What is Buffy Summers’ personality type in Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, Buffy is an ISFP 6w7 whose fierce independence, strong personal values, and action-oriented nature make her an unconventional example of an Introverted Feeling dominant. Her Fi gives her a deeply personal moral code, while auxiliary Extraverted Sensing (Se) makes her adaptable, impulsive, and exceptionally responsive to her physical environment. Buffy’s MBTI and Enneagram combination of ISFP 6w7 also explains the fascinating contradiction at the heart of her character: she struggles with fear, doubt, trust, and abandonment, yet repeatedly finds the courage to protect the people she loves.
ISFP 6w7 Characters
Why is Bufy Summers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer an ISFP 6w7? Continue reading for my argument using cognitive functions! The headers for each section are clickable, so you can easily access more information about the dominant function and the Enneagram type, or discover more characters who share the type.
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Introverted Feeling
Buffy is very “I decide what is right for me,” and that influences all of her decisions, from how she treats Spike to loving Angel, and distrusting and disobeying the Watchers Council. Even though she inherited an ancient gift that tells her what a Slayer is supposed to be, Buffy repeatedly rejects it in order to decide what kind of a Slayer she is, and is going to be. She obeys the Watchers Council until she figures out it’s treating her as an instrument rather than a person, then refuses to deal with them anymore. When Giles has to weaken her as one of the tests for the Council, Buffy feels this is a profound betrayal and rejects him for a time (“You did this to me”).
Because she judges things that are done to her as bad, she pushes away anything that she doesn’t like, and has a hard time seeing alternatives to her own point of view. This is most apparent with her conflict with Angel in the Season 4 / Angel crossover. Faith steals her body, and steals part of her life; she sleeps with Buffy’s boyfriend, then goes to LA to attack Angel. Buffy judges this as “absolute evil” and shows up wanting to kill her or send her to jail, and is incredulous that Angel wants to protect Faith and help her. How could he, after what Faith did to her?
Buffy also loved Angel even though everyone argued against it, and told her that vampires don’t have souls, that this would not work out. None of those arguments changed how she felt about him. And because she was devoted to doing what was right, even when Angelus went away at the end of season two and left Angel standing in front of her, Buffy had to kill him anyway, to save the world. She had to make a decision between the person I love, and what I value even higher than that person: doing the right thing.
That led to depression, angst, and inner “acting out,” because Buffy can’t or won’t open up about her feelings easily. She goes off to cry in private. She acts out. She distracts herself with sensory activities and pleasures, and ignores her friends’ feelings in the process (Where were you? How could you just run away like that? How could you treat us that way?).
Buffy also personalizes everything; even when she knows what Dawn “technically” is, that doesn’t matter. She’s my sister. I will protect her. You can’t have her. Period.
Extraverted Sensing
There are two versions of Buffy. One of them just wants to be a normal teenage girl, to care about clothes, and shopping, and shoes, and to go places and have fun, and stay out all night dancing and partying with her friends. The other Buffy is the one kicking demon ass, fighting, and Slaying. She breaks in, she throws objects at vampires, she sometimes over-estimates her abilities and gets in way over her head. In one episode, Buffy is almost killed because she got sloppy and was too busy taunting a vampire to recognize the risks involved. She is highly improvisational and uses whatever is at hand in her environment to dispatch the legions of demons, vampires, mummy girls, and whatnot that come for her.
During Buffy’s depressive period, she becomes even more physically oriented. She treats recreational secret sex with Spike like therapy. And she is very, very physical with the men in her life; she wants to sleep with them, once she has feelings for them, and sometimes when she doesn’t and just needs an “outlet” (Spike). Buffy runs away from problems at times, hitting the road rather than stick around after she kills Angel, and not telling her friends where she went.
When she is almost killed, Buffy then wants to know how other Slayers die, and how to avoid it; so she first tries books and then goes right to the source: Spike. And she wants a blow-by-blow, so she can learn from it physically and hopefully avoid it. Him telling her that there is no way to anticipate a fight, that you have to be “in it” and “feel it” frustrates her. She wanted something concrete to hang on to.
Introverted Intuition
In season one in particular, Buffy has a lot of low Ni insights. She speculates accurately about monsters’ motives and identities; she knows something is “up” even if she can’t put her finger on what that might be yet. Buffy knows that she can get Spike on her side, if rescuing Dru is in the cards. Her low Ni insights also show up in how she trusts Angel, even when everyone tells her not to, and that vampires with souls don’t exist.
As she gets older, Buffy starts looking for what being a Slayer means. What is her destiny, why was she chosen, where is this leading? Her relationship with Faith digs into this further, because Buffy recognizes in Faith what she could become, if she doesn’t dial back her Slayer instincts. She at first engages with Faith on a Se level (Slaying hard, then partying hard) but then pulls away from her whenever she sees something in her that Buffy fears in herself. It’s the same way with Spike. She starts to see their similarities and hates it so much, she pushes him away and takes her life down another path.
Extraverted Thinking
Buffy can become brutal under stress, and downright mean when she’s being cruel. You are beneath me, Spike. She has an all or none relationship with Faith that turns into “She did a bad thing, and she will be punished for it.” Buffy, in those situations, has a “either you are with me or against me” attitude that alienates Angel, Willow, and sometimes Giles. If they won’t go along with her plan, she will strike out on her own. The greater the risk, the more authoritarian she becomes: this is what we are doing, you’re not going to argue with me, you will do what you are told. We don’t have time to argue about this. Get in line!
But particularly in season six, Buffy struggles a lot with being an adult and handling normal things like… making enough money to keep her sister in school and stay in their home.
The Enneagram 6
Buffy doesn’t really want to be a Slayer, but she feels as if she “should” and she takes that responsibility very seriously. She often tells her friends that they will not be going with her, because it’s too dangerous and one of them could get hurt—or she could get hurt, because she’s trying to protect them rather than slay a demon. This is partly her problem with Riley. Rather than invite him entirely into her heart, Buffy keeps him at a slight distance. He isn’t Angel, and being with Angel bruised her trust, so now Riley gets treated differently.
When Giles intentionally weakens her as part of a Council test, Buffy finds out about it and is devastated. He was supposed to be on her side. She pushes him away and does not trust him for a while after that, until she realizes that she needs him. Later, she pushes him away again in a different season, because she wants to do things on her own, only to find out that she could use the support. Buffy does better when she is with her friends, though. And she needs them so much that one of Spike’s methods in helping Adam to “destroy her” involves turning her friends against one another and her, because Spike knows she will be weaker and feel less confident if they’re not with her.
Buffy is also watching constantly for threats, keeping her eye on what is happening around the Bronze, and giving up her goals and dreams to protect other people.
She also rationalizes and argues and tries to protect herself with logical reasoning at times. Such as needing Spike to tell her how he beat two Slayers, because the awareness that she will one day die meant needing a “plan” of action.
The 7 Wing
Some of Buffy’s happiest times are when she can “cut loose” and “have fun.” Dancing with Faith. Slaying with Faith. Being with Angel. Hanging out with her friends. Trading insults and banter and barbs with vampires before she dispatches them. Buffy can make jokes even in the midst of terrible situations or when she’s afraid, even if they don’t always land. Her reaction to a lot of things is to laugh at it.
She also tries to psychologically protect her sister from the truth about their mom’s illness, by pretending that they don’t know anything yet. Buffy can also run away from her problems and responsibilities, and not want to face up to the hurt she has left behind; it’s hard for her to apologize for hurting her friends and her mom, when it seems easier just to pack up her bags and leave town again.
