How to spot an INFJ
A few years ago, I made a post about how the cognitive functions manifest in our behaviour and now I’m going to expand on that and give a more detailed, visually accompanied overview for each type, now for the INFJ.
For the purpose of this guide, I’m taking a look at several interviews (1, 2, 3, 4) with Colin Morgan, a Northern Irish actor. I’m breaking my unspoken rule of focussing on a single interview here, but you’ll see why later. You can find the links to other type spotting guides below which I will update over time when new guides are being added.
The dominant and the auxiliary cognitive functions that people use are those that are the ones that are really noticeable in the quality of their gaze, in their speech style, in their facial expressions, and their whole general demeanour, and so these are the ones that I will be focussing on here. In case of an INFJ, these functions are Ni and Fe. Thanks to this combination, INFJs are the most detached of all the types. It might seem like a contradiction at first, but their focus is indeed directed outwards, particularly at other people, which is where the infamous “INFJ stare” comes from. Like the ENFJ, yet taking it a step further, they will just stare right into your soul with a completely blank expression. And the more people there are in the conversation, the more they forget that they are a real person that, too, is part of the conversation and should play a role in. But they don’t as it’s like they tuck themselves away and become an empty vessel inviting everyone’s words and feelings in, and since their own identity is almost kind of hidden from themselves in that moment, they are unable to emote a reaction or to even speak because there is just not much to give right now. All they do is stare at the person talking and at everyone else listening to look for their reactions, without reacting themselves, as you can see nicely in the gif below. When they really need to listen to your words, however, they have to detach themselves even further and stop looking at people entirely. Instead, they will stare intensely into space without actually seeing anything.
This detachment that is mainly due to dominant Ni obviously has some serious impact on their interactions with other people, which actually becomes a dead giveaway for their type: there is always some kind of disconnect between the INFJ and everyone else. As you can see in the gif below, Colin Morgan (on the left) is standing completely still, just watching everything without moving or talking, just listening. And people generally have no idea how to deal with that and typically need quite some time to get accustomed to them as a person because, let’s be honest, it is a bit unsettling (and I say that with utmost affection), so there is quite a lot of emotional space between the INFJ and everyone else as if they were standing behind a glass window. They are not lost in thought, they are mentally present, and yet they are like an island in their midst, separate from everyone else, even when the INFJ is a beloved member of the group. However, this is why they typically radiate calmness and some kind of solemnity wherever they go. Interestingly, though, I find that this disconnect is slightly less severe around other FJs as they seem to be the ones best equipped to adapt to them.
But don’t be fooled, INFJs are generally very comfortable with their auxiliary Fe and know exactly how to charm people and can turn it on in an instant like a light switch so that their whole demeanour can change from aloof to charming jokester from one second to the next. Particularly when there is just one single person to focus on, they will go all out and use their entire face as a communication device. The gif below demonstrates this full-on Fe-blast very well. Whenever you have a person with a face this expressive in front of you, there is an almost 100% chance that it’s an FJ (or the occasional ExTP) you’re talking to. But it’s not necessarily a genuine emotion the INFJ is currently feeling that they want to get across, though if it is, then it‘s more of a conscious choice and slightly exaggerated. Mostly, they want to emphasise a point or make everyone feel comfortable and themselves more approachable, and there is often a lot of mirroring involved. Generally, the fewer people are around, the more animated they become. They always anticipate how they need to say something and which facial expression they need to make in order to be liked. Even when what they are trying to say is a delicate matter, they are good at finding a way to say it in a way that circumvents any kind of possible conflict and without coming across as rude. They can usually navigate unpleasant conversations in a lighthearted manner without actually answering uncomfortable questions, yet remain polite and friendly enough that it can take a moment for you to even notice that they subtly steered the conversation into a completely different direction. Another thing that INFJs are extremely prone to is speaking in metaphors.
Like all the intuitives, INFJs can also have some trouble articulating what they mean. High Ni typically leads to long pauses in their speech that they rarely fill with “uhm” and this is kind of their default so that their speech seems quite deliberate, but when they are following a train of thought and let it flow freely, like the ENFJ, they can and will drop their sentence and start a new one before finishing the last without caring if what they’re saying is even still grammatically correct, which can lead to an absolute train wreck of a sentence, but then they cover it up with a whole range of facial expressions. Despite being on the Ni/Se spectrum, INFJs can occasionally come close to a speech pattern that is almost reminiscent of high Ne. Unlike NPs, they will not stutter and rapidly repeat the beginning of a word, but they will repeat the whole word or phrase and make a little verbal mess in not quite as infinite run-on sentences, but still rather long ones. This is also what sets them apart from ISFJs because unlike high Ni users, high Si users are usually amazingly good at expressing themselves and can keep a sentence grammatically intact even after suddenly embedding another thought into it and can then carry on without missing a beat, while the INFJ along with the other NJs have already forgotten how their sentence even started. However, I chose an example of the more deliberate default pattern from yet another interview on a character he played that had to fight in World War I:
And I think it’s hard for … people of our generation now … to … connect …. with that … and to … understand … what it is to put so much trust … into something … like serving your country … something which you … from a young age were conditioned to believe was … was comforting and something y-you could absolutely believe in … could betray you so … badly. There is a real sense of duty. I think there is a real sense of … honour and pride … I think … whenever you’re representing someone’s life … because … there’s no way … they could’ve ever thought something like this was going to happen, so there’s a sense that you … then have to do them proud.
A little bonus: In contrast to the gif above where you can see Colin Morgan staring into space, but listening intently, the gif below shows what it looks like when an INFJ is functioning while suffering from a stage not too far away from sensory overload and trying very hard to keep it together. He’s trying to focus on the conversation and trying to be polite, so he’s still half-absent-mindedly nodding along, but his eyes jump around because there is too much sensory information all around that is difficult to block out and it just looks like he is mostly set on Fe-auto-pilot throughout the interview to simply endure whatever is going on. This is what inferior Se does to you, so INTJs experience that as well.
