The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test provides a framework for understanding different personality types. Honestly, it's really cool. And can give us a new insight into the characters of Friends. Why did they do the crazy stuff they did while making us laugh week after week? Because they were motivated by their MBTI-specific personality types.
It wasn't just the storylines in Friends that kept us coming back week after week; it was the friends themselves. As a weekly situation comedy television series, the formula was to have these friends move through comedic situations and relatable struggles. But Friends entertained audiences for 10 seasons and 236 episodes when it originally aired from 1994-2004 (and now on streaming, celebrating their 30th anniversary). Looking at physical attributes (Rachel's hair) and the humorous storylines are an outside-in approach to the characters of Friends. On the other hand, the MBTI is a way to approach the characters from the inside.
So, let's get into what made them one of the most beloved sitcoms of all time.
Friends captures a specific period in time, one that occurred before social media and smartphones. Watching it now is like how it felt watching That '70s Show in 1998. Moving through three different decades since it originally aired, through different fashions, different social values, and different life circumstances, what has stayed the same is the MBTI personalities of the six core characters, Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe.
The MBTI has been around for a long time. Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers came up with the test during World War II after being inspired by Carl Jung's 1921 book Psychological Types. If you are a fan of 90s sitcoms, you might recall Niles, Frasier's brother, was a Jungian and quoted Carl often. Even if Myers-Briggs's theories and concepts could be considered only loosely based on psychological principles, they undoubtedly still resonate today and can provide deep insights. It can validate the push and shove people can feel to assimilate with others around them because instead, we can take the test and declare, this is me! This personality type (there are 16 in all, grouped into four different categories), this explains me perfectly!
Well, maybe not perfectly. But most people consider the MBTI more accurate than, for example, a horoscope (with no offense to avid horoscope enthusiasts, of course). It relies on information provided by you, the subject when you answer a series of questions.
The differences in personality types start with whether or not you are an introvert or an extrovert, which is the first part of each MBTI category. I, for introvert, and E, for extrovert, and so on. In fact, there are 4 four points of comparison.
Throughout the series, the audience saw how the characters of Friends
acted with each other, which was sometimes different from how they acted in the world outside the safety of their inner circle. How many of us try to put on a different personality type in different relationships or a different one professionally in work situations?
The Logical Protector: Ross Geller (ISTJ)
Ross falls into the MBTI category of Sentinels, known for their logic. He's practical and has a structured and methodical approach to life. This leads him to be the most educated friend in the group, with a PhD in Paleontology. He meticulously organizes events and then struggles with unexpected changes. As methodical as he is when it comes to how his life would be, he certainly did not plan for his first marriage to fall apart because his wife fell in love with another woman. His insistence on being "right" often leads to conflict, with the infamous "We were on a break!" episode. It's particularly hard on him when both his second and third marriages also end in divorce (despite desperately not wanting to be the guy with three divorces).
But his reliability cannot be doubted. He develops deep feelings for Rachel, back when she was his sister's best friend in high school, and never quite lets them go. One year, while home from college, he was even going to save the day as a fill-in prom date when it looked like Rachel was stood up. As Phoebe once said, he was Rachel's lobster (that is, if lobster mated for life, which apparently, they don't).
The Enthusiastic Performer: Rachel Green (ESFP)
Rachel falls into the MBTI category of Explorers, known for their spontaneous energy. She truly embodies the ESFP personality type, which is known as the "Enthusiastic Performer." When it comes to spontaneity, she is the most impulsive of the group. Case in point, she leaves her fiancé on her wedding day and shows up at the coffee shop called "The Central Perk," looking for her old friend Monica. When it comes to Ross and Rachel getting together (more than once), it was Rachel "who made the first move."
Life is never boring around Rachel. She loves socializing and being the center of attention. She works at various dead-end jobs, from being a waitress at the coffee shop where the friends gather, to being a personal shopper. When she begins dating a customer from Bloomingdale's, one she helped buy an entire new wardrobe following his divorce, she is caught by his parents half-dressed and just in a slip. But Rachel, with her flair for fashion and aesthetics, wears the slip to dinner with them at a fancy restaurant, convincing everyone it's the latest design in fashionable dress.
The Efficient Organizer and the Quick-Witted Innovator: Monica Geller (ESTJ) and Chandler Bing (ENTP)Monica, like her brother Ross, falls into the MBTI category of Sentinels, but as an extrovert rather than as an introvert, like Ross. She embodies the "Efficient Organizer" personality of Sentinels and has an intense need for control. The series highlights, on numerous occasions, her preference for order and organization, showing how she obsessively cleans and organizes her apartment.
But Monica is quick to protect Rachel when she first shows up, having just walked away jobless and penniless from everything she knew. Monica's personality allows her to naturally take on a caretaker role for the group, and she lets Rachel move in with her. Of course, Rachel is not allowed to change or move anything in the apartment, especially not the couch. At one point, Monica eventually grows tired of doing all the household chores and complains (not that Rachel would have cleaned up to her standards anyway).
Monica works as a professional chef and applies her strict adherence to the rules when she cooks most of the holiday meals for the group. Because both Monica and Ross are Sentinels, they're fiercely competitive with each other. But when they team up, like for a dance competition for the annual Thanksgiving "Geller Cup," they make a formidable team.
On the other hand, Chandler falls into the MBTI category of Analysts, known for smart and curious thinking. He becomes a perfect counterbalance for Monica's personality type, with his spontaneous tendencies contrasting with hers, which are more structured.
Chandler uses his sharp wit and use of humor as a defense mechanism, but he cannot resist an intellectual challenge. He eventually quit his job in statistical analysis and data reconfiguration to become an entry-level intern at an advertising agency. Despite being much older than the other interns, he proves he is highly adaptable and outshines all his younger peers.
Because Chandler was Ross's friend from college and had been friends with both Ross and Monica for so many years, it comes as a huge shock for the audience when Monica and Chandler get together. They initially keep their relationship a secret, but Phoebe finds out and tries to seduce Chandler to see if he admits he's in a relationship. Their awkward interactions highlight that Phoebe is not the right personality type for Chandler and solidifies that Monica is the perfect fit.
Joey Tribbiani and Phoebe Buffay (ESFP and ENFP)
Joey is the exact personality type as Rachel, with his spontaneity, energy, and enthusiasm. He's incredibly outgoing and affectionate, and it makes sense that throughout the series, he is trying to be an actor. Although it is often masked by his humorous and flirtatious exterior, Joey is deeply caring towards his friends and family. When he gets a small part on a television show, he can't wait to share his success with his grandmother (even though she doesn't speak very much English, and Joey's part was ultimately cut).
Like the time when Phoebe tried to seduce Chandler, and we could tell they weren't a "fit," sometimes the writers mixed it up, changing who was dating who. Joey and Rachel dated for a short time, but the audience could tell they didn't fit well together. Rather than a counterbalanced compliment to one another, their personality types were too alike.
Although Joey remained single until the end of the series, the writers showed the audience a glimpse of an alternate world, one where Joey and Monica got together instead. Because of Joey's love of food and Monica's natural tendency to be a caretaker, Monica used food as love, and the inevitable outcome was Joey became extremely fat but deliriously happy.
Phoebe is the only one of the group to fall into the MBTI category of Diplomats. Although she resembles Joey as an entertainer, being that she is a singer, she is more of a creative, free spirit who can always find a reason to smile. Her unique worldview is shaped by a difficult past, coming from a broken home and losing her mom to suicide. She even spent time living on the street. Phoebe has a twin sister, Ursula, but they are estranged. The MBTI can explain this. Ursula's personality type simply clashes with Phoebe's, which is full of warmth and spontaneity, and they just do not get along.
When Rachel moves in and becomes Phoebe's roommate, it was clear that their personalities also clashed. Rachel lied about where she was buying items of furniture (she was buying from a big-box retailer, a huge no-no to Phoebe's socially conscious thinking) and instead passed them off as incredible finds from various yard sales. Phoebe's personality type wants furniture items to be old and used, even homemade and unique, and therefore have a story.
At different times, the personalities of the core cast were paired with other supporting characters. A successive line of different partners became objects of comparison, either complimenting the friends' personalities or conflicting with them (mostly conflicting). There was Gunther, an ISFJ, who owned the Central Perk where Rachel first got a job and could only love her from afar. Richard Burke, an ENFJ who dated Monica, was a friend of hers and was the same age as her dad! Janice ESTP, who dated Chandler on and off, much to the dismay of his friends, because she was so annoying! And Mike Hannigan, an INFP, who ended up marrying Phoebe (finally found the right fit for her). The reasons why these supporting characters came and went just as quickly was because of how their personalities clashed or gelled with each of the friends. And at the heart of it all, the MBTI explains it all.
Article WriterKiera Polzin
Kiera Polzin is a writer/storyteller who loves Stephen King, and she collects stories adapted and read in film and television. Having an MFA in Creative Writing allows her to weave her passion for all genres of fiction into a career teaching online creative writing courses and freelance writing focusing on entertainment and pop culture. She would be most at home in Ravenclaw because she loves immersing herself in research, including occasional shifts at a rural post office, which inspired her fifth novel.
Kiera’s first YA novel can be found on Amazon and on her blog at Kiera Polzin.
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