MBTI Type: ISFJ

Betty is very detail-driven on all of her cases, and tends to lock onto one thing and fixate on it, whether it’s the Trash Bag Killer or her own connection to a serial killer. She’s obsessed with her own “serial killer gene” and is afraid it means she’s a bad person. She tracks down details without getting bored of them; one example is in going through a murdered man’s phone, calling every person in it, and trying to figure out who he was, instead of just leaving well enough alone. Whenever anything happens in Riverdale, Betty pours over the details of the case, attempting to piece together what is happening. She becomes obsessed with the Black Hood and tries to connect all the dots to unmask him, building her sense of what is ‘really going on’ one bit of information at a time. Though she trusts her hunches, she always looks for the evidence to support them before presenting her findings to other people. Betty is also obsessed with the past and her need to unravel it and explore all of her old memories and feelings about her father; it’s like she can’t make sense of the future without knowing everything about her past. She is sentimental; as another character says, her ponytail is ‘iconic’—she has always worn her hair that way and continues to do so, even as the world shifts around her. She finds reminders of her childhood, and her attachment to sleuth books charming throwbacks. Betty can be too quick to rely on family ties—she brings her ‘brother’ into the house out of a familial sense of ‘we care for our own,’ only to become less and less sure of him as time passes. Betty has a continual focus on serving the emotional needs of other people. She looks for ways to keep her mother happy in times of duress, can be judgmental toward her father for not wanting to accept her ‘brother’ in the house, and builds her connection to Jughead, even if it means ‘compromising’ her virtuous image and doing a striptease for the Southside Serpents. She looks to motivate and inspire others through her reporting, but can often go out on a limb and become fiercely opinionated, confrontational about her feelings (such as when she tells off her mother in front of The Farm for being too naïve, trusting, and self-revealing), too proactive, or even reckless. She ‘scares’ her ‘brother’ in her levels of direct combativeness and aggression, because whatever Betty is thinking or feeling, she airs immediately. When she thinks she has figured out the identity of the Black Hood, she confides in her friends about it and asks them to help her prove it. She does not question her own actions, motives, or the wisdom of direct action nearly enough—bringing a murderer into her house, and only thinking about it later. Under stress, she becomes obsessed with figuring things out, showcasing her desire to ‘make things fit.’ She’s more rational than her mother and more detached, able to question things and talk them through instead of relying only on her feelings. Like when she refuses to buy into her mother’s delusions after her sister’s murder and forces her to cope with the loss. She questions her brother, has serious doubts about him, and experiences some lower Ne apprehension toward what ‘might’ happen as long as he stays in the house. She also has a ‘strong sense’ of who the Black Hood is, after a while, though she hopes herself wrong. Her intuition knows it is not ‘over’ with the Black Hood (though she tries to ignore her it), but is poor at sensing the true psychopathic nature of the stranger she just brought into the house, until his behavior reaches overt ‘weirdo’ status.

Enneagram: 1w2 so/sp

Betty is obsessed with whether having the serial killer gene means she’s destined to be a bad person, and ruthlessly analyzes everything in her past and present, in an attempt to make sure that none of her actions are “evil” by an impersonal standard. But she also admits that she’s fierce, unwilling to find middle ground at times, and makes gut-leading decisions too quickly, causing the deaths of innocent people when she chases after the Trash Bag Killer on her own (and her own capture). She’s haunted by anything she has ever done that was cruel or might indicate that she’s like her father, and feels fanatical about getting to the bottom of all the lies in her life. She can become vindictive, over-aggressive, and borderline ‘nuts’ (such as when she threatens to burn someone in the middle of the night, waking them up by flipping on and off a lighter in their face; or when she and Veronica exact revenge upon a classmate for wrongdoing; in later seasons, she confronts people and gets in a trucker’s face and slams his face against his steering wheel; she winds up kidnapping a man she believes was involved in her sister’s disappearance, tying him to a tree, and threatening to shoot him or leave him there overnight), all in the service of ‘justice.’ Betty thinks of herself as loving, generous, and helpful. She can, by extension, be aggressive, interfering, and controlling… but she is always the first person to show up if anyone needs her, and the last one to leave. She tries to earn love from Jughead, through connecting to him and showing him she ‘supports’ him. She drops Veronica when he asks her to support him and run with him for the school board. She runs out and brings home her ‘brother’ when she feels her mother needs cheering up, but overly interferes in her life and forces her to deal with the death of her daughter before she’s ready, out of a need to ‘help’ her face reality.