Butch MBTI Personality Type
Personality
What personality type is Butch? Butch is an ESTP personality type in MBTI, 8w7 - sx/sp - 874 in Enneagram, SLUEN in Big 5, SLI in Socionics.
This is one of those characters who makes me wonder if every PPG character has a personality reference, because I’m not sure if his lack of presence compared to his brothers was intentional. But there do seem to be hints that this is a genuine part of his personality, so let’s take a look… My main focus here is his enneagram, so I’ll make the MBTI part short. I don’t think he has inferior Fe—most of his lines and actions, if you actually observe him, are him aligning with his brothers’ interests and values. Since he’s shown to be bad at drawing connections (being unprepared for Buttercup retaliating when he bullies Bubbles), I think he’s just a relatively laconic ESTP (if even that—not so much in the comics…), a quiet-ish person with imbalanced Se-Ni and fairly balanced Ti-Fe. As for enneagram, I don’t see E8 for him. For example, “Bubble Boy” highlights how much of a yes-man he is for Brick, which contradicts the attitude of a lustful, life-conquering E8. Brick proposes some low-effort activity (“Who can spit down that plane?”), and Butch’s reaction is an overly enthusiastic “I can! I can!”. Imagine Buttercup, textbook 8w7, reacting to that (“No one tells me when to come.”), or Brick himself. It’s hard to imagine them being so excited to jump through others’ hoops, right? So, I don’t think control or vulnerability is Butch’s neurosis like theirs. Plus, look at him laying stupefied after he gets hit by Bubbles’s spitball. He kind of maybe looks mad, with a dazed expression, but he isn’t doing anything about it. Looks like suppression of anger (or even just a vagueness about it) à la E9 to me, not the defiance of a provoked E8. Some of my reasoning also comes from the DC Action Pack. In it, Boomer pranks Butch by rigging a water fountain to spray in his face. Instead of getting angry, though, all Butch does is become mildly annoyed and say he has to dry his shirt now. And when Brick supposedly tells him how, he immediately trusts and thanks him. There’s no sign that he embraces anger like an E8. He either seems unaware of it or lets it go as soon as possible. He also doesn’t try to accost Boomer at any point (neither does Brick), indicating that it wasn’t something that naturally arose in him like, for example, Buttercup with regard to Bubbles. E9s try to compensate for their lack of self by looking outside of themselves (and sx9s with specific other individuals), so analyzing what little characterization he gets, does this not fit Butch more than an E8’s fear of vulnerability? Even in the show, though, I see more E9 than E8 traits in him. Him punching his hand when “Boomer” graffitis about flowers in “Bubble Boy” not only shows his alignment to Brick’s will but aggression towards disharmonious behavior, also like his question to Brick as to whether he can believe Boomer is their brother (w8). This is actually the only time we see Butch showing aggression unrelated to the girls, and it’s not even full aggression, but an implied threat that he drops once “Boomer” gets back in line. Although he enforces rejection of femininity like Brick, he doesn’t have the same complex about looking silly/weak. (Especially silly.) From that, and from him referring to Boomer “getting girly on ‘us’”, it again seems like his main fixation is harmony, not vulnerability. An alternative I was considering was 7w8, since I do see in him the high energy/easy boredom/positive outlook commonly associated with E7s. However, I don’t think he fits E7’s fundamental trait structure at all. Namely, I don’t see anticipation, planning, or assertiveness in him, all of which are key for E7 as part of the assertive (E3, E7, E8) and head (E5, E6, E7) triads. He mostly just seems to be in his own little world when he has fun. And he’s not consistently high-energy—he seems to behave in a much less hyperactive manner when he’s just with his brothers, which puzzled me before I thought about the chameleonic nature of E9s. What we can say is that his one truly consistent trait is obedience to Brick, so definitely a point against the self-focused E7 there. As excited as he seems to get when Brick announces things to do (E7 gluttony?), it seems like he just gets excited over mundane things in life (“Snails Away”, the RRB episodes). Him being perfectly satisfied with Brick’s prosaic suggestions, as well as his context-dependent demeanor, seem to match better with a E9’s versatility and desire for harmony. Since part of being a E9, and especially a 9w8, is also being attuned to the physical world/one’s body, I think he’s just a 9w8 in which that trait manifests as adrenaline junkieism. I also see some stereotypical E9 traits in him because, if you watch TBABIT, he seems more geared towards defense than offense compared to his brothers and doesn’t seem as actively vengeful as them. Really, just go through the show/comics again. His primary role is acting as his brothers’ accomplice. But let’s see where the reboot takes us...
