Welcome everybody to the fourth installment of this series, where we seek to determine whether the Harry Potter housing results line up with MBTI types, and what that says about them. In our last installment we finished the Hogwarts houses; as a quick summary, the typings we found for each house according to our survey were

Gryffindor: ESFP

Ravenclaw: INTP

Hufflepuff: ISFJ

Slytherin: ENTJ/ESTJ

This time, we’re going to analyze the first two Ilvermorny houses, Thunderbird and Pukwudgie. Now, Ilvermorny housing is different from Hogwarts, in the sense that the descriptions of those who are sorted there do not depend on individual traits, such as bravery or ambition, but rather on more “macro” aspects of personality. At first glance, this would mean that the people sorted within a given house would be more similar to each other than, say, the population of a given Hogwarts house, since they’re defined by their paths in life more than by certain character traits.

Whether that’s the case or not, we’re about to find out.

Thunderbird

The first Ilvermorny house to be analyzed is Thunderbird, named by Chadwick Boot after his favourite magical beast, a beast that can create storms as it flies. It’s a house which is said to favour adventurers, and the creature is considered to represent the soul of a witch or wizard. Contrary to Hogwarts houses, Ilvermorny houses don’t have colours associated to them, so don’t expect any colours to be referenced.

Thunderbird is far and away the house which got the most representation in this survey, with a staggering 191 people being Thunderbirds (37.37% of the total). This is true for all houses, meaning that more people were sorted into this particular Ilvermorny house than they were sorted to any particular Hogwarts house. This gives us a fairly large sample size to work with, which we will break down in order to better analyze.

The first thing that jumps out from the results is that being sorted into Thunderbird doesn’t depend on one’s Focus – they differ by less than 1% from our base, leaning almost imperceptibly towards Extraversion (19.90% against our base of 18.98%). Surprisingly, a similar case can be made for Information Intake. While Thunderbirds lean towards Intuition as their main source of Information Intake, this is only a slight preference (86.39% against our base of 84.54%) – large enough to be noticeable, giving them this penchant towards imagining possibilities and going for them. Thunderbirds don’t stick to the practical, or even tie themselves to the numbing practicality of daily life – they prefer to go out and make a world for themselves.

The defining characteristic in Thunderbirds is their strong Feeling aspect (61.78% against our base of 54.60%). Thunderbirds, the adventurers, those represented by a beast which stands for the soul, was bound to attract people whose main source of decision making is their feeling itself. They trust their gut and their values, and combined with their intuition, allow this to lead them into the unknown. It is here where their adventurer dynamic arises and forms itself, without a shade of doubt. All of this is nicely complemented by a slight preference towards Outer Perception (51.31% against our base of 48.73%), allowing them to keep an open world view, not tying themselves down, giving them the creativity to improvise and surprise themselves and others to wherever this whimsy takes them.

All in all, we could sum up Thunderbirds as follows:

“Thunderbird has a neutral tendency towards Focus, a slight tendency towards Information Intake through Intuition, a strong tendency towards Decisionmaking through Feeling and a slight tendency towards Outer Perception”

Our quintessential Thunderbird would therefore be an ENFP/INFP

Pukwudgie

If Thunderbird was meant to represent the soul, Pukwudgie represents the heart. A house named by a Muggle, James Steward, it derives its name from the mythical Pukwudgie, a creature known to be absolutely independent. It is said that this house favours “the healers”. Much like Thunderbird, Pukwudgie is a house which comes alive not by any of these individual sentences, but through a combination of all of them. Statistically speaking, Pukwudgie was represented fairly well in our survey, sharing the second place with Horned Serpent (128 and 126 people, respectively, giving them a sizeable 25% representation to each).

In our personality analysis, Pukwudgie shares a common trait with Thunderbird in the sense that it’s also neutral towards Focus, leaning ever so slightly towards Extroversion (20.31% against our base of 18.98%). I feel I need to reiterate that, once again, this refers to a neutral tendency regarding the average taker of the survey – it only means that the results are proportioned in a similar fashion as the survey in general. This, however, seems to be a tendency regarding Focus with the Ilvermorny houses, which is something I’ll analyse later. Where this house begins jumping to life is through their Information Intake results. They have a moderate tendency towards Sensing (20.31% against our base of 15.46%), which makes sense given their house description. Being healers, Pukwudgies tend to focus on the reality of the situation at hand, so that they may assess it better. Dream worlds are of little use to them, since they are there to cure the problems of the world, not to go look for a better one.

This is massively aided by a marked, very strong tendency towards Decisionmaking through Feeling (69.53% against our base of 54.60%). They’re second only to Hufflepuff in this regard, and it’s the most defining factor in both of those houses, which is why the initial thought of many people was that they would be very closely linked. Much like Hufflepuff, they also favour Outer Judging (60.94% against the base of 51.27%), but on a much stronger fashion – while Hufflepuff’s tendency is barely above a moderate 4%, Pukwudgie’s is closer to 10%, making it an extremely defining characteristic. This speaks volumes about their independent nature, not in an adventure seeking way like Thunderbird, but rather as a free spirit which treasures their individuality and personal drive while simultaneously having a crafted approach to their endeavours.

All in all, we could summarize Pukwudgies as follows:

“Pukwudgie has a neutral tendency towards Focus, a moderate tendency towards Information Intake through Sensing, a very strong tendency towards Decisionmaking through Feeling and a strong tendency towards Outer Judgment”

Our typical Pukwudgie would be an ESFJ/ISFJ

That about wraps it up for these two houses. On a personal level, it was interesting to look at the pictures where they associate a type to a character, and see how they link up. I personally never made the connection between Lily and Neville having these healer, protective traits, but seeing them side by side helps me form a mind picture about the type of person that would be in Pukwudgie. A similar thought can be made for a person falling between Ron and Luna, with this strong drive for adventure with a strong soul. Keep your eyes peeled for the next part coming up soon!