You are faced with a daunting situation. Your best friend has developed a highly dead;y disease with no known cure, and is in dire need of a heart transplant. There are no compatible donor hearts available and the cost for an artificial heart is far too high, but there is one solution: you donate your own heart to save your friend’s life. Of course your best friend’s life is just as precious as yours, but life still has many plans for you; your graduation is coming up, something you and your family have been looking forward to since forever, and you're just far too young to die. In this situation would you choose to nobly sacrifice your life for your best friend who, even after receiving the transplant, will continue to suffer from the disease; or let death take your friend while you continue to live as guilt torments you.
Decision-making is a major part of what makes everyone unique. It tells the world about our morals, values, and emotional intelligence. The popular personality indicator, the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), also incorporates decision-making into one of the four dimensions of our personality alongside other factors such as extraversion and introversion, ways we interpret information, and how we respond to certain stimuli. According to this theory, there are sixteen different personality types with different combinations of the four dichotomies, one of which is ‘T’ for ‘Thinking’ or ‘F’ for ‘Feeling’. On the surface, this may seem straightforward; people who are more logical are labeled as ‘Thinking’, meanwhile those who are more emotional are put into the ‘Feeling’ category. However this is not how the MBTI works.
Thinkers look at situations from an outsider perspective, seeing things more objectively than subjectively. We pay close attention to the facts and information before comparing them to certain standards while using logic and reasoning to make decisions. This often gets thinkers into the habits of weighing pros and cons, wanting to be consistent with decision-making, and to remain as impersonal as possible. Although Thinkers may be put on a pedestal for being rational or analytical, our objective standpoint could cause us to come off as blunt and straightforward at times, and we are sometimes stereotyped as indifferent and heartless.
Feelers, on the other hand, like to involve peoples’ values and perspectives into their decision-making process. They care about how the people involved would think of the outcome of their choice, and focus more on others emotions and reactions. Feelers are compassionate, empathetic, and emotionally intelligent, but they can be seen as indirect or dishonest as they often sugarcoat information. Because they value emotions, feelers are often thought as illogical or irrational but this belief is completely untrue. Individuals like Barack Obama, the former president of the United States, and Nelson Mandela, an anti-apartheid activist who became South Africa’s first black president are Feelers and certainly do not fit that stereotype.
In more serious cases like the hypothetical question above, thinking in only one perspective will never be enough; both Thinking and Feeling viewpoints should be used, and in fact most decision-making situations people naturally think in both perspectives anyway. The dichotomy of Thinker and Feeler simply tells us which values or principles we tend to value more, or which perspective we initially think in when faced with a choice. Not every Thinker will choose to let their friend die and not every Feeler will choose to die for their friend.
This goes to show how unique and situational our decision-making can be, and how simple categories like Thinking and Feeling can not summarize the complexities of the human mind. Although MBTI quizzes and four letter codes are fun to study and play around with, we should all keep in mind that these should not dictate how we ‘should’ act or think, and that human personalities are so incredibly multilayered and no four-letter code can holistically capture you.
Sources:
- [What's My Personality: Thinking or Feeling? | 5 Minute MBTI - Youtube]https://youtu.be/eXMzcEtb1WA
- [Nature: Thinking vs. Feeling - 16 Personalities]https://www.16personalities.com/articles/nature-thinking-vs-feeling
- [Thinking or Feeling - The Myers & Briggs Foundation]https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/thinking-or-feeling.htm