Originally Posted by
silverchris9
Hmmmm... well, I'd say every type has various ways of being confrontational and various ways of being angry, without necessarily having forms of "aggression"? I mean, "aggression" I'd imagine refers to a certain forwardness about how you express anger or how you confront someone whose behavior you wish to change or who you feel has wronged you, etc. Like, I don't think I'm ever "aggressive" except in being (occasionally) very clear about someone displeasing me, which is just a matter of speaking in more clipped sentences and saying things like, "Well, my understanding was that this was a simple matter, but since it isn't, why don't we speak to a supervisor. Perhaps they could make it clearer for us." So I guess for me aggression is an exaggerated form of dismissive politeness with a clear undercurrent of anger. But can you really call that aggression? When I think of an ESE or even EIE I think less aggression and more "pushy," which I suppose is a way of being aggressive. An aggressive LII might say something like, "You know what? No. No, that's not fair. If you're going to tell me that blah blah blah, then I expect blah blah blah, and I think that's a perfectly fair expectation, and if you can't do that then... maybe [insert consequence/break-up threat/whatever here]."
Also for me confrontational is very different than aggressive. Like, if I really need to make someone change their behavior, I'll just be as direct and emotionless as possible: "Your behavior is unacceptable. Please change it or consequence y." Like I had an actor freak out in a rehearsal once as a (actually very funny) April Fool's prank and I said something to the effect of, "ACTOR NAME, that's not helpful right now. We can talk after rehearsal." and if he hadn't backed down, the next thing was "Please leave my rehearsal until you're ready to be constructive. We'll talk after rehearsal." And then we'd try to reason together and find out what the cause of his bad behavior is when we're both calmer after the situation is over.
So anyway, some theories: aggression could be the application of the base function to the situation uncompromisingly (without allowing for other perspective, perhaps). So a Ti-leading type would apply logic (more in an "If/then" sense for an LII, more in a "These were the rules and you broke them, which means I have to do x" for the LSI). Maybe for an Fi-leading type, it might be more appealing to the relationship, like ESI: "How dare you behave like that. You have no right to speak that way to my child." or EII... "That was so unkind, I can't believe you said that. I expect better." For a Te-type maybe it's facts? "No, no, that's just not true. If you look at the evidence, there's no WAY you can possibly think it's reasonable, let alone fair, to do that." Obviously for Fe-leading it's emotional, like "Oh no! Listen, that's not gonna work for me, you're gonna have to do better..." lots of facial expressions and movement and all. Not sure how Ni or Si would relate, so those types might rely more on their creative functions. So yeah, those are some thoughts!