Intuitive Bias: Here’s What You Need to Know

Sometimes it seems like the online MBTI communities have relegated everything that is insightful and abstract to the intuitives, while relegating the sensors to essentially being dumb brutes. Granted, my terminology here may be a touch dramatic, but I legitimately feel like this is what a lot of people subconsciously think and support (perhaps without realizing it), which is why not only does no one want to be a sensor, but so many people don’t take personality theory seriously. After all, to hold that view point that only intuitives ever seek meaning or realize that something more is going on then is being stated is entirely unrealistic. Only idiots and the truly naive (like young children) take everything at face value, and if you’re next argument is that “well, intuitives are known for being smarter than sensors” then please to just walk away from personality theory now. You’re part of the problem.

First of all, there are different types of insights, and different styles of predictions. Unless someone shares their thought process with you, it’ll probably all look about the same to you – like Ne/Ni. Additionally, sensors do have an intuition function, and they can learn to use it. Every single person with maturity can reach a point where they can “read between the lines” or “just know” what’s going on without someone outright saying, whether that be via logic, feeling, concrete observation, or intuition. To say otherwise is not realistic. I have seen all personality types read a situation and understand what was going on without anything being stated outright. It’s called wisdom.

I’m an ISTP. I use Se/Ni. I have made offhanded predictions on several occasions about a situation, and ended up being dead accurate to the point of it shocking someone close to me. I also get a general read on people when interacting with them, and form conclusions about them based on it. Most people don’t see this side of me though. I keep it to myself or those closest to me. I know other tertiary Ni users who are similar. Se users are concrete in the sense that they are in tune with their senses, focusing on concrete information. However, they don’t store away that concrete information. They store impressions and abstract data. The more mature they get, the broader and more accessible their storehouse of abstract data becomes, and the more accurate their intuition gets.

Moving on. I know an ISTJ who once walked away from a situation, declaring that the person that we had just spoken to had been lying. It threw me initially, because I didn’t catch the lie. Some people might misconstrue his insight as intuition. However, after talking with him further, I realized that due to his detailed memory, the ISTJ could trace back everything that had been said and picked up on small details and observations which proved the lie. This is where high Si users are probably going to excel – looking back into the past and finding all of the inconsistencies.

People like to blend Ne and Ni together, and make them virtually the same. As far as I’m concerned, those doing that might as well not bother with the cognitive functions and stick with the dichotomies. If there’s isn’t a distinct difference, the cognitive functions are meaningless. Ni, in my experience, is the closest function to what I would deem “classic intuition”, but I also feel the need to clarify that phrase. Classic intuition, before personality theory confused everything, was understanding something unstated, or jumping to a single, correct conclusion. Ni, at it’s best, does this.  (As I say in every Ni article – Ni can be wrong. It all depends on their maturity, intelligence, and life experiences.) Ni, based on subconscious pattern recognition, jumps straight to a conclusion without necessarily remembering the patterns or details that the conclusion is based on. It’s not magical. It’s abstract, pattern-based memory. They usually look for evidence to support the conclusion after the fact, or just trust that their hunch is correct. People find it more awe-inspiring, because when accurate, it is very direct, sudden, certain, and seemingly out of the blue.

Ne users do NOT do this. Does that mean they can’t read between the lines? No. They’re just as capable of reading between the lines as anyone else is, but they do not possess the direct Ni style intuition. They entertain all of the possibilities, and then use logic (not intuition) to narrow those possibilities down to the most probable conclusion. Sometimes this means there will only be one. Other times, they’ll have to pick the most likely out of a couple possibilities. Regardless, Ne “predictions” will be on average slower than Ni and more traceable, if you can get them to express their thought process. That’s because ultimately their information is still being stored via Si, and Si is concrete.

Intuitives are probably prone to trying to read between the lines more often than the sensors, but that also doesn’t mean that there’s always something to read. I’ve run across Ni and Ne users who are over eager to see some deep, hidden meaning behind everything, whereas sometimes the person being read is just making a matter-of-fact statement, and there is nothing further to be gleaned. I’ve seen intuitives push and push, convinced that there is, and ultimately end up angering the person or way over-analyzing the situation. I used to mess with my Ne siblings when I played strategic games with them by making various facial expressions and doing other such things to imply that I had some deep underhanded strategy that they just couldn’t see. They would spend the entire game distracted by paranoia, overthinking everything, and then, as usual, I would win. They eventually realized what I was doing and stopped letting it work, but it took them a while. Would that strategy have worked with Ni users? Hard to say. I never really tried it on one, but my point is that a desire to read between the lines doesn’t equate to accurately finding a deeper meaning – sometimes it just leads to unnecessary paranoia.

Sensors would much rather take things at face value. Meaning, they’d rather people just be more straightforward. Life is simpler without having to play a bunch of games, or translate riddles from every conversation. Sometimes, they just won’t bother to look for there to be a hidden meaning. In general, they’ll probably rely on a concrete, sensory observation to tell them that there is something more going on. But, what you need to realize is that once they catch the initial clue, they’re fully capable of tuning in and rationalizing what might be happening. Subtle sensory observations can be very informative.

Another factor coming into play here is emotional intelligence – whether in the Fi or Fe sense. Sometimes “classic intuition” crosses into the boundaries of emotions, and you’ll see the feelers or those with any kind of emotional insight just “understanding” what’s going on with someone – but it’s on an emotional level.  Classically, this would be called intuition, but it’s not really intuition in the world of personality theory. It’s emotional wisdom or empathy (aka: emotional intelligence). Someone is going through something, and you’ve gone through something similar or recognize the subtle emotional hints due to your feeling function, and you understand at least on a basic level what’s probably going on with them. Those who are oblivious to emotions won’t pick up on these subtleties. Insight like that has nothing to do with Ne or Ni, not really. It’s being driven primarily by an Fi or Fe interpretation of their observations (whether those observations are based on Ni, Se, Ne, or Si.)

All the information above is based on my real life, intimate observations of these users. My goal is not to lift one type above another, or bash the intuitives to lift up the sensors. Each type brings something different to the table, both in the positive and in the negative. In my experience, both Si and Ne users prone to drowning in “information.” Ne users drown in possibilities, while Si users drown in details. Both usually take a while to weed through information and make a decision whenever there’s any kind of strategy involved. (Although when values get involved, those with Fi can be very decisive.) However, the Ni or Se users are more prone to leaping to conclusions. I’ve seen both Se and Ni leap to conclusions and be dead wrong, yet unable to recognize it even though it was blatantly obvious (the famous Ni tunnel vision). But, you don’t see that explained much in online descriptions because all people want to do is explain how wonderful and amazing every type is without realistically describing the accompanying negatives.