There is an order of behavioral preference or default role in which a person will be most comfortable based on personality type. The order is defined (from most comfortable to least):
- Dominant - the dominant information gathering function (Sensing or iNtuition)
- Auxiliary - the decision making function (Thinking or Feeling)
- Tertiary - usually develops more with age
- Inferior - the least developed function, often viewed as the most problematic personality trait
The INTJ cognitive functions are:
| Order | Function | Role | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dominant | Introverted iNtuition (Ni) | Leading | Great at synthesizing complex data, foreseeing implications, attracted to symbolic actions or devices |
| Auxiliary | Extraverted Thinking (Te) | Supporting | Efficient, organized, productive, seeks logical explanations for events, searches for faulty reasoning, good at breaking down a complex task into smaller/manageable pieces |
| Tertiary | Introverted Feeling (Fi) | Relief | Values such as harmony and authenticity, senses what is true vs. false, used to judge worth based on sometimes intangible criteria |
| Inferior | Extraverted Sensing (Se) | Aspirational | Focuses on immediate and physical world experiences and sensations. Awareness of present surroundings. May lead to spontaneous action. |
As can be extrapolated from above, INTJs tend to love big, complex problems to solve and like breaking down the problem to be solved in an efficient manner. Nothing makes me more happy at work than to have to sit down for days or weeks to solve such a problem in an uninterrupted manner. Luckily, many work places value this drive to solve hard problems and need to see the solution to fruition if the right position for the INTJ can be found. I would likely be fired from a sales or marketing job (sensing and feeling oriented jobs) but engineering and science is very natural to me.
Each personality type has a cognitive function breakdown. I encourage you to look yours up and understand yet another piece of your own needs, drive and goals.
This article is actually quite good in describing INTJ cognitive functions even though it is a comparison with another type:
http://psyphics.wordpress.com/2012/10/13/infj-vs-intj-part-1/
I think you may have gathered some of your information from a weak source. (You tend to remind your readers not to fully trust the online tests that you suggest for them, so I assume you'll understand my point rather easily.)
ReplyDeleteYou seem to be saying that the Dominant function is always a perceiving function and that the Auxiliary is always a judging function. That's not exactly how it works. To determine your function stack these are the steps to be taken:
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1. Look at your 4th Myers-Briggs letter (I will use ENFJ, ISTJ, and INFP as examples):
____________________
a) If it's J, your 2nd letter is the introverted function and your 3rd letter is the extraverted function.*
(So ENFJ has introverted intuition [Ni] and extraverted feeling [Fe]; ISTJ has introverted sensing [Si] and extraverted thinking [Te].)
b) If it's P, your 2nd letter is the extraverted function and your 3rd letter is the introverted function.**
(So INFP has has extraverted intuition [Ne] and introverted feeling [Fi].)
____________________
*Being a Judger extraverts your Judging function (Te or Fe) and introverts your Perception function (Si or Ni).
**Being a Perceiver extraverts your Perception function (Se or Ne) and introverts your Judging function (Ti or Fi).
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2. Once you've determined the two functions found by following step 1, you assign 1st and 2nd place based on the 1st Myers-Briggs letter:
____________________
a) For an Introvert the introverted function (Si, Ni, Ti, or Fi) comes 1st and the extraverted function (Se, Ne, Te, or Fe) comes 2nd.
(For ISTJ, Si is dominant while Te is auxiliary; INFP will have dominant Fi and auxiliary Ne.)
b) For an Extravert, the extraverted function is 1st and the introverted function is 2nd.
(For ENFJ, Fe is dominant while Ni is auxiliary.)
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3. The tertiary function is the exact opposite of the auxiliary:
Se <---> Ni Si <---> Ne
Te <---> Fi Ti <---> Fe
____________________
ENFJ: Ni is their auxiliary, so Se is their tertiary.
ISTJ: Te is their auxiliary, so Fi is their tertiary.
INFP: Ne is their auxiliary, so Si is their tertiary.
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4. The inferior function is the exact opposite of the dominant:
Se <---> Ni Si <---> Ne
Te <---> Fi Ti <---> Fe
____________________
ENFJ: Fe is their dominant, so Ti is their inferior.
ISTJ: Si is their dominant, so Ne is their inferior.
INFP: Fi is their dominant, so Te is their inferior.
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The best resource I've found (to date) for understanding the cognitive functions is an activity book titled: [Functions of Type: Activities for Developing the Eight Jungian Functions]
DeleteA second resource I would recommend is [Gifts Differing], by Isabel Briggs herself.
Thirdly, I would recommend [Who are you Meant to be?] which, despite it's terrible writing (seriously, as a fellow INTJ, I'm sure you will be shocked that they got away with publishing a book that is so riddled with grammatical errors and sentences that are missing essential words as if it were a game of fill-in-the-blank, not to mention their ineffective use of page headers, but I digress) offers more depth to your understanding of the cognitive functions, which they refer to as striving styles. The names that they have given to the 8 striving styles are confusing, so I will give you a translation:
Leader = Te | Intellectual = Ti
Socializer = Fe | Artist = Fi
Performer = Ne | Visionary = Ni
Adventurer = Se | Stabilizer = Si
Honestly, the only value this book had for me was the in-depth analyses of positive and negative forms of each cognitive function (or striving style, as the authors call it) in Chapters 6 through 13; the rest of the book is touchy-feely nonsense that seems to repeatedly contradict itself, an attempt by the authors to convince you that they aren't merely copying the ideas of the Myers-Briggs, or chores that an INTJ will probably ignore.
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If you want my honest opinion, I take everything I read on the internet about the MBTI with a grain of salt... until I can confirm their reliability by comparing them to what I read in MBTI-focused books. I've gone through 7 books about the MBTI, and each one has added a layer of understanding that the previous didn't offer. I still have more on my reading list.