# Mad Men MBTI



## Enygmatic

There has been an MBTI thread before but as the series is beginning to end, I thought that we had a broader understanding of the characters. 

Don Draper: INTJ - He is insightful, clever, serious, confident, has strong feelings underneath his exterior and sometimes acts cold.
Roger Sterling: ESTP - He is witty, confident, impulsive, self-seeking and has a charisma which people are attracted to. 
Peggy Olson: ISTJ - She is responsible, practical, likes order, tenacious and blames herself. 
Joan Holloway: ESTJ - She is dedicated, organised, loyal and sometimes struggles expressing her feelings. 
Betty: ISFJ - She keeps her feelings, she is reluctant to change, takes things personally and has good practical skills.
Pete Campbell: ENTP - He is knowledgeable, original, energetic and argumentative. 
Megan Draper: ENFP - She is energetic, enthusiastic, friendly and has lots of ideas.

Let me know what you think and add any characters you like.


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## dragthewaters

I'm pretty sure Peggy is INFP. She has had to develop a tough exterior due to the environment she works in, which may lead some people to type her as a Thinker, but she's really all Fi. And the way she comes up with ideas is Ne...a lot of times she comes up with 3 or 4 ideas in a row and Don has to tell her to narrow it down. Fi + Ne is what makes her such a good copywriter who is aware of what will reach other people.

Megan is ENFJ I think. She's a people-pleaser and her expertise comes with gauging social situations...just look at the Heinz pitch in Season 5. She was willing to be a copywriter to make Don happy until her dad (and then Don) essentially gave her permission to become an actress. People may see her as an ENFP because she got caught up in the 60s counterculture, but that was just the times, people of all types were getting caught up in it.

Pete is ESTJ I think. He's very "my way or the highway" and has very little social judgment. Ken Cosgrove would be a better example of ENTP.

I also think Betty is ISFP.

Also here's typings for some of the women Don has dated:
Midge: ISTP
Rachel: INFJ
Faye: ENTP


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## Morn

thismustbetheplace said:


> I'm pretty sure Peggy is INFP. She has had to develop a tough exterior due to the environment she works in, which may lead some people to type her as a Thinker, but she's really all Fi. And the way she comes up with ideas is Ne...a lot of times she comes up with 3 or 4 ideas in a row and Don has to tell her to narrow it down. Fi + Ne is what makes her such a good copywriter who is aware of what will reach other people.


Fi is a trait of an INTJ. And in terms of Ni vs Ne, well Ni is concerned with future potential and the big picture, conceiving of the scale and importance of new ideas and concepts. Ne is about seeing all possibilities and contingencies. Both are useful skills for a copywriter, but I think Ni will do a better job of seeing a concept though.
Peggy is independent minded and does not fit in. Yet she is able to figure out how play others game to get the best possible out of a given situation. She to me seems like a strategising INTJ. Who fully realises the significance of the opportunities provided to her and is able to plan how to take full advantage of them, she is ever pragmatic and rarely idealistic. Note how she was at first willing to sleep with people in the office to further her career, but as she became a copywriter she disbanded this strategy as unnecessary and told male suiters what she really thought. Beyond furthering her own goals she isn't interested in what everybody thinks or what the world thinks of her, she is only concerned with her own judgement and her own sense of reason. She is an INTJ.


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## dragthewaters

Morn said:


> Fi is a trait of an INTJ. And in terms of Ni vs Ne, well Ni is concerned with future potential and the big picture, conceiving of the scale and importance of new ideas and concepts. Ne is about seeing all possibilities and contingencies. Both are useful skills for a copywriter, but I think Ni will do a better job of seeing a concept though.
> Peggy is independent minded and does not fit in. Yet she is able to figure out how play others game to get the best possible out of a given situation. She to me seems like a strategising INTJ. Who fully realises the significance of the opportunities provided to her and is able to plan how to take full advantage of them, she is ever pragmatic and rarely idealistic. Note how she was at first willing to sleep with people in the office to further her career, but as she became a copywriter she disbanded this strategy as unnecessary and told male suiters what she really thought. Beyond furthering her own goals she isn't interested in what everybody thinks or what the world thinks of her, she is only concerned with her own judgement and her own sense of reason. She is an INTJ.


Actually the Ni + Ne thing is what makes Don and Peggy a good team for coming up with ideas. Don comes up with the "grand vision" of what the pitch should ultimately be trying to say, and then Peggy comes up with a bunch of ideas based on that and chooses one that is the best.

Peggy isn't really a strategist. It was never her giant master plan to become a copywriter...it happened by accident, when Freddy Rumsen just so happened to like something she said offhand. The only reason she got made a full copywriter is because she did a good job on her assignment, and because Don wanted to piss off Pete because Pete didn't want a woman working on his Clearasil account (I'm rewatching the series and just watched this episode which is why I remember this). If anyone strategized to make Peggy a copywriter, it was Don...he even made sure she would be able to return to her job uninterrupted after giving birth, which nobody else would have done for her, probably.

It is made very clear throughout the series that Peggy sees copywriting as her art, and she gets personally offended if anyone tries to tell her it's not a real art form. Like the truck driver she went on a date with in Season 1 who said "advertising doesn't work on me," or the hipster guy at the party she went to with Joyce in Season 4 who told her that advertising is all fake. Contrast that to Don who probably wouldn't give a shit if someone insulted advertising.

The only reason why she came on to Don in the first episode is because she thought it was an expected part of the job based on what Joan told her. And sleeping with Pete had nothing to do with her career, especially because Pete had no direct influence on her career. She slept with him because she was attracted to him.

She does care what people think, and what the world thinks. She cares a LOT what Don thinks of her. In Season 1 (and sporadically throughout the other seasons) she cares a lot what Pete thinks of her as well (in the scene where Pete rejects her request to dance with him, she actually starts crying...that doesn't sound very INTJ to me). In Season 2 she cares enough what her family thinks, to allow them to guilt-trip her into going to church. She is concerned with her own judgment and sense of reason because she is Fi-dom...however she doesn't fully follow her own judgment until people like Don tell her it's ok. If she becomes more callous and uncaring as the show goes on, it's a result of the environment she is part of and having a better sense of what she needs to do to get ahead. She gets better at hiding her emotions, but they are still there and inform everything she does.


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## Morn

thismustbetheplace said:


> Actually the Ni + Ne thing is what makes Don and Peggy a good team for coming up with ideas. Don comes up with the "grand vision" of what the pitch should ultimately be trying to say, and then Peggy comes up with a bunch of ideas based on that and chooses one that is the best.


But Peggy always has a very clear and singular vision of what the advert should contain, it takes her very little time to pick a direction and she is not floating random ideas about. She has precision and focus and becomes offended when 'lesser' people can't see the quality in her concept, which strikes me as Ni. And very typically INTJ, love of and aspiration for competency.



> Peggy isn't really a strategist. It was never her giant master plan to become a copywriter...it happened by accident, when Freddy Rumsen just so happened to like something she said offhand. The only reason she got made a full copywriter is because she did a good job on her assignment, and because Don wanted to piss off Pete because Pete didn't want a woman working on his Clearasil account (I'm rewatching the series and just watched this episode which is why I remember this). If anyone strategized to make Peggy a copywriter, it was Don...he even made sure she would be able to return to her job uninterrupted after giving birth, which nobody else would have done for her, probably.


She saw the opportunities and did everything possible to take advantage of them. No other secretaries in the office had any concept or idea of being a copywriter or anything else in the business. But she quickly saw that she could be more than a secretary and did everything to make it work.
Notice her drive at the start of the show to be a great secretary. When she realised she could be a copywriter thanks to Freddy, she totally stopped caring about being a secretary and did everything possible to prove that she could be a great copywriter. 
She can see the big picture and future possibilities, she is not limited by convention or expectation she only is looking at her internal concept of what is possible. That is very Ni.



> It is made very clear throughout the series that Peggy sees copywriting as her art, and she gets personally offended if anyone tries to tell her it's not a real art form. Like the truck driver she went on a date with in Season 1 who said "advertising doesn't work on me," or the hipster guy at the party she went to with Joyce in Season 4 who told her that advertising is all fake. Contrast that to Don who probably wouldn't give a shit if someone insulted advertising.
> 
> The only reason why she came on to Don in the first episode is because she thought it was an expected part of the job based on what Joan told her. And sleeping with Pete had nothing to do with her career, especially because Pete had no direct influence on her career. She slept with him because she was attracted to him.


She failed with Don and was practising on Pete, it helped that she found him attractive. Again this can be quite normal INTJ behaviour, use your emotions as part of a strategy. It's easier to do some things when you're able to be emotionally involved.

Don strikes me as ENTP, they are experts at devils advocate and love to think big about the larger concepts. INTJs are by comparison more detail orientated, will want to ensure that everything is done to a high standard and fits in with the overall concept. Perfection in action vs perfection in concept. That is the dynamic Peggy and Don have.




> She does care what people think, and what the world thinks. She cares a LOT what Don thinks of her. In Season 1 (and sporadically throughout the other seasons) she cares a lot what Pete thinks of her as well (in the scene where Pete rejects her request to dance with him, she actually starts crying...that doesn't sound very INTJ to me). In Season 2 she cares enough what her family thinks, to allow them to guilt-trip her into going to church. She is concerned with her own judgment and sense of reason because she is Fi-dom...however she doesn't fully follow her own judgment until people like Don tell her it's ok. If she becomes more callous and uncaring as the show goes on, it's a result of the environment she is part of and having a better sense of what she needs to do to get ahead. She gets better at hiding her emotions, but they are still there and inform everything she does.


INTJs are human beings, we have emotions and we can care a lot about a small number of important people, and we can fall in love and can be miserable from rejection.
In terms of Don, she has a professional respect for Don, a mentor relationship. Her treatment of Don comes from her respect and admiration of his abilities. 
Peggy absolutely hates church, the only reason she's going there is because she realises one day her mother will die and she needs to look after her mother while she's around. It's not because she cares what people or god think, indeed she doesn't display much guilt at all. She's not guilted into going to church, and doesn't appear to have any interest in religion. She absolutely hates the church and holding a crying kid in a church is quite possibly the most unpleasant thing she's ever done. She has a plan to take care of her parent, and she's sticking to it. She's not going to prostitute herself by letting them tell her want to do or how to behave, but she will spend time in church to make them happy. She's doing it because she loves her mother. 

It seems INTJ behaviour to me. 'My family are religious morons but I love them, I'll stay quite and do what I can to please them but I won't compromise myself' 
INTJ are rarely emotional on the surface, because we will filter our emotions into actions though Ni and Te.


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## dragthewaters

Morn said:


> But Peggy always has a very clear and singular vision of what the advert should contain, it takes her very little time to pick a direction and she is not floating random ideas about. She has precision and focus and becomes offended when 'lesser' people can't see the quality in her concept, which strikes me as Ni. And very typically INTJ, love of and aspiration for competency.


Actually if you look at the conversations between her and Don, she usually comes up with a bunch of possible ideas and she and the other copywriters bounce ideas off each other. Sure, she has a single idea by the time she has to present, but that's because she HAS to have narrowed it down to one by then. She also often takes inspiration from her own life when coming up with ideas. Whereas Don comes up with his ideas based on some abstract concept that advertising in general is supposed to convey. He only changes directions for his "vision" if some change in circumstances occurs.

She gets offended if people can't see the quality in her concept...but so does everyone else. Nobody likes to have their ideas shot down, if it's an idea they have faith in, and an idea that is objectively better. Even Pete got upset when his creative ideas weren't being taken seriously in Season 1. And having faith in her ideas could easily be seen as Fi-dom also.



> She saw the opportunities and did everything possible to take advantage of them. No other secretaries in the office had any concept or idea of being a copywriter or anything else in the business. But she quickly saw that she could be more than a secretary and did everything to make it work.
> Notice her drive at the start of the show to be a great secretary. When she realised she could be a copywriter thanks to Freddy, she totally stopped caring about being a secretary and did everything possible to prove that she could be a great copywriter.
> She can see the big picture and future possibilities, she is not limited by convention or expectation she only is looking at her internal concept of what is possible. That is very Ni.


But anyone can be driven to be good at their job and take advantage of opportunities that have been offered to them. Not just INTJs. The way she got ahead was actually very conventional. Every time she gets promoted or offered a new opportunity, it is the result of her own skill and merit at copywriting. Contrast to Don who bullshitted his way into his job at Sterling Cooper, or even Joan who used a bad situation (having to prostitute herself to the Jaguar guy) to get ahead at the company. Peggy would never have become a copywriter or gotten ahead if Don (and Freddy Rumsen) hadn't seen her potential, and seen that she offered a perspective that nobody else could offer. They allowed her to become a copywriter in spite of being a woman because of the lucrative potential of her work. Sure she did certain things to get ahead, like make sure she was included in the right meetings, but that's more a result of initiative and copying what everyone else is doing, rather than strategizing.

And the majority of times she takes initiative to get ahead, it's directly based on advice people gave to her, like when Bobbie tells her "Don't try to be a man, be a woman instead, it's more powerful," or when Joan says, "If you want to get ahead, stop dressing like a little girl." When she becomes a creative director in her own right, she basically copies verbatim things that Don has told her, such as "If you don't like what's being said, then change the conversation." Seems more Ne-Si than Ni-Se to me. Most of the time when she is faced with a complicated situation where she has to figure out exactly the right thing to say/do, she goes to someone like Joan or Don for advice. Contrast that to Don (or even Bert Cooper for that matter) who always seems to instinctively know the right thing to say or do.



> She failed with Don and was practising on Pete, it helped that she found him attractive. Again this can be quite normal INTJ behaviour, use your emotions as part of a strategy. It's easier to do some things when you're able to be emotionally involved.


But there was no strategy. She never had a plan to sleep with Don after episode 1. In fact it isn't known if she even planned to sleep with Don in episode 1...all she did was touch his hand. Maybe she thought that secretaries had to be flirtatious.

And Pete doesn't even work in the same department as her, and her affair with him was more of a risk to her career than anything else. The other romances she had with her coworkers (Duck, Ted) also were a risk to her career, and instances when she let her feelings for them get the best of her. She has well established in multiple scenes that she never planned to use her sexuality, her emotions, or "sleeping with the right people" to get ahead at work.



> INTJs are human beings, we have emotions and we can care a lot about a small number of important people, and we can fall in love and can be miserable from rejection.
> In terms of Don, she has a professional respect for Don, a mentor relationship. Her treatment of Don comes from her respect and admiration of his abilities.


She has more than a professional respect for Don...did you see the episode "The Suitcase"?



> Peggy absolutely hates church, the only reason she's going there is because she realises one day her mother will die and she needs to look after her mother while she's around. It's not because she cares what people or god think, indeed she doesn't display much guilt at all. She's not guilted into going to church, and doesn't appear to have any interest in religion. She absolutely hates the church and holding a crying kid in a church is quite possibly the most unpleasant thing she's ever done. She has a plan to take care of her parent, and she's sticking to it. She's not going to prostitute herself by letting them tell her want to do or how to behave, but she will spend time in church to make them happy. She's doing it because she loves her mother.
> 
> It seems INTJ behaviour to me. 'My family are religious morons but I love them, I'll stay quite and do what I can to please them but I won't compromise myself'


Not exactly. She starts out that way, but throughout Season 2 she struggles with her faith. Her confession to Pete about her pregnancy is supposed to represent a confession she would make to a priest. At the very end of Season 2 she crosses herself before going to bed...why would she do that if she was only going to church to please her mom? Why would she agree to help the priest out with his sermon, and the advertisements for the church dance, for that matter? Her family didn't even know he asked her to do those things until after the fact, so she obviously wasn't doing them for her family's sake.

Peggy displays a ton of guilt throughout the season...that's WHY holding the crying child is so unpleasant to her, because it reminds her of her "sin" (giving up her child). Then after refusing to confess to her priest all season, she confesses to Pete, and then crosses herself, indicating that she has "cleansed her soul" or whatever and is moving forward with her life.


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## Morn

thismustbetheplace said:


> Actually if you look at the conversations between her and Don, she usually comes up with a bunch of possible ideas and she and the other copywriters bounce ideas off each other. Sure, she has a single idea by the time she has to present, but that's because she HAS to have narrowed it down to one by then. She also often takes inspiration from her own life when coming up with ideas. Whereas Don comes up with his ideas based on some abstract concept that advertising in general is supposed to convey. He only changes directions for his "vision" if some change in circumstances occurs.
> 
> She gets offended if people can't see the quality in her concept...but so does everyone else. Nobody likes to have their ideas shot down, if it's an idea they have faith in, and an idea that is objectively better. Even Pete got upset when his creative ideas weren't being taken seriously in Season 1. And having faith in her ideas could easily be seen as Fi-dom also.


Well we seem to have entirely different interpretations of her personality and motivations, and this is becoming a matter of subjectivity. But I still disagree with you on a couple of points here.



> But anyone can be driven to be good at their job and take advantage of opportunities that have been offered to them. Not just INTJs. The way she got ahead was actually very conventional. Every time she gets promoted or offered a new opportunity, it is the result of her own skill and merit at copywriting. Contrast to Don who bullshitted his way into his job at Sterling Cooper, or even Joan who used a bad situation (having to prostitute herself to the Jaguar guy) to get ahead at the company. Peggy would never have become a copywriter or gotten ahead if Don (and Freddy Rumsen) hadn't seen her potential, and seen that she offered a perspective that nobody else could offer. They allowed her to become a copywriter in spite of being a woman because of the lucrative potential of her work. Sure she did certain things to get ahead, like make sure she was included in the right meetings, but that's more a result of initiative and copying what everyone else is doing, rather than strategizing.


A thing to note about INTJs, they are not really people persons. Strategising is all about taking advantages of situations and achieving objectives. Rather than bullshitting and cheating other people to get what they want, INTJs will be focused on acquiring everything they need to prove their competency, be highly visible and deliver better results than their colleague. Who needs to outmaneuver when you can outperform? 




> And the majority of times she takes initiative to get ahead, it's directly based on advice people gave to her, like when Bobbie tells her "Don't try to be a man, be a woman instead, it's more powerful," or when Joan says, "If you want to get ahead, stop dressing like a little girl." When she becomes a creative director in her own right, she basically copies verbatim things that Don has told her, such as "If you don't like what's being said, then change the conversation." Seems more Ne-Si than Ni-Se to me. Most of the time when she is faced with a complicated situation where she has to figure out exactly the right thing to say/do, she goes to someone like Joan or Don for advice. Contrast that to Don (or even Bert Cooper for that matter) who always seems to instinctively know the right thing to say or do.


Note that these examples are to do with how she communicates to other people, how other people see her and the impression she is delivering to others, notorious weaknesses of INTJs and areas we tend to need help. We have complete confidence and control in our own intelligence and talents, but are clueless when it comes to people. See my signature.  
A big part of Peggy's job is to persuade the client, and that comes far more naturally to an ENTP like Don. She respects his competency and learns as much as she can from him.







> Not exactly. She starts out that way, but throughout Season 2 she struggles with her faith. Her confession to Pete about her pregnancy is supposed to represent a confession she would make to a priest. At the very end of Season 2 she crosses herself before going to bed...why would she do that if she was only going to church to please her mom? Why would she agree to help the priest out with his sermon, and the advertisements for the church dance, for that matter? Her family didn't even know he asked her to do those things until after the fact, so she obviously wasn't doing them for her family's sake.


Why help the church? She clearly feels more at home at work than she does with her family. She loves her job, a chance to solve another fun puzzle of how to sell this. A chance to relax from the pressures of her super religious family.



> Peggy displays a ton of guilt throughout the season...that's WHY holding the crying child is so unpleasant to her, because it reminds her of her "sin" (giving up her child). Then after refusing to confess to her priest all season, she confesses to Pete, and then crosses herself, indicating that she has "cleansed her soul" or whatever and is moving forward with her life.


Yet, she never takes any interest in the religion. We never see her prayer, read the bible or take any interest in it, she appears to be going only to please her mother. She may have felt guilty about the adoption, she may be a disinterested agnostic who crosses fingers out of guilt but never had any intentions to adopt the religion with seriousness.


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## dragthewaters

@_Morn_

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree, since we obviously have such hugely different interpretations of the characters. I do believe that Peggy's main motivation comes from Fi, and the main source of her creativity comes from Ne.

INFPs have just as many problems with communication and the impression they give off to others, due to being Fi-dom. Just ask any INFP.

You think Don is ENTP? That's surprising to me too. Don is about as Ni as they come. Ken Cosgrove seems more ENTP to me.


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## Enygmatic

What about Bob Benson?


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## SymphonyInBlue

Don: ENTJ (a depressive one, perhaps?) or an INTJ..
Peggy: INTJ
Betty: ESFJ
Joan: ESTJ
Roger: ESFP
Pete: ESTP (?)
Megan: ENFP
Sally: ENTP

Not sure about the others.


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## LordDarthMoominKirby

I'm late as hell but...

Bob Benson is an ENTP


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