Uncovering Client Tendencies: Thinking vs Feeling

In our last couple of articles, we began drilling down on the four continua of personality and psychological preferences that underlie the Myers-Briggs Type indicator:

--Extraversion v. Introversion
--Sensing v. Intuition
--Thinking v. Feeling
--Judging v. Perceiving

An individual's personality will give us vital guidance to the client's psychological needs, behavioral patterns, and the way in which emotions interact with and interrupt financial decision-making. So far, we have covered the Extroversion vs. Introversion continua and the Sensing vs. Intuition continua. We offered observations of both sides of the continua and uncovered some common biases and barriers that advisors might encounter on the way to economically rational decision-making.

This month we take on the next leg of the Myers-Briggs Type indicator and discuss the Thinking vs. Feeling preference. As an advisor, this overview will help you 1) recognize which side of the ledger your clients occupy and 2) give some ideas and advice as to how you can best work with them and the specific behavioral and cognitive biases they may bring into their financial decision-making.

In previous articles, we presented a brief description of the Thinking individual juxtaposed with the Feeling counterpart and gave a ten thousand foot view of their communication styles and tendencies toward certain economically irrational thought processes. Determining if a client is more aligned with the Thinking or Feeling tendency gives advisors two huge pieces of information about how best to work with them. Stated very simplistically:

1) The Thinking preference is objective in decision-making, placing more weight on facts.

2) The Feeling counterpart is expected to be more subjective and place more weight on personal concerns.

Clients are mostly Thinking or Feeling but are likely to still have traits of the other. A Thinking person may make a decision based on his or her need for objectivity but test the decision for success and soundness with a Feeling style of decision-making. So it would not be accurate to pigeonhole individuals into one classification. Although we will discuss them as two separate categories for purposes of contrast, advisors must avoid the misconception that a Thinking person must be overly intelligent and a Feeling person must be overly emotional.