Part Two: What Type Practitioners Need to Know About Emotional Intelligence and Type

By Roger R. Pearman, Ed.D
Founder and President, Leadership Performance Systems and Qualifying.org

Decoding and Using the Information in Emotions

Emotions provide energy, motivation, and direction. Emotions are so integrated into the way we see, interpret, and act on experience that it is a miracle that eleven emotions have proven to have specific neurological patterns of chemical activity and pathways.[i]

Researchers have shown that we have short and long routes to emotional triggers. Imagine that you are walking around a cabin you’ve rented for a long weekend and it is early evening. You see a long, curled object on the side of the path and you immediately prepare to flee out of fear that it is a snake (short route). In a few moments you realize that the object is a water hose and now you are calm and even laugh at yourself for the initial reaction (long route).

Here’s the core issue. All of our emotions have short and long routes which are developed over a lifetime of experience. The interplay of experience and hard wiring create “programs” that get triggered, and the evidence clearly shows the programming related to relationships is largely influenced by type.

Ask an ISTJ and an ENFP what gets them hot under the collar and you’ll see what I mean. With lightning speed, many ISTJs will note inaccuracy and incompetent analysis as a trigger to a hot emotion, and ENFPs will often identify any kind of rejection or observed unkindness as a trigger. This is not to say that rudeness is unimportant to the ISTJ or accuracy and incompetence are not of concern to the ENFP, but these do not trigger a hot emotion like anger or impatience.

Parallel differences are found on triggers for the other emotions as well for the sixteen types. As we might expect, if type influences the triggers it also affects how these are managed internally and interpersonally. A decade ago when I started researching the various linkages between type and emotional intelligence, I had the good fortune of accessing the database at the Center for Creative Leadership which provided ample evidence of EQ variables. Without reviewing all of the subtle differences between the types, let me encourage you to read Introduction to Type and Emotional Intelligence[ii]. My point for this article is to illustrate that type is integral to our emotional lives.

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“The psyche is a whole in which everything is connected to everything else.” C.G. Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, p.212

If, as suggested above, type influences the most fundamental aspects of emotions and emotional expression, then how might type be related to the proposed abilities that have been shown to be essential to emotional intelligence?

As indicated earlier, a group of researchers has taken the perspective that emotional intelligence is reflected in the way eight specific abilities are used. These researchers hold that like other abilities (e.g. math calculations), the eight abilities of emotional intelligence are coded into the human neurological makeup. The following table identifies the eight abilities and associates the psychological type mental process with each ability.

EQ Ability / Type Mental Process
Recognizing the physical fact of emotions /Sensing that is introverted
Identifying the contextual elements in your emotions /Intuiting that is introverted
Recognizing others’ emotions /Sensing that is extraverted
Anticipating others’ emotions /Intuiting that is extraverted
Identifying an appropriate emotional response /Feeling that is introverted
Matching the emotion with the situation /Thinking that is introverted
Evaluating the emotional needs of others /Thinking that is extraverted
Demonstrating appropriate emotions in interpersonal behavior /Feeling that is extraverted

Please note that I am not suggesting that a given type has an advantage on any given EQ ability. I am suggesting that the mental functions in their attitudes of types have a role in understanding the abilities of emotional intelligence.

Jung proposed four mental functions (Sensing, INtuiting, Thinking, Feeling) that are manifest in either extraverted or introverted attitudes as fundamental to an individual’s ability to perceive and judge. These processes work together in a pattern to produce a typical way of adapting to daily challenges. The perceiving processes are under less conscious control while the decision-making processes are more conscious.[iii] In a similar way, the EQ abilities model suggests that the eight abilities identified above work in various dynamic ways which the result being a certain level of emotional effectiveness.

Jung’s model included a way of understanding four perceiving strategies and four judging strategies that are used in varying degrees in our type dynamic. As Jung noted, type was about how we orient our conscious mind to the world, people, and things, and that while some processes are superior in consciousness, others are inferior in consciousness but NOT inferior in strength.[iv] Again, the EQ abilities model researchers have illustrated that abilities vary in their depth and use within each individual.

As a note of caution, let’s remember that there are some important theoretical issues which we as type users are working through in our research and use of type. Jung’s structure of type is based on two attitudes and four mental functions as expressed in those attitudes. This distinction is sometimes blurred when talking about the source of the type expression. For example, sometimes we hear discussions about extraverted thinking as if it has a different source than introverted thinking. In a letter to Erich von Fange, Jung wrote of his own theory: My book has been written to demonstrate the structural and functional aspects of certain typical elements of the psyche….my concepts are merely meant to serve as a means of communication through colloquial language about immensely complicated structures…We should take note of Jung’s caution about the complexity of the psyche and the interdependence of all of its processes.


[i] Lewis, M. and Haviland-Jones, J. (2000). The Handbook of Emotions. New York, New York: The Guildford Press.
[ii] Pearman, Roger. (2002). Introduction to Type and Emotional Intelligence. Mountain View, CA; CPP, Inc.
[iii] Jung is explicit that the four mental functions are manifest differently in extraversion and introversion. His theory of types plainly spells out that there are four qualities of extraversion and four qualities of introversion. The qualities are driven by the four functions. He begins the “General Description of the Types” (paragraph 536) with a focus on extraversion and introversion and in every essay after Psychological Types he goes to great pain to make the point that “the two attitudes are manifest in a special way through the predominance of one of the four basic functions” (paragraph 913). In recent writings we have moved to discussing these manifestations as extraverted thinking, introverted thinking, etc. as eight mental processes, which Jung alludes to with examples of the qualitative differences among the way extraverted thinking and introverted thinking are discussed. See Jung, C.G (1921) Psychological Types. Princeton: Bolingren, paragraphs 536-987.
[iv] Jung made this point in numerous papers. In an effort to make explicit is use of the words superior and inferior, he specifically noted that the “superior function is superior in consciousness; the inferior function is interior to consciousness but not in strength.”

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