Harry Potter Myers-Briggs

Warning:  Spoilers ahead!  Don't read if you haven't read all of the books!

When I was looking up a lot of Myers-Briggs information, I found this test to tell you which Harry Potter character you are, and which Myers-Briggs type goes with that character.  Some worked well (Snape as an INTJ), but many didn't so I didn't bother to mention it on my blog.*

Bub and Pie has written her own post on Myers-Briggs types for Harry Potter characters, and her categories work much better.  She doesn't break them down into all sixteen categories, instead, she sorts them into four broader categories:  SF, SJ, NT, and NF.

...The Harry Potter series is all about the SJs and SPs, concrete thinkers who either follow the rules (SJ) or break them (SP). On the whole, Rowling seems to side with the SPs. Everything in the wizarding world is concrete, even the magic (especially the magic). Wizards don’t read novels – or write them. At best they read the occasional fairy tale, but Beedle the Bard appears to be the only wizard who ever had a literary imagination. Wizards are scientists: they combine ingredients to create potions, they care for magical plants and creatures, and they utter set incantations to create particular effects. There is some innovation in the wizarding world (particularly by the Half-Blood Prince), but little true creativity. Perhaps if we’d ever followed Hermione to Arithmancy class or hung out in the Ravenclaw common room we might have met a few NTs, but NF idealists are terribly thin on the ground
...

NT students are hard to find a Hogwarts: in the Muggle world they’re easily located by their D&D clubs, their gaming conventions, and their science fair projects. There seem to be no nerds at Hogwarts, no cliques of misfits who bond over their arcane interests. Neville’s flair for Herbology suggests an NT nature – he may be a mild-mannered INTJ, intimidated by his robust ESTJ grandmother but never quite conforming to social expectations.
...

I talso enjoyed this consideration of Snape and Dumbledore:

The best NTs in the Potterverse, of course, are Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape. (Snape’s loyal following, especially in the N-dominated blogosphere, may arise from the fact that he is one of the few abstract thinkers in the concrete world of witchcraft and wizardry.) Snape is a true scientist: as the Half-Blood Prince, he tinkered with potions and created spells of his own invention. The only wizard who surpasses him for intellect and creativity is Dumbledore. His early friendship with Grindelwald – based on a shared intellectual vision – suggests to me that he is a classic NT, probably an ENTP or an INTP. Dumbledore’s quirky sense of humour, his flair for nonsense, and his unsurpassed magical knowledge all place him in the same category as Lewis Carroll, Albert Einstein, and Jon Stewart.

Whenever I've taken any Myers-Briggs-type tests, I've always been in between INTJ and INFJ.  However, a recent conversation thoroughly convinced me that I'm really an INFJ.  For me, INTJ is a vacation, but not where I live.  As Bub and Pie says about the Potterverse, "...NF idealists are terribly thin on the ground."  She does find a very few:

Perhaps the only NF in the series is Lily Potter. Against the advice of her friends, she remains loyal to Snape even though he’s an outsider and a Slytherin. She is impervious to peer pressure but not to her own ideals: when Snape goes over to the Death Eaters, she ends the friendship. Lily is described by Slughorn as an intuitive potion-maker, someone with good instincts and an ability to follow them. She harnesses the power of love so skillfully that she helps defeat the greatest wizard in the world; she also has a weak spot for a good-looking Quidditch player whose arrogance cannot conceal his romantic interest. She is credulous and even, at times, naïve: she considers Wormtail a safe repository for secrets and laughs away the suggestion that Dumbledore might ever have been friends with Grindelwald.

The only other potential NF I can think of is Remus Lupin: his life is one of tortured emotion – he is an outcast who falls in love, considers abandoning his child out of a misguided sense of duty, and ultimately gives his life for a good cause. R.I.P., Remus. We hardly knew ye.

One of the comments also adds Hagrid as a possible NF - which I can see.**

If you enjoy Myers-Briggs or Harry Potter, I highly recommend reading all of her post (click here).

*  INTP's don't like being Voldemort.

** Another comment says, "Wow. This is better than how Gilligan's Island represents Dante's levels of hell!"  I Googled that, but never found a Gilligan/Dante connection.  I did find a webpage describing how the characters in Gilligan's Island personify the seven deadly sins (about halfway down the page):

According to the book Inside Gilligan's Island by Sherwood Schwartz (St. Martin's Press, 1994), the creator of the show confesses that he purposely patterned the 'seven stranded castaways' after the seven deadly sins. He confesses that he didn't tell anyone until years after the show was over, because he thought that people would ridicule him for attributing such a serious theme to such a silly show:

Mr. Howell (the millionaire) - greed
The Professor - pride
Mrs. Lovey Howell - thoughtless excess (gluttony)
Gilligan - sloth
Ginger (the movie star) - extravagance (later lust)
The Skipper - anger (wrath)
Mary Ann - envy

Comments

[Rachel]

there's a great free resource at www.INFJ.com

[M Light]

Interesting book list, but the floating menu is very annoying.

[bubandpie]

That is exactly my personality as well: on paper, I'm very nearly split between INTJ and INFJ - but really, in real life, I'm an INFJ all the way.

And it's so, so true - the INTPs aren't liking the Voldemort thing one bit. (And, to be fair, Voldemort doesn't have nearly the sense of humour that most INTPs have, in my experience.)

[DF]

As someone who has not read all the books cover to cover and doesn't have a feel for most of the characters, I can't say all that much about the appropriateness of the classifications, but I'm here to vote for Voldemort as not INTP by any stretch.

The INTP is an absent-minded professor who corrects your logic. It is one of the more neurotic types of the 16.

Voldemort to me is more an ESTJ, the overconfident boss of a badly-run corporation.

Harry might be an INTP, an opinionated but reluctant messiah. Hermione is an INFJ, really interested in justice but has trouble getting out of her bookworm nature. (What do you think of that, INFJ MLight?)

If I don't watch out, this will turn into a post.

[M Light]

I'm a T more at work, total F at home (unless I'm absolutely alone and in a businesslike mood), and it varies for everything else. I've become more F as I've gotten older.

It's difficult to pin down Voldemort. Does his need to dominate others, and therefore have others around to dominate, make him an extrovert? Or does his absorption in his vision of a world of his own creation make him an I? He's definitely a T - no understanding of others' feelings there; and his plan for world domination and the execution of that plan seem J.

However, the Myers-Briggs is supposed to describe normal personalities, not psychopathic ones so it really shouldn't apply to him (That lets everyone off the hook).

[M Light]

Hermione... she gets a comment of her own.

She seems quite variable. If I think about the earlier books, where she's very much into the rules of the school, she seems more S. INFJ's don't have a particular focus on following rules or fitting into organizations. However... neither does Hermione by the end of the series.

I/E? She seems to be in the middle. She's far more talkative in situations than an average I, but she doesn't seem to have a driving need to be in social situations.

I think she's definitely a J - nothing open-ended or unsettled about her conclusions.

T/F is another one where she's in the middle. Her insistence on being right seems more TJ than FJ (FJ is more along the lines of "I'm right, but I won't press the point if it might make you feel bad"). However, she does understand others a good bit also.

So: XSXJ when she's younger and XNXJ when she's older.

That's the step by step analytical perspective. My immediate "intuitive" reaction was that she's too pushy* and talkative to be an INFJ.

Even so, because of her intensity, idealism, loyalty, and intellectual interests, she's one of the characters I identify with most so her type can't be far off.

* She seems to debate to prove things and wants to be perceived as right. I enjoy debating ideas, and of course I'd like to be right (who wouldn't?!), but I don't really care whether people agree with me or not.**

** If I did, I'd be really disappointed!

[OK]

I was at themindbehind.net and it listed Dumbledore as an INTP. He seems like a much better match for INTP's than Voldemort.

[M Light]

I can see that. The INTP's I know aren't organized enough for world domination.

[Mike]

You gotta give J.K credit. She made a book about witches and wizards that was awesome. It's hard to write a good book on that topic. I'm sure that when she writes new books people will compare them to Harry Potter.