured Ti network" of knowledge that can then be tapped into at any time. That network is not nebulous or vague, nor does it consist of "imagery".

So, the inner world/outer world ends up roughly looking like this for the two types:

INFJ: nebulous/clear
INTP: clear/nebulous


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## ascii (May 3, 2012)

Thanks for the responses! This thread was mostly made to help me type myself, and I can't say I've gotten any closer to doing so (I'm not very good at typing myself off of just descriptions of functions), but I've definitely learned a lot!

-ascii


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## Jit (Feb 19, 2012)

INTPs are inclined to share many of their half-baked ideas which they are still working on. INFJs, on the other hand, share their opinions about ideas which they already have thought about.

Unlike INFJs, INTPs are more logic driven rather than value driven (i.e. what works best for the people rather than what is plain logical). INFJs therefore appear to be more empathetic.

INTPs are more attached to the objects rather than the people and they are often interested collecting artifacts and old items. INFJs are more attached to the people rather than the objects which they believe to be perishable in nature.

INTPs are easygoing but tough-minded. INFJs are tender hearted but may appear cautious or inflexible.


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## cyamitide (Jul 8, 2010)

ascii said:


> Could someone please explain the differences between these two types? I'm looking for a cognitive functions analysis. I haven't seen these two types contrasted before (I guess they're considered pretty different), but I'd really like an explanation of their habits, motivations, etc.


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## VodkaBear (Mar 5, 2013)

Sorry for the bump, but I thought I might touch on some things. 

Like a lot of people brought up, INFJs are more "mystical" and more interested in people and this Ni-Fe usually works together, where they have people-oriented visions or ideas; to give a personal anecdote: a very INFJ friend (who also tested for it) once said he had a vision that someone in our generation would bring light to the blind(?)
A lot of times Ni-Fe can actually look a lot like Fi, where INFJs will become very protective of people and any offense against those people will be met with a lot of scorn. 

Of course INFJs also have Ti which if it's developed may make someone look like a Ti-dom. However the way to clearly distinguish the two is that while INFJs may have complicated ideas and visions that may work rationally, the _cause _of those ideas is usually not that rational. 

For INTPs, ideas start out as logical assumptions which are then given abstract examples to refute or confirm them (see for instance how Descartes describes his thinking process) while for INFJs ideas originate as either "mystical" or moral beliefs but then are rationalized so they work out (and not in the negative sense of the term "rationalized"). 

One really good example of this is probably Noam Chomsky, who although sounds like a Ti-dom because he often asks whether things logically make sense, he denies a deeper theory behind his ideas for how the world works.


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## platorepublic (Dec 27, 2012)

I'm not sure still and I am not sure that it really matters!  Just be yourself.

I think they are very closely related MBTI's, so be careful distinguishing the two too much!!


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## westlose (Oct 9, 2014)

One knows how to speak to people and to please them, and the other feels completly awkward and inadequate with people. Guess who.


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## Juiz (Dec 31, 2014)

So wait. . . What if I know how to please people and get them to feel connected with me easily. I don't feel awkward at all in doing it, in fact I am quite a pro at it. However, I don't necessarily "care" about ethics and morals and I tend to draw towards impersonal studies and concepts that deal more with complex theory over people (not like straight math and technicalities but stuff that "fits" with everything else). I'm very good with making people feel at ease (if I want to), at times I have been mistaken for an extrovert too, but for the most part I could really care less about value-judgements from others. When I hear about them I may be interested but also annoyed because I have no common level within to compute "feelings" as I've recognized most others are. Is this of a lower Fe, or simply "not as deep or subjective as Fi"? I'm not sensitive until I feel I am "wrong" about how I handled things. If it weren't for the idea that I need people to like and cooperate with me in order for myself to survive harmoniously in this world, I would detach from feelings in general and conceptualize the crap out of everything possible, alone. Does that make sense? . . . Does that make me any more INFJ or INTP, if one can help? Am I just an INTP, or maybe an INFJ 5w4?


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## Jerdle (Dec 30, 2015)

@VenuTauri
Are you sure you're actually an introvert? What you described sounds like tertiary Fe in an ENTP.


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