Beneath the four-letter Myers-Briggs types lies an older, richer idea from Carl Jung: eight cognitive functions. Each pairs a mental activity — sensing, intuition, thinking or feeling — with an orientation, extraverted or introverted, giving Se, Si, Ne, Ni, Te, Ti, Fe and Fi. The functions you rely on most, and the order you use them in, are said to shape how you take in the world and make decisions.This free course brings together the clearest explainers into one ordered path. You will start with what cognitive functions are, meet all eight one by one, see how they stack into a type's 'function stack', go deep with a comprehensive walkthrough, and finish by watching the functions in action in how different types make decisions.By the end you will recognise all eight functions, understand your own likely function stack, and see how this lens deepens the MBTI letters. Keep in mind this is an influential model in type communities rather than an empirically validated framework. There is no quiz — you finish each video by writing your own question and learning from your peers' answers.
oh hey there uh you want to learn about cognitive functions today you know i get this question a lot in the comments what are cognitive functions and how do they work into our understanding of the 16 myers-briggs personalities getting into cognitive functions can really deepen your understanding of the 16 personalities so many things so many things make so much more sense about personality types once you start understanding functions i mean you can get an okay picture of the 16 personalities if you're just using the four letters of the personality types like if someone an introvert or an extrovert are they a thinker or a feeler etc and if you're studying traditional myers-briggs or you're looking on 16personalities.com or whatever that's as far as they go it just it just leaves a lot of information and a lot of insight off the table but look i'll tell you cognitive functions are pretty easy to pick up in this video i'll explain what cognitive functions are in general some principles about them how they make up a personality type what a function stack is and how to know what the cognitive functions for each personality type are this is gonna be a long video okay let's get let's get going what are cognitive functions it's good to start at a basic level you know like what what are we even talking about when we say cognitive function this is an idea that was put forward by carl jung when he wrote psychological types where is it when he wrote psychological types and for him to oversimplify cognitive functions are processes of the psyche they are ways that we become aware of information and to a degree make conclusions about what is real they are also processes of making decisions and you heard me talk about those two things before on this channel a lot because that's ultimately what myers-briggs and the 16 personalities comes down to perceiving means how we become aware of reality perceiving is intuition and sensing those are the two ways that we take in information and organize it sensing has to do with the facts the details and what is provable intuition has to do with the concepts the patterns and what is possible feeling and thinking are the processes by which we make decisions or judgments feeling is judging things based on value or appropriateness uh whereas thinking is judging things based on if they will make sense and get a result if you've been watching my channel for any amount of time you probably know that already and you're like frank i'm bored i'm falling asleep over here i wish uh i'm gonna save this video for later when i'm having trouble falling asleep i'll just go watch this it'll put me right out yeah okay i get it i'm moving on now cognitive functions are just taking those four basic things intuition sensing thinking and feeling and then saying actually we can split those up even more because there's not just one type of thinking there's two types of thinking there's not just one type of intuition there's two types and those two types of each of those four things we just talked about are the two attitudes which sounds special but the two attitudes are just introverted and extroverted i mean that's something you've definitely heard before but what does that mean how can thinking or feeling be introverted or extroverted what's the difference all right so generally when cognitive functions are extroverted they're outward focused they're not as personal they are broader in scope they gather in more information when functions are introverted they're inward focused they're personal they're narrower but deeper in scope they like to organize and narrow down so let's go through the eight functions briefly and in the future i will do more in-depth descriptions of each function i mean like future videos but for now this will get us started i'll also take this as an opportunity to explain to you all the shorthand that the personality nerds use for each of the cognitive functions okay so there is introverted sensing and extroverted sensing that's s i and se so you have s for sensing and then you just put a little i next to it for introverted or a little e next to it for extroverted that's the nerdy shorthand for the functions pretty cool right so sensing is looking at the facts and what is provable introverted sensing is more focused on organizing that information and even just organizing stuff in the real world like getting the books on the bookshelf in the right order whereas extroverted sensing is focused on gathering new information and new experiences well hey you already know two cognitive functions wow okay then there's introverted intuition ni and extroverted intuition n e introverted intuition wants to narrow down things into as few abstract concepts as possible whereas extroverted intuition wants to continually gather and create new connections so those four functions we just covered are the four cognitive functions for perceiving now let's move on to the four judging functions so there's introverted thinking and extroverted thinking that's ti and te introverted thinking is a process of making logical decisions with the self as the decision maker whereas extroverted thinking aims to make logical decisions that are focused outwards and rely on others input of course this is a very general description there's a lot more to it but i'm just trying to give you the quick explanation and then we have introverted feeling and extroverted feeling fi and fe introverted feeling is the process of making decisions based on what the person themselves values whereas extroverted feeling is the process of making decisions based on what is more broadly valued those are the eight cognitive functions that's it now you know what they are you know a bit about them and you know the special little symbols for each of them and you know you're really cool when instead of saying like extroverted feeling you just say fe that is so rad in the next part of the video we're going to explore how cognitive functions make up each personality type stay tuned welcome back now let's go a bit farther into cognitive function theory and how each type is made up of cognitive functions so think of a personality type like a molecule and the cognitive functions are the individual elements that make up the molecule all right first of all a really important thing you need to know is that each cognitive function is not just floating out there on its own in a vacuum each cognitive function is attached to its opposite say what think of it like a magnet each magnet has opposite poles people in the audience are like i've never used a magnet i don't know what you're talking about frank magnets how do they work you know they have a north and south pole likewise each cognitive function has an opposite pole it's the other side of the coin cognitive functions are always linked together with their opposite no matter what well what do we mean by opposite well not only do we mean the opposite process so the opposite of thinking is feeling and vice versa the opposite of sensing is intuition and vice versa but we also mean the opposite attitude and remember by attitude we just mean introverted or extroverted so for example if you were to take introverted sensing s-i for the cool kids its opposite cognitive function which is always attached to it is that's right extroverted intuition any the opposite of sensing his intuition and the opposite of introversion is extroversion my tongue got a little slow there s i and in e are always joined together and this pairing of two opposite functions is often called an axis starting to make sense i hope so or i'll be really embarrassed all right so uh doing a little math here there are four pairings of opposites four axes so look at extroverted thinking the opposite is introverted feeling those two are always together and extroverted feeling and introverted thinking are always linked together you might ask could introverted sensing and introverted intuition be paired together or introverted feeling and extroverted feeling the answer is no my name is no my sign is no my number is no not in the same personality type cognitive functions work exclusively in opposites so if your personality type has one cognitive function it must also have the opposite for example to to belabor this point and beat it to death if your personality type has extroverted sensing that personality type also has to have introverted intuition somewhere in its function stack and i'll explain what a stack is a little bit later this is why i always say everyone has everything when talking about personality type because everyone has thinking feeling sensing and intuition why is this why must it be that cognitive functions are always in these pairs well the theory is that when a cognitive function is conscious to you or to use the myers-briggs terms if it is what your type prefers then it's opposite the function you don't prefer is being suppressed by your psyche so for example if you prefer to use feeling to make decisions you are overusing feeling to the detriment of thinking hate to break it to you but the non-preferred functions are often a source of pain and fear so if you prefer introverted feeling for example you have extroverted thinking but you don't prefer it it's going to be something you try to ignore or suppress perhaps something that is not entirely conscious to you it's going to be a source of pain and fear in your life sound fun all right we'll come back to that a little bit later but right now we're going to talk about the dominant function that's that's a bit more fun so each personality type has what is called a dominant cognitive function this is a personality types first function it's the single cognitive function that dominates what a personality type is all about so when carl jung was talking about the psychological types when he first came up with all this stuff he was only talking about eight personality types he was talking about the eight cognitive functions in the dominant position so for each cognitive function there are two personality types that have it as their dominant function so as an example both intp and istp have introverted thinking or ti as their dominant function introverted thinking is the most influential cognitive function to those two types so if you are astute you might have done some math and realized hey that's only eight personality types and of course 16 personalities is where it's at you know what i'm saying so how do we go from eight cognitive functions to 16 personalities well carl jung when he was talking about the psychological types he was talking mostly about the dominant function the eight cognitive functions but then he said yeah but you know you got like a secondary function also probably that you use that's exactly how he wrote it then catherine briggs and isabelle briggs myers came along and they're like well crap that would seem to indicate that there's actually 16 personalities for instance you have the introverted intuitive psychological type so this type has ni introverted intuition as the dominant function that's great but at some point that type is going to have to make some decisions and use some judgment because if you recall intuition is a perceiving function it's just about you know becoming aware of information which means you need to use thinking or feeling at some point right myers and briggs were like well that means there's got to be two different types of introverted intuitives both have the same dominant cognitive function introverted intuition but they have different decision-making functions so there's the infj who prefers to use feeling to make decisions and there's the intj who prefers to use thinking to make decisions that's how they came up with the 16 personalities and the four letter types what that means is not only do you have a dominant cognitive function but you also have a second preferred function what's often called an auxiliary cognitive function you could just call it your second function but the nerds call it auxiliary so i'm probably going to go back and forth in this video don't get confused second function auxiliary function means the same thing your dominant function is either a perceiving or a judging function right so your second function is going to be the other one for example if you have a dominant perceiving function whether that's intuition or sensing your second function is going to be thinking or feeling or if you have it the other way around where your dominant function is thinking or feeling your auxiliary function is going to be intuition or sensing what this means is each type has a preferred judging function thinking or feeling as well as a preferred perceiving function intuition or sensing one of those is dominant it's the head honcho it's the big cheese and the other is auxiliary secondary it's the helper it's supportive it's just it's just wonderful and that's where the four letter type comes from that you get on your 16 personalities test those two letters in the middle of your personality type those are your two preferred functions your one and your two your dominant and your auxiliary so you might wonder looking at your personality type letters how do you figure out which is your dominant and which is your auxiliary to answer that first we got to talk about another principle which follows along with this broader concept of things needing to be balanced out with their opposites we'll get all into that in the next part of the video so take a breather get a little snack get a good cookie and juice and stay tuned welcome back so how do you figure out your dominant and your second functions well myers and briggs were like well personalities need to be balanced out right so if my dominant function is introverted then my second function has got to be extroverted or if my dominant function is extraverted then my second function should be introverted the first and second cognitive functions the two preferred functions have got to be opposite attitudes one introvert one extrovert to bring balance to the psyche for example if your first function is introverted sensing it's an introverted function and it's a perceiving function so your second function has got to be extroverted and it's got to be a judging function right so isfjs have introverted sensing as their dominant function so we see sf as the two letters in the middle we know sensing is dominant so the feeling is the second function and since the dominant function is introverted then the second function is extroverted so we have extroverted feeling as an isfj's second function or an enfp their first function is extroverted extroverted intuition the second function must be introverted introverted feeling that was fast but we're gonna go through it a bit slower with more examples in a bit so don't freak out now that i've explained all that about the opposite attitude of the second function i can give you the secret code to figure out the cognitive functions for your type and as i'm explaining this i'm like gosh this seems so complicated when i'm explaining it from scratch when you're first trying to soak this in it's easy to get lost but don't get frustrated because i felt the same way when i was first learning this i was like what the frick but look it just takes a little bit of time i picked it up quick just take your time and one day i promise you it will click okay let's get into some examples so you can learn this stuff let's say you have an enfj that's the type we're going to look at as an example how do i know which is the dominant function and the auxiliary function and whatever now we know that the dominant and auxiliary functions have to be intuition and feeling because that's what's right in the middle right there the two preferred cognitive functions right okay so we look at the first letter the first letter is how we know if the dominant function is introverted or extroverted that's really what the ire of a type means it doesn't mean that you are shy or you're outgoing it means is your dominant function introverted or extroverted which doesn't necessarily make you an introvert or extrovert in the common understanding of the word anyway we could put a little e right here we know the dominant function is extroverted for an enfj now how do we know if the dominant function for an enfj is extroverted intuition or is it extroverted feeling hmm well here's myers-briggs little trick here right you look at the last letter of the type now stay with me the first extroverted cognitive function is what is represented by the last letter the reason that this gets confusing is because that's different for an e type and an i type that's why we're starting with an e type because this is the easier type to decode so we look here there's a j at the end that means the first extroverted function for the e and fj is a judging function what are the judging functions thinking and feeling so we know feeling is extroverted for an enfj and we know the dominant function is extroverted and there we go fe extroverted feeling is the dominant function for an enfj so then we know that an enfj second function must be intuition and because it's got to be the opposite attitude of the dominant function it's introverted so when enfj's second function is in i introverted intuition i know this seems like confusing at first but stick with me we're gonna do more examples and in no time flat this will be second nature to you i promise you once you learn this it will change how you look at the 16 personality types forever and you will get so much more value out of it all right let's go with an entp as our next example we know the first letter tells us that the dominant function is extroverted then we got to ask ourselves is it extroverted intuition or is it thinking well we look here we got a p at the end so the first extroverted function is a perceiving function which is intuition right here so extroverted intuition and it's an extroverted type so the dominant function is extraverted so we know an entp's dominant function is extroverted intuition now let's make it tricky let's look at an introvert type their dominant function is introverted so the last letter of the type the j or the p is actually describing the second auxiliary function not the dominant like it did with the extroverts so for an example let's look at the infj we know that the dominant function is going to be introverted because there's an i at the beginning so is it introverted intuition or is it introverted feeling i kind of gave away the answer a little bit earlier the j here tells us that the first extroverted cognitive function for an infj is a judging function which is feeling but remember an introverted type has their extroverted function second their dominant function is introverted you'll also remember i just said that for the introverts the last letter is describing their second function so because we know that the feeling is extroverted that means it can't be the dominant function so now we know that intuition must be the dominant function for the infj so we have ni introverted intuition let's do one more example we'll look at an intp can you pick up on this by now so what does the i mean the i means the dominant function for the intp is introverted cool that was easy right we know that the dominant function is one of these two letters in the middle then we go to the last letter here which is what that's right the first extroverted cognitive function this tells us that the first extroverted function is a perceiving function which is intuition right any extroverted intuition is the first extroverted function but it's an introvert type so it's not the dominant function here so we can tell that it's actually introverted thinking that is the dominant function for the intp so that's how you can use the letters of a type to break down what their first two cognitive functions are the dominant function and the auxiliary function the two preferred functions in the next part of the video we're going to get into the non-preferred functions because you remember what i said cognitive functions don't exist in a vacuum so we talked about the dominant function well guess what that's connected to its opposite function and your auxiliary function is also connected to its opposite function and those functions can cause you problems so stay tuned okay welcome back we're going to talk about the non-preferred functions now and how they all fit together and what we're talking about what we're building here is what is referred to as a cognitive function stack every personality type of the 16 personalities has four cognitive functions in their stack we've already talked about the first two the other two are just the opposites of the first two all right let's do a little drawing so we have our dominant function and we have our auxiliary function and those are our two preferred functions and these are the two letters in the middle of your type right the dominant function is the star of the show that's the defining thing about our personality and the auxiliary function is like the helper it really helps to serve the dominant function but like i said these two have opposites that they're always going to be linked to you can't get away from it the auxiliary function has its opposite which is called the tertiary function but you can just call it the third function if you want right and this is not preferred this is the opposite of the auxiliary if your auxiliary is extroverted feeling for example what's the opposite of that it's going to be introverted thinking right so the third function yeah it's not preferred you don't love it you'd rather use your second function than your third it causes you some problems in life but it's like ah you know i can figure out a way to kind of use that every once in a while it's not the scariest thing in the world if you go to my video how do the types develop when the card above my head whoa you will see how i talk about that third function starting to come into play when you're in your late teens early adulthood something like that you start to become a bit more aware of it but the cognitive function that causes the most problems and the one that's going to bite you in the booty one day or every day is the opposite one of the dominant function that is your fourth function it's called the inferior function so let's say for an example you're an infj you have introverted intuition dominant so what's the opposite of that it's extroverted and the opposite of intuition is sensing so you have extroverted sensing as your inferior function and notice this your second function and your third function are there in the middle the opposite of the second function is right next to it they're relatively balanced if you look at this as a chart of like how balanced things are and your personality you've got the dominant function at the very top it's what your whole life is all about it looms large the helper function is right here doing its thing hanging out and then you go down to the third one you don't prefer it but it's not too out of whack relatively balanced but then you get down to the fourth one and this one is like way out of whack you see it's all the way down here it's the fourth function and the polarity here between the dominant and the inferior function is theoretically the defining problem of each personality type that's because you are so invested in your dominant function that you are to an equal degree suppressing the inferior function you know as an example intps your dominant function is introverted thinking so what's the opposite of that extroverted feeling that's right that's your inferior function that's the thing that you are suppressing the most we got a lot of infps watching introverted feeling is your dominant function extroverted thinking the opposite is your most suppressed function your inferior function that's going to be the biggest thing the biggest imbalance that causes the big biggest it's gonna cause a lot of problems in your life is what i'm trying to say and it's not the function in and of itself that causes you problems it's the fact that the function is out of balance it is being ignored it is being suppressed you're probably a little aware of it like you can use it a little bit just because a function is not preferred doesn't mean you can't use it because you have to be able to use all of your functions just to be like a functioning human being right but you suppress it you don't want to use it if you can get away with not using it and using your preferred functions that's what you're going to do and this is the function stack of every type you have four functions so now that you know the formula to figure out the stack the function stack based on the four letters of the type i want to challenge you to go through and figure out the function stack for various personalities heck try to do it for all 16 and then just google it google function stack isfp function stack intj whatever type it is and see if you are correct or not thanks for watching check out another video here about how the 16 personalities interact or check out the whole playlist right here and find another video that piques your interest and until next time stay cool and attractive you