Using AI To Determine Your Enneagram Type
If you know me, or have been following my content for a while, you know I'm very interested in the Enneagram and in AI. I think learning about both topics can offer us many advantages, as we try to streamline our lives day to day. I'm also very wary of using hacks or shortcuts, especially when it comes to self awareness, communication, and personal development.
Most of my friends and family aren't very familiar with the Enneagram. When I talked to them about my upcoming book release and was looking for early reader feedback, most of them had no idea what their type was and wanted to find a quick way to figure it out. While I do offer a short quiz in my book, The Self-Aware Interview, I am always underwhelmed with results from using quizzes to determine your type. To truly use the Enneagram to know yourself, I think it takes quite a bit of deep reflection and honesty about your internal motivations.
When trying to think of ways these folks could find a shortcut for discovering their type so they could give me the feedback I was looking for, I was struck by an exciting thought. If someone uses AI regularly, and is honest, and thorough with their usage, could it type them appropriately? At minimum, this would require someone having a professional/paid subscription and revealing a lot of personal details - not sure how many people actually do this, though we do know many folks are starting to have deeper relationships with AI. (If you're as fascinated in this as I am, I highly recommend Esther Perel's latest podcast about a man who has fallen in love with his AI- wow!)
I experiment with AI regularly, and I do try to be extremely thorough in the hopes that it will give me better results. I don't tell it all of my hopes, dreams or internal motivations, so I knew it would fall short. However, I was interested to see what it would type me as! I am confidently a 6w5, but as I asked it for feedback, I was a little surprised to see that it thought I was a 1w2. When I asked it for backups, it called out 3 (I often use it to sanity check my marketing strategies or website updates) or 9 (I also sometimes use it as another perspective to smooth my language to take out any defensiveness or intensity).
What was its rationale? I ALWAYS ask it to double-check its work, I want it to fact check and make sure it's giving me the right information. This is after lots of experiences with it feeding me hallucinations or made up information. In short, AI assumed that because I was always asking it to be sure it was correct, I must always be asking this of myself. So interesting!
While I do identify with the inner critic at times, I identify as a "never let perfect be the enemy of the good" type of person. You should see all of the handywork I do throughout my house where I decide "This is good enough, I can live with this!" while my husband (who is much more about aesthetics) shudders. This is one of many reasons why I'm not the one doing the handywork in my other business, Hire Possibilities Home.
Overall, I think AI can give an interesting "outside" (although remember this is based on information YOU fed it) perspective or another point of view when you're stress testing your Enneagram type. I'd keep these aspects in mind if you're going to use it for this purpose:
Make sure you're using a paid/professional account.
Give it as much info as you can about what's going on inside of you- what's your self talk like? What expectations do you have for yourselves and others? How do you approach conflict? You could even have it ask you 25 questions to help you determine what your type might be (then it becomes more like a quiz). The more honest and detailed you are, the closer it may be able to get you to a helpful result.
Ask AI (and yourself) what variables fed into its logic. Use your critical thinking skills to ask yourself it it's valid, or if it has more to do with how you interact with AI.
Explore other Enneagram Resources to learn more if you're interested - I've personally learned the most from Suzanne Stabile's "The Enneagram Journey" Podcast as there are so many real life examples used. Her books are fabulous as well.
Don't stress too much if multiple Enneagram types resonate for you, there may be takeaways that help you in your self-discovery from each. The chapters of my book, The Self-Aware Interview, are tailored to each type, but you may want to read several (or all of them) to see what helps you the most as you prepare for your next interview.
If you want someone to geek out with or help stress test your type, reach out to me! As I mentioned earlier in this post, most of my community is new to this framework, so I love making connections with folks who are into it!