4 Tiers of Typing Evidence

If you have been reading our blog for any amount of time, you may have heard us talk about different types of evidence when it comes to typing characters in shows and the people around us. We have mentioned how some evidence is more compelling than other pieces, but as of yet, we haven’t really laid out in detail what all this means. That’s what I aim to explain in this article. I usually like to look at it as four different tiers when it comes to evidence. There is non-evidence, stereotypes, tendencies, and finally, cognitive reasoning.

Non-Evidence

Let’s start with the worst evidence and work our way up through the more credible stuff. Even though this technically isn’t a tier of evidence, it still is worth mentioning. Non-evidence is the stuff that usually people, who are either very new to typology or just ignorant, throw around to try convincing people of a certain type. Things like ‘but I relate so well to them so they have to be my type’ or ‘They are such a good person. They must be X.’ This is the kind of stuff that I am talking about. Usually, they are using something like a person’s character or some other non-cognitive function based attribute as evidence. While you can tell a lot about a person based upon their character, it is not indicative of cognitive function use.

Another example of things like this is labeling the ESTP as the bad boy, and thus assuming that any character that has that bad boy vibe must be an ESTP. This somewhat bridges into stereotypes to a degree, but it’s worse when they have it so dialed in that they think only one type can fill a role. Things like only INTJs can be mastermind villains. That perception is so narrowed that you can’t even hardly call it a stereotype anymore.

Other examples of non-evidence would be using something like the temperaments to prove type, or bridging into any other system and trying to make it work for the cognitive functions. Needless to say this kind of “evidence” has no usefulness when it comes to typing, and honestly, does more to get in the way rather than produce anything helpful.

Stereotypes

Everyone should be fairly familiar with this. Stereotyping is when certain personas or labels get placed on people of certain types. All Se users are good at sports is one example. People tend to want to stereotype everyone with good use of a certain function into a mold. So, they recognize this person is good at X and then automatically jump to a certain set of functions because of it.

Stereotyping has very limited use when it comes to typing. At best, it can point you in a direction when it comes to evidence, but I would be remiss to say that you could use the stereotypical thing as evidence in and of itself. The most you could do is maybe throw it in as a very weak supporting piece of the picture, but it should in no way rank highly in your reasons for why you think a person is a certain type. This is another example of something that tends to do more harm than good. Typically, the amateur typology enthusiast will jump to a conclusion based on a stereotype and then block out any other possibilities, causing a premature bias to form.

Tendencies

Ok, now we are getting into some of the better stuff. Tendencies are behaviors that are generally observed within a certain group of people based on the functions that they use. It can range from something that tends to be specific to a function, or it can be broader. These are things like people on the Si/Ne axis tending toward being more wordy than those on the Ni/Se axis. Another example of a tendency would be for Se and Ne users to be excited about spontaneity and new ideas. While these things on their own only give you a portion of the picture, they start tying back much more closely to the functions that produce them.

Usually, if you can’t get the opportunity to talk one on one with someone you are trying to type, tendencies can end up being the best evidence that you can come up with. This is also true when it comes to character typings at times. If the character doesn’t feature heavily in the show sometimes all you have to go off is some stereotypes and tendencies to point you in a direction. For characters though, you can technically also look at the role they are inhabiting to fill in and assume some things about them, but that’s a topic for a different article. Typically with tendencies, you are trying to base your conclusion on the product of cognitive reasoning rather than the reasoning itself, which leads us into our final category…

Cognitive Reasoning

Being able to observe someone’s cognitive reasoning is the absolute best evidence that you can get for proving someone’s type. It is, for the most part, not something someone can change or fake, and mostly comes out in the way people choose to word things or focus on. Note here that I am not simply talking about someone saying “well, I am really logical and have a robust inner system.” I want to see how they are explaining that system in their own words: how they choose to describe it, what they choose to focus on about it, and what is the attitude that they have towards it. These are the things that expose how someone really truly thinks.

For example: an Fi user could claim to have the traits of Ti, but it would come off pretty unconvincing. This is because the Fi user’s focus will naturally drift to the things that Fi values. They will use Fi wording, so to speak, to describe their supposed ‘Ti’. Very frequently, the topic of discussion will start to drift toward what they know to be the truth, how deeply they feel, what they think to be right, and etc. So, can you spot the discrepancy in that description of Ti?

High Ti users are by nature rather uncertain. You don’t often see them use absolutes, especially not ones like ‘what I deeply feel to be right’. They are simply not wired that way. Fi/Te users on the other hand, due to their Te, do tend to make statements in the absolute. This is due to the way that Te processes and interacts with the external world leading them to make concrete conclusions.

Summary

So, at the end of the day one should be looking for tendencies and cognitive reasoning when trying to provide evidence to support type. Hopefully, I did a decent job explaining how to classify whatever evidence you are gathering. Let me know what you think down below.