Is Santa Claus a Reclusive Extravert or Jolly Old Introvert?
Can that gift-giving guy secluded at the North Pole be much of a people person?
Posted December 27, 2020
While working on a personality profile of Santa Claus as a lighthearted way to look at how experts sometimes have to work up profiles on unknown subjects or persons about whom the reports are conflicted, I found a number of sources whose authors examined the character along the dimensions of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator . While they disagreed on some aspects, they all agreed that Santa is an extravert.
"What Type is Santa?" Hile Rutledge pegs Santa as clearly extraverted: "Most of the shows and images we see of Santa show a gregarious and expressive man, frequently in the company of others. Can you imagine the network that man must have? No Introvert would have such a thing unless he lived in total stress , and that jolly old elf certainly has a stress-free life 51 weeks out of the year."
"Holiday Movies MBTI" Regarding Kris Kringle as depicted in the Rankin/Bass program Santa Claus is Comin' to Town .
"Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 10 — Christmas Characters’ MBTI" Without elaboration because "there are a lot of versions of Santa Claus," A. M. Molvik said Santa "seems like he might be an ENFP" (an extraverted, intuitive, feeling, perceiving person).
"How Festive Are You Feeling?" Not only did respondents in this study reported by the Myers-Briggs Company tend to see Santa as an extravert, but nearly half specifically pinned him down as fitting the ESFJ (extraverted, sensing, feeling, judging) type.
"Here's What You're Like as a Friend, Based on Your Myers-Briggs Personality Type" Writer Katherine Gillen also refers to the ESFJ combination as "the Santa Claus."
"Myers-Briggs® Personality Types Of Dragon Ball Heroes" Indirect but specific. In labeling the series protagonist as ESFP-A, author Will Harris explains, "Goku, at his heart, is a happy, jolly, smiling, Santa Claus kind of guy."
Related: "A Christmas Song for Each Type" Again referring to "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," this time the energizing nature of song rather than the character in the stop-motion TV program's Kris Kringle incarnation.
A further search turned up some that dubbed Santa Claus an introvert.
As noted here previously, "The extravert is more active, talkative, socially aware, and focused on his or her environment, as opposed to the shy , anxious , inwardly focused introvert. Extraverts also tend to be bolder, more fearless."
First identified as a concept and popularized by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, the continuum concerned whether each person tends to focus more on the external world or on inner experience. Even though some of his own followers may dichotomize people as being either extraverts or introverts, Jung (1921) himself believed that we all possess both characteristics within ourselves even if we tend to emphasize one more than the other. Jung said no person is purely extraverted or introverted but instead shows such a mix of both extraverted and introverted qualities to the point that ambivert (both extravert and introvert, akin to how people who can be both righthanded and lefthanded are ambidextrous ). can offer a more accurate description (Cohen & Schmidt, 1979).
Both popular and controversial, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) dichotomizes people along four different, Jung-inspired dimensions including introversion/ extraversion . Whereas those who use the test to assess personality find it to be a useful tool for categorizing people, its critics argue that individuals' responses to the test are inconsistent, that placing people into binary categories oversimplifies our views on human nature, and the unscientific thing suffers from such a dearth of empirical support as to be practically pseudoscience (Eveleth, 2013; Goodfriend, 2016).
Nevertheless, the extraversion-introversion dimension emerges in every major identification of human beings' primary personality factors (McCrae & Costa, 1987). Regardless of how professionals feel about the MBTI, this appears to be an important and well-established aspect of human nature.
Asked for a response regarding where a typical version of Santa Claus might fall on the extraversion-introversion dimension, psychologists and other writers for the Popular Culture Psychology books shared their thoughts.
Cohen, D., & Schmidt, J. P. (1979). Ambiversion: Characteristics of midrange responders on the Introversion-Extraversion continuum. Journal of Personality Assessment, 43 (5), 514-516.
Eveleth, R. (2013, March 26). The Myers-Briggs personality test is pretty much meaningless . Smithsonian Magazine: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-myers-briggs-personality-test-is-pretty-much-meaningless-9359770/ .
Goodfriend, W. (2016). Modern astrology. In T. Langley (Ed.), Doctor Who psychology: A madman with a box (pp. 113-114). New York, NY; Sterling.
Jung, C. G. (1921). Psychologische Typen [Psychological types]. Zurich, Switzerland: Rascher Verlag.
McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T., Jr. (1987). Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 52 (1), 81-90.
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Travis Langley, Ph.D. , a professor at Henderson State University, is the author of Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight.
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