Fi vs. Fe: De-Empathizing The Feeling Functions

Most people believe that empathy is an innate trait of the feeling functions, introverted feeling (Fi) and extraverted feeling (Fe). (If you’ve never heard of these before, check out our page on the cognitive functions.) As a result, feelers are associated with being kind, compassionate, empathetic, and every other synonym you can think of. They‘re the heroes, not the villains. However, that association has actually obscured what the feeling functions really are. In this article, I’m going to strip empathy out of the Fi and Fe, discussing them in a way that gets much closer to the core of these two cognitive functions. My intent is not to offend anyone. Don’t worry – I have a parallel article planned for the thinkers.

First, What Is Empathy?

According to the dictionary, empathy is:
the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another

From what I’ve read, there are two main types of empathy: affective empathy and cognitive empathy. Affective empathy typically refers to having a personal, emotional response in response to the feelings of others. This is the type that people refer to when they talk about feeling what the other person is feeling. It can include mirroring people’s emotions, or just experiencing a similar emotion (such as feeling stressed when someone you’re interacting with is anxious). The other type, cognitive empathy, seems to take a more cerebral approaching, focused on being able to identify and understand what other people are feeling.

Resource: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/empathy/definition#what-is-empathy

How Does Empathy Connect To The Personality Types?

One’s ability to empathize is dependent upon two main factors. If you’re missing either, empathy will be lacking. The first, and most obvious, is the tie that empathy has to the feeling functions. Namely, empathy is related to feeling function development. But with that begin said, empathy is not exclusively a feeler trait. Too often I see the FPs and FJs at war over who is the most empathetic, while thinkers get descriptions like “mean” and “cold”. Now, a thinker who has completely suppressed their feeling functions will lack empathy, but the average thinker has not done that. Most thinkers are aware of their emotions to some degree. They typically just struggle to express them, and prefer not to prioritize decisions based on feeling-values.

The second factor that empathy is dependent upon is moral development. Many character traits (such as integrity, discipline, etc.) are learned, and empathy is no exception. The individual who strives to be understanding of others will learn to be empathetic. Any personality type is perfectly capable of this, just like any personality type can lack empathy if they lack moral development.

Awareness of Emotions Does Not Imply Empathy

Generally speaking, feelers often have a higher emotional awareness. (It typically requires more effort on the part of the thinker to tune into their emotional awareness.) However, being aware of other people’s emotions does not automatically make someone empathetic or understanding of said emotions. Think of the selfish individual who manipulates other people’s emotions for their own personal gain. It takes emotional awareness to do that, but it’s certainly not empathy. (People like to make Fe users the manipulative ones, but that’s not entirely fair. Jung describes Fi as being manipulative as well.) The bottom line here is that you can be aware of people’s emotions but still not care if they have a positive emotional experience (i.e. you don’t care about their emotional wellbeing). That’s where the moral development comes into play.

So, Let’s Talk About Fi vs. Fe

Now that I’ve got the preliminary information out of the way, I’d like to discuss Fi vs. Fe, or more specifically, the core of these two functions. I’m leaving out all the flowery language (not that I was ever very good at any of that to begin with), and just laying out the basic foundation for each of these cognitive functions. I think a majority of Fe vs. Fi mistypes happen because people get attracted to a romanticized picture of either function (such as ‘I care about people so I must be Fe’).

What Is Core Fe?

Fe (like Fi) is judging function based on feeling. When speaking of the extraverted feeler, Jung explains that their “feelings harmonize with objective situations and general values.” In other words, these types often align their feelings to the collective or objective values of their culture, their community, their chosen people group, etc. As a result, you see FJs emphasize values that support cohesion and unity (i.e. social values). For instance, FJs are usually big on being polite, and not doing anything that could be perceived as rude. Unfortunately, sometimes their individuality gets lost or suppressed in their effort to align with objective feeling values. (A common struggle these types have is trying to please everyone, which sometimes leads to pleasing no one because maybe their true feelings leaked out too late or they failed to realize that they were really just trying to make themselves happy.)

What Is Core Fi?

Likewise, Fi is a judging function based on feeling, but this time subjective values. FPs generate personal values based on their feelings, striving to harmonize the two. This can create dissonance between them and the external feeling environment, because they’re not automatically tuned into it. This is why you often sees FPs emphasize values like authenticity, and staying true to your feelings. It’s not that FJs don’t act authentic and don’t value authenticity, but their authenticity is being anchored in the external, while the FPs authenticity is being anchored in their internal world. In that way, their sense of self is entirely separate, and often leaks out into the world in a way that can accidentally clash with their surroundings. (These types sometimes show what can be perceived as hypocrisy because they’ll be true to their feelings in the moment, but a little later, those feelings might change, and now they need to be true to those new feelings.)

How Fi and Fe Can Lack Empathy

We’ll start with Fi, since it already has been gifted a negative reputation in the war between Fi and Fe feelers. (In other words, it’ll be easy to cover and understand since you may have already heard it before.)

Fi Lacking Empathy

Fi gets often depicted as selfish. Why? Because, it’s self-focused or inwardly focused. That’s that dissonance I mentioned earlier. For the record, I also think this descriptor is unfair, because selfishness is not exclusive to Fi, nor is every Fi user selfish. However, since the introverted FP can at times be mistaken for being selfish (since they prioritize their own values), what do you think a truly selfish FP will look like? Well, Jung described Fi users as cold. They can get so wrapped up in their own feelings and values, and care little for those around them. Unlike the FJ, an FP may not even bother to pretend to care. They’ll just be cold and self-centered, fixating only on their own feelings and what matters to them.

Fe Lacking Empathy

This is the one that people struggle to understand, because they assume Fe to be synonymous with being caring and doting. However, the Fe focus on objective values can lead FJs to act quite cold and condescending towards social offenders. Honestly, people also make Fe synonymous with social skills without realizing. That characteristic genuine warmth and accommodating nature is only really possible when the FJ has good social skills. (You don’t have to be an FJ to be warm and accommodating.) Fe users, but without empathy, may align themselves to their chosen group, acting in way that matches those values, but the effort won’t be genuine or for the sake of others. It’ll be self-serving, only better concealed then the selfish Fi user. In addition, all those who don’t align with that set of objective values, will get iced out, reprimanded, and/or likely treated in a condescending or demeaning way.

In Conclusion…

I felt compelled to write this primarily because of the misconceptions I’ve noticed surrounding Fe, not because I felt particularly thrilled about bashing certain personality types. My aim was more to level out or even out people’s perspectives regarding Fi and Fe. Like I mentioned in the introduction, I do intend to write one about the thinking function (maybe Ti vs. Te: Dumbing Down The Thinking Functions). Anyhow, let me know your thoughts in the comments!