5 Hurtful Myths About the Feelings of Thinkers

I recently read an article in which the Myers and Briggs personality types were ranked from most loving to least loving. As a fan of the 16-type system and its proper use, I was troubled. The point of personality psychology is not to dehumanize people or elevate some types over others. But, accidentally or not, that’s exactly what this article did.  

You may have already guessed that the “least loving” folks listed in this article were Thinkers.

Thinkers often get a bad rap. There’s this idea that they are all emotionless robots who can’t understand feelings. Do I really need to say that all human beings have the capacity to love deeply, and we all just show it in different ways?  It should be obvious that no type has a corner market on love, or any emotion. Seems like something we should have learned in elementary school.

So it's hard to believe that "Thinkers don't feel" is a persisting blind spot, even among some seasoned practitioners of type theory.

Why do people keep saying Thinkers have fewer emotions?

I don’t know.  Wish I did.  But here’s an example that illustrates that it’s not true.

I knew a couple once and they were both hot heads. He was a Feeler and she was a Thinker. When they tried to come together to make a decision, they would both become hyper-emotional and WW3 would ensue.

Here’s the thing—neither one based the final decision on that emotion. 

Wait, you say—don’t Feelers base their decisions on emotions? No, not really. It may appear this way, but Feelers base their decisions on their value systems and relationships with people.

They trust their values and relationships to guide them toward the “right” action.

And Thinkers trust logic and reason to guide them toward the “sensible” action.

Here’s the simple truth: Thinkers feel just as deeply as Feelers, they just use a different process to make decisions. That’s it! It’s as easy as that.

Now let’s look at five disturbing myths about the feelings of Thinkers that are still floating around and banish these misconceptions once and for all.

#1: They are less loving

This myth might be the most insulting one of all. The depth of one’s love does not depend on your personality type or on whether you are a Thinker or Feeler. Personality psychology can help us understand how a Thinker expresses love and affection, but it never presumes that one type is more loving than any other type.

A basic understanding of type theory and its purpose puts this one to bed—we aim to understand and appreciate our differences, not belittle people.

#2: They are not in touch with their emotions

In some ways, Thinkers can be even more in touch with their emotions because they sort them out before they make a decision. The messy emotions they are feeling are noted, identified and then set aside as the Thinker focuses on a more logical way forward. Feelings may be involved in the decision-making process, but as another data point to supplement the objective reasoning.

In my experience, Thinkers become good at identifying what they are feeling in order to manage this process. They will then turn to the Thinkers’ natural approach to decision-making, which is based on impersonal data.

#3: They don’t get their feelings hurt

This one is ridiculous. Thinkers are not less likely to have hurt feelings, they may just choose to think about them in a reasonable way. And they may not act on those hurt feelings, but they are there just the same.

Thinkers can feel belittled or betrayed (just as Feelers do), they can be sensitive if their competence is attacked (just as Feelers can) and they can get angry if they perceive injustice (just as Feelers do). It's simply that they will process these emotions through the lens of objective knowledge and might appear “unfeeling.”

#4: They aren’t nurturing 

You don’t need to dump flowery emotions all over someone to be nurturing. Feelers often don’t understand that Thinkers can be just as nurturing as they are—they just do it differently. I have seen Thinker mothers nurture their children in more discerning ways, such as running scenarios of what the child could have done to help them handle situations better or helping their children become more independent by teaching them problem-solving skills. They nurture by using insightful (but less emotive) strategies to pursue what is best for their families. 

Don’t be fooled into believing that a Thinker’s care is superficial, or that their devotion to their loved ones is somehow diminished because they are less touchy-feely.

 #5: They make decisions without any emotions

Here’s where a broad brush is used to ignorantly paint Thinkers as robots. This really bugs me.  I watched my Thinker husband’s heart break when we had to put our beloved dog to sleep, and he was the one who had to make that decision. He used all his Thinker tools to do it … reason, logic and a knowledge of what was in the best interest of our Boston Terrier, Maggie.

This was the choice of a deeply caring person, not a robot, and after it was done he agonized over our loss, and cried. Just like me.

To wrap it up

I can’t resist the story of Spock from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, who falls in love with Nurse Chapel from sick bay.  She becomes deathly ill, and he fears he will lose her.  We all know Spock’s attachment to logic, but emotion overwhelms him. At her bedside, he finds a way to express it … “You do not die!! You do not die!!” 

Dramatic, right? The way Spock expressed his love looked like a clear, level-headed command rather than a heart-wrenching lament, but the powerful feeling behind it was the same. You gotta love that.

So here’s the skinny: a Thinker’s decision-making process is impersonal, but they are not. They are as personal as Feeling types and they feel their emotions as intensely and as deeply.

Don’t make the mistake of painting Thinkers as “robotic” or incapable of love. This is hurtful and an irresponsible use of personality typology.

And next time you find yourself judging someone to be coldly calculated and emotionless, you might consider the possibility that you don’t understand them. Go back to the basics of type theory—and take a closer, kinder look.