Cognitive Functions 101
In a previous post we established that understanding your Meyers-Briggs (MBTI) type is really all about understanding your cognitive functions, the next step is to understand what the cognitive functions are, how they work, and how you can leverage them to get where you’re going.
About MBTI
The MBTI (Meyers Briggs Type Indicator) is a personality typology tool developed from the work of Dr. Carl Jung that sorts people into one of 16 personality types based on their preferred cognitive functions.
Many people who poo-poo the MBTI do so on the premise that there can’t simply be 16 types of people in the world and to claim so is naïve. Those people are correct in their statement but incorrect in their assumption that MBTI is striving just to put people into 16 boxes. What MBTI does do is offer a set of metrics that measure and lay out your preferred way of taking in, processing, and making decisions about information.
The MBTI was created by a mother/daughter duo, Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Meyers. They sought a more universal and general application of Jung’s theories and research on cognitive functions.
What they did not seek was a definitive measurement of human personality and if you’ve ever had an MBTI administered by someone certified to do so, you’ll know that you are asked whether you believe the description of the results of the assessment fits you. They will listen to you describe what feels off and help you determine your best fit type, even if it’s not the one you got as a result of taking the assessment. MBTI is an empirical tool for self-understanding; it is not a quantitative and definitive test.
We now know that a certain percentage of our personalities are heritable, while the rest is formed by environment and experience. There may come a day where more definitive means of personality evaluation are discovered, but until then, we have to do a certain amount of the heavy lifting in understanding how we operate.
The Eight Cognitive Functions
In MBTI, the eight cognitive functions are determined by where you fall on four sets of polarities:
· the Introversion/Extroversion polarity
· the Intuition/Sensing polarity
· the Thinking/Feeling polarity
· the Judging/Perceiving polarity
Depending on these placements, you will primarily use four of the following functions:
· Introverted Intuition (Ni)
· Extroverted Intuition (Ne)
· Introverted Sensing (Si)
· Extroverted Sensing (Se)
· Introverted Thinking (Ti—no, not the rapper)
· Extroverted Thinking (Te)
· Introverted Feeling (Fi)
· Extroverted Feeling (Fe)
Everyone has one Intuition, Sensing, Thinking, and Feeling function in their cognitive function stack. So even if you’re an INFP, for example, you still have a Thinking and Sensing function—you just prefer Feeling and Intuition so they fall higher up your stack. The function stack simply refers to the order in which you prefer to use your functions.
The four-letter type names are really just a code that states what functions you use and in what order you use them. I will go into depth on each of these functions in future posts but for now, I just want to give you an overview of how the system works.
Shades of Grey Street (A gratuitous Dave Matthews reference, just because.)
Those mechanics are all pretty straight forward, but here’s where it gets interesting. With every one of the polarities used, there are factors that take the whole shebang from black and white to 50+ shades of grey. The first factor being that all of the functions measured exist on a sliding scale. Whether we’re assessing Thinking versus Feeling, Intuition versus Sensing, Introversion versus Extroversion, or the awkward stepchild of Judging versus Perceiving (more on that in a minute), they all exist on a spectrum.
There is the idea of that some people are ambiverts—someone who is both introverted and extroverted. In attempting to find one’s place on an Introversion/Extroversion sliding polarity scale, a person may be 51% introverted and 49% extroverted. This can cause them to state that they are not really introverted or extroverted but that they’re both—they’re ambiverted. When using this metric—and this only metric—that might make sense. However, ambiversion doesn’t actually exist in the Meyers-Briggs system.
The second element that complicates things in a way that only humans can, is that we all have varying degrees of skill in using our functions and our aptitude at wielding them changes with our levels of health.
A person with an unhealthy personality might look and act like a completely different type than they do when they are healthy. Confused? It’s okay. My point is simply that there is a great deal of nuance to this system that a cursory glance at the 16 types does not convey.
Function Stacking
We all have a preferred order of using our functions when we are healthy. This order is called our function stack. We primarily use four functions and their stacking is as follows: the Dominant Function, the Auxiliary Function, the Tertiary Function, and the Inferior Function. All of the functions play important roles in our lives. Identifying what they are and understanding how they work is where the magic happens in this system.
Bear with me a second while I go a bit technical. All other polarity preferences being the same—such as a preference for Thinking, Sensing, and Judging—a person with 51% Introversion would be an ISTJ. A person with 51% Extroversion would be an ESTJ. And while that seems to be just one letter off and the two types share all of the same cognitive functions, the way in which they use those functions is very different. Being either an Introvert or and Extrovert causes them to prefer different functions over others; the functions fall in different places in their stack.
An ISTJ’s Dominant Function (the top dog in the stack) is Introverted Sensing whereas and ESTJ’s Dominant Function is Extroverted Thinking. Our Dominant Function represents how we show up to the world and is our first and most often used function. Thus, in the world of cognitive function stacking, there’s no such thing as am ambivert. They are just people who need to dig a little deeper to sniff out their function stack.
Flow State & Growth State
I ascribe to the belief that our Dominant Function is the gateway to entering our Flow State and the Auxiliary Function is how we access our Growth State.
The Flow state as described by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his research on optimal experience, is a complete absorption in an experience that is both challenging and optimally suited to our abilities and interests. In the realm of personality this can be conveyed as the elements of life that put us “in the zone” by challenging us while still aligning with our personalities. Utilization of our Dominant Function in these moments is what helps us achieve Flow.
The Growth State in this context refers to the leveraging of our Auxiliary Function, which had the opposite attitude (introverted or extroverted) as our Dominant Function and thus pushes outside of our comfort zones and ushers in growth.
If your Dominant Function is extroverted (e.g. Extroverted Thinking or Te) then your Auxiliary Function will always be the opposite attitude of introverted (e.g. Introverted Intuition). The opposite holds true if your Dominant Function is introverted, then your Auxiliary Function will be extroverted. Because every type’s stack has four functions, this means we all have two introverted functions, and two extroverted functions.
The Awkward Stepchild
The awkward stepchild of this system is the Judging/Perceiving polarity. If you’ve read much of Jung, you know this polarity doesn’t make an appearance. The Judging/Perceiving polarity is what Meyers and Briggs added to the system to codify the functional stack.
While there are some traits and tendencies that correlate with the two (e.g. Perceivers tend to be more go-with-the-flow whereas Judgers tend to like organization and planning), they have less to do with those traits than they do with determining your preferred functional stacking.
How that all works is material for an entirely different post, but I’m bringing it up here because I don’t want people to think they can’t be Judging types (which has nothing to do with being judgmental by the way) if they have a messy room, or they can’t be Perceiving types if they love nothing more than a well-thought-out travel itinerary. It is more a dynamic of the systematization of the functional stack than it is a measure of personality functions.
MBTI as “Pseudo-Science”
MBTI is sometimes written off as “pseudo-science.” I think “soft-science” may be a more apt term. People who have found power in using the system can sometimes swing the other direction and get a bit zealotous about it. Both mindsets have a lot of downfalls. While MBTI has had a profound influence on my life, I think understanding its shortfalls makes it more powerful. Rather than nullifying its impact, seeing the system as imperfect is what lends it its humanity.
MBTI and understanding cognitive functions is not like a blood test. It has no definitive, “Yes, you do have high cholesterol,” or “No, you do not have high cholesterol” type answers. In the world of scientific research, being a skeptic is critical for ruling whether a test or measurement can be relied upon. Thus the critique of the system by some.
However, there’s no blood test for human personality. It is intrinsically complicated. That is why some people can type differently every time they take the MBTI, why understanding how it works means diving beyond those four-letter results, and why it should be treated as a tool rather than a dogma.
I hope this was a helpful primer on some core components of MBTI and cognitive functions. I’ll be tackling the specifics of each function soon. In the meantime, if you have any questions or are looking better understand how this system can help you, feel free to drop me a line!