MBTI: what are cognitive functions?

The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) seems at first sight all about four letters that together form your personality type. What is unfortunately often overlooked is that those four letters are in fact a code that means more than the sum of its parts. It tells us how our minds work: what ‘cognitive functions’ we prefer to use.

Different personality typologies focus on different parts of our personality and identity. The Enneagram is about our core motivations. DISC is about our behavior. And the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is about how we think. The system of cognitive functions lies at its basis. Our preferences for one function or another reflects how our minds are wired differently. For a good understanding of the MBTI, understanding the cognitive functions is absolutely essential.

Let’s start with the basics most of us know about MBTI: the framework consists of 16 personality types, each represented by a four-letter code. Examples are INTP and ESFJ. These are determined by whether you have a preference for:

• Extraversion or Introversion
• Sensing or iNtuition
• Thinking or Feeling
• Judging or Perceiving

But really, these letters say very little about the actual inner workings of a type. They are just the raw ingredients. Together they concoct the ways in which your mind sees and processes the world: the cognitive functions. According to MBTI, there are eight such functions. And they are not the eight possible letters in your four-letter code.

The four letters are in fact a bit misleading. They can make it seem that the difference between, for example, INTP and INTJ is very small – as if the INTJ is an organized version of the INTP. But actually these two types share no cognitive functions at all, which means that their minds work in completely different ways. And saying you are an ENFP one day and an ENTP the next is not the same as saying that sometimes you are very emotional and other times you are not.

In this article I will explain what the four letters really mean, which is the door to understanding the cognitive functions. Only when you know which cognitive functions you use, you can understand how your type plays out in you and see what the whole system really is about.

So what are cognitive functions?

‘Cognition’ refers to the mental process: the cognitive functions are the ways in which the mind does what it does. Now what does the mind? It has essentially two basic purposes: first, taking in information, and second, processing it and making decisions with that information. In MBTI terminology we say that it perceives the world and judges it.

There are two different ways to execute each of these:

Perceiving can be focused on concrete facts of the environment; things that the five senses experience. This is called Sensing. Or it can be drawn to more abstract patterns, theories, concepts, and contrasts. This is called iNtuition.

Judging can be based on universal and objective logic. This is called Thinking. Or it can be based on values and circumstances. This is called Feeling.

Perceiving: acquiring information
– Sensing: focused on concrete facts and experiences
– iNtuition: drawn to the abstract, conceptual

Judging: processing information
– Thinking: based on logic
– Feeling: based on values

These four functions give us the second and third letters of our MBTI type codes. If you prefer Sensing over iNtuition, your second letter is an S. And if you prefer Thinking over Feeling, your third letter is a T.

But we’re not there yet. These four functions can again be expressed in two different ways: directed inward and directed outward. Let’s take Feeling as an example: it can be attuned to your own emotional world (introverted) or to other people (extraverted).

This makes for eight functions in total. And those are the eight cognitive functions. The way these are written are by adding an ‘e’ or an ‘i’ (for extraverted or introverted) to the letters:

The eight cognitive functions

Perceiving: Se, Si, Ne, Ni
Judging: Te, Ti, Fe, Fi

This is it. To understand MBTI, it is of fundamental importance that you understand what these different functions do.

For the purposes of this article I will not explain the functions, but I recommend looking at this overview from the website Personality Hacker. This also includes nicknames for all functions to make remembering and understanding them easier.

For now it is important to know that everyone’s brain uses several of these functions, but we have a few that are our top favorites, and only very rarely or never use certain others. Our personalities use the functions in an order of preference: this is called stacking. This is the arrangement of the four functions from most important to least important. We can also see them as having different roles, as in a family or a team. Every member has different responsibilities.

Typically, the first two you use are by far the most important and account for about 90% of our thinking. Think of them as the two parents: most of the time, when the children are still small, they determine the rules in the house. But when the children – the third and fourth functions – mature, they get a larger role to play.

An example of someone’s stacking could be Ti-Ne-Si-Fe:

Ti: Judging function, introverted
Ne: Perceiving function, extraverted
Si: Perceiving function, introverted
Fe: Judging function, extraverted

This is the stacking of the type INTP. This type can also be called Ti-Ne (because remember, the first two functions are the most important).

This is what these four-letter codes like INTP actually mean: they are basically a different way of saying which cognitive functions you prefer and in which order they all stand.

You can find the stacking of your type just by typing it into Google. Or you can learn how to find the functions yourself in this article.