Cognitive Functions; An Introduction
If Carl Jung had been alive today, he might have rolled his eyes at how his ideas have morphed into internet quizzes and personality memes. Let’s explore how he got from, “I observe people’s minds,” to “eight cognitive functions.”
Jung published Psychological Types in 1921, in German (Psychologische Typen), in which he proposed that humans differ by how they orient to the world (extraversion/introversion) and how they favor perceiving (observing) versus judging (allocating preferences). His original conception had just four “psychic functions” (thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition), each of which could be turned inward or outward. Over the decades, later thinkers unpacked that into what we now call “eight cognitive functions,” a more granular taxonomy built on Jung’s scaffolding.
Because Jung wrote in German, his words are slippery. The German Empfinden (feeling/sensation) and Empfindung (sensation or feeling) blur in translation; Anschauung (literally “looking‐at,” “intuition” or “apprehension”) also doesn’t map cleanly into how we use “intuition” today. That messiness of translation is why I prefer to stick to the letters when it comes to discussing typology. N doesn’t mean “intuition” – because the word intuitive today often means the opposite of what N means in Jungian typology. A better translation for N is abstract thought.
Despite the muddled lineage, the eight behavioral terms and eight cognitive functions have become ideal vocabulary for talking about who we are, and how we think – not just what we think and do. While not all of my friends and family know what N means, I can lean on my understanding of typology to remark, “Even though she is a concrete type, she has strong abstraction skills.” In typology terminology, that would be: “For an S type, she has strong N skills.”
I teach typology because understanding the cognitive functions and their map helps individuals, couples, and families love themselves and each other. Knowing these terms and, more importantly, the concepts the terms represent, can help us see why two people talking about the same situation are experiencing radically different “realities.”
One caveat: these are psychological tools built on a brilliant theory of cognition. These terms aren’t laws of nature. Function theory is not proven in a lab in the way neuroscience is, and social skeptics often dismiss it. (Although some preliminary EEGs on typology have been very promising and fascinating!) But as a semi‐formal theory, typology can sharpen your self‐awareness, help you map blindspots, and give you a shared vocabulary for discussing internal experience (without requiring a dive into pure typology-geekery).
Now, before I tell you about the eight cognitive functions, we need to address the elephant in the typology room. Most of the definitions on the web are simplified to the point of inaccuracy. Jung laid the groundwork, but later interpreters diverged. Many authors try to give you something memorable at the expense of flattening the nuance – which means many new enthusiasts are working from a deluge of sloppy footwork.
One of the biggest fault-lines runs through how people treat the judging (discernment) functions (Thinking versus Feeling, and especially the P versus J axis). Casual explanations often paint Fe as “being nice” or “caring about others’ feelings.” But Fe is a judging function, which means it’s about evaluating external circumstances and discerning what aligns socially, ethically, or relationally. The external world provides the cues, but the function itself is evaluative. Likewise, Te isn’t about “making spreadsheets” – it’s judging external systems against logical, structural, and measurable standards.
The perceiving functions get tangled too. For instance, Ne is often described as “random idea-spinning,” while Ni gets simplified to “mystical hunches.” But the deeper experts point out that both Ne and Ni are perceiving, not judging – which means they don’t evaluate, they just take in. One scans outward across possibilities (Ne), the other dives inward to singularize meaning (Ni).
For a deeper, plain-language dive into P versus J, please read: The Deeper Meanings of Judging and Perceiving.
Now I’ll give you a one-line outline of the eight functions, then dig deeper on each.
The Eight Cognitive Priorities (Functions)
- 👀 Se – Extraverted Sensing – sense things externally using sensory data in real time 🎢🌊🏄♀️⚡
- 💾 Si – Introverted Sensing – access, compare, and relate to internal sensory memory 📚🕰️🕯️🔥
- 💡 Ne – Extraverted Intuition – explore external ideas, patterns, and novelty ✨🗺️🤹♀️🌱
- 🧩 Ni – Introverted Intuition – explore internal patterns, concepts, and hunches 🔮🌌📈🌄
- ✅ Te – Extraverted Thinking – evaluate systems, structure, and efficiency relative to external scalability 📊🧰🗓️⚙️
- 🧠 Ti – Introverted Thinking – refine and utilize internal frameworks for logical consistency (often small scale) 📐🧪⚖️🧬
- 💐 Fe – Extraverted Feeling – evaluate external events by social and ethical alignment 🤝💬💞🕊️
📜 Fi – Introverted Feeling – evaluate internally according to personal values and authenticity 🛡️🧭🏹🌿
Jung described people in terms of attitudes. All of these cognitive functions, I believe, are better described as priorities. To learn more about this, read my related article: Cognitive Priorities: How Attention Shapes Who You Are.
Se (“Extroverted Sensing”)
Se is sensing data from the external world, moment by moment.
Se-dominants (ESxPs) are defined by “living in the moment.” They are often late or generally misjudge time because they are really here in the moment more consistently than other types. Se isn’t just about external thrills (although many Se-dominants are thrill-seekers); Se is about our mundane perception. People with a high Se priority often feel that other types are clumsy, lazy, or unobservant. When Se comes naturally to you, it can feel baffling that others lack the same spatial perception or present-moment awareness. Se-dominants, in particular, often mis-identify themselves as introverts, because their Se may drive them to solitary activities such as surfing or hiking on their own. Because these activities are about sensing something outside themselves, however, this still fits into how Jung originally meant the term extroversion.
Because Se is in the dominant position for ESxPs, Ni is found in the fourth position, which I call the min-max position (it is the maximum in some ways at the expense of being the minimum in others – which is also captured by other concepts such as an “idiot savant” or being “twice exceptional”). Having a min-max Ni seems to frequently translate into ESxPs being remarkably good at having a stable vision for what their life is about. An ESFP I knew in my teens knew he was an artist, and when I caught up with him twenty years later, he was still an artist; it was a core identity for him with no room for the flexibility of self-vision that an Ni-dominant has, yet with a relaxed calmness of self that many other types lack.
Se-dominance makes up around a fifth of the general population – which makes evolutionary sense. We need a lot of people who are present-moment oriented and aware of their sensory surroundings.
When we think of S in typology, we’re talking about anything concrete, literal, and sensory based. It doesn’t matter if what we’re taking in is mediated through a camera, noise-cancelation, monitor, or mask – Se still pertains to attending to what the external world actually offers in real time, before we layer any story or judgment onto it.
As usual, I prefer to use the letter S for the behavioral description rather than saying “sensing” – which has drifted in everyday usage. People now often say, “I just sensed that something was off,” meaning they intuited, felt, or discerned something (Ni or Fi most likely, but also could be Ne, Fe, or even Ti or Te). While they likely used Se somewhere in the process to pick up cues, their statement is not about sensing: it is actually about something internal and abstract, not about something concrete or explicit.
In similar fashion, we use “feel” for both bodily sensations and for abstract hunches. Considering how this further muddies communication, I prefer to separate these concepts out more precisely, and so find it useful to denote the terms using their respective typology letters: S for concrete sensory perceptions, and N for abstract perceptions. This is the axis of perception: S to N. (Perceiver types are seen as perceivers because their highest extroverted function is a perceiving function – Ne or Se.)
As with all functions, we all use all of them to varying extents. Se helps you notice texture, motion, shifts in tone, composition, relative locations, and more. If you’re in a conversation and someone’s body language subtly changes, Se is part of what picks it up.
A personality which is leaning into Se excessively may tend toward hyperstimulation, distraction, or novelty chasing. Leaning too much on Se to the exclusion of development N-related skins could mean missing highly relevant conceptual developments in your life (such as your wife slowly giving up on the relationship).
Under developing Se-related skills means you may miss the texture of life – the aroma of fresh flowers, ambiance, and important physical cues – such as literal smoke alerting you to a fire.
Si (“Introverted Sensing”)
Si filters and ranks prior sensory impressions and uses them as a reference frame. Si is often defined as comparing the present to what is already stored inside: memory, impression, continuity. Where Se says “this is what’s here, now,” Si says “this reminds me of that.” It references the past – not always in a nostalgic way, but in the sense of benchmarking.
The comparison frame is one way of describing it – “the present reminds me of the past.” That’s certainly how Si often shows up in conscious awareness: you notice today’s soup tastes like the one you had at your aunt’s table, or that your coworker’s tone echoes your father’s.
But underneath, Si can also just be remembering without explicit comparison. Jung himself wrote about Si as the “subjective image of the experience.” That means the memory doesn’t have to be juxtaposed against the present moment like a side-by-side photograph. It can just be there as a living impression that carries weight on its own, even if you don’t consciously line it up against the now.
Si-dominants (ISxJs) are defined by orientation to precedent. They are often punctual, organized, and prefer familiar routines, not because they lack imagination, but because their system of internal memory gives them a rich map of “what usually works.” Because Si is in the dominant position for ISxJs, Ne shows up in the min-max slot (fourth position). And sure enough, ISxJs often surprise people with rich curiosity, and a deep thirst for abstract knowledge – despite how concrete and particular they are with how they live their own lives.
ISFJs have shown up often in my own life as good friends. ISFJs share with my type (INFJ) the Fe auxiliary (second position), which tends to lend itself to a deep interest in psychology, and the Ne inferior (fourth position) tends to be strong enough for them to easily follow my theories. Si-dominant ISFJs, and Ni-dominant INFJs are both inward-facing perceivers – we’re both using an inward-facing (introverted) perceptual function as our dominant function. This may be why both Si-Fe and Ni-Fe love sharing personal stories. I find that I can sit with an ISFJ for hours talking about our respective experiences of various relationships.
Si-dominance is roughly another fifth of the general population, which also makes evolutionary sense. Every tribe needs its sensory archivists – the ones who remember which berries poisoned Uncle Fenn, or which path through the canyon floods in the spring. Without the conservators of precedent, we’d reinvent the wheel every generation.
When we think of S in typology, we’re talking about anything concrete, literal, sensory based – but Si adds the comparative, historical layer. It doesn’t matter whether the data are physical sensations, cultural traditions, or a recipe you half-memorized. Si indexes the present against the catalogue of what has come before.
Even though Si sounds like it ought to refer to internal sensations, such as a stomachache (since that is inside your body, after all), perceptions of bodily happenings still falls under the scope of Se. In contrast, Si is about the internal mindscape of sensations – almost like the “imagination” of sensory experiences of the past. They do not have to feel like a memory, and they don’t have to be comparative.
Si is not a gut feeling; it is the slow pull of remembered impressions. (A gut feeling is more likely to pertain to our preferences – our judgements about what we do and do not want – and thus is more likely to relate to Fi or possibly Ti, as well as Se.)
The English “sensation” has become tinged with “thrill” – a “sensational concert” – which misleads us about the quieter, more archival quality of Si.
“Si isn’t necessarily having great memory because it’s so selective about what it files, but it does mean to have incredible recall of details …” – Komatik
This shows why Si isn’t about being “stuck in the past” in some caricatured way. It’s about how the past remains embodied in us, often outside awareness, guiding choices by resonance.
People with strong Si often feel baffled at others’ lack of continuity. If something worked yesterday, why not repeat it? To them, a recipe, a schedule, or a cultural ritual is not “stagnation” but scaffolding. In contrast, those who lack Si preference may feel constrained by these very structures.
Again, we all use all of the functions. Si helps you track changes over time, honor traditions, keep long-term commitments, and maintain consistency. Someone I know with Si inferior (that highly revealing min-max fourth position) is stalwartly attached to theme. To me, with Si in the eighth position as an INFJ, theme is a more fluid thing attached to my own personal ideals (Ni, Ti, Se). To them, with their rigid-yet-brilliant Si, they are very good at observing when my writing is slipping ungracefully between an editorial style and a blog-like style – or when someone has chosen a strange mishmash of modern and Renaissance era architecture in their house design.
In conversation, Si might supply context: “We’ve had this argument before – and here’s how it went.” Important caveat: plenty of people are good at recalling past arguments and telling you how they went even if Si shows up in their “shadow stack” (outside of their main four-function stack). As always, there are multiple internal ways to do something which appear similar externally.
Overemphasizing Si can lead to rigidity, clinging to tradition, or resistance to novelty – even when change is necessary. Underusing it means losing continuity, repeating old mistakes, or floating unmoored without an anchor of reference. Si can be particularly important for social cohesion, as it tends to lend support to social etiquette through rituals. Si-dominants are stereotypically attached to holidays and family, and in my first-hand experience, this has anecdotally proved accurate.
Ne (“Extraverted Intuition”)
Ne is about perceiving external ideas, and concepts. It’s a perfect mirror for Se, except for the abstract reality. While Se sucks in sensory data through our many-more-than-five senses (not just kinesthetic, but proprioceptive, for example), Ne sucks in concepts. Where Se says “this light switch has a smooth, rectangular, plastic plate around it,” Ne says, “This switch turns the light on or off.” High Ne-users (Ne-dominants like EN*Ps and Ne-auxilary users IN*Ps) tend to ask, “How?” frequently: “How does that work?” As well as “Why?” questions: “Why does that work?”
Where Si anchors in memory and Se anchors in what is, Ne says, “What else could this be?” It opens outward, generating ideas, seeing lateral connections, and imagining variant futures. When many high Ne-users are in a room together, the conversation can bounce around seemingly wildly to someone who doesn’t have Ne on their stack, running from one hypothetical or another, or one related concept (or meme) to another.
The “possibility frame” is one way to describe Ne – from a single cue, the mind spins outward: what could it lead to? Ne expands outward: it can be likened to brainstorming – the step where we generate infinite ideas before we winnow down to our ultimate choice. The winnowing down can be done with participation from any of our judging functions (T or F), which store our preferences as thoughts, bodily sensations, and emotions.
“Ne is simply preferring to see the world in patterns and seeing the multiple possibilities past that.” – XandyDory
Ne-dominants (ENxPs) are typified by restlessness of concept, curiosity in many directions, and a tendency toward jumping ships mid-voyage. My experience of Ne-dominance is a double-edged sword. As an Ni-dominant myself, I enjoy how Ne-dominants absorb my ideas so readily and easily. They often impress me with their interest, engagement, and extrapolations. Unfortunately, I do not enjoy Ne-dominants doing what they tend to love doing most: a wild, almost bombastic exploration of ideas which feel unrelated, and non-salient to me.
ENFPs, in particular, to be the largest consumers of media at large, able to effortlessly bounce around cultural lore and dance out an appropriate quote, impression, song, or movie reference for any occasion or topic. ENTPs, in contrast, can come across as slightly more practical, often pulling out a little bit of knowledge for virtually any craft involving engineering.
Both Ne-dominant types notably exhibit traits which are often pathologized as ADHD, but these types would not consistently receive a diagnosis as such if they went for an evaluation as they often have perfectly strong executive function (self control, ability to tune out unwanted stimuli, focus, etc) and discernment. Nonetheless, these types often question whether they have ADHD because of how much their cognitive stack naturally propels them toward myriad interests and pursuits.
I estimate about 12% of the population being Ne-dominant. We need this energetic, questioning, creative type of person around to ask “what if” and wildly experiment and imagine alternatives. Ne-dominants can also serve the more sober role of representing N-types as a whole, as the introverted N types are often quieter and harder for the main populace to understand. Ne-dominants (EN*Ps) can serve as translators for Ni-dominants (IN*Js) and Ne-auxiliary types (IN*Ps).
When we talk about N in typology, we’re talking about abstractions, patterns, possibilities. Ne especially is the outward exploratory version of that: it doesn’t insist on one meaning (and when an Ne-dominant is insisting in this way, it’s their Si in the inferior position acting up). And once again, N (and Ne and Ni in turn) do not relate to the modern day word “intuition.” When someone says “I just had an intuition about it,” they are likely referring to an Fi or Ti judgement about an Se perception. It can even be something quite complex: an Se perception leads to an Si memory which leads to a Ti judgment, which reminds us of something else Ni, which could lead to an Fe judgement. All of this can happen in a blink and be summarized bodily as an uneasy feeling in the gut, and described aloud as “an intuition.”
Ne is not an impulsive idea-vomit slurry (usually). Ne pairs up with judgment functions to create careful discernment of latent structures beyond face value.
When Ne is strong, you see connections everywhere – metaphor, analogy, extrapolation. You ask, “What if?” as a reflex. You idea-surf. In conversations, Ne brings breadth: you’ll make lateral jumps, digress into side paths, propose alternate framings. It’s generative.
Imbalanced Ne use can lead to scattering, indecision, “paralysis by possibilities.” You may falter in execution because so many directions look viable. Underusing Ne could mean sticking to immediate, concrete paths, missing imaginative alternatives, or failing to re-vision your situation when change is necessary.
As with all functions, we all use Ne to some degree. Even a person who doesn’t have Ne high in their stack can surprise themselves by making lateral leaps in a brainstorming session. The difference is fluency, speed, and how comfortable you feel operating in that space. And as with all functions, anything we can say is “an Ne activity” – such as making puns – is something that can be internally managed in different ways. For example, ISTPs, who have Ne in their blindspot, often are still deft with puns. Perhaps Ti-Se together can do much of what Ne can do.
Ni (“Introverted Intuition”)
Ni is about perceiving inward, observing trajectories, and (with the aid of judging functions) distilling insight. While Ne opens outward to possibilities, Ni closes inwards to a singular vision, which often leads to a keen sense of where things are going.
Often Si is summarized as perceiving the internal past and Ni as perceiving the internal future, or some such, but as an Ni-dominant with many close Si-dominant friends, I find this highly inaccurate. We’re both very past-and-future oriented. Si and Ni dominants both both stories grounded in personal truth and introspective insights. However, Si dominants often focus on how to create stability, pleasure, receptivity, and harmony in their lives. Ni dominants tend to focus more on what things mean, what their past says about them, and how to alter their own life trajectory to create an idyllic outcome.
Carl Jung described Si as producing “subjective images of objective reality.” In practice, that means present sensations (Se) trigger inner impressions (Si) colored by memory. It’s not just about the past, but about the way past impressions shape present perception. Jung described Ni as “perception of images arising from the a priori archetype,” which sounds esoteric, but in plain English it’s the perception of patterns and trajectories that come from within. Ni isn’t literally about the future; it’s about abstracting a single, distilled meaning from diffuse impressions – sometimes known as “integrative intelligence.” That distilled meaning often points forward (because once you perceive a trajectory, you imagine its outcome), but it can just as easily re-frame the past.
The “trajectory frame” is one way to grasp Ni – your mind discerns a thread weaving through many data points, and you sense the direction it leads. But Ni isn’t always loud or explicit. Often it operates in conjunction with other functions to produce a sensation, image, or feeling which can take some time to crystalize into meaning.
Ni-dominants (INxJs) are typified by future-orienting vision, focus on themes over details, and a tendency to filter complexity into distilled meaning. In INFJs this tends to look like being “wise beyond your years” and in INTJs this can look like fantastical academic success.
Because Ni is in the dominant position for INxJs, Se sits in the fourth min-max slot. That means Ni-dominants sometimes surprise others by suddenly switching into acute sensory awareness – maybe noticing subtle shifts in lighting, color tones, or textures. INFJs, in particular, often become artists. For me, my Se tends to go into its “savant mode” when I teach yoga, and I receive many compliments on my grace, flow, and informative (yet grounding) teaching style. Yet my Se looks like a total idiot in unscripted social situations, or when driving a car.
Ni-dominance is rare – only about three percent of the population. That scarcity is entirely evolutionarily appropriate. If the whole world was made up of people like me, the world would be a little too sensitive, and too focused on the future. I need people with high Se and high Ne to bring me into the present moment and into novelty. I love how Fi-dominants can bring me more deeply into my emotions. It’s fun to talk with other Ni-dominants and run down our past-and-future oriented rabbit holes – but as a type, we’re better as advisors, artists, and designers. The world doesn’t need more Ni-dominants so much as it needs more respect for the important gifts we bring to the table.
Ni is sometimes imbued with mystical, or oracle-like abilities. Psychic intuitions are a different topic, and while related and fascinating, it’s outside of the scope of this article. That said, Ni-dominants can have an uncanny ability for predicting outcomes, particularly on subjects they are deeply familiar with.
Imbalanced Ni use can lead to narrow-mindedness, dogmatism, speculative tunnel vision, or ignoring messy data that doesn’t fit the vision. Underusing Ni means losing long-range sight, getting lost in immediate novelty or detail, or bouncing from project to project without coherence.
As always, we all use Ni to some extent. Depending on where Ni lands in your overall typology map, you may have greater or lesser use of it, and you will filter it through other priorities. If Ni is dominant, you may experience life as a kind of unfolding storyline, always searching for the thematic through-line: “What is this chapter about?” If Ni is auxiliary, you’ll support your dominant function with it – an ENTJ might summon Ni to create an internal trajectory of a Te-driven business plan. Tertiary Ni (IS*P) will serve under Ti or Fi to help clarify the map of internal judgments and priorities. And, as I already mentioned, Ni in the min-max position is incredible for holding constancy over decades.
Te (“Extraverted Thinking”)
Te evaluates the outside world using shared, operational criteria – standards, metrics, procedures, and evidence you can point to. If Ti is “does this make internal sense to me?”, Te is “does this work reliably out there, for other people, under constraints?” Te likes things you can run – checklists, rubrics, standard operating procedures, pilots, A/B tests, timelines, budgets, roadmaps. It is a judging function, so it decides – but it decides by referencing what is externally verifiable and implementable.
Te-dominants (ExTJs) are often the people who turn hazy intent into a plan and then into output. They scope, sequence, delegate, measure, and adjust. Because Te is dominant for ExTJs, Fi sits in the fourth, or min-max slot; when that flips on, you’ll see a shocking flash of values-clarity: “No, we aren’t doing that – it violates the spirit of why we started.”
Te-dominants are not common occurrences in my life, as their need for neat-and-predictable variables doesn’t enjoy a sensitive, needy, artistic, unconventional INFJ in their midst. In particular, *ST* types and *NF* types often do not communicate well with one another. Thus, ESTJs (Te-dominants) and ISTPs (Ti-dominants) have often complained to me that I’m too metaphorical or vague when I thought I was being very literal and very specific.
Te-dominants can have a very “take charge” attitude – something my parents taught me to have, and thus, why I often used to mistype as an ENTJ. Inferior (fourth position) Te types (I*FPs) may only surface their Te in crunch time – color-coded spreadsheets at two o’clock in the morning before a deadline – or a sudden flurry of paperwork – then a retreat to gentler terrain once the fire is out. Some folks with Te in the min-max position will whip out Te for an emergency of a friend (Fi values, Ne perception, Te execution), such as when an INFP I knew went through many legal hurdles and paperwork to ensure a woman got appropriate protection from her abusive ex.
Jung’s term is Denken, “thinking,” and his “extraverted” qualifier means the judging criteria lean outward – toward shared, public, intersubjective reference. In modern English we often conflate Te with efficiency or bossiness. But Te is more about logical, systematic accountability to the world at large. This can look like speed or expediency in some cases, but Te at its best is about repeatability, traceability, and fair enforcement of rules so that systems scale without depending on one gifted individual’s private logic.
“Te tends to value what makes sense to others … I wish people would stop simplifying Te to just efficiency… I’d actually argue that Te is often more open-minded than Ti, because it’s an Extraverted function… High Te users tend to be open to constructive criticism.” – xoxokaterina
Te seeks clarity of role, crisp definitions of “done,” a visible feedback loop, and friction-reducing protocols so that progress happens without heroics. You reach for concrete levers – change the form, rewrite the checklist, or sequence dependencies. When a skilled Te-user hears, “Great idea,” their next reflex is, “What’s the critical path?” Not because they’re allergic to nuance, but because they don’t want good intent to die in a tangle of unowned tasks. (But, once again, this example applies to many people who are not high Te-users, including myself.)
Pair Te with Ni and you get long-horizon reformers who iterate structures toward an internally envisioned end-state. Pair Te with Si and you get institutional memory turned into robust process – the hospital unit that always runs on time because someone codified the handoff protocol. Pair Te with strong Fi and you get principled logistics – “we’ll meet the metric and protect the value.”
Over-amped Te without balancing factors can bulldoze – metric myopia, box-checking that misses human signal, impatience with deep exploration outside of practical plans. Underused Te shows up as elegant ideas that never ship or teams that “talk process” but don’t walk one. In my own case, Te shows up in my blindspot (as is the case for both INFJ and ISFJ), which translates into underuse in the sense of difficulty plugging into worldly systems. Add in a little trauma from institutions with systems that don’t serve neurological minorities like myself, and an outright contempt for the systems of the world can act as an Achilles heel – especially in one’s twenties.
If you can’t point to a single visible system that made something easier for other people to execute – a template, a flow, a policy, a dashboard – Te might be underfed. If you can point to many systems but can’t explain why they exist beyond “that’s the rule,” Te may be over-steering without enough Ne/Ni/Fe/Fi cross-checks.
Te can be summarized as the part of you that says, “Let’s make this legible and repeatable for other minds and hands.” Te can help you manage systems, budgets, projects, and decisions. It loves efficiency and metrics. But overuse can create rigidity, impatience with nuance, and pressure to force structure where it isn’t needed.
Ti (“Introverted Thinking”)
Ti builds internal frameworks – crisp definitions, clean categories, and if-then rules that make sense to you first, then scale outward as needed. If Te asks, “Does this work reliably out there?” Ti asks, “Is this internally coherent – are the premises tight and the terms well-defined?” It’s a judging function, so it decides – but it does so by refining concepts until they ‘click’ into a tidy, self-consistent model.
Ti-dominants (IxTPs) tend to dissect claims, rename sloppy terms, and rebuild the argument from first principles. Auxiliary Ti types (ExTPs) often display remarkable communication skills, using their perception-based dominant function (Ne or Se) to gather information deftly, and then using Ti to judge and sort the information. My experiences with ESTPs and ENTPs have reliably found them good at poking holes in sloppy logic. They often do this through being methodical. An ESTP (Se-Ti) I know carefully rereads all text they receive three times to ensure they fully understand the intent before they respond. This is a very clever tactic, as it ensures their Se feeds everything to the rest of themselves very clearly before they get too attached to any interpretations. It’s an admirable habit that I think many of us – of any type – could benefit from adopting.
Tertiary Ti (in IxFJs) can appear as periodic precision-bursts that sharpen an otherwise narrative-driven approach.
In my case, as an INFJ, I am a subtype with Ti developing before Fe. As I discuss in my neurotypology workshops and with my clients, there aren’t just sixteen types, but at least thirty-two. Ni-Fe is the typical INFJ, but some are Ni-Ti. To find out if you’re one of these rarer subtypes – which can make your type much muddier in test results – book a session with me.
In the min-max slot (in ExFJs), Ti may surface suddenly as surgical analysis – a cool, exacting correction that surprises even the speaker.
Ti is sometimes pigeon-holed as arbitrary or capricious, but really, it is simply “subjective” in the sense that it is privately vetted. Ti still values truth-tracking – but it routes evidence through personal coherence before it commits. Something that is vetted privately for personal coherence can be just as scientific and rigorous as Te in principle. This doesn’t mean that every Ti-user is coherent or scientific, but simply the cognitive function, when utilized well, has these capacities.
“Ti is subjective logic, so we determine what makes sense or doesn’t make sense based on our personal experiences. As we get older, this database becomes more refined and nuanced, so that our Ti becomes masterful at detecting inconsistencies…” – HakuGaara
Ti-users often report a sense of relief when a definition finally snicks neatly into place – although others without Ti on their stack (namely INTJs) use similar terms to describe their sense of satisfaction when something fits neatly together. Ti tends to prefer small, elegant systems over sprawling, ad-hoc patchwork. It will ignore “what most people say” until the semantics are clean – then happily re-engage. Where INTPs have their Ti-dominance balanced with an Si-tertiary which lends itself to a little fluid appreciation of precedent, ISTPs (Ti-Se) are happy to use their own systems based purely on their lived experiences.
When balanced, Ti is a gift to teams: it prevents scope-creep in meaning, catches hidden contradictions, and keeps everyone from arguing past one another.
Ti, when not counter-balanced, can nitpick, stall out in analysis-paralysis, or mistake a tidy internal model for reality itself. Underused Ti shows up as vibe-based logic, concept drift, or conflating correlation with causation because no one slowed down enough to define terms.
Ti with Ne yields agile theorists who test variations mentally before committing. Ti with Se yields incisive troubleshooters who tinker, observe, adjust, and re-spec in real time. Ti in Fe-heavy people can be a quiet superpower for conflict resolution – refining the claims, separating interpretations from facts, then offering a clearer framework everyone can agree on. As always, we all use all eight functions: Ti can be the part of you that says, with surgical calm: “Let’s define this precisely – then everything else will make more sense.”
Fe (“Extraverted Feeling”)
Fe evaluates the outside world through shared ethics – group norms, relational expectations, and context-sensitive cues about what will help people thrive together. If Ti asks, “Is this internally coherent?”, Fe asks, “Given these humans, in this place, right now – what’s the right move so needs are met and the social fabric holds?” It’s a judging function, so it decides – but it does so by referencing intersubjective criteria: customs, roles, stated preferences, unwritten rules, and the emotional climate as it actually is.
Fe-dominants (ExFJs) often seem like social systems engineers. On their good days, they anticipate coordination problems before they blow up; they set tone; they translate between subgroups; they turn vague goodwill into shared practice. My experience with Fe-dominants is that they can take up a tremendous amount of “emotional space” in a room – often steering a conversation strongly even if they aren’t actually “dominanting” the air space through volumes of words. Fe-dominants are often highly appreciated by the neurotypicals present, who feel like the conversation is being usefully and comfortably directed. Neurodivergents, in my experience, often feel uncut or even cut out by careless Fe-dominants.
Auxiliary Fe users (IxFJs) also tend to direct conversations, but often with more subtlety – and usually only smaller groups. IxFJs are commonly utilizing their Fe auxiliary for caretaking in some form or another; these types are stereotypically nurses for a reason.
Tertiary Fe (ExTPs) often appears as a burst of deft diplomacy that tidies up the wake of their explorations (whether those are Se or Ne based). My experience with Fe-tertiary users is that they are often quite socially skilled, but can lack confidence or consistency in their social judgments.
Min-max Fe is something I grew up with in my household with an INTP father. Since I have a lot of experience with both INTPs and ISTPs, I happen to know how Fe inferior differs specifically between the INTP and ISTP. In both cases it looks like a rigid attachment to certain ideals of social etiquette whilst simultaneously seeming to misunderstand or ignore a huge swath of social etiquette.
The INTP (Ti-Ne) flavor of this tends to be more about leveraging Fe in limited contexts to seek prestige, praise, or belonging – “Oh, look what useful thing I can pull out of my hat for this social scenario!” This specific example utilizes their Ne auxiliary as well.
In contrast, the ISTP (Ti-Se) tends to hold social protocols high like a dogma they can’t imagine how to break – which can make them seem like the epitome of politeness is casual interactions, but the epitome of insensitivity in more intimate contexts.
When either the INTP or ISTP suddenly realizes they’ve made a grave social error which utterly ignored the feelings of one or more people they care about, they can be almost paralyzed with embarrassment, but with skill and time, they often mature into people who can offer surprisingly tender and caring apologies.
Fe is often conflated with “vibe reading” because high Fe is associated with prioritizing people and emotions over things and thoughts. Thus, people with Fe high in their stack are often people who read a room and work to create harmony. But Fe itself isn’t about reading a room (which would be Se and/or Ne), nor about creating harmony specifically. Fe is a judging function, which means it is about coming to conclusions about your preferences with the external reality in mind. Fe could be key in writing the ground rules for a community gathering; deciding what apology will repair trust; or matching tone to a group’s capacity rather than to your private mood.
“Fe is a judging function that determines if something is good or bad by using moral heuristics and generalizations.” – Hellowally
Fe is the ethical analogue to Te’s “does it work for others?” Ironically, I feel that introverts using Te or Fe tend to be better about considering whether it works for all others, and not just “typical” people. Likely this is because, regardless of type, the primary reference point we have in life is our own experience, and Fe and Te dominants are extroverts, and extroverts are relatively more neurotypical than introverts. (However, you can still be extroverted and neurodivergent in substantial ways. Most of my aunts, uncles, siblings, and cousins are extroverted dyslexics, for example.)
Fe users often lean on introverted perceiving (Si or Ni) to supply the rule-of-thumb: “Normally, in our family we do it this way . . .” (Si), or, “Given the trajectory of this relationship, the repair needs to include an apology that sounds like . . .” (Ni). Then Fe renders a decision: “Therefore, I’ll do X now to build a stronger sense of camaraderie between us.”
Many Fe-users describe Fe as feeling like a subtle barometer for collective strain. While I’m unsure if I experience that personally (as an INFJ), I do relate to the common report that Fe-users experience relief when roles are clarified. Skilled Fe-users are often seeking the levers that make it easier to cooperate – a clearer invitation, a useful ritual, a check-in question, a boundary phrased so people can say “yes” to it. In my own life this often shows up as my collection of facilitation skills. When something is well-facilitated, I ask myself, “What precisely are they doing that is making everything flow so well?” Then I aim to incorporate those techniques in my own workshops.
Fi asks, “Is this true to my values?” Fe asks, “Is this right given our values here-and-now?”
When Fe isn’t tempered, it can slide into people-pleasing, rule-by-consensus, or moralistic crowd-following that punishes outliers who actually carry needed dissent. Underused Fe shows up as brittle truth-telling that scorches trust, or as endless meta-talk about values with no felt repair in the room.
A quick self-check: if everyone “agrees” but someone looks “smaller” than when they walked in, Fe is under-calibrated; if everyone feels soothed but nothing important got said, Fe may be over-calibrated without enough Ti/Te/Ni ballast.
Fe with Ni yields “tone-with-trajectory” – guiding groups through arc and meaning, often with ritual flair. Fe with Si yields “belonging-through-tradition” – etiquette, rituals, and caretaking scaled into dependable practice.
Fi (“Introverted Feeling”)
Fi evaluates inward – an ongoing audit of “what is right for me to stand for, consent to, or refuse,” referenced against an internal constellation of values. If Fe asks, “Given these humans, here and now, what preserves the fabric?”, Fi asks, “Given who I am – and who I’m trying to become – what choice preserves my integrity?” It’s a judging function, so it decides – but it does so by consulting an inner court of appeal rather than public consensus or shared rubrics.
Fi-dominants (IxFPs) typically feel like they carry a private charter. They may be soft-spoken or expressive, social or solitary, but the through-line is this: choices must align with personal values, not merely with precedent or popularity. Fi-dominants care a lot about personal honor and integrity.
Auxiliary Fi (ExFPs) often runs like a quiet governor beneath Ne or Se – “we can try a hundred things, but not that one.” ESFPs I’ve known use words like “vibe” and “atmosphere” frequently – capturing both their Se perceptions and Fi judgments in one word. Their Se-Fi experience of life lends itself to caring tremendously about the moment-to-moment felt experience – both in the sensory and emotional sense. ESFPs, however, don’t demonstrate this care through trying to force change or through dramatic displays. Instead, they tend to absorb everything, feel deeply, and simply course-correct if they realize that certain locations or people aren’t resulting in the “atmosphere” they need to carry out their strict (fourth position) Ni vision of their life.
In ENFPs, the Fi-auxiliary is quite different. Fi is now serving the grand exploration of abstract ideas (Ne). ENFPs tend to be more verbal than any of the three types we’ve just discussed (IxFPs and ESFPs). ENFPs, unlike the other high Fi-users, will often regale you with mile-a-minute speech about their ideas and ideals – usually peppered with plenty of pop-culture references.
Tertiary Fi (IxTJs) can appear as sudden, non-negotiable boundaries that surprise people who are used to their cool composure. Growing up with an INTJ mother, I was used to her being stoic and rational, but when her sense of “rightness” or “fairness” was tripped, she had quite the bite.
In the min-max slot (ExTJs), Fi sometimes erupts as fierce advocacy – the manager who seems all metrics until a fairness line is crossed, and then they go to the mat for a junior teammate.
Fi is not to be confused with emotions themselves. Emotions aren’t a cognitive function, and high F users don’t “have more emotion” than high T users. (Likewise, high T users don’t have more thoughts than other types.) Emotions supply data; Fi weighs that data against principles you can live with tomorrow, next year, and on your deathbed.
“Fi is a judging function and not a feeling function. We are empathetic and feel a lot but that is not Fi. Fi is the internal evaluation, sorting and judging we do with those feelings.” – forrestmaker
Types with high Fi report relief when a boundary is honored; dissonance (sometimes somatic) when a choice violates your code; and an impulse to choose language that is true rather than merely pleasing. Fi tends to prefer depth over breadth – fewer commitments, held more earnestly. It will ignore “what most people do” until the choice sits right internally – then it can be surprisingly steadfast, even in the face of disapproval.
Fi when not counterbalanced can harden into moral absolutism, self-referential echo chambers, or a refusal to translate values for outsiders. Underused Fi shows up as chameleon-ism – agreeing outwardly while quietly resenting, or losing track of your own yes/no after too many concessions.
If you can’t name why a boundary matters to you (beyond “I don’t like it”), Fi could benefit from articulation. If you can name the value but weaponize it to avoid listening, Fi needs tempering with Ti/Fe/Te or possibly even Ni/Ne.
Fi with Ne yields principled explorers – the values set the fence posts while ideas roam. Fi with Se yields embodied integrity – boundaries enforced through direct action, craft, or care for physical realities (diet, design, habitat). (Although Fi with Ne can look very similar to Fi with Se in terms of designing an all-around holistic, self-affirming lifestyle.) Fi with Ni can look like myth-making: your life becomes a story you’re responsible for upholding. Fi with Si preserves personal tradition – rituals and keepsakes that aren’t about “how people do it,” but about what matters to you and yours.
Fi-dominants can be startlingly clear about their boundaries when things matter deeply. I’ve seen numerous occasions of INFPs walking away from a relationship, career, or highly lucrative opportunities because the strings attached conflicted with their values.
Balanced well, Fi doesn’t shrink your world; it clarifies it – so your choices line up with a self you respect tomorrow.
But what are cognitive functions?
Most people think a cognitive function is a skill, a trait, or a behavior. It’s none of those things.
A cognitive function is a priority pattern of attention – an inner compass that tells the mind what matters most in any given moment. Your “function stack” isn’t a list of talents; it’s an order of attention. It governs which kinds of information you instinctively notice first, trust most, and build skill around fastest.
Cognitive functions are a rich lens for mapping how we internally operate. They swell into large, multifaceted, mostly misunderstood concepts because of how much grows out of our priorities. Many skills and activities come to be associated with specific cognitive functions – and those stereotypes, like all stereotypes, have basis in reality. Yet these associations distract from the reality of what cognitive functions are – which are not functions at all. They are priorities.
Ever heard the phrase that you are (or become) what you pay attention to? Cognitive functions – priorities – drive your attention, and thus what you are and what you become.
I used to think I could find cognitive functions somewhere clearly spelled out in neuroscience. But here is an analogy to illustrate why we can not simply pin down the priority stack: consider the term “willpower.” At the neuroscience level, willpower doesn’t live in one particular area of the brain. It’s not even one particular network. Willpower exists – it’s a real phenomena – but it is a complex one emerging from many interacting parts. Willpower draws on several executive functions – inhibitory control (not doing something), working-memory updating (keeping the goal in mind), and cognitive flexibility or shifting (changing strategies when the situation changes). These executive functions (a neuroscience phrase, not a typology one) are separable yet interwoven; in other words, you can be strong in one (such as inhibitory control) and weak in another (such as working memory), but they share variance because they’re powered by overlapping control systems.
Willpower is an observed behavior, and behind it we have executive functions (particularly inhibitory control), and beneath those we have neuro-networks (such as the frontoparietal network and the cingulo-opercular network).
When thinking about typology, we can think of adventurousness as an observed behavior, with Ne as a likely cognitive priority behind it, and beneath that we still have neural networks at play (such as the explore–exploit circuitry of the posterolateral frontopolar cortex and curiosity-novelty loop that happens between the hippocampus the ventral tegmental area).
Thus, as illustrated above, typology cognitive functions are conceptually similar to neuropsychological executive functions. They describe complex network operations that happen in our brains. Whereas the art of typology – or understanding personality – is understanding how these cognitive functions (priorities) are arranged preferentially within an individual to create their collection of internal workings and thus outward behaviors.
So how does the priority stack relate to the actual skills we develop? That is the deep mystery which keeps many typologists exploring human development for decades. It seems that people with high Ne have a penchant for puns which many Ni-users lack, and yet the ISTPs (Ni tertiary) I have known are also good at generating puns, while the Ni-dominants I know (myself included) seem to need to develop their fifth function (Ne) to become better with generating puns. The priority stack is relevant to skill development and facility, but not unbreakably linked.
Consider that Ne is a perceiving function. It has to do with what we can explore, but actually creating a pun is generative. It is neither a perception nor a judgment to generate a pun. You can perceive whether or not something is a pun and you can judge whether you found it funny, but the act of creation itself does not neatly fall into perceptual skills and discernment skills. Yet the priority stack we possess clearly drives many of our preferences and skill development around creating things – as it is common for INFJs to become writers and artists, just as it is common for ISTPs to become carpenters. The priority stack, after all, dictates what we are deeming important. What we value relates directly to the kinds of things we create.
One could say that cognitive functions are cognitive priorities, and priorities, ultimately are value set.
Another important caveat about cognitive priorities: we’re literally never being influenced by just one. We’re constantly pinging perceptions off of judgements. There’s no such thing as an activity for “just Se” or “just Ti.” And activities aren’t limited to being appealing due to a particular combination of functions either – as I illustrated with puns.
Consider that savants with the same outward abilities don’t even consistently share the same inward process: while some build a mental abacus in their minds, Daniel Tammet (an autistic, synesthetic savant) describes numbers as having colors, textures, and even “personalities.” Shakuntala Devi wrote books full of shortcuts and “number tricks” she used for lightning-fast answers. Scott Flansburg talks about pattern-based strategies and alternative counting habits (and holds a Guinness record). In all of these cases we’re talking about individuals who can do mental math very quickly, but they’re going about it in different ways internally.
Understanding cognitive functions and how they relate to who a person is isn’t simply about slapping a label on a person in order to predict how they might fare in a given life situation. Cognitive functions are most accurate when we think of them as systems of personality and skill. Each person has their own patterns of pinging around the cognitive functions, and any given person will have a few idiosyncratic paths which you wouldn’t expect for their overall type. The types themselves describe archetypal, overarching patterns of preference, and how those relate to overarching patterns of behavior. Within the base sixteen types there are forty-eight subtypes when we take into account more individual type development over one’s lifetime.
Once again, one’s personal cognitive stack is more about relative preferences and skills; it does not dictate what you can and can’t use. However, if you’re an I*FP and have Se in your blindspot (seventh position), it’s going to be easier to implement a Te system (fourth position) that aligns with your Fi values (first position) than it is for you to brute force activate Se throughout each day of your life. This is where knowing the natural strengths of your type can become emotionally affirming and validating, as well as simply practical. If you’ve been trying to sew clothes with a thread and crochet hook, imagine the relief you’ll feel when introduced to a sewing needle! That’s what it’s like when you grasp your own natural gifts and difficulties and work with them.
Another example: IS*Ps, who have Ne in their blindspot (seventh position), will still be able to have a conversation about abstract concepts. An ISTP can use Ti-Ni for impressive internal evaluations while deftly soaking in sensory cues with Se (auxiliary) to fine-tune their understanding. Then they use their min-max function, Fe, to politely and directly explain their own point of view. I have seen ISTPs deliver staggering conceptual insight – until their Ne blindspot creates a sudden “I don’t see why that matters” stall.
In other words, when people say “this task requires Ne,” they commit a category error. Tasks can be achieved in many different ways. Usually when someone makes generalizations, they are talking about the most common way it is done – or the way they personally do it. Typology reveals trends in behaviors, but it is most useful when we apply it to our general life approach, rather than trying to confine or conflate cognitive functions with activities where they might be utilized.
Your type is a rich map, not a cage. You can explore your cognitive functions to name strengths and shadows, to illuminate blindspots, and to refine your approach to thinking and relating. But remember that your type doesn’t define your destiny.