| Primary Functions (Strengths and Motivations) | Shadow Functions (Sources of stress) |
| Ingrained: Introverted Feeling (Fi) | Extraverted Feeling (Fe) |
| Associative: Extraverted Sensing (Se) | Introverted Sensing (Si) |
| Exploratory: Introverted Intuition (Ni) | Extraverted Intuition (Ne) |
| Regulatory: Extraverted Thinking (Te) | Introverted Thinking (Ti) |
The ingrained nature of IFS is to get a feel of people and things around so as to generate and maintain a harmonious state of existence. An IFS maintains an internal model of ethics and expectations which they constantly revise and use it to feel connected to the world.
New information is gathered by interacting with the world with the senses using their associative Se. Hands on experiencing different facets of life is one of the most interesting activities for IFS as well as the most preferred way of interacting with the world. With the combination of ingrained Fi and associative Se, they are well placed to appreciate the beauty and aesthetics and are well aware of the impact that world of senses has on the feelings.
IFS’s exploratory is made up of introverted intuition, which tells the IFS what works and what doesn’t without much information on why that is so. Hence the IFS sticks to pretty much tried and tested strategies and steps out of them only when the odds are in their favour. They can spot if something is odd in a place or a person without having much clue about what is different. They like to understand hidden or mysterious aspects of things and hence value things that have an element of mystery. Combined with associative Se and ingrained Fi, they generally have an appeal towards arts and aesthetics that they seek to master.
Regulatory of IFS is made up of Te, which is used to fine tune the other functions in a way that is efficient. They generally like to have things organized so that they can carry out their task in a smooth manner and can find it hard it to work that needs constant adjustments. Also, any pending activity can put pressure on the regulatory Te, which can get compounded by the exploratory Ni that tells that things are off before coming up with the reasons, which makes the IFS agitated or nervous till the task is completed. If there are a lot of things that need their attention, they can get lost and might even forget or reluctant to engage in basic self care activities like eating etc. Combined with Fi, the IFS expects world to be efficient and to reward actions that are ethically correct and novel. If the world seems unfair, the IFS can recoil into their own self and may ignore and blame the world for the internal anguish and might become very sceptical.
Type codes in other systems: ISFP (MBTI), ISFj (Socionics)