ESFP Function Breakdown

Extroverted Sensing Feeler Perceiver

DRIVER – Se Extroverted Sensing REALITY

Asks: What is happening right now? What is everyone doing?

The ESFP feels most at home when they are existing in their environment completely in reality. They often ask what everyone is doing? They hone in on their five sense to notice everything that is happening around them and they seek to provide the people around them with the best experience possible. For this reason, they are often well liked and loved by many people. Usually the most positive people in the room, ESFPs have an excitable and entertaining nature that they are proud of. They like to talk to people about whatever gives people the best experience. They are also extremely observant and will notice people’s behaviors but also manage to live completely in the moment. Constantly observing reality and forgetting it as it is no longer important. This means that they are very flexible moving their emotions and actions with what the environment needs every second. They are very ‘now’ orientated people and they are who you want with you if you need to let go of something in your past. Se is also very concerned with the physical environment and this includes the way everything looks. ESFPs are very interested in fashion and maximizing beauty. They will often decorate lavishly and dress beautifully being attracted to nice things that they believe make them look nice. This is a part of the experience that they offer, they want to look nice and they want the environment to look nice as well.

PASSENGER – Fi Introverted Feeling MORALS

Asks: Does this feel right to me? Is this is action right or wrong? Does this experience feel good to me?

The goal of Fi is to hold Se accountable from a moral perspective. It supports and helps Se by making sure that the current experience feels good and makes them feel good about themselves. If it doesn’t feel good or positive, then they will change the experience until it does. Fi works to hold the ESFP morally accountable and gives them a responsibility to stay true to themselves. Unfortunately since the experience comes before the evaluation they are often left questioning whether they are a good or bad person or whether they can trust that experience and out of need to reevaluate an experience they might end up finding themselves in the same situations. ESFPs are constantly evaluating how something or someone makes them feel. How the whole situation makes them feel and how the environment makes them feel. They will also extend their help by offering people evaluations on their situations and whether actions were right or wrong. They are sensitive people with a fluctuating sense of self worth. A self worth that is rooted in giving others the best and most fun experience possible. If however, the ESFP becomes overwhelmed with whether something is right or wrong, it can stunt the desire of Se to experience new situations. When Se is paired with Fi in a healthy way, ESFPs come off as very sensitive people that are always happy to entertain and make someone smile as long as the situation is in accordance with their values.

10 YR OLD – Te extroverted thinking EFFECTIVENESS

Asks: How can I get things done or cause things to happen? What actions create the best experience and feel good?

When paired with Se and Fi, ESFPs childlike Te becomes short sighted planning for actions that will create the best experience that will make them feel good about themselves and give others the most enjoyment. For this reason, ESFPs are often the people that will be sitting on the couch looking around at the people around them and say “let’s go to the amusement park. I already have season passes.” The planning part being the buying of season passes ahead of time knowing that the urge would strike them in the future. Or having a project in the back yard that they know they will want the experience of completing in the future waiting for them. If ESFPs balance Fi and Te to provide Se with the best experiences, ESFPs can look a lot like ENTJs and be very effective in business because having money means more possibilities of experiences to provide the people they love and to themselves. But ESFPs are also skilled at being so much fun and providing a fun experience that people offer to pay for them to come along on trips because they know they will have fun if they come along. This is why ESFPs are almost constantly being showered with free trips, opportunities and connections. However if the ESFP resists developing Fi, and goes straight to using Te to manipulate their environment to the best experience, they may hurt people along the way because they were only thinking about the experience in that moment and then planning to move on to the next experience. If you let an ESFP plan out the activities for the day it will feel very much like you are at the whim of the desires of a child but this not a criticism because if you are adaptable you will find that the activities are actually a lot of fun BECAUSE they were innocently chosen for fun and production. The angelic side of Te in an ESFP, is concerned with fun and productivity, jumping to accomplish things and do things at that exact moment. The demonic side of Te in an ESFP, is controlling and restrictive, ignoring the needs and wants of others.

3 YEAR OLD – Ni Introverted Intuition PROPHETIC

Asks: What will be because of me? What future creates the best experience?

ESFPs fear this function. They see a convergent future as limiting. They prefer the possibilities of the present and fear a focus on the future might take away from their ability to live in the moment and see everything going on. Thinking about the future detaches them from what they are experiencing now, and they fear missing something. They prefer to take in everything in the moment and just enjoy it. The ability to live in the moment independent of the past or the future is a very highly praised talent. But this means that they can be short sighted. Without thinking about how their actions will impact their futures, they often experience the same things many times as if for the first time, getting caught in a loop of feeling trapped. The truth is that they use Ni to some degree to think about what experience they will choose. When an ESFP chooses to go to the amusement park they are thinking ahead and evaluating their current state to know that going to the amusement park will be a pleasant thing to do for the day. (they are always the ones to remember to look at the weather) They consciously resist and reject the need to look to the future or that their present impacts their future but they use it with Se and in fact it strengthens Se. ESFPs feel a sense of shame from not being able to plan and think about the future better. They often find themselves in a similar situation, realizing how they feel and that they have felt this way before, in fact the last time they were stuck in this situation. And because of that they wish desperately that they could see further into the future. The truth is that they have this ability if they just accept that their three year old needs them to consciously recognize their foresight. When an ESFP accepts the part that Ni plays, they become very powerful in creating some of the most fun and amazing times for everyone that knows them. This is also manifested in the very childlike way that ESFP’s will ask the meaning of other people’s actions and what it means for them in the future.

DETOUR – Si Introverted Sensing MEMORY

Asks: What has happened? What have I already experienced?

Se seeks to experience their world in the moment and then to move on to the next experience and it also wants to give others the best experience possible. But Si receives experiences and then remembers them in a detached way. Si can cause the ESFP to become frustrated, stubborn and filled with worry. Constantly questioning themselves and whether or not they had done something before. The ESFP might be resistant to remembering their experiences though feeling that it takes away from living in the moment. But ESFPs are drawn to Si users as they can remember the experiences for them and remind them when they are doing the same thing again. This is a great opportunity for growth for ESFPs and can help expand their thinking. If Si users do not shut off their desire to continually experience new things in reality, then ESFPs will show great admiration for Si users. ESFPs will grow frustrated with Si users for always wanting to slow experiences down to absorb them but then be very appreciative of Si for remembering the experiences they offered.

COP – Fe extroverted feeling HARMONY

Asks: What gets everyone’s needs met? What is the current culture? How is everyone feeling?

This is how the ESFP endlessly criticizes themselves and others for not being able to meet everyone’s emotional needs. They also criticize their inability to read people’s emotions. Constantly asking how everyone is feeling and if they are having fun. They also endlessly criticize themselves and others when they go against social norms. They will want women to dress and behave like women and men are expected to dress and behave like men. Because if people act outside of the social norms, then are harming everyone’s experience. The ironic part is that they criticize their lack of following norms thinking it hurts the experiences of others but because of Se creativity, they are often trendsetters and stick out of the crowd in a way that others adore them. Once they notice this, their potential for positive influence is enormous. As fashion designers, as entertainers etc.

SPEEDOMETER Ti Introverted Thinking ACCURACY

Asks:  What makes logical sense?

ESFPs function that they choose to ignore consciously has to do with internal logical truth. They believe logic is subjective. They recognize that nothing is ever truly accurate and therefore deciding what is logically accurate comes from a person’s beliefs or biases in every logical deduction. This often gives the ESFP the appearance of being dumb. It isn’t that, usually they understand the logical process, they just don’t care about it. They want to know about the morals, emotions, beliefs, that got you to your logical conclusion. Or they at least want to know that you have a sense of right and wrong. To them, internal logical truths aren’t important and are subjective. What they are interested in is beliefs and the emotions that got you to your conclusion. The problem with this is that it tends to cause a dismissal of facts and logic. But apart of them will agree that there is some objective logical truth. Anything can be true, what matters is how you feel and how they feel. An ESFP might say that it might be true or false that god is real or not, the only thing that matters is how you feel about whether or not god is real and what experience you’ve had that led you to believe that. They might however, miss obvious truths about themselves because of the dismissal of this function, opting to focus on how they make others feel.

SPEEDLIMIT Ne Extroverted Intuition CREATIVITY

Asks: What could be? What if?

ESFPs are so absorbed in the physical environment and gathering all of the data in reality that they have to dismiss philosophical understandings, ideas, and theories that create a future for the collective, because they prefer to think about the state of the collective as it is right now. Attempting to think about the state of the collective as it is right now and the state of the collective as it will be in the future is too much information. Because for them, in order to extrapolate futures of the collective they’d have to use cultural norms and emotional states of others, which are frustratingly always changing and they’d have to use the facts which are also objective to see the collective future. And since theories aren’t grounded in reality, the information is difficult to hold on to. The ESFP believes that a good current reality will lead to a good future so worrying about the future can be dismissed. It isn’t that ESFPs don’t care about the theoretical or the future of the collective, it’s that in order to concentrate on the present they must filter out this type of information. If the conceptual is shared with an ESFP they will ask the person if they believe it or how they feel about it, if the person states their feelings about the theoretical, the ESFP can then extrapolate the person’s experience. But if the person doesn’t know how they feel about it, the ESFP will become frustrated and go to their third function asking what the benefit of the theoretical idea is. If the person provides a goal out of the theoretical, the ESFP will feel a sense of relief, if they do not they might throw a tantrum not understanding why the idea or theoretical thing was shared with them.

How do ESFPs go bad?

An ESFP going bad will decide that all ideas, theories and futures of others do not matter. All that matters is that they have a good time. And they will use people to have a good time and help them feel better. As long as everyone has a good time and they feel good it doesn’t matter what they do. The experience or desires of others no longer matter. And they will destroy other peoples futures. Mostly unintentionally but if intentional they might get people addicted to drugs or use them to enhance their experience or use them to gain attention and recognition. They become thrill seekers incapable of thinking about the effect that their actions might have on the person they are inflicting their experience on.