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In this episode, Joel and Antonia talk about which Myers-Briggs cognitive function is more selfish “Harmony” (Extraverted Feeling) or “Authenticity” (Introverted Feeling).
In this podcast you’ll find:
- Joel defines selfishness as taking more than you should.
- Antonia defines selfishness as making sure you get yours first.
- Extraverted Feeling “Harmony” Fe – All FJs and TPs
- Introverted Feeling “Authenticity” Fi – All FPs and TJs
- Fi is selfish for the individual.
- Fe is selfish for the collective.
- Fe may define selfishness as individuating away from the collective.
- Fi thinks it’s selfish to make everyone assimilate.
- Fe finds it rewarding when someone gets their needs met.
- Fe also takes a hit if someone isn’t getting their needs met.
- Fe uses other people’s emotions to calibrate if everyone’s needs have been met sufficiently.
- To a Fe user, Fi does feel selfish because they are taking more energetic resource than they are allowed.
- Why is it okay to sacrifice inner turmoil over group turmoil?
- Fe allows everybody to have a bad day as long as everyone agrees that they take turns.
- Fi sometimes forgets that other people have struggles too and need a turn in the bitch fest.
- Fi sometimes wants everybody else to focus on their problems and solve them.
- Fe can be a sickly sweet commandant who condescends to others and forces them to do things their way.
- Fi can’t understand why anyone would suppress who they are for the group’s benefit.
- Fe sacrifices themselves every day for the group’s benefit.
- Fe creates a system where everybody gets their time/day to be special. And the rest of us acknowledge when it is our day and when it is not.
- Fi doesn’t understand why they need to assimilate for the benefit of everyone.
- We all have to take the hit on occasion.
- Fe does more emotional labor than the other types, so they notice when things are imbalanced.
- Sometimes we project selfishness on to people who have permitted themselves to do what we haven’t. So, it’s a sort of envy.
- Fe: “I wish I had permission to take for myself.”
- Fe can learn from Fi that they need to acknowledge their needs freely.
- Individuals matter, and they need to acknowledge their needs eventually.
- Fe users can become passive-aggressive, angry, and resentful against the people around them who seem to take, take, take.
- What Fe fails to realize is they are the ones who created the situation.
- It becomes a false virtue for Fe users to sacrifice to others while hiding feelings of anger and resentment.
- Resentment’s root is in envy.
- Fe hates feeling negative emotions about others, so instead of stacking resentment maybe they can learn from the actions of the Fi user.
- “They’re giving themselves permission to have those feelings and be disruptive, and I need to give myself the permission to do the same thing on occasion.”
- Less mature Fe wants us all to buy into the same reality.
- Fe teaches us that even if we can’t find compassion for ourselves, we can still be compassionate to others.
- Fi can feel emotionally cavalier to Fe because Fi assumes everybody can deal with their emotional experience.
- Fe is more gentle with people’s emotions, but they tend to overdo the nurturing and over-protecting.
- Over-protecting is selfish of Fe because they are protecting themselves from having to see someone else in pain.
- Our egos are the manifestation of selfishness.
- So, our way is always going to appear better to us than someone else’s way.
- Selfishness is not the product of a cognitive function.
- Selfishness is the product of the individual.
- All of us are selfish.
- We have thrived as a species because we are selfish and have a will to live and dominate.
- We accuse each other of selfishness but rarely admit it to ourselves.
- Fe has its finger on the pulse of how serving the group helps serve self.
- The more seasoned Fe gets, the more it will bring in Ti and need less input from others.
- It’s common for younger Fe users to conflate harmony with agreement.
- When Fe is caught up in something symbiotic, it wants to share it.
- Fi has to get good at knowing the sweet spot.
- “Most of me is on board, so it’s good.”
- Fe assumes everyone is going to be on board.
- Fe feels good when everybody is experiencing the same emotion.
- Fi wants to make sure it won’t regret doing something that runs contrary to its values.
- Project positive intent on others.
- Fi can learn from Fe and vice versa.
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50 comments
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this podcast in particular, as well as reading the comments. As an ISFP Fi-dominant user surrounded by Fe-dominant users, I think I could write a book, if I were so inclined. I’m aware that there is some disagreement concerning the definitions of the terms selfish and self-centered. For years, I have considered myself to be somewhat self-centered because I spend large amounts of time thinking about myself, my life, my circumstances, my feelings, my motivations, my struggles, etc., etc…
However, I don’t generally consider myself to be selfish because I am usually willing to put someone else’s needs and desires before my own, once I become aware of them.
I care a lot about what others think of me (or more so how they FEEL about me), and I HATE conflict. This sounds to me like harmony, but the truth is that, as much as I care about pleasing other people and having them like me, I care WAY more about liking myself and being true to my beliefs. Besides, if I don’t even like myself, how can I effectively love someone else?
As I said before, I care a lot about how other people feel. Yes, I spend a lot of time thinking about my own feelings, but it’s not wholly selfish because I use the things I discover about myself to inform me concerning the thoughts and feelings of others, so that I can show more understanding toward them.
As has already been said, selfishness is not a trait belonging to a cognitive function. I have seen some Fe users be very thoughtful and generous, while others were extremely selfish. The same is true of Fi users.
Again, thanks for a great podcast, and keep up the good work!
I agree with you on this. I think the one thing that bothered me in the episode is that only Fe is interested in getting people’s needs met, when in reality, both do, just in different ways.
I would also add this to your positive interpretations of how each function solves social problems(I apologize that this is long). Often times the systems we have designed to get everyone’s needs met, have worked as intended when they were designed, but as times and the people in the system change, the system no longer achieves its goals. The importance of respecting the system from Fe is valuable, but it’s also necessary for Fi to exist to look at when the system isn’t working and challenge the norm. Using the pizza model, its rare that the number of slices matches up to the number of people, and in my experience, the compromises Fe ends up proposing ends up being that one person should go hungry so that everyone who is used to getting a full slice doesn’t have to give up anything. I’m not saying that Fe isn’t willing to change the system for the better, but there is more of a reluctance to in it’s less mature forms. When all parties agree that change is needed, you need both Fe and Fi as well to make that change. A lot of the civil rights activists(Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, more recently Kapaernick) are all using Fi to make a change, but there is also a place for people who “play the game” and change the system from the inside(Booker T Washington, Joe Louis)
I want to share a quick story that just happened this past weekend and is still working its way out, in an attempt to show how Fe and Fi can manifest themselves in particular situations. I’m an INFP and my wife is an ESFJ; I lead with Fi, she leads with Fe.
We had a young lady (just turned 18) living with us for the past month, as she attended a nearby school. She was a friend of my eldest daughter from last year while she attended a different school, and her family is about 2 hours away. This past week, there were some things that happened and our guest was not honest about what happened (she had left a conference she was supposed to be attending because she was “sick” and was going to come back to the house; instead she didn’t return until the next morning). We had a long heart-to-heart discussion with her and found out that there was some abuse in her past that has led to the symptoms we’d seen and culminating with this weekend. We had known about 1 small issue, but apparently there was more and she needs more complete healing. Primarily because of the dishonesty, we decided that she couldn’t stay with us any longer.
This was such a hard decision for me.
My Fi just wants to care for her and help her through the healing that she needs. My head at least understands the issues and can agree that she can’t stay (because of the lying and because of the impacts to my family of her issues), but my heart doesn’t want her to feel rejected. I really feel torn to pieces about it but I know that we made the right decision. In this case, from the outside, my willingness to continue with her would seem more selfless because of willing to give up my own comfort and peace for this girl, but internally I am recognizing that part of it is just that I don’t want to experience the cognitive dissonance of making a decision that is completely against my Fi. The whole decision feels so alien and exterior to me and I don’t like it.
For my wife, her Fe was much more able to see the impacts that continuing to host this girl would have on our own daughters, as well as on her ability to be at peace and sleep well at night, so the decision for her was much easier. But my wife is normally the one that sacrifices herself day in and day out for those around her. In this case, she is seeing the needs of the group and is minimizing the impacts on the group by making the decision to let our guest go. At the same time, she has so much love and compassion for this girl and she does communicates it well. From the outside, and maybe from the perspective of the girl in question, she could appear selfish, but I know that that is not where this decision is coming from.
For me, going through this was such a clear example of the differences in Fi and Fe and how they show up differently depending on the circumstances.
In the end, we are working with her parents to help find another place for her to stay and to find a good person to provide counseling, because we genuinely love her and want the best for her. Unfortunately, she currently feels rejected and I hope and pray that this changes. Ideally, she’ll come back to use in 6 months and thank us for the hard decision.
I hope someone is able to get something useful out of this…
I’ve always thought of Fi as self important. This has always annoyed me. This podcast has shown me that it’s not always bad thing :)
Fi dominant ISFP speaking… I absolutely and positively 100% agree with you regarding quality versus quantity of time invested in other people. Truthfully, I MUST invest large amounts of time in myself in order to invest meaningful time in others.