# Determining MBTI by Typing Cognitive Functions



## GENIUSandVIOLENCE (Oct 6, 2012)

I've been trying to type individuals around me by looking at what cognitive functions are being expressed, and then trying to see what MBTI they match up with. So far I've been trying to look for dominant cognitive functions in people, and I think I've posted occasionally on certain functions. I've also read around a little bit.

One thing that puts me at a loss is when people tell me to not stereotype. But how else do I figure out what cognitive function it is? So if someone appreciates aesthetics, is very observant, etc. they're not Se because that's stereotyping. If someone has very strong moral/emotional/ethical bases which they make decisions from, without much tendency for filtering with logical and rational deduction, then it's not Fi because that's stereotyping.

It may be that I have my cognitive functions all wrong, that I don't understand them properly and my stereotyping is incorrect too. So how can one learn to type people to a reasonable amount of accuracy based on how those people express and act?


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## caffeine_buff (Feb 20, 2011)

GENIUSandVIOLENCE said:


> One thing that puts me at a loss is when people tell me to not stereotype. But how else do I figure out what cognitive function it is?


yes, patterns of behaviour are good cues for figuring out what functions a person is using, but maybe keeping some more stuff in mind could help pattern without stereotyping? for example, say you're talking to an ESFJ: 

stereotype - 'you're all about popularity for the moment because you're Fe dom' 
pattern - 'you tend to value people and communities'

a pattern is neutral and open-ended. a stereotype associates outcome or effect with a pattern and makes a subjective call on whether that outcome/effect is healthy, valuable, 'good' and so on.

a stereotype doesn't account for a person's choice and individuality. people are 'real' - their functional set may not really map exactly to 'this one thing is the dominant function, so you're good at that. that also means you suck at this which is driven by the inferior function'. people have life experiences that colour them and accordingly they develop in different ways. so while something may be associated with an inferior function, don't assume the person is automatically self-unaware and has done nothing about it. people are in stasis only in stereotypes.

that help?


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## Jewl (Feb 28, 2012)

GENIUSandVIOLENCE said:


> I've been trying to type individuals around me by looking at what cognitive functions are being expressed, and then trying to see what MBTI they match up with. So far I've been trying to look for dominant cognitive functions in people, and I think I've posted occasionally on certain functions. I've also read around a little bit.
> 
> One thing that puts me at a loss is when people tell me to not stereotype. But how else do I figure out what cognitive function it is? So if someone appreciates aesthetics, is very observant, etc. they're not Se because that's stereotyping. If someone has very strong moral/emotional/ethical bases which they make decisions from, without much tendency for filtering with logical and rational deduction, then it's not Fi because that's stereotyping.
> 
> It may be that I have my cognitive functions all wrong, that I don't understand them properly and my stereotyping is incorrect too. So how can one learn to type people to a reasonable amount of accuracy based on how those people express and act?


That's not so much a typing-by-stereotype problem, but a typing-by-behavior problem. It doesn't make a person a Se-dom if they appreciate aesthetics and happen to be observant. The question to ask is _how _that person appreciates aesthetics, _how _they are observant. Because cognitive functions are all about how we experience, how we think. Not _what _we think. 

For example, anybody can appreciate aesthetics for any number of reasons. But it's how they're experiencing beauty that matters. If a person focuses clearly on what is in an objective manner, then you can fairly safely conclude that they are using Se. If a person focuses clearly on what is meaningful, you can fairly safely conclude they're using some sort of Feeling. 

Anybody can use logical deduction and like it and use that to help determine ethics, even Feelers. How is what matters.


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

I also think it can be something of a dangerous game trying to type people accurately without really knowing them. Some people have really obvious dominant functions. Sometimes you can pretty much tell if a person is Te, Ne, Se, Ti, Ni, Si, etc. But to give them an MBTI type off the cuff is probably tougher (the instrument itself is only so-so). One it relies on the dichotomies and infers the functions, so you might be able to figure out I-E, N vs S, T vs F, J vs P, if you've been around a person long enough, but that doesn't mean you've nailed their type. You might say "this person seems I-N-T-J" but that doesn't necessarily mean the person is truly a Ni-dom, just that's where they seem to fall. You see this all of time with people typed as INFP who when you begin to talk to them, you realize clearly are not Introverted Feeling types, and some of them are extraverts! Similarly a lot of people typed INFJ are not actually Ni-doms. 

MBTI has a more-or-less self-chosen best-fit process that is the next level beyond the test where the person sort of goes over a number of profiles and sees which seems most like them. Obviously if you are just typing someone off the top of your head you can't do this, you would projecting your own interpretation of the types onto someone. 

I've personally found trying to force someone into an MBTI type to be somewhat fruitless anyway. If I can look at someone and clearly tell they're a Te-dom or Ne-dom or whatever that pretty much tells me all I need to know. I can generally tell someone who is, for example, a Ne-dom who prefers feeling, I don't necessarily need to know Ne-Fi-Te-Si ENFP with that detail because they may not necessarily conform to all that in every situation. But as a general rule you can say "well so-and-so is probably a Ne+Feeling type," and really what more do you need to know? You already can guess their inferior function by default.


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## Nitou (Feb 3, 2010)

Looking for a dominant function is one way to type someone, but not necessarily the best way. People wear different sides of their personalities in different situations. I recognize functions best by "feel." Ti is my dominant trait, so I can recognize another TP type most easily. There is a particular sense of camaraderie. Sometimes the Fe is more apparent at first because that is the extroverted side of Ti. 

I can spot Te, especially dominant position. But again it's by feel; Te-dom presents itself to the world in a characteristic manner. Someone taking charge doesn't necessarily mean they're Te-dom, but the Te-dom is imbued with an attitude of taking charge.


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

I'm so on board with @LiquidLight here. I have no idea why MBTI thinks this stuff is like neuroscience where you have to have every technical point mentally "in place" before making any guesses. It's not really a hardcore act of mental functioning to type people to begin with (if you're making it too hardcore, you're probably trying to make the other person conform with your projections and ideals too much rather than just using it properly as a heuristic rule of thumb). I mean, honestly, who really cares what type another person is to that extent - it can't be that important that you need to force them into a box, let alone, yourself. In a basic sense, a lot of this stuff is fairly self-evident really if you want to type yourself on a purely superficial level rather than for psychological reasons. I don't see the point of assigning a type to someone, unless it confirms some important and obvious enough characteristics of them to begin with. Then, it's a purely fruitless exercise in just trying to theoretically force an impression of someone into your own ideas of their motives and character, trying to predict the consequences of these ideas, all for no purpose other than to see if you understand the theory, which is going about it backwards. You're just creating a fantasy. The MBTI type sort of becomes the superstitious answer to nothing, especially, like Liquid said, when you already have an obvious enough idea of what type you're dealing with (from the Jungian standpoint) to begin with. They way you want to look at a person's type is another matter of it's own, but one that MBTI is not well-equipped to deal with either. The extent to which I think type is important at all would come from reasoning tendencies people have due to it. I don't honestly care to get super personal with it, because that's where it gets ambiguous and most likely irrelevant - no one is trying to "be" a type (unless you're using this stuff as persona, which it isn't) - it's just a kind of mental organization of priorities that people have regarding thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. No one can help being their type (to the extent to which they are one at all anyhow). I think people just end up wasting their energy of trying to concretize it, because no matter what, there's nothing you can do about having a type but live and let live with the idea. You as a person are not a type. The functions themselves are largely trivial theoretical constructs for phenomena observed by Carl Jung - people take them too far and assign meaning to them where there is none - change the names of the functions and the theoretical basis of having a psychological profile will still be feasible anyway.


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

Taking charge is more of an Fi thing, I think (the motivation would come from Fi anyway, not Te, which is just raw mental processing in line with concepts). It takes an independent streak to just get up and take the "right route" without consideration for the group's views (more of an Fe thing). Not that Fe types can't, depending on how we define "taking charge," but being imbued with a "take charge" attitude would probably be coming from some kind of feeling vibes a person is giving off - you can certainly get Te doms who don't really have this attitude as well - I don't know how one can really read any personal vibes into someone's thinking processes to begin with, that would be weird, lol (like telepathy) - it's often the "freedom from all traditional values" mentality of Fi that might give someone this kind of vibe that they're not being pulled along by others (Jung mentions the quoted).


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## bearotter (Aug 10, 2012)

GeniusandViolence said:


> One thing that puts me at a loss is when people tell me to not stereotype. But how else do I figure out what cognitive function it is?




Well those give you hunches, and then you analyze how well they actually conform to the functions by further observation and analysis! And beware that you should be willing, in your analysis, to mark a lot of things as "I don't know," particularly if you don't know the person inside out. 

It was hard enough for me to find my own type, so I imagine it's pretty tough to type someone else where it's at all subtle. 

Gathering vibes from what someone tends towards is fine. Just have to confirm it further.


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## Eric B (Jun 18, 2010)

JungyesMBTIno said:


> Taking charge is more of an Fi thing, I think (the motivation would come from Fi anyway, not Te, which is just raw mental processing in line with concepts). It takes an independent streak to just get up and take the "right route" without consideration for the group's views (more of an Fe thing). Not that Fe types can't, depending on how we define "taking charge," but being imbued with a "take charge" attitude would probably be coming from some kind of feeling vibes a person is giving off - you can certainly get Te doms who don't really have this attitude as well - I don't know how one can really read any personal vibes into someone's thinking processes to begin with, that would be weird, lol (like telepathy) - it's often the "freedom from all traditional values" mentality of Fi that might give someone this kind of vibe that they're not being pulled along by others (Jung mentions the quoted).


 I would say "taking charge" (if connected to a functional preference) is more Te backed by a lesser (tertiary of inferior) Fi. Fi preferrers aren't as much into taking charge, and doms. especially seem to be very slow at it. Fi in preferred positions is often described in terms of a "weighing" that does involve them feeling "pulled" by others' wishes. You want to give everyone their personal freedom and allow them to be who they are, at the same time as trying to maintain your own values, and this can be difficult. 
When unpreferred, this _inter_personal aspect of it drops out, and what's left is the more self-involved stance you're thinking of, that's really supporting the preferred impersonal external judgment. 
Remember; Fi (in a preferred position) is a "P" attitude function. (And this is why I believe Myers' and her J/P _do_ have a lot of merit. Extraverted function is what's important in _external_ actions such as "taking charge").


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

Yea, maybe. Then again, you might get those Fi doms who sort of live out their shadow side anyway, so this might manifest this way. I can agree from experience, especially with Fi doms, that some of these people can be a bit of pushovers with others if repressed to an unacknowledged extent around Te. I agree that socially speaking, I'm not really quick to wait for the the greater unknown of a person's individuality to emerge (I dunno, I think I just tend to intuit that about people - I think intuition can be a bit of a social hinderance, since it kind of causes you to know things about the person that they might not even consider about themselves, so then, I lose motivation to really genuinely get to know them on certain levels anyhow, because I feel like they'll think I'm weird for just kind of knowing them so well), but I'm not at all a strict person with people either (quite the contrary - at least that isn't my intent) - I usually need to gauge a sense of where I stand with people or otherwise, I'll get too insecure. Frankly I'd be lying through my teeth if I said I were a pure Te type anyhow (I think I can straddle the line between Te and Ti - more just thinking in general).


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

I think also, I don't really jump to conclusions about who a person "really is" IRL either, unless it just kind of happens on a hunch (I dunno, I really don't see the point of putting your efforts toward divulging a person from beneath their persona as a conscious aim for my existence anyway).


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