[TheBlackKnight]

Alright, so Fe is primarily being influenced by others' emotions, and Fi is being influenced primarily by your own emotions. So, for example, in the case of someone not liking you, if you were Fi you may or may not care, depending on who the person was; if you were Fe, you'd tend to want to get that person to like you.

[Elfrun]

	Originally Posted by TheBlackKnight To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Alright, so Fe is primarily being influenced by others' emotions, and Fi is being influenced primarily by your own emotions. So, for example, in the case of someone not liking you, if you were Fi you may or may not care, depending on who the person was; if you were Fe, you'd tend to want to get that person to like you.

Nope, I don't, I'm still a NT after all and while I'd prefer for people to like me I could care less if they don't especially if they're blunt about it. For me the biggest difference is I care more about the group and what is best for everyone involved than I do for my own personal morals.

	Originally Posted by Eleven To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Question: What function would be most likely associated with compassion and/or empathy and/or sympathy?

	Originally Posted by Synamon To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I think of Fe as sympathy, more of an action word, verbalizing feelings, giving hugs, an emotional pathway. Fi is the ability to put yourself in someone's situation and understand what they are going through, and empathize with them. Fi reads feelings by internalizing them, sort of "if I was going through that I'd feel like this" and Fe senses the actual emotions coming from people.

*shudders* verbalizing feelings, giving hugs... e
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
I think sympathy/empathy is more about a T or F preference than Fe v Fi, I do not do sympathy, I find it exceptionally fake, ENFPs on the other hand can.

[psychobabble]

The discussion of Feeling and feeling is interesting. The internal or external focus of Feeling seems to change the nature of the relationship an F-function focuses on:

Fi= That I (subject) love you (object)
Fe= That you (subject) love me (object)
(Where "love" stands for the emotional connection between people)

Both function-attitudes are concerned with love. With Fe, the emphasis is on *you*, while with Fi, the emphasis is on *love*. Both have virtues and drawbacks, and a mature person would hopefully have an appreciation for both.

I have a hunch about INTP dealings with "F", that while Fe is the natural and most important F-function for them, Ne and Ti give INTP a greater ability to appreciate the value of Fi than one might predict for a non-preferred function. Another hunch: that the more important a function is to someone, the more pronounced the internal/external attitude preference for that function will be.

[freeeekyyy]

Originally Posted by Solaris To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

By popular demand...and that this just is a natural extension. Please discuss away about Fi versus Fe. I actually seem to have a good idea of the two. Fi is really about internal values and beliefs, and Fe is about basing values around others (and connecting with others). That's my take anyway. Let's keep To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. as the source for a definition to start from -- even if you disagree with it. This way, we still are all starting from the same place.

From my understanding, they can both be "about others." The question isn't to whom they're applied, but from where they're derived. Fe, like Te, is a very formal, structured function. The way you're told to act is how you act. Fi is much more complicated and is more about what seems "right" in a given situation. Most social institutions have a very "Fe style."

[Elfrun]

	Originally Posted by freeeekyyy To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Fe, like Te, is a very formal, structured function. The way you're told to act is how you act. Fi is much more complicated and is more about what seems "right" in a given situation. Most social institutions have a very "Fe style."

Explain more what you mean by "The way you're told to act is how you act".

I don't expect that Fi is much more complicated, it's just internalised and therefore harder to read. Ime Fe isn't about doing what one is told, it's about considering what fits in best according to the people surrounding a situation and attempting to find an answer that suits the majority, depending on who the group is socially expected behaviour may be completely ignored.

[freeeekyyy]

Originally Posted by Elfrun To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Explain more what you mean by "The way you're told to act is how you act". I don't expect that Fi is much more complicated, it's just internalised and therefore harder to read. Ime Fe isn't about doing what one is told, it's about considering what fits in best according to the people surrounding a situation and attempting to find an answer that suits the majority, depending on who the group is socially expected behaviour may be completely ignored.

I guess I misspoke. I don't mean it quite like that. Not that Fe "does what it's told" by authority figures, or whatever, but that it uses social expectation to determine what's right. Just as Te uses statistics, studies, and other forms of objective data to determine truth, Fe uses objective definitions of right and wrong, that is, social expectation. It's not an insult to Fe, and wasn't meant to make it look "simplistic."

[Elfrun]

Originally Posted by freeeekyyy To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I guess I misspoke. I don't mean it quite like that. Not that Fe "does what it's told" by authority figures, or whatever, but that it uses social expectation to determine what's right. Just as Te uses statistics, studies, and other forms of objective data to determine truth, Fe uses objective definitions of right and wrong, that is, social expectation. It's not an insult to Fe, and wasn't meant to make it look "simplistic."

Sure, it relies on external cues and information. I find all extroverted functions easier to understand and recognise because of that, the objectivity of them compared to the introverted functions also helps.

I still wouldn't use the phrase "social expectation" though, something about that doesn't gel for me, as a NT what is expected of me is not how I make decisions, as someone with a Fe preference I would summarise Fi V Fe as preferring to focus on individual moral stances Vs group moral stances.

[jndiii]

Originally Posted by Elfrun To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Sure, it relies on external cues and information. I find all extroverted functions easier to understand and recognise because of that, the objectivity of them compared to the introverted functions also helps. I still wouldn't use the phrase "social expectation" though, something about that doesn't gel for me, as a NT what is expected of me is not how I make decisions, as someone with a Fe preference I would summarise Fi V Fe as preferring to focus on individual moral stances Vs group moral stances.

That doesn't gel for me, either. It's like saying Fe and Fi are about "values" when what one really means is that they aren't just about "emotions." The "moral stances" doesn't gel for me either, though "individual" vs "group" is closer.

These days, I prefer to say that F is about "holistic" evaluation. It doesn't try to systematically process anything, breaking ideas/understandings into pieces that can be applied in different ways to different things. Rather, it goes after nuances, "feelings" if you will, in the more general sense. Evaluating things in this holistic manner can arrive at very different conclusions than a systematic evaluation, and often this holistic approach can be more appropriate, naturally including details and understanding that might be missed by a conventional analysis. It is particularly effective at dealing with people and conventional feelings because these topics do not lend themselves to conventional analysis, and thus becomes associated with "emotions" "values" "morals" and so on.

That said, extroverted holistic evaluation (Fe) will attempt to understand and organize one's world in this holistic way, usually with some sort of purpose or goal in mind. Introverted holistic reasoning (Fi), on the other hand, goes more for a pure understanding, not unlike Ti. It's kind of weird, but Fi wants to understand the nature of people (as individuals), feelings (as experienced by oneself and others, individually), and so on.

Let us say that both an Fe person and an Fi person have a goal of "peace" or "harmony." Fe will attempt to bring about peace through cooperation, by resolving conflicts, aiding mutual understanding, diplomacy, and in general through dealing with other people. Fi would approach "peace" not so much as a "goal" but as a process, as a state of being. It would try to understand what "peace" means, and distinguish it from things that seem to be peaceful, but really aren't. This latter Fi perspective can be rather difficult to convey to others, and isn't easily communicated in an "Fe way", because the extroverted Fe assumes a goal or purpose in a very objective sense (e.g., people need to get along in order to achieve peace), while the Fi is looking for a more fundamental, subjective understanding (e.g., we need to understand how to find peace in ourselves, then we can share it with others).

[fduniho]

As an INTP, Fe is my fourth function, which is to say that it is my point of vulnerability, my Achilles' heel. So I will describe it from that perspective. As a vulnerability, it means that my emotional state can be influenced by my environment and by the emotional expressions of other people around me. I'm more likely to be angry around angry people, cheerful around cheerful people, etc. When people try to influence me emotionally, I can feel myself swayed. However, perhaps because Fi is not that far behind Fe for an INTP, I often prefer to feel my own feelings and have my own values. Thus, my Fi and Fe can come into conflict, my Fe feeling the attempt to sway me emotionally, and my Fi resisting it. The environment itself can also affect my emotions, such that sometimes I feel good because it is bright and sunny out or down because it is dark and gloomy during the day. Although my inferior Fe makes me vulnerable to external emotions, I can also intelligently use this to my advantage. Since my Fe gives me the ability to easily feel the emotions expressed in music, I can keep my mood up by regularly listening to music that expresses a positive mood, and when I am feeling down anyway, I can use music to gradually pull myself up. I can also use music to counter the effects of other environmental influences on my emotions. When I'm in private, I enjoy watching dramas that draw me in emotionally. This gives me a safe environment in which my Fe can have full reign without real world consequences and without the need to resist it with Fi. When I think about it and try to, I can also express emotions without having to feel them inside first. And when I sing songs, which I don't really do that often, I tend to find the emotional core of the song and express the feeling behind the song, not just mouth the words. To sum up Fe, based on what I have just written, the thermostat that controls feeling is more external than internal.

This is not to say that an Fi person cannot have feelings triggered by outside influences. But the mechanism seems to be different. An Fi person might get set off by certain events, by getting his buttons pushed -- to use a common expression. For example, an Fi person who cares strongly about vegetarianism might get set off at the sight of someone eating meat. But an Fe vegetarian might not be bothered by this as much. Or take my own peeve, smoking. It's not a moral issue for me so much as it is a health issue. I object to breathing secondhand smoke, but as long as smokers stay far enough away from me, their smoking is not much of an issue for me.

The main difference between Fe and Fi seems to be that control of feeling is more external for Fe and more internal for Fi. But this is not to say that the Fi has more control than the Fe. What matters is knowing how to exercise control. An Fe person may consciously control his emotions by controlling the external influences on his emotions, whereas an Fi person may be prone to having his buttons pushed if he doesn't know how to manipulate the internal controls on his feelings.

---------- Post added 12-05-2010 at 05:56 PM ----------

I had another thought I'll add. I recall a character from the comic strip Monty who felt sad at the knowledge that there is so much suffering in the world. This strikes me as being more characteristic of Fi than of Fe. With Fe, my feelings are affected more by my immediate environment, not so much by my knowledge of external circumstances that don't involve me in anyway.

[Dru]

Fi seems to merely be an abstraction of Fe. strong Fi users will say "i like/don't like this" or "that's not good", where strong Fe-users actually verbalize the emotion through words, as in "that makes me sad" or "i feel valued when you do this for me". it may or may not be that Fi is less self-aware, those are just my observations.

Fe seeks harmony, Fi seeks harmony with self.

[datagirl]

	Originally Posted by jndiii To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	...the extroverted Fe assumes a goal or purpose in a very objective sense (e.g., people need to get along in order to achieve peace), while the Fi is looking for a more fundamental, subjective understanding (e.g., we need to understand how to find peace in ourselves, then we can share it with others).

gold star for jndiii - best Fi description that I have seen

Was reading a discussion of Ti vs. Fi - the introverted judging functions. These functions assign value to abstract ideas (so Fi assigns value to values?). Ti/Fi determine which ideas are true - which ideas are worthy of attentiondevotion. Both INFPs and INTPs can have a fanatical quality when it comes to core ideas. In the extreme (Ted Kaczynski?), Ti demands a kind of religious fealty.

Extroverted feeling (Fe) has more in common with Ne. Fe wants to connect with people - Ne wants to make intuitive connections. Both are relational. Both are fluid and subject to change. Both functions express as emotion - no surprise that there is so much INTP/INFJ confusion in the forum.

[freeeekyyy]

Originally Posted by datagirl To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

gold star for jndiii - best Fi description that I have seen Was reading a discussion of Ti vs. Fi - the introverted judging functions. These functions assign value to abstract ideas (so Fi assigns value to values?). Ti/Fi determine which ideas are true - which ideas are worthy of attentiondevotion. Both INFPs and INTPs can have a fanatical quality when it comes to core ideas. In the extreme (Ted Kaczynski?), Ti demands a kind of religious fealty. Extroverted feeling (Fe) has more in common with Ne. Fe wants to connect with people - Ne wants to make intuitive connections. Both are relational. Both are fluid and subject to change. Both functions express as emotion - no surprise that there is so much INTP/INFJ confusion in the forum.

Yes! Fe is kind of the left-brain equivalent to Ne, in the same way as Te and Se relate to each other. They are very objective, yet also nebulous and non-specific.

[fduniho]

	Originally Posted by TheBlackKnight To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Alright, so Fe is primarily being influenced by others' emotions, and Fi is being influenced primarily by your own emotions. So, for example, in the case of someone not liking you, if you were Fi you may or may not care, depending on who the person was; if you were Fe, you'd tend to want to get that person to like you.

That's not my experience. Although I am an INTP, which favors Fe over Fi, I do not normally care whether someone likes me unless I have a reason to want to be liked by that person. That said, I favor being liked over being disliked, which may be normal for anyone, but I don't go out of my way to get anyone to like me unless it particularly matters to me.

[jndiii]

	Originally Posted by fduniho To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	That's not my experience. Although I am an INTP, which favors Fe over Fi, I do not normally care whether someone likes me unless I have a reason to want to be liked by that person. That said, I favor being liked over being disliked, which may be normal for anyone, but I don't go out of my way to get anyone to like me unless it particularly matters to me.

Fe has an odd expression in INTPs. The main thing I've noticed is that it makes them more aware of social obligations, and similar "Fe things" than, say, an INTJ, who is often just oblivious to such things. In particular, many INTPs seem to be resentful, to a degree, of those obligations. They would rather deal more with the Ti world of pure rationality, and Fe things, while necessary, don't often count as "rational."

[fduniho]

Originally Posted by jndiii To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Let us say that both an Fe person and an Fi person have a goal of "peace" or "harmony." Fe will attempt to bring about peace through cooperation, by resolving conflicts, aiding mutual understanding, diplomacy, and in general through dealing with other people. Fi would approach "peace" not so much as a "goal" but as a process, as a state of being. It would try to understand what "peace" means, and distinguish it from things that seem to be peaceful, but really aren't. This latter Fi perspective can be rather difficult to convey to others, and isn't easily communicated in an "Fe way", because the extroverted Fe assumes a goal or purpose in a very objective sense (e.g., people need to get along in order to achieve peace), while the Fi is looking for a more fundamental, subjective understanding (e.g., we need to understand how to find peace in ourselves, then we can share it with others).

What you're saying makes sense. Inasmuch as peace or harmony matters to someone, Fe should be more concerned with external harmony, and Fi should be more concerned with internal harmony. Maybe this preference is more pronounced in types that are more extreme on Fe vs. Fi. For myself, as an INTP, I think logical consistency between my feelings matters more to me than external harmony does. I know logical consistency between feelings sounds a lot like internal harmony, but maybe it's not the same thing. Maybe this illustrates the difference. It would be logically inconsistent to truly love and hate the same person, but it would not be inconsistent to love two different people. Although it is not inconsistent, loving two different people might cause internal conflict that an Fi person would prefer to avoid. Is this on the right track, or would you describe it differently?

[jndiii]

Originally Posted by fduniho To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

What you're saying makes sense. Inasmuch as peace or harmony matters to someone, Fe should be more concerned with external harmony, and Fi should be more concerned with internal harmony. Maybe this preference is more pronounced in types that are more extreme on Fe vs. Fi. For myself, as an INTP, I think logical consistency between my feelings matters more to me than external harmony does. I know logical consistency between feelings sounds a lot like internal harmony, but maybe it's not the same thing. Maybe this illustrates the difference. It would be logically inconsistent to truly love and hate the same person, but it would not be inconsistent to love two different people. Although it is not inconsistent, loving two different people might cause internal conflict that an Fi person would prefer to avoid. Is this on the right track, or would you describe it differently?

With respect to being a Ti dom (INTPs have Ti "first" in their order of functional preference), you are a better source of what it means to "be Ti" than I do, even though I'm rather good at dealing with things in a "Ti way". (Science/math training seems to emphasize both Ti and Te styles, so it can be difficult to tell which one prefers.)

Fi is perfectly capable of loving two different people, but it is using a totally different set of standards. Your standard is, "It's not logically inconsistent." The Fi standard is, "Is it right for me?" Fi acknowledges that it could be OK for Person A, but bad for Person B.

I would say that the main diff between Fi and Fe is that Fi is more "self-aware" in terms of subjective emotion and the like. One of the best ways to differentiate INTJ and INTP is to gauge the intensity. Both types are rather laid back, but one good description of INTJ I read a long while back on this forum was "intense/relaxed." INTJ's maintain a distance, and are not easily moved by casual expressions of emotion, but there is an underlying intensity that others can sense, e.g., by the "death stare." Fi is that source of intensity, I believe.

[Maayan]

Wow, I haven't posted here in years! I think I'm finally starting to wrap my head around Fe and I'd like to share my musings, for what it's worth.

Disclaimer/Sources:
This is hardly rigorous research, it is what it is, disclaimer etc.
I still consider myself an ENFJ, although not the healthiest nor exemplary. I'm drawing this post from a conversation with my friend and some things he said about himself. He knows nothing of personality types but is a clear-cut healthy ENFJ and an excellent human being. I am going to try to describe a few things about him in terms of dominant Fe and what he lacks consequently.
Hope there's useful information somewhere in here!

- He is acutely aware of the feelings of people around him and heavily invested in respecting them. He is concerned with overstepping privacy, boundaries, and timing. Due to a combination of social awareness and good personness, he doesn't tend to find himself in situations where something would be overstepped, but he often asks just to make sure. From what I remember of this forum, ENFJs get a bad rep for being manipulative and uncaring that people have boundaries, but perhaps that is a matter of respect, not personality type.

- The cost of emphasizing other people's feelings over his own that he is out of touch with his own feelings. When big bad things happen in his life, for example, he knows he should be more upset, but he isn't.

- He always is positive on the outside, regardless of how he actually feels on the inside. This is a wonderful thing when he is comforting a friend, but not so good if say he were depressed and nobody knew. He hardly ever talks about his own feelings. My best friend is an ENFJ, and this point applies to her as well.

- He is heavily affected by the emotions of others. He doesn't actively try to affect other people's emotions, but nevertheless (and this is straying a bit), I feel so calm and positive after hanging out with him.

[Desmond Linus]

Originally Posted by curiousjane To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Fe is the lava that boils out. Fi is the fire inside that started it all. Fe sings. Fi composes. Fe asserts itself. Fi just IS. Fe is the bird. Fi is the song. Fe is contagious. Fi is seductive. Fe feels for others. Fi feels for self. Fe resounds. Fi resonates. Fe is the smile that leads to the kiss. Fi is the butterfly in your chest that led to the smile. Fe makes decisions based on values. Fi makes decisions based on PERSONAL values. Fe reaches out. Fi pulls in.

That's a really good way of putting it. Straightforward, yet poetic.

[Uriel]

Fe necessitates the acknowledgement of an other.

Fi does not.