Elsa Korr’s MBTI type has sparked a thoughtful debate among fans of Jojo Rabbit. Portrayed with quiet intensity by Thomasin McKenzie, Elsa reflects the grounded resilience of an ISFJ personality type paired with the cautious vigilance of an Enneagram 6w5. Hidden in plain sight and forced to rely on instinct and emotional awareness to survive, Elsa’s calm exterior masks a deeply perceptive and strategic mind. Her ability to read people, adapt to danger, and maintain control in an unpredictable environment makes her a compelling example of how ISFJ 6w5 traits emerge under pressure.
ISFJ 6w5 Characters
Why is Elsa Korr from JoJo Rabbit an ISFJ? 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 Sensing
Elsa operates out of a grounded awareness of the real-world consequences of the situation she finds herself in, by carefully shaping her behavior around what she knows to be true (that she is in danger of being eliminated by the Nazi’s, and that JoJo finding her is putting her at risk; she has to make him like her, and feel for her, to survive). Her decisions are all to ensure her personal safety and to work with what she has at hand (stories).
Once Elsa is discovered hiding in the attic, she probes JoJo’s mind to learn what he believes about the Jews, and manipulates it by making him see how ridiculous it all is (telling him absurd things, which she hopes will make him realize the accusations against her people are ludicrous; they hang upside-down from the ceiling like bats! They were born in the center of the earth! They have horns and a tail, but she doesn’t have them yet because you have to turn 21 first!). She takes the fantasies and lies he is operating off of and builds off them in a new direction (Si/Ne) to change his thinking (Fe).
She is aware of the risk of being discovered, of hiding, of what could happen to her, and is concealing her footprints by constructing careful and plausible stories to hide her identity or explain her reason for being there (saying she is JoJo’s sister when questioned). Elsa knows what will happen if she is found (taken away and “disappeared” with the rest of her family and friends), so she lives in the reality of what is happening and deals with it from moment to moment. She looks for openings to communicate better with JoJo, such as waiting until after he breaks down and cries to share her own loss with him. This cements their “sameness” by meeting in a moment in which both of them have experienced pain.
Elsa reacts strongly to the letter about her boyfriend because her pain is tied to a real person and actual loss. She holds onto what they shared and what happened to him. Elsa reinterprets her experience by saying perhaps they are all ghosts, because she is living as someone who should be dead. It’s a way to express what she is feeling with a metaphor. Instead of drifting into what if? thinking, she focuses on JoJo and chipping away at his beliefs. When she wants to make a point with JoJo, she manhandles and threatens him, citing her ancestral roots as the “Chosen People,” one of which “wrestled with an angel” in the Torah, and mocking his “superior strength” because she can defeat him.
Extraverted Feeling
Throughout the story, she carefully manages JoJo’s emotions and adopts her tone and context based on his mood and beliefs. She uses her ability to connect to him, entertain him, and to undermine his convictions as a tool to ensure her own safety. She builds their connection on purpose for her own survival and knows exactly what to say to make him listen to her.
While at first she is distrustful of him, Elsa warms up to him through their conversation and feels sympathy for him as a fellow human being, even though she dislikes some of his beliefs. She hopes that by humanizing her experiences, JoJo will learn to question his indoctrination. After he tries to stab her, she quietly sits beside him on the floor in a gesture of forgiveness and acceptance. Another time, she talks about her own losses in life as an attempt to connect with him after a loss.
She at first enjoys mocking him for her amusement and to make a fool out of him, as her way of coping with his overt bigotry. She even draws a satirical picture of his head to make a point. But she easily becomes emotional when he reads her a “cruel letter” from her fiancé (whom she knows to be dead), and pulls away from him. This behavior disturbs him so much, he writes her another letter to apologize for the tone and reassure her that none of it is true, which comforts her. She forgives him.
Elsa puts aside her own feelings to talk to him, and even likes him the more time they spend together. She subtly shifts him in a different direction through the humanization of her experiences, and by informing him he is not a Nazi, however much he wants to be one. She forgives him at the end for crushing her hopes of freedom when he lies to her about the Allied forces not winning the war in order to keep her in the house. She can understand his desire to keep her as a friend. She lies to get him out of trouble and to disguise her presence in the house after he misplaces a knife.
Introverted Thinking
Elsa knows that to be safe, she has to not take any of the horrible things he says about the Jews personally, so she acts as if she is untouched by it. She remains stoic-faced while testing him to find out more, so she can turn around and mock his position on everything with satire. She makes up absurd stories to prove to him that the things he believes are wrong, stupid, and destructive. But all along, she knows his beliefs are absurd.
Extraverted Intuition
Elsa comes up with some metaphors and silly concepts to illustrate her point, about the origins of the Jews and their special powers, but she is telling these stories to show him that in reality, none of them work or are plausible, and for her own entertainment when faced with a racist, rather than indulging them as being true, partially true, or for their own potential.
The Enneagram 6
Elsa wants to be safe, and to do that, she has to pretend to be friends with a Nazi boy whose beliefs are the same abhorrent ones that got everyone she loves killed. But that does not matter to her as much as ensuring that he will not turn her over to the authorities so she shares the same fate. She detaches from the situation to analyze it and him, and to make friends with him to ensure he wants to keep her in the attic. But she still can’t help arguing with his beliefs, pushing him a little, insulting him, and even threatening him at one point when she gets upset. Her reactivity emerges, and she can’t stand listening to his absurd, racist stories one minute more!
But then she realizes what she has done and the risks involved, and reluctantly puts up with him again because she has no choice. This is head type behavior, and particularly the 6, that thinks to be safe, it will simply make people care about them as a human being, see that they are not a threat, and use the ways we are all human to seem nonthreatening. Her ease at tearing into his comments as irrational also shows that she cares about logical consistency. When they first meet, she tests and scans him, trying to figure out how much she can trust him and if he is going to betray her.
The 5 Wing
She is stuck in an attic for months on end, in a horrible set of circumstances, and she does not go crazy from being shut away from the world. Nor does she entertain herself with 7ish fantasies; she realistically appreciates the situation she is in, and what she has to do to survive, and can put aside her own personal feelings toward JoJo. This ties into the 5’s competency, detachment, and self-trust. It withdraws and goes into isolation for self-protection, which is what she actually does at one point when she gets too angry and upset to continue talking to him.
