PHQ | QUESTIONS: "Perspectives" Used By INFJ vs INTJ

12 comments

• 

  • Josh
  • January 7, 2016 at 5:20 pm

  Hi Fahad – a couple observations about your comment.

  1) You’re trying to explain to a typology expert — whose own resources you said were very helpful — that he doesn’t know his own type. If you were correct, that would mean Joel’s knowledge of typology is rather pitiful — and would also mean you lack sufficient knowledge of typology, since you found his material to be “effective.” (Point being, the entire statement seems self-contradictory.)

  2) Even if we didn’t already know Joel’s type, and were trying to deduce it from his commentary in the podcast, it’s pretty clear that he’s a Feeler simply based on his expressiveness. Antonia (a Thinker) is expressive to a certain degree, but it’s not so much emotional as it is purely energetic (because she’s an Extravert). Antonia isn’t attempting to convey any emotions, whereas Joel clearly is. The reason that’s relevant is because an INTJ will not attempt to directly affect people’s emotions, because they want people to understand things rationally (not emotionally). INTJs filter out emotional content when delivering information, because it’s viewed as being irrelevant. The fact that Joel uses emotion in his delivery gives a high degree of certainty that he’s a Feeler. So even if he weren’t an ENFP, he couldn’t be an INTJ.

  I’m an INTJ, I have an ENFP dad, and I know at least one other male ENFP and a few female ENFPs. I can attest to the similarities in thought process between all of them — namely, that their observation is based on patterns in the outside world, not in their ability to see from multiple perspectives. Ne has to do with observing patterns in — for example — people’s actions, as opposed to recognizing the patterns in their thought processes that led to said actions (a.k.a. Ni).

  If Joel were speaking from an Ni point of view, he would primarily be analyzing how a persons’ cognitive functions affect their own thoughts and motivations (from the inside), not primarily how it affects their behavior in an observable fashion. While both Ne and Ni can speak to either point (assuming sufficient knowledge of cognitive functions), Ne primarily observes actions, whereas Ni primarily observes that which can’t be observed from the outside (namely, thought processes). If you listen to more than one of the Personality Hacker podcasts, hopefully you’ll start to see the Ne more clearly.

  Also, keep in mind that Te is a Judging (not a Perceiving) process. When Joel is discussing how Ni is affected by either Te or Fe, his is making observations (not value statements). He is explaining “how it is,” not “how it ought to be.” I believe you were mistaking Ne (which deals with observable patterns) with Te (which deals with making systems work the best way possible).

  3) I also know at least one male and one female INFP. I also know an ENFJ with the symptoms I’m about to describe. If you’re familiar with cognitive functions, then you should realize that people who lead with a Judging function (such as Fe in ENFJ, or Fi in INFP) need to temper their drive to reach conclusions by first gathering more information, and/or testing the information they already have. You used Ne to a small degree when listening to Joel — but then swiftly jumped to a conclusion with Fi before gathering more information to find out whether your observations were actually valid.

  In certain contexts, your ability to reach conclusions based on limited information is very useful. But when it comes to determining someone else’s type, you need to take more care in jumping to conclusions. In this case, it doesn’t matter at all since Joel already know his type. But if you make a habit of “speed-typing” people, you’re lvery likely to mistype them (as you did with Joel), which can confuse people who don’t know their own type. This may turn them off from looking into it further, because you’re essentially claiming to speak as an authority on the subject — and if the apparent spokesperson is unreliable, then it can give the impression that the entire arena of typology — or at least typology based on MBTI — is bunk (as many people have concluded for similar reasons).

  I applaud you for wanting to apply what you’ve learned, but — as Treebeard in LOTR said — “Don’t be hasty.”

  P(arting).S(hot). This was written to you by an INTJ. As a Feeler, consider whether it was a more or less pleasant experience than having a Feeler (such as Joel) explain typology? That should be one more clue to his type (ENFP).

• 

  • Fahad
  • December 30, 2015 at 6:58 pm

  Hi everyone,
  I love your website, i really find it effective and the material you’re posting is really helping. All of it in a good environment that you created.
  So Thanks for that.

  A side note anyway, I think that (even almost sure :D) Joel Mark is an INTJ, not an ENFP.
  based on his way of talking it’s clear that he’s not using the extroverted intuition. I mean if you look carefully he’s using a practical extroverted thinking, straight forward to the point which is a trait of both Ni and Te. That’s just the tangible objective part of the argument i’m making.
  There’s also a subjective thing in my mind (maybe it’s the Fi of my INFP :D) that says ‘this is absolutely an INTJ’, So trust the INFP please :D

  I’m really ashamed of posting this while it’s very irrelevant to the topic being discussed, but anyway I felt I have to say it anyway.

  And please correct me if I’m wrong, since it will help my typing mechanisms in the future.

  Thanks a lot,
  Fahad

• 

  • Alyssa
  • November 25, 2015 at 6:37 am

  I just want to thank both personality hacker for this podcast and commenter Kenneth for his take on how an “S” would view Ni. My husband is, we think, INFJ while I am fairly confident I am INTJ. This podcast reaffirmed some conclusions I had come to about the differences I see between myself and my hubby and explained them in a more thorough fashion than I had yet been able to do myself (I’m pretty new to cognitive function study).

  I grew up around Ni’s so the idea of abstract ideas being “woowoo” is foreign to me. The sensing personality type that,as Kenneth mentioned, wants to manage the cashiers every task but won’t see that his business is failing, is harder for me to understand. What he explained was that, whether supported by more concrete data supplied by math and science, or lacking that support in subjects of personal feelings or, as Antonia mentioned in her reply, astrology, the conjectures made by intuitives will all be “woowoo” to an “S” type. This is immensely helpful to note as an INTJ since I feel like “hey! I have data here so of course everyone will think that my thought process makes sense!” when really it doesnt.

  However since the podcast was comparing INFJ to INTJ and not S’s to N’s, I certainly think Antonia’s use of “woo woo” was appropriate since most T’s will ABSOLUTLY think soft sciences or reading people’s feelings are more “woo woo” than the hard sciences.

  And I can’t really think of a better term for a conversational type setting than “woo woo” either. :)
• 

  • Antonia Dodge
  • November 3, 2015 at 11:04 am

  I still think we agree pretty much on everything. And you’ve got a point about the podcast being more free-flowing. While still seeing word choice as important when speaking as opposed to writing, I’m definitely more casual in my speech (probably because I’m Ne’ing and to some extent thinking as I go), whereas my articles and posts show more in-the-moment Ti and a far less cavalier spirit with individual word choice. Though I do think to some extent the very word “woo-woo” is tripping you up to the point where the purpose of that sentence is being lost. I tried to once again reiterate that the word choice was intended to be representative of a possible macro-opinion, not reflecting my own.

  Sorry I used the word “woo-woo.” Every time I do I seem to get frustrated feedback, but I’ll be damned if I can’t think of a better word for how other people seem to see iNtuition (and, yes, sometimes in particular Ni). So I’m probably going to keep using it and just taking the hit. :P

  A

  p.s. You being taking seriously and the INTP being discredited is probably an entire conversation in and of itself. I wouldn’t assume it’s entirely because of Ne vs Ni, though that’s probably a node in the system.

• 

  • Kenneth
  • November 3, 2015 at 8:51 am

  This is the insider definition. But, from an S’s point of view, its all “woo woo”. As a ENTP you can point to Astrology and say, “woo woo” but when an S looks at an ENTP, who says, “when you come right down to it, I don’t know what money is, no definition explains all of what money does, without a long list of exceptions.” (Ti) All an S hears is “woo woo”.

  I spent a couple of years working closely with an INTP. From my point of view, his experience, knowledge, and competence were equal, but different, to my own. From the point of view of our Artisan and Guardian co-workers, he was not to be taken seriously, and I was an expert. It was because people could his learning process at work, and experts aren’t understood as people who learn, they already know. People couldn’t see my learning process, I’m Ni. We could say the same thing, he wasn’t taken seriously, I was. His verbalizing the Exploration process undermined him at work. I verbalized the Effectiveness process. Since I was on the same side of the N-S communication barrier, I could look at the INTP and say, I do the same thing, only in my head. There is nothing wrong with the intuitive learning style, but when S’s see it, you may as well tell them your business decisions came out of the astrology pages.

  We all want to be taken seriously for our gifts, for our perspective. Who gets disregarded because their thinking is not considered serious (or is considered too serious, our words for that are “cruel” and “ruthless”) depends not only on the thinker, but the observer.

  On the point that INTJ’s spend more time on the concrete, I’ll remind you of something you said earlier: “There’s only so much think tanking the world wants done, and the overwhelming majority of INTJs are just looking for a job that doesn’t make them want to stab their eyes out.” Oct 14, 2014. If there are INTJ’s testing as S’s, in addition to the problems of testing, I’d point to the fact that most of us are forced to do a lot of S work. Very few of us are asked to solve world hunger, revive the American auto industry, or devise a solution to the Social Security financing problem. When we do, that’s when we’ll look the most “woo woo”. An INTJ’s master plan to change everything to a more effective equilibrium will involve so many new assumptions for participants, and so many untested assumptions about how the world works, that to a lot of people, its effectively astrology for public policy.

  My objection isn’t with the podcast as a whole, but the way terms are used, “woo woo”, what gets called abstract, and some others seem much too casual to be useful. Some of this is the inevitable nature of your conversational format. Benefits from the engaging style mean losses elsewhere: the rigor in the expression of ideas. Some may be the openness to newcomers to type, some of whom will be turned off by what sounds like a graduate seminar in comparative Jungian psychology.

  There is a great cartoon on the INFJ doodles tumbler, where the artists INTJ friend says to her, I need to translate what you say into terms I can measure, analyze, and take action on. So perhaps I am just expressing frustration with the fact that I have to translate what you say into things I can measure, analyze, and take action on.