It's your moral compass
Fi judges things by whether they feel good or bad to you. Over time, those judgments become a personal sense of right and wrong that guides your choices.
Cognitive functions: Fi
Introverted Feeling
Fi is your personal sense of right and wrong. It decides how you feel about the world, the people in it, and yourself.
- I feel
- I value
- I relate
- I appreciate
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Sympathy · led by INFP and ISFP
The heart's sympathy
Fi is the heart turned inward.
- ValuesWhat matters most to you
- MoralsYour own sense of good and bad
- Self-worthHow good you judge yourself to be
- AuthenticityLiving by your own principles
The feeling functions can be pictured as the heart. Fi is the heart turned inward: it holds your values, your emotions, and your sense of who you really are.
Its gift is sympathy. Fi relates to other people through its own feelings, asking "how would this feel to me?" That's how it comes to care about a person or a cause.
Sympathy starts from your own feelings. Empathy, the outward side of the heart, starts from someone else's.
These are metaphors, not science. They're just a way to picture what Fi does.
What Fi does
Six ways Fi shapes a person
Fi is a judging function. It deals with personal good-and-bad judgments, and it's in the ego of eight types: INFP, ENFP, ISFP, ESFP, INTJ, ENTJ, ISTJ, and ESTJ.
It relates through your own feelings
Fi users often connect with others by drawing on how they'd feel in the same situation, which can make them care strongly about the people and causes they relate to.
It measures your self-worth
Fi governs how good you judge yourself to be. Strong Fi users may feel better when others see them positively, and worse if they're seen as a bad person.
It notices how people treat you
Fi users tend to judge others by how kind they are. Someone supportive is likely to earn their appreciation, while someone demeaning may quickly lose it.
It wants you to be yourself
Fi pushes you to live by your own opinions, principles, and values, and to express yourself honestly rather than perform for others.
It's always ranking what matters
Fi is constantly evaluating: what you like, what you value most, and what you think someone deserves. It can sort priorities quickly because it knows what it cares about.
Fi in daily life
You can hear Fi in everyday language.
Fi talks about how you feel, what you value, and how good something is to you. It shows up in phrases like these.
FiI feel, I love, I value, I appreciate, I relate, I'm grateful
I just don't feel right doing that.
A personal sense of right and wrong, felt before it's explained.I really appreciate you being here.
Gratitude that comes from how someone makes you feel.I relate to that so much.
Sympathy: connecting through your own experience.That's just not who I am.
Authenticity: choosing what fits your own character.I love this song.
A personal evaluation of what you like.I'm proud of how I handled that.
Self-worth: judging how well you lived up to your values.
Strengths and trade-offs
A heart can open up or close off.
The same values that keep someone true to themselves can also make them rigid. How Fi shows up depends on how healthy and developed it is.
When Fi is open
- Knows what it values, so it can make choices that feel right.
- Often good at gratitude and appreciating the people in their life.
- Can build a steady, healthy sense of self-esteem.
- Can stay true to its principles when others disagree.
When Fi closes off
- Can become prideful, and when unhealthy may start to feel superior to others.
- May push back against a truth because of how it feels.
- May reject someone's values entirely once it has judged that person as "bad."
- Self-worth may rise and fall with how others see them.
The Fi + Te axis
Fi never works alone.
Fi is paired with Extraverted Thinking (Te). What you value and what you believe are tied together, and each one shapes the other.
The more you value someone, the more likely you are to believe them. And the more respect someone shows you, the more you tend to value them. Together, values and beliefs form judgments that are both moral and rational.
FiValueHow much someone matters to you
TeBeliefHow much you trust what they say
Fi in every type
Everyone has Fi. Where it sits changes everything.
All 16 types have Fi, but in a different position, or attitude. Here is how Fi tends to show up for them.
Fi is their Hero, the primary function they use to solve everyday problems. It gives them the strongest sense of morals, sympathy, and good-and-bad judgment, and they tend to use their feelings to decide their principles.
Growth: Like any Hero function, it can be overused or overconfident. Weighing how something feels against what's actually true keeps their judgments fair.
Fi is their Parent, the most responsible attitude. They tend to hold themselves to a high standard of personal goodness and work to make sure their actions line up with their values.
Growth: The Parent attitude is more cautious and can take more energy to use. Their challenge is to keep high standards without being too hard on themselves.
Fi is their Child: a pure, innocent approach to morals and values. They often know exactly how they feel about a situation and are very genuine about their opinions. When immature, they may overestimate their own goodness, which can tip into feeling superior.
Growth: Growth means refining their morals and assessing themselves more responsibly. Developed, it can become a high level of personal integrity.
Fi is their Aspirational (Inferior) function, which is both insecure and ambitious when it comes to values and sympathy. They may feel unsure about their self-worth or about how they really feel in a situation.
Growth: Cultivating their own morals and practising showing love to others helps. Developed, they can become very good at recognizing what is good and sharing it with others.
Shadow positions
Fi is their Nemesis, which worries about their self-worth and whether they are a good person. They may feel they're not enough and struggle to hold on to high self-esteem.
Growth: Developing their own values and learning to love themselves helps. Over time, they can feel confident in their worth, even when doubts come up.
Fi is their Critic, which is critical of their self-worth and of how good a person they are. When underdeveloped, they may hold themselves to an unrealistic standard of goodness and often end up feeling bad about themselves.
Growth: Holding themselves to a realistic standard, and leaning on facts rather than harsh feelings, helps. Developed, the Critic can become real wisdom about their own worth.
Fi is their Trickster, the position with the lowest awareness. They may not automatically notice their own feelings and values, may put others' feelings ahead of their own, and may let emotions build up instead of expressing them.
Growth: Expressing their emotions and deciding their values with intention helps, as does spending time with strong Fi users. Developed, they can gain a clearer sense of their own feelings and what's good.
Fi is their Demon, the deepest shadow position. They often focus on making others feel good, but if they feel unvalued or unrecognized, they may turn inward in unhealthy ways, such as self-indulgence or arrogance.
Growth: Expressing their feelings in healthy ways keeps them from building up. With growth, they can learn to appreciate themselves and feel grateful for the people who genuinely care about them.
Positions are listed from Hero down to Demon. The order shows where Fi sits in each type's mind, not how good or capable a type is.
Explore the other functions
Fi is one of eight cognitive functions. Each shapes the mind in its own way.
Where does Fi sit in your mind?
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