Thinkers and Feelers

This is Part 4 of my series on personality types (character traits, if you will) based upon the Kiersey Personality Sorter. You can find Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.

Remember, I'm an EXFJ.

Today I'm talking about the T(hinking) and F(eeling). From mine, you can see that I'm a Feeler. And since I've always taken the paper copy of the Kiersey, I know how many of my answers are Ts and how many are Fs.

Um, I'm not just an Feeler, I'm a flaming Feeler.

So what does that even mean?

Source: PowerPoint

Thinking: These are the folks who make decisions based upon logic, going for impersonal findings. They tend to be objective when making decisions and evaluate their options based on laws, principles, and policies. Good at arguments, they try to influence people using logic rather than emotions. They experience emotion just as much as the Feelers do but are less likely to show their feelings.

Feeling: We tend to make our decisions based on subjective reasoning and choose in the context of how our decisions impact ourselves and others. We don't usually hide our emotions. Our evaluations are usually in terms of circumstances, values, and good or bad. We can be very persuasive and appeal to emotions.

If you want to convince someone to do something, it comes in handy if you know if this person is a Thinker or a Feeler. Make your case to a Thinker using emotions or subjective reasoning, what do you think will happen?

In the communications class where I first studied the Kiersey, we were required to make three speeches. The first one was extemporaneous. The second one was to persuade using logic, and the third was to persuade using emotion.

I did okay with the first one. And I got an A with the logic speech, but the Prof said I knocked her socks off with the third one. You gotta play to your strengths.

An interesting tidbit about Thinkers and Feelers is how they react to strife. A Thinker boss facing the need to fire an employee will "feel" just as bad as the Feeler boss does. However, the Thinker boss is much less likely to have a sleepless night the day before. The Feeler has a harder time letting that kind of thing go. General office or family conflict tends to bleed into other aspects of a Feeler's life, much more so than it does to a Thinker.

Once again, there are degrees to which we may be a Thinker or a Feeler (or any of the other character groups). Someone who scores closely between the two will be different from someone like me who tests very high on the Feeler side.

So what about the main characters in your current WIP? Do you think they're Thinkers or Feelers? How might that impact how they handle the mean evil things you keep doing to them?