I will take my personality result as an example, the INFP.
If you are an INFP just like me, then it'll be easier for you to understand. Coz I'm biased and that I will make it easier for my fellow INFPs to understand this. So,
I- stands for Introversion
N- for Intuition
F- for Feeling
P- for Perceiving
I and P letters on these four letter typology serves huge indicators of your dominant and first extraverted functions respectively. These are the main key points in understanding your functions.
First, if you are INFP, you are a Perceiving type. Meaning, whenever you are making decisions you prefer to gather more information before settling to an answer.
Under Perceiving function are Sensing and Intuition. Sensing means you're gathering information through our 5 senses (seeing, smelling, tasting, hearing and touching). It means they are basing the information through facts and are very much objective. On the other hand, Intuition is more of a subjective type of information gathering. We're basing more on the feeling or instincts instead of logical reasoning or thinking.
P serves as our indicator in recognizing our 1st extraverted function, in the case of INFP, it would be (Ne) Extraverted Intuition. This means that when we gather information we consider the things around us like people, things, possibilities, theories (something that is out of our mind, which is the external or outer world).
1.
2.(Ne) Extraverted Intuition
3.
4
The cognitive function order in a specific personality type always is Introverted first followed by Extroverted and so on or this could be vice versa depending on your result's first letter indicator. That's how things worked and not the other way around.
In case you are wondering, why is it not indicated as the first function? Because the first cognitive function is always the dominant one. And in our case, I indicates the dominant one. Since we have eliminated the Intuition as our way of Perceiving, the only one function left is the Feeling under the Judging category. So our Dominant function is (Fi) Intorverted Feeling.
1.(Fi) Introverted Feeling
2.(Ne) Extraverted Intuition
3.
4.
(Fi) or Introverted Feeling is all about judging things based on our self values. Does it defy our moral values or does it support it?
So since we already distinguish our first 2 cognitive functions, what would be the third and fourth?
1.(Fi) Introverted Feeling
2.(Ne) Extraverted Intuition
3. (Si) Introverted Sensing
4. (Te) Extraverted Thinking
Since our dominant function is number 1, therefore our inferior function is at the 4th number and the exact opposite of our dominant function which is the (Te) Extraverted Thinking. This means for us INFPs the function that we cannot control or something that makes us miserable is being objective/logical when it comes to decision making because it literally contradicts our dominant function. This together with Ne somehow makes everything hard for us to be decisive. But in my case I'm trying to improve this inferior function just so I can be more peaceful with myself.
The third function on the other hand can also be distinguished easily as it is the opposite of our 2nd function. And that is (Si) Introverted Sensing which means when we make decisions we consider the information we have gathered through what we have experienced (touched/felt, seen, smelled, heard, tasted).
So basically that's it for us INFPs.
But to be fair to my readers, here's a brief general information about the functions. I'll leave this here for you to contemplate individually and probably you'll recognize more of yourself.
There are 2 paths were we categorize our cognitive functions: Perceiving and Judging
Perceiving is basically what I have told above and Judging is how you make decisions.
| Perceiving | Judging |
| Intuition | Feeling |
| Sensing | Thinking |
Based on Carl Jung, these perceiving and judging functions can be done in an extraverted or introverted preference. Which is why we have:
| Perceiving | Judging | ||
| Introverted | Intuition | Introverted | Feeling |
| Extraverted | Extraverted | ||
| Introverted | Sensing | Introverted | Thinking |
| Extraverted | Extraverted | ||
In short by code:
| Perceiving | Judging |
| Ni | Fi |
| Ne | Fe |
| Si | Ti |
| Se | Te |
That's it for now. I'll probably create a post wherein I'll explain more about these functions. Don't worry I won't be biased there anymore.