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 align him with his brothers. 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. He’s pretty talkative in the comics, if still agreeable to his brothers…), a quiet-ish person with imbalanced Se-Ni and fairly balanced Ti-Fe. As for enneagram, I don’t see 8 for him. For example, “Bubble Boy” highlights how much of a yes-man he is for Brick, which flies in the face of a lustful, life-conquering 8. 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, a 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 his key neurosis. 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 9 to me, not the defiance of a provoked 8. Some of my reasoning also comes from the DC Action Pack. (This particular comic, “Root of All Cooties”, might even be noncanon, since the boys die of cooties again (?).) 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, saying he has to dry his shirt now. And when Brick supposedly tells him how, he immediately trusts and thanks him. There’s no sign of him embracing anger like an 8. He either seems unaware of it or lets any indignation go as soon as possible. He also doesn’t try to harangue Boomer at any point, and neither does Brick, indicating that it wasn’t something that naturally exists in him like Buttercup with regard to Bubbles, for instance. 9s (and specifically sx 9s) try to compensate for their lack of self by looking outside of themselves, so analyzing what little actual characterization he gets, does this not fit him more than an 8’s fear of vulnerability? Even in the show, though, I see more 9 than 8 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 concerning group-disrupting behavior, 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 hostility 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 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 commonly associated with 7s. However, I don’t see anticipation/planning for the sake of running from negative feelings at all. No initiative whatsoever. 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 9s. What we can say for sure is that his one truly consistent trait is obedience towards Brick. As excited as he seems to get when Brick announces things to do (gluttony of 7?), it seems like he just gets excited over mundane things in life (e.g. “Snails Away”, the RRB episodes). Him being perfectly satisfied with Brick’s prosaic suggestions, as well as his context-dependent demeanor (hyperactive when fighting the girls, more low-key when just hanging around with his brothers) seems to match better with a 9’s versatility and desire for harmony. Since part of being a 9, and especially a 9w8, is also being connected to the physical world/one’s body, I think he’s just a 9w8 in which that trait manifests as adrenaline junkieism. (A lot of ISTPs are 9w8, albeit sp/sx; maybe that’s why some have voted him as such?) I also do see some stereotypical 9 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, go through the show/comics again. His role is mostly just acting as his brothers’ accomplice. But let’s see where the reboot takes us...
