The Myers-Briggs® Personality Types of the Gilmore Girls Characters

Even though we can’t actually live in the cozy town of Stars Hollow, we all wish we could be a part of the beloved set of characters that call it home. To further relate to our favorite TV show, today we’ll be going over the Myers-Briggs® personality types of the “Gilmore Girls” characters.

Guest post by Muna Nnamani

Not sure what your personality type is? Take our personality questionnaire here. Or you can take the official MBTI® here.

The Myers-Briggs® Personality Types of the Gilmore Girls Characters

Rory Gilmore: ISFJ

I would like to preface this by saying that I am the number one Rory Gilmore hater. If Rory Gilmore has no more haters, it’s because I died. But I don’t hate her because she’s an ISFJ. In the latter half of the series, she became manipulative, selfish and mean-spirited – however, her gifted child to burnout college student pipeline is something that happens to many of us, even ISFJs.

At the beginning of the series, Rory encapsulated ISFJs’ positive qualities: She was committed to her tasks, highly principled, and caring. In fact, her attention to detail and determination to get into Harvard in spite of distractions, made her an entire generation’s study inspiration. Rory Gilmore was every overachieving little girl’s role model before Elle Woods.

Her hyper awareness of others’ feelings made it common for episodes to center around her trying to improve life for other characters. Rory’s kindness to Paris Geller, in spite of everything Paris had done to her, was a key example of the empathy that ISFJs often display.

However, ISFJs also struggle with prioritizing others’ dreams above their own. From a young age, Rory – influenced by her mother – grew attached to her goal of going to Harvard and becoming a reporter. Even when it was displayed multiple times that the career path wasn’t for her, Rory pushed ahead and viewed setbacks as proof that she was not working hard enough.

When she reached Yale, Rory could no longer carry the expectations of her family and community, which is why she “snapped”. She could not face her mistakes because she could not come to terms with the fact that she had failed. Unfortunately, Rory also lacked the commonly Intuitive skill of in-depth self-reflection, and never realized that she was responsible for a great deal of the pain in her life.

Discover more about ISFJs: Are ISFJs Rare? A Look at the Protector Personality Type

Lorelai Gilmore: ENFP

Lorelai’s charm and outgoing nature make her an obvious ENFP. On the surface level, she’s a charming conversationalist and has the people skills that Rory can lack. Her creative one-liners are the reason that Gilmore Girls is known for its fast-talking characters – she never stutters.

Her perceiving nature makes it harder for her to commit to tasks than her daughter, but it also makes her fun and spontaneous. Yes, the responsible thing to do after she called off her wedding would have been to process her problems with commitment. But a road trip to Harvard was more fun.

One of her most central ENFP traits is the reason she felt stifled in her parents’ house. Along with her pregnancy with Rory, it’s part of the reason she ran away as a teenager: she craves independence.

In contrast with Emily’s love for tradition, Lorelai values autonomy over yielding to others’ expectations. This manifests in the way that she jokes around in her conversations with those with positions of authority, and the way she found committing to one man difficult throughout the series. The idea of being tied to one thing forever, the foregoing of options, was a scary idea.

However, she strongly values loyalty, and Luke Danes wins her heart by being loyal. After he proves to her time and time again that he will be there for her and Rory, she reaches a point of maturity and realizes that commitment can be a good thing.

Curious about ENFPs? Find out more in our in-depth ENFP profile

Luke Danes: ISTJ

Luke Danes is a textbook ISTJ because he is everything that makes them good partners: loyal, trustworthy, and steady. Even though he gives off a cold exterior, Luke loves Lorelai and Rory like family and shows it by being the character they look to for support.

He makes breakfast for the pair consistently, even baking Rory a birthday cake for her sixteenth birthday. He partnered with Lorelai in raising her, assuming the fatherly role of attending her graduation and helping her move into her dorm. In fact, he was such a steady rock during Lorelai’s man troubles that she realized that she could just cut out the middleman and date him instead.

Even though ISTJs and ENFPs aren’t “supposed” to be compatible, I think he balanced out Lorelai’s warmth and peculiarity with his sardonic one-liners. She needed someone like him to constantly bring her down to earth.

While Luke didn’t talk much or enjoy expressing affections, he didn’t hesitate to stand up for his loved ones when it was necessary (remember when Dean and Rory broke up and he tried to fight Dean?)

Jess Mariano: ISFP

When ISFPs arrive in new settings, they often take the role of observers. They watch everybody and try to systemize the social hierarchy in their minds, when they’re young and less mature this can result in them  overgeneralizing others’ personalities. When Jess arrived at Stars Hollow, he did just that. Jess felt like he’d figured everybody out by the first episode.

Because he doesn’t enjoy dissecting his feelings in great detail, Jess is also hiding a lot of pain. He doesn’t want anybody to look at him as inferior, so he builds a rebel self-image to repel sympathy. However, his lack of emotional vulnerability bites him, when he isn’t able to commit to Rory in the way that she needs. Jess is obviously in love with her – as he expresses in a big release of pent-up emotion after he comes back from running away – but has problems connecting with people.

Jess’ value of his independence reaches extremes because he is unable to be the steady boyfriend that Rory needs, even though the spark is there. Like many ISFPs (hello Shawn Hunter), it takes him a while to heal his past relationship wounds. But he tries for the girl he loves. And as Jess grows older and more mature he develops more accurate and perceptive insights about the people in his life and becomes better at expressing himself.

His ISFP creativity is also on display in A Year in the Life when he eventually writes a book and starts a publishing company at the end of his very long inner journey.

Dean Forester: ISFJ/ISFP

If Dean continued to be the sweet and reliable boyfriend he was at the beginning of the series, he would be an easy ISFJ. However, the emotional instability and scariness that he reveals later on indicates that he might be an unhealthy ISFP (don’t worry, I’m not saying that average or healthy ISFPs are unstable).

In season one, Dean is actually very sensitive and supportive of Rory. He fully supports her academic endeavors and is the solid rock she needs while she gets adjusted to Chilton. While he doesn’t look for opportunities to talk about feelings, he isn’t averse to it – he’s very similar to Rory, once you get over the difference in interests.

However, his emotional instability first showed itself when he broke up with Rory after she wasn’t ready to say that she loved him back. The show writers also tried to make him seem unnecessarily insecure once Jess arrived on the scene. But I actually think that he was justified in being angry about Jess openly flirting with Rory and Rory pretending she couldn’t do anything about it.

His insecurity really became an issue when he started taking it out on his partners. After marrying Lindsay, he proceeded to cheat on her with Rory and yell at her for answering the phone. He yelled at women, made Rory feel intimidated, and made his relationship with Rory revolve around his emotional state.

Logan Huntzberger: ESTP

Logan is personally my favorite one of Rory’s love interests because he was the least emotionally attached to her, and therefore the least toxic. While he definitely had a lot of his own issues (arrogance, privilege, infidelity), Logan was not wrestling inner demons the way Dean and Jess were: for him – and for ESTPs – it was simply never that serious.

He did love Rory, but he also knew that she was not the end-all-be-all. He asked her to marry him at graduation, she said no, and he accepted the rejection with grace – Dean could take a page out of his book.

Logan is also the signature entrepreneurial ESTP personality. The second he appears in the series, he’s working crowds and walking around the Yale campus surrounded by groups of friends. Rory was popular back in Stars Hollow (or at least well-known) because she did everything that everybody expected from her. Logan was popular because he was himself, and that was attractive. ESTPs are also risk takers, which is evident in Logan when he joins the Life and Death Brigade.

Lane Kim: INFP

Artistic and free-spirited, Lane Kim is one of the many Gilmore Girls characters who deserved better. Her thoughtful nature is one of the qualities that classifies her as an INFP.

Lane has the INFP tendency to become very interested in a specific topic and learn everything there is to know about it. In her stifling household, collecting music and identifying with the lyrics was her method of maintaining her individuality. Instead of becoming the perfect child that her mother would have wanted, she remains true to herself and focuses on tricking her mother into believing she is that child.

However, Lane is also highly sensitive. Her strained relationship with her mother is not just a running gag, but a key part of who she is. Because she doesn’t always feel seen by her mother, she tries to help others feel seen. This looks like being a good listener to Rory.

Lane is also a hopeless romantic like most INFPs, refusing to love a man strictly because of practical qualifiers like money and profession. She seeks out true love in spite of her mother. Her greatest romance was with Dave, who read the entire Bible in one night to please her religious mother and be allowed to date her.

Find out more about INFPs: 24 Signs That You’re an INFP, the Dreamer Personality Type

Paris Geller: INTJ

I have seen arguments that Paris Geller is an ENTJ, and that makes partial sense because she carries the intensity that ENTJs are known to get. However, her antisocial tendencies and pursuit of success over human connection in every setting makes her an INTJ in my opinion.

Like most INTJs, Paris knows what she wants and goes after it with alarming intensity. I will forever argue that she deserved to get into Harvard over Rory. From season one, she boasts not only the grades to get in, but a plethora of extracurriculars (including running a suicide hotline as a child). She is more ambitious than Rory and truly sees every activity she’s in as an opportunity to effect positive change. For Paris, it’s never just an after-school club.

As shown in A Year in the Life, her love for education runs deep. Unlike Rory, who only studies hard to maintain her image as a hard worker, Paris studies hard because that’s who she is. Paris makes her fire for education last through college, gaining acceptance into plenty of medical and law schools upon graduation.

However, INTJs can also lack people skills. Paris could get so in love with her goals that she often saw other people as distractions to them. As a result, she found romantic relationships and forming genuine friendships difficult. This is why she and Rory were such good friends – Rory gently helped Paris see others’ point of view.

Sookie St. James: ESFJ

Sookie could be classified as either an ENFJ or ESFJ, but her character seems more down-to-earth than an ENFJ. Rather than talking about concepts and meanings she talks about food, recipes, relationships, and real life experiences. In either case, she was a charismatic worker and passionate about what she did.

Because she loved cooking, she took her job very seriously. Like other ESFJs, Sookie was able to keep the workplace environment fun and still be a reliable leader. Even though she was often written as the spacey comic relief, she was able to make things happen at the end of the day and she was able to emotionally support Lorelai during some of her toughest times.

Emily Gilmore: ESTJ

Considering that Lorelai is an ENFP, and Emily Gilmore is an imbalanced ESTJ, it makes sense that they didn’t get along: their core values were completely different. While Lorelai valued individuality and happiness, Emily valued tradition and consistency. She felt a duty to her family to uphold a certain image. That said, Emily is a fairly unhealthy ESTJ and has some passive-aggressive tendencies that most ESTJs wouldn’t use unless they were in an especially dark place. Emily was unable to come to terms with her emotions, much less others’. Because she was hurt by Lorelai excluding her from her life, she attempted to take revenge by little biting comments and passive aggression. In fact, she did not truly break ground with her daughter until later in the series.

As much as we may vilify Emily Gilmore, she did show emotional resilience in the face of her family’s problems. If she was nothing else, Emily was reliable. She considered everything she did as an important task: running the debutante ball, attending tea parties, sitting in on community meetings. When Richard tried to belittle her activities as trivial and feminine, she wasn’t having it.

However, this image-conscious nature made her unnecessarily rigid. For most of the series, she was unable to look past her daughter’s unorthodox house decorations and edgy sense of humor to see that she was doing a good job raising Rory. It also took her a while to accept that Lorelai was never going to live the life that she had perfectly picked out for her.

However, she had one of the best character development arcs, later becoming more laid back. In A Year in the Life, we see a more relaxed Emily with a healthier relationship with her daughter.

Richard Gilmore: ISTJ

Richard shows the typical ISTJ love of consistency and routine. His unquestioned commitment to routine is part of what made him a great husband to Emily. While he exhibited more of a relaxed personality than Emily when it came to first getting reacquainted with Lorelai and Rory, I think it was just because he had a less strained relationship with Lorelai.

Richard’s ISTJ nature also shows up in his love for work. Before he retired, he found purpose in doing the same thing every day. After he realized that it was time to quit, he had a hard time rediscovering his purpose because he felt useless without his job.

Unlike Emily, his disappointment in Lorelai stemmed less from a need to maintain an image and more from the fact that Lorelai was going against his core values: tradition and a conventional family. In fact, his disappointment in Lorelai was so deep-rooted that he found being around Rory difficult until he realized that she was hardworking and principled like him.

Miss Patty: ESFP

Like ESFPs in television tend to be, Miss Patty is lovable comic relief. Her extroverted and perceiving nature makes her spontaneous – she doesn’t hesitate to spill other people’s secrets (but will roll her eyes if you accuse her of being the town gossip) or shamelessly flirt with a collection of handsome men over the series. She also knows everybody in town, which indicates the popularity that marks most ESFPs.

A signature feeler-perceiver, Miss Patty is also creative. She’s always making music and teaching other people how to harness their own creativity.

April Nardini: INTP

April Nardini is a bit more chatty than the average INTP, but she’s got the same curious, innovative, logical nature. She marches to the beat of her own drum, but not in the self-expressive, introspective way that ISFPs or INFPs do, she’s more focused on knowledge, detached analysis, and figuring out how theories work. Brainy and innovative, she comes up with outside-the-box strategies for getting what she wants (for example, coming up with a “Who’s Your Daddy” science fair demonstration that would reveal her actual biological father).

Dave Rygalski: ENFJ

Kind, insightful, and amazing with people, Dave Rygalski embodies the many qualities that make ENFJs so lovable. He immediately knows how to win over Lane’s strict, intimidating mother, and seems to intuitively know how all his friends are feeling without having to try. He’s good at taking charge and organizing situations as well as knowing how to impact people’s feelings and their decisions in a positive way. We wish there was more of him in the series!

Jason Stiles: ENTP

Jason Stiles has no issue keeping up with Lorelai Gilmore’s witty banter and the random connections she seems to make at every moment. He can match her creative verbal wit and shares her impulsive, spontaneous nature. Yet as an ENTP instead of an ENFP he’s got a more of a logical, competitive side that shows up more in his relationship as Richard Gilmore’s business partner. He has the charm, wit, and negotiation skills of an ENTP and the fear of commitment that many ENTP’s also share (as evidenced when he admits to Lorelai that he usually breaks up with his girlfriends when the relationships get serious).

What Are Your Thoughts?

Do you agree with my takes on these characters or do you have a different perspective?  Let me know in the comments!

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About Muna

Muna Nnamani is the managing editor of her school newspaper, an avid fan of personality typology, and a sucker for good books and bad television. She is an INFP 4w5 and suffers the consequences daily.