NF Types, Imagination and Empathy: What Intuition Plus Feeling Means

INFJ, INFP, ENFJ and ENFP share two letters: N for Intuition and F for Feeling. This page covers what those two letters mean in the Myers-Briggs framework, which questions on the personality type quiz decide them, what happens when your answers split close to even, and what research says about how much weight the letters can carry.

Why these four types make a group

The Myers & Briggs Foundation calls the two middle letters of a type a person's "mental processes," one way of taking in information and one way of deciding, and it calls the two together a "process pair" (the Foundation's type dynamics overview). NF, Intuition plus Feeling, is one of four such pairs, alongside ST, SF and NT, and the Foundation gives it the heading "Possibilities for People." Its summary of the pair: "People who prefer NF use insights to help others to be their best," and they "like to focus on ideas and possibilities, particularly 'possibilities for people.'" The same page says people with an NF preference "are often found in" a list of fields that includes the arts, counseling and psychology, writing, education and health care. Those descriptions come from the framework. The research section further down covers what a 1991 review made of type data by occupation.

Imagination and Empathy, a house name

This site calls the NF group Imagination and Empathy. The two words come from the keyword lists on the Foundation's preferences page, which include "imaginative" for Intuition and "empathetic" for Feeling (MBTI Preferences). It's a label for these pages, not an official one; the Foundation's own label for the pair is "Possibilities for People." The quiz doesn't score a group either. It scores each of the four pairs on its own, and this page gathers the four types whose answers came out N and F.

What the two letters mean in the framework

The Foundation describes eight preferences organized into four pairs of opposites (Myers-Briggs Overview). NF takes one side of each of the middle two.

• Sensing (S) or Intuition (N) are "opposite ways to take in information," and the Foundation's question for the pair is "Do you prefer to focus on the facts or the big picture?" (overview). On its preferences page, "People who prefer Intuition pay more attention to the patterns and possibilities in the information they receive," with habits such as "Look at the big picture" and "Trust inspiration."
• Thinking (T) or Feeling (F) are "opposite ways to decide and come to conclusions," with the question "Do you prefer to take an objective or an empathetic approach for deciding?" (overview). The preferences page says "People who prefer Feeling put more weight on personal concerns and the people involved when decision making," and lists habits such as "Seek harmony, consider everyone's viewpoints" and "Take personal circumstances into consideration."

The same pages keep the letters in proportion. "Everyone spends some time using the Sensing and Intuition preferences throughout their day," the Foundation writes, and "Most of us tend to rely on and trust one more than the other." The Thinking and Feeling pair, it says, has "nothing to do with the everyday definitions of feeling (emotion) and thinking (intellect)" (MBTI Preferences). And the assessment "sorts for preferences; it does not measure traits, ability, skill, or character," with "no better or worse types" (overview).

The four NF types

Inside the group, the types differ only on the outer letters: Extraversion or Introversion, which the Foundation calls "opposite ways to direct and receive energy," and Judging or Perceiving, "opposite ways to approach the outside world" (overview). In the framework's theory of type dynamics, those outer letters also determine "the order in which we typically use" the mental processes (type dynamics overview). First comes the dominant process, "the process we rely on the most," and next the auxiliary, which "serves to support and balance the first process." Each line below gives the dominant and auxiliary processes the Foundation's type table lists for that type.

• INFJ (Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, Judging): a focus on the inner world and a preference for closure, with introverted Intuition as the dominant process and extraverted Feeling as the auxiliary.
• INFP (Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, Perceiving): a focus on the inner world and a preference for staying open to new information, with introverted Feeling as the dominant process and extraverted Intuition as the auxiliary.
• ENFJ (Extraversion, Intuition, Feeling, Judging): a focus on the outer world and a preference for closure, with extraverted Feeling as the dominant process and introverted Intuition as the auxiliary.
• ENFP (Extraversion, Intuition, Feeling, Perceiving): a focus on the outer world and a preference for staying open to new information, with extraverted Intuition as the dominant process and introverted Feeling as the auxiliary.

The quiz here doesn't score type dynamics. It counts your answers on each pair separately, so the dominant process is background from the framework, not something your result measured.

The questions that decide N and F

On the quiz, every answer counts toward one side of one pair, and each answer is scored by what it says, not by where it sits on the page. Only the Sensing or Intuition questions and the Thinking or Feeling questions decide whether a result lands in NF; the other two pairs decide which NF type it names. Further down this page, in the section the site computes from the quiz itself, every answer that leans toward N or F is listed word for word with the version it appears on. What follows is the contrast each question draws, so you can see what the other side looked like.

Sensing or Intuition

• Learning to cook a new dish: working from the recipe's principles or your instincts, against following it exactly the first time or copying someone's technique step by step.
• Being told you're always in your head: calling it completely fair, or agreeing but saying you're thinking about the world rather than checked out from it, against saying you're actually very present and observant, or that it's partly true but you're also very aware of your surroundings.
• The core of an ideal career: creating things that don't exist yet or connecting ideas across fields, against building and maintaining real systems or mastering a craft.
• Planning a road trip: the feel of the trip and what it might stand for, against the specific spots and the practical side of when to drive and what to pack.
• Hearing a detailed factual explanation: wanting the big idea or jumping ahead to connections, against valuing the specifics and following carefully.

Thinking or Feeling

• Looking back on a decision you regret: who got hurt, or the emotions behind the choice, against missed information or a better process.
• A hiring vote: the candidate who fits the team, against the slightly better-qualified one.
• A colleague who keeps missing deadlines: checking on them first or raising it gently, against a direct talk about the impact or taking the pattern to management.
• A team vote where the data would upset someone you respect: a third path or serious weight on the cost to the relationship, against voting with the data.
• Feedback on a project someone worked hard on: leading with what works or asking what they want first, against being direct, whether or not you watch their reaction as you go.

A few things in these questions are easy to misread. The hiring vote gives each side a hedged answer (a culture-fit vote that admits doubt, a vote for the stronger candidate that flags the risk), so how certain you sound doesn't decide the letter. Caring about delivery isn't automatically F either: on the feedback question, the quiz counts an honest verdict delivered with an eye on the other person's reaction as a Thinking answer, and on the team vote, voting with the data and then addressing the person's concerns counts as Thinking too. And one F answer, about the emotions behind a regretted decision, sits closer to the everyday sense of "feeling" than the Foundation's definition does, which is worth knowing if that answer is the one that tipped your count.

How a near-even split shows up in this quiz

For each pair, the quiz counts how many of your answers went to each side, and your letter is the side with more, unless the count is too close to call. If the leading side holds no more than a set share of that pair's answers, the result calls the pair balanced and prints a lowercase x where the letter would go. That share is a single setting in the quiz's code, and whether a count can fall inside it depends on how many questions a version asks on each pair. The quiz page states the setting, which splits it covers on each length, and how often random answers would leave a pair balanced. All of them are worked out from the questions rather than typed in.

For this group, where the x lands changes what you see:

• An x on Extraversion or Introversion, or on Judging or Perceiving. Your N and F still came through, so every type closest to your answers is an NF type. An xNFP result, for example, lists INFP and ENFP, and each links back to this page.
• An x on Sensing or Intuition. The closest types are an NF type and its Sensing counterpart, such as INFJ and ISFJ. This site files the Sensing types under SJ or SP, so the two halves of that result belong to different groups.
• An x on Thinking or Feeling. The closest types are an NF type and its NT counterpart, such as ENFP and ENTP.
• Several balanced pairs. The list of closest types grows with each x. When too many types fit your answers equally well, the result names no single type and shows only the split on each pair.

When a pair isn't balanced, a wide lead and a narrow one print the same letter. The Foundation is open about this: type theory "does not measure how much of that preference a person possesses" (Reliability and Validity of the MBTI). The quiz shows the counts beside each letter anyway, so you can see whether your N or F came from a wide lead or a narrow one. A narrow lead is the one closest to the balanced line, and the one a single changed answer is most likely to move.

What research says about these two letters

How often a whole type holds up on a retest, and the broader case for and against the four-letter result, are questions about every type, so they are covered once, in the science behind the MBTI. One reliability figure is specific to this group. The Foundation's validity page cites a 2002 meta-analysis by Capraro, which it says found reliability across studies was good (.80 to .87) but varied, particularly on the Thinking and Feeling scale (0.64 to 0.87), without saying which kind of reliability. That is the scale behind the F in NF.

How much they predict

A 1991 National Research Council committee read the validity data in the test's manual. It reported that Myers and McCaulley, the manual's authors, looked at correlational data from 20 studies comparing the MBTI scales with other instruments and concluded that the Extraversion and Introversion scale has good construct validity. "In contrast," the report goes on, "the S-N and T-F scales show relatively weak validity, with only moderate correlations with other instruments designed to measure similar constructs," and it noted that these findings rest largely on high school and college student samples (chapter 5). Those are the two scales that define this group. On data about which types are found in which occupations, the committee added that "no evidence has been presented on relationships to performance in those occupations," and it concluded: "At this time, there is not sufficient, well-designed research to justify the use of the MBTI in career counseling programs."

Where the two letters do line up with mainstream research is through the Big Five, also called the Five Factor Model, which the Foundation's own validity page calls "the most used personality model and assessment in academia" (validity page). McCrae and Costa found that the four MBTI indices "did measure aspects of four of the five major dimensions" of personality (1989). A 2003 study of 900 people by Adrian Furnham, Joanna Moutafi and John Crump found that "Openness was correlated with Sensing-Intuition, Agreeableness with Thinking-Feeling," replicating McCrae and Costa (Social Behavior and Personality). So the Big Five traits these studies tie to the two scales behind NF are Openness, for Sensing or Intuition, and Agreeableness, for Thinking or Feeling. Trait measures like these, in the Foundation's words, report "where results fall on the spectrum from a lot to a little of that trait," rather than sorting a person to one side.

Common mix-ups

• Feeling is not the same as being emotional. F, in the framework, is about what you weigh when you decide: personal concerns and the people involved. The Foundation says outright that the pair has nothing to do with feeling in the sense of emotion.
• Intuition is not a sixth sense. In the framework it means paying attention to patterns and possibilities. The Foundation says everyone uses both Sensing and Intuition every day, and the letter says which one a person tends to rely on and trust more.
• NF is not a measure of introversion. Extraversion and Introversion are a separate pair, which is why the group includes ENFJ and ENFP as well as INFJ and INFP.
• NF has neighbors on both letters. It shares Intuition with the NT types and Feeling with ISFJ, ESFJ, ISFP and ESFP. If one of your two NF letters came from a narrow count, the types across that line are worth reading as closely as these.

If NF doesn't fit you

Start with the counts. If your N or your F came from a narrow lead, the other side of that pair may describe you just as well, and the quiz page describes both sides of every pair. The full version gives each pair more answers to count than the short one, and taking it again on another day shows whether a close letter holds.

The framework itself leaves the last word with you. The Foundation describes ethical practice with the official assessment as helping you verify your results and settle on a "best-fit type," which it defines as "the four-letter type that you think best describes you," and it says: "Ultimately, you are the only one who can decide which of the 16 types you prefer" (Verification of Best-Fit Type). This quiz isn't the official assessment and hasn't been tested the way research questionnaires are, so it has even less claim on the final say.

Using the result

• Read the counts before the letters. A narrow N or F says much less than a wide one.
• Treat it as a summary of the answers you gave today. The retest figures covered in the science behind the MBTI are a reminder that even the official instrument's letters move.
• Keep it out of decisions about other people. The Foundation's ethics page says "The MBTI assessment is not designed to be used for hiring purposes" and "Results are never to be used to limit anyone" (Ethical Use of the MBTI Assessment).
• Take bigger questions to a person. For a career decision, or anything that touches your health or your relationships, a qualified professional is a better guide than a type. The committee's caution about career counseling was about the official test, and a free quiz has less going for it.

For the longer story of where the four letters came from and what holds up, see the science behind MBTI. For how the letters line up with trait research, see MBTI and the Big Five. For what a narrow count on one pair can and can't tell you, see what a close split on a personality quiz tells you. For why a type description can feel written about you, see why personality tests feel so accurate.