Fe/Fi and empathy.

Fe - empathy, Fe users will often tell you stories of their own personal troubles as way to empathize i.e. show understanding of your feelings by trying to make a connection to you as in "hey I had this same experience a month ago, I understand what it feels like!"

Fi - sympathy, Fi users will often try to use comforting words as a way to console you, may hug you to make you feel better, they treat your emotional problems as unique to you and may ask you about the details of your problems - this is different from reinforcement of the connection as means of support that Fe users do by telling personal stories to others

Fe is adapting one's interactions with the external world to the moods
and feelings of others. Fe is sensitive to events like changes in
people's expressions or other such "soft," hard-to-quantify conditions
in the environment.

Fi is judging perceptions emotionally, based on weight of evidence. Fi
as a mental process is the flow of judgements on perceptions personal
ideals or feeling of right and wrong. Fi strives for integrity and
consistency in it's ideals. Fi is higher cognitive refinement personal
emotion. Fi enables one to vividly re-experience past feelings.

Source: Jungian Function Theory




Feeling is a process of making evaluations based on what is important,
where personal, interpersonal, or universal values serve as
guideposts. Using the cognitive process of Feeling, situations and
information are assessed subjectively. The impact on people,
circumstances, appropriateness, harmony, likes, and dislikes are all
considered in making Feeling judgments. Weighing different values,
considering ethical and moral issues, attending to personal and
relationship goals, and having a belief in something all involve this
process.

Extraverted Feeling - Considering others and responding to them. The
extraverted Feeling process is used in relation to particular people
and situations and so has a more here-and-now quality than a
universal, future, or past quality. When particular people are out of
our presence or awareness, we can then adjust to new people or
situations. This process helps us "grease the wheels" of social
interaction. Often, the process of extraverted Feeling seems to
involve a desire to connect with (or disconnect from) others and is
often evidenced by expressions of warmth (or displeasure) and
self-disclosure. The "social graces" such as being polite, being nice,
being friendly, being considerate, and being appropriate often revolve
around the process of extraverted Feeling. Associated behaviors might
include remembering birthdays, finding just the right card for a
person and selecting a gift based on what a person likes. Keeping in
touch, laughing at jokes when others laugh, and trying to get people
to act kindly to each other also involve extraverted Feeling. Using
this process, we respond according to expressed or even unexpressed
wants and needs of others. We may ask people what they want or need or
self-disclose to prompt them to talk more about themselves. This often
sparks conversation and lets us know more about them so we can better
adjust our behavior to them.

Introverted Feeling - Evaluating importance and maintaining
congruence. It is often hard to put words to the values used to make
introverted Feeling judgments since they are often associated with
images and feeling-tones more than words. As a cognitive process, it
often serves as a filter for information that matches what is valued
and wanted. We engage in the process of introverted Feeling when a
value is compromised and we think, "sometimes, some things just have
to be said." On the other hand, most of the time this process works
"in private" and is seldom expressed directly. Actions often speak
louder than words. This process helps us know when people are being
fake or insincere or if they are basically good. It is like having an
internal sense of the "essence" of a person or a project, and reading
another person or action or project with fine distinctions among
feeling-tones. When the other person's values and beliefs are
congruent with our own, we are inclined to feel kinship with them and
want to connect with them.
Source: Brief descriptions of cognitive functions (a.k.a. Personality “traits”)

I think...

Fe is to do with sympathy. You understand how the other is feeling on a subconscious level. The reasoning behind their emotion does not concern you. E.g: "I really can't imagine what you are feeling, but I know you are feeling bad. Cookies cheer people up. Here, have a cookie."

Fi is to do with empathy. You understand how the other is feeling on a conscious level. You know the reasoning behind their emotion. E.g "You're acting how I would if I were sad or if my dog ran away so I know you are feeling bad. Cookies cheer me up when I am sad. Here, have a cookie."

I think the logic functions can also masquerade as sympathy/empathy.
Eg Ti could reason "I have no idea what feelings are all about but I have the idea that if I give this cookie to you, you will stop crying. Then I can continue thinking in peace."
Or Te "Cookie makes you stop crying. I will give it to you. Then I can carry out my Master Plan. Muhahahahaha!"

pc3000 said:

I think the logic functions can also masquerade as sympathy/empathy.Muhahahahaha!"

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Exactly. I'll often use my Ti to put myself in someone else's shoes and play out a scenario in my head. Maybe not the same as true "empathy" but faking it isn't very hard. I've read where ESTP's might be most adept at this, even though Fe is their Tertiary.

ZaRocks said:

Exactly. I'll often use my Ti to put myself in someone else's shoes and play out a scenario in my head. Maybe not the same as true "empathy" but faking it isn't very hard. I've read where ESTP's might be most adept at this, even though Fe is their Tertiary.

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I don't really seem to be able to pull off real empathy at all. The absolute best I can do is a general, very brief feeling of "Huh, that would suck".

sofort99 said:

I don't really seem to be able to pull off real empathy at all. The absolute best I can do is a general, very brief feeling of "Huh, that would suck".

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I think empathy is when you see someone suffering and their pain becomes your pain, such that you are moved to help them (yes, I am basing that on Star Trek). However, the extent to which people feel pain varies greatly. I can't empathize with a person if they're feeling pain over something which I consider trivial. It's not empathy unless you actually feel the pain as acutely as the other person. Personally I don't usually feel pain for anything other than a physical injury, torture of people or animals, or the untimely death of someone special. Stuff like that.

rousse said:

How on earth does a guy like Armando get banned? I thought he was cute as pie.

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Maybe he asked for himself to be banned since he wanted to close his account? I don't know but I'm offering my guess since I'm 'sympathising' with your curiosity. Actually I really have no idea how you feel or even how I feel.
Actually I know how I feel: I want to know everything - or everything that suits my current interest that can change every second.

vel said:

Fe - empathy, Fe users will often tell you stories of their own personal troubles as way to empathize i.e. show understanding of your feelings by trying to make a connection to you as in "hey I had this same experience a month ago, I understand what it feels like!"

Fi - sympathy, Fi users will often try to use comforting words as a way to console you, may hug you to make you feel better, they treat your emotional problems as unique to you and may ask you about the details of your problems - this is different from reinforcement of the connection as means of support that Fe users do by telling personal stories to others

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Old thread, but I ran across this and am a bit confused about Fi now. The way you described the Fe reaction is how I would handle a situation in which someone is hurting. I thought the reason it was so difficult to find the right words to comfort someone could be attributed to having Fi as an auxiliary function. Any verbal expression of sympathy feels too shallow and almost trite. I usually will share a personal story to comfort and/or inspire the sad person. Perhaps one associate empathy and sympathy with functions at all...

The way I understand it is

Fi tends to absorb the emotions of others and mixes it in with their own. Since Fi identifies more with the individual emotional nuances of other people, it's harder for Fi to act emotionally spontaneous and change the emotions of other people. Instead, it uses Te to act on, deal with, and attempt to improve the well-being of other people and them-self.

Fe, since it doesn't identify as much with the individual emotional nuances of other people, finds it easier to act emotionally spontaneous and modify or adjust a group emotional atmosphere. It does this by using Ti to identify, relate, and differentiate groups/categories to determine how to act in them, prioritize them, and understand them, which is more general and less personal than Fi.

So as they relate to empathy, I think they both do, but somewhat differently. I think Fi conceptually is empathy and Fe conceptually is sympathy, but that they both can lead to compassion when developed enough or focused on enough, which is a combination of both. That's why I summarized Fi and Fe, since I think this approach can be much more misleading or ambiguous.

Hopes this helps somebody or at least provides someone some kind of insightful thought.

I think Fe is more empathy, and Fi is more sympathy. For example, my sister (ESTJ) and I both have inferior feeling, but hers is Fi and mine is Fe. So I think it makes for a good comparison.

Maybe it's because of my Se, too, but I pick up on people's feelings really easily. Even really subtle things, I notice them just automatically. My sister, though, said she has a really hard time knowing how people feel. She'll annoy people or make them mad without even noticing, or without understanding why. My brother's an ISFx and he's pretty sensitive, so a lot of the time my mom or I will have to stop my sister because she'll start upsetting him without realizing. I'm a lot more careful with him than she is, and it's not because I care more or am nicer, it's because I can read his feelings better.

Another thing, my ESTJ sister used to have a bunch of fish, but she kept crying when they died so she eventually got rid of them. She just couldn't really handle it. For me, though, I remember when we thought we were going to put our cat down, I felt really awkward because I didn't feel like crying or anything. I kept making an effort to look sad just so that nobody would think I didn't care. Same thing happened when my grandma died, or my teacher back in 6th grade. At the same time, though, I'll bawl my eyes out when I'm watching a sappy TV show (Extreme Makeover: Home edition and Secret Millionaire are the worst) but it won't affect my sister at all.