Choices of Personality
Judging Functions: Making Decisions

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Thinkers are logical and analytical.

Feelers rely on a deep valuing process.

Thinking and feeling are the two dimensions of the judgmental function. They are the rational functions and are so designated because they make decisions or judgments about the information provided by the perceiving functions. Thinking and feeling make decisions in very different ways.

Thinking

Thinking approaches decision making through a logical, sequential process of analyzing data to arrive at a conclusion. Thinking is directed towards an impersonal finding. It is a "true-false" approach to decision making. Thinking employs principles and laws. It is most appropriate for handling problems that are of an impersonal nature. Thinking is objective and critical. This is the predominate Western mode of making decisions and it underlies the scientific model. About 50% of the American population are Thinkers. By gender 60% of men and 40% of women are thinkers.

Feeling

Feeling reaches a decision in a very different manner through a deep valuing process. Feeling, as discussed by Jung, does not refer to emotion in the sense of emotional reasoning. It is not emotional in a shallow manner of being angry, fearful or joyful and using this as a basis for decision. Rather feeling refers to a deep process of a "gut-like" recognition of the worth or value of something. Feeling recognizes beauty, value, or significance but not through an analytical process.

Feeling is the experience of just knowing at an instinctive level what is valuable and what needs to be done. It is most useful in situations involving relationships. Feeling involves passion rather than logic. It is a process of appreciation and is interested in harmony. Feeling is not impersonal and includes a subjective element. For example, in regard to assessing a work of art, thinking can evaluate it according to a critical analysis of technique and decide if it has worth as well as explain why it has worth. Feeling can immediately recognize the true beauty or worth of the artwork but not explain why it is so. Feeling just recognizes and knows. About 50% of the American population are Feelers. By gender 40% of men and 60% of women are Feelers.

Once again relationship conflict can arise from type differences on this dimension. For example, parents may have a dispute over how to discipline a child. The thinker analyzes the situation based on past history and other variables and carefully chooses a punishment. The feeler just looks at the situation and has a strong sense of the appropriate action. If they have reached different conclusions then communication becomes difficult. The thinker wants to know the reasons for the decision while for the feeler the process cannot be put into a logical argument. Furthermore, no reasons of the thinker are good enough to persuade the feeler of a change of mind (or, perhaps, gut). An impasse is reached and conflict over typology arises.

Feeling is best used in situations that are interpersonal and require empathy and understanding. Thinking is best in impersonal situations. A clash of type differences is most likely to arise when one of the dimensions is used in the wrong setting.

The next choice regards our general orientation to an organized or flexible lifestyle.

Learn about Lifestyle Orientation

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