The Myers-Briggs® Personality Typing model, is a framework used to describe the primary ways your mind is wired.

It is very tangible and has strong evidence in neuroscience studies of the brain, using an electroencephalogram (EEG), which records brain activity.

It describes how your physical brain is wired.

It looks at cognition, or cognitive functions, of the brain, to describe how you primarily perceive, interact with, make decisions and engage with the world around you and within you.

It looks at extraversion and introversion traits/tendencies – are you primarily wired to recharge through the outer world of social interaction, activity or action, exploring possibilities, or creating structure and systems? – or to recharge through the inner world of pattern recognition, personal values, rational logic, or past experiences and traditions?

We all have more than one of these traits, or ways, that our brain is wired. But to discover our ‘personality type’, we want to first look at the cognitive functions of the brain.

 

8 Cognitive Functions

There are 8 cognitive functions that form the foundation for the Myers-Briggs® personality typing model.

Each person’s brain relies on using 4 main cognitive functions, and of these, 1 or 2 most predominantly. There is therefore an order, or preference to the use of these functions in your brain.

The characteristics of each function are listed below, and are not meant to be comprehensive, but an introduction.

 

Cognitive Functions – Overview

Te – extraverted thinking – outer world of creating structure and systems

Fe – extraverted feeling – outer world of social human-human interactions and dynamics

Se – extraverted sensing – outer world of activity, action, sensory experience

Ne – extraverted intuition – outer world of ideas, imagination and creative possibilities

 

Fi – introverted feeling – inner world of deeply held personal values and beliefs

Ti – introverted thinking – inner world of rational logic and reason

Si – introverted sensing – inner world of past experiences and traditions

Ni – introverted intuition – inner world of pattern recognition, drawing future conclusions

 

Looking at this list, you may already find there are one or two of these functions you most identify with.

This is just meant to be an introduction, and in the next article, we will expand on each of these cognitive functions and how these connect to ‘Personality Type’.