Know Thyselfby Silenos Works

Personality Types

Cognitive Functions

The eight Jungian functions behind the four letters

  • About 9 minutes
  • 64 questions
  • 8 dimensions
  • 8 illustrated results

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Illustration: Cognitive Functions

Behind every four-letter type lie the eight ways of working that Jung described: four ways of taking in information and four ways of making decisions, each turned either outward toward the world or inward toward your inner experience. This test measures all eight, shows your personal function stack and finds the four-letter types whose classic stacks fit you best.

Answer as you naturally are, especially when no one is watching. Some questions ask you to choose between two statements: pick the one that is more often true of you, even if both fit.

What it measures

Extraverted Intuition (Ne)

Seeing possibilities in the outer world: connections, alternatives and what-ifs sparked by people, ideas and situations.

Low: You prefer to work with one proven approach rather than juggle many possibilities.

High: Possibilities, alternatives and unexpected connections leap out at you everywhere.

Introverted Intuition (Ni)

Sensing where things are heading through an inner synthesis: single, converging insights about meaning and implications.

Low: You take things as they come rather than looking for a hidden pattern or a long-range forecast.

High: You often sense where things are heading and what lies beneath them.

Extraverted Sensing (Se)

Full, vivid engagement with the present: noticing and responding to what is physically happening right now.

Low: You are often absorbed in thought rather than in the sights, sounds and action around you.

High: You are vividly aware of the present moment and respond quickly to what is happening.

Introverted Sensing (Si)

Comparing the present with a rich inner store of past experience, detail and bodily sensation; valuing the familiar and proven.

Low: You rarely lean on routine or past experience and like to do things differently each time.

High: You draw on a detailed store of experience and value what is familiar and proven.

Extraverted Thinking (Te)

Organising the outer world by objective logic: goals, evidence, measurable results and efficient systems.

Low: Organising people, plans and results is not your natural way of deciding.

High: You organise the world around goals, evidence and efficient results.

Introverted Thinking (Ti)

Building an inner framework of precise principles and testing every idea against it for consistency.

Low: You care more that a method works than that its inner logic is airtight.

High: You test ideas against a precise inner framework until they are fully consistent.

Extraverted Feeling (Fe)

Attuning to the feelings and values shared by a group: harmony, courtesy and what other people need.

Low: You are fairly unaffected by the mood of a group and adjust little to it.

High: You attune to the feelings of others and work to keep the group in harmony.

Introverted Feeling (Fi)

Weighing everything against a deeply personal set of values: authenticity, conscience and what feels true to you.

Low: Your sense of right and wrong is shaped more by shared norms than by private conviction.

High: You weigh everything against deeply personal values and a need to be authentic.

Possible results

About this test

Carl Jung's Psychological Types (1921) described four mental functions, two ways of perceiving (sensation and intuition) and two ways of judging (thinking and feeling), each of which can be directed outward toward the world (extraverted) or inward toward inner experience (introverted). That gives eight function-attitudes, written here as Ne, Ni, Se, Si, Te, Ti, Fe and Fi. Isabel Briggs Myers built the four-letter types on this idea: each type has a dominant function, an auxiliary that balances it, and a least developed, inferior function. Later writers, notably Harold Grant, popularised the four-function stack used here, with a tertiary function between auxiliary and inferior (INTJ = Ni, Te, Fi, Se, and so on). Myers-Briggs and MBTI are trademarks of the Myers-Briggs Company; this is an independent test inspired by Jung's typology and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the company.

The test scores each function directly with statements and forced choices, then compares your eight scores with the stack of every type: weights of four, three, two and one for the dominant, auxiliary, tertiary and inferior functions, zero for the rest. The fit is the correlation between those weights and your profile, from 0 to 100.

Treat the results as a lens, not a verdict. The function model is a theory rather than an established finding: it has had little direct empirical testing, and the ordering of the stack is debated even among type enthusiasts. Research on the related four-letter scales finds continuous traits rather than clean types, and only moderate stability of the letters on retest. Scores are relative to the answer range, not to population norms.

References

For self-reflection and curiosity, not diagnosis. Scores describe how you answered, relative to the possible range; they are not compared with population norms.

All questions, type names and descriptions were written for this suite. Where a test is inspired by a branded instrument (the MBTI®, the five love languages®, DISC assessments, the Political Compass), it is an independent test of the same idea and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the owners of those names.

Cognitive Functions

About 9 minutes · 64 questions

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