Comment by aaimnr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aaimnr | Hacker News Reader

Personality typing is obviously incredibly shaky ground because of the huge potential for the suggestion bias, but we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater. It's almost obvious that there are patterns of human behaviour that are often distinctive and repetitive across society. It's hard to identify these regularities and we should be sceptical about any blatant simplifications, but we shouldn't stop trying to understand them.

There is another personality typing method called Enneagram, that takes a more interesting approach than static M-B. Rather than attributing some essential properties to each person, it assumes that personality is formed by a set of cognitive habits. These habits condition our attention to pick specific aspects of experience and giving it interpretation in line with this bias. Most people use all of these 9 identified patterns, but one is dominant, and hence it defines what we perceive as personality.

These habits are mostly crystalised in childhood and depend on the environment and upbringing. Eg. when a child is punished at random without any consequence there's a chance it will become type 8, on the other hand if there's great deal of regularity and rules at home, it may and up as type 1 etc. Seems like a gross oversimplification, but it's just an example of this type of conditioning.

The general approach seems legit (based on what we know about cognitive science), but what's more important, learning about these 9 habits/types usually leads to incredible insights into one's behaviour. There's lot of regularities that we suddenly find in our actions that fit specifically to one of these 9 types.

Unlike what article states about M-B, Ennegram mostly focuses on the dark, habitual and unconscious aspects of each personality, so it's much less susceptible to the "horoscope effect" (where we're more likely to attribute anything positive to ourselves).

I try to challenge it as much as possible, because as anything related to personality it may become a self fulfilling prophecy, but still I found it very hard to falsify, there's just a lot of positive evidence.

Since there's strong overrepresentation of rational thinkers on HN I'd love to hear some comments from anyone here who took Enneagram test or heard about it (there's a lot of free tests on the internet).

I have studied the Enneagram deeply. It is a far more profound system than the MBTI, and far more useful for understanding oneself and others.

The MBTI has some correlation to the Enneagram, and it is from that correlation that it takes most or all of its validity. But the correlation is only partial. If you look in Jung's Psychological Types, you will see that he correctly characterized eight of the nine Enneagram types (which one he missed I leave as an exercise for the reader). Missing one type, he was unable to see the whole structure with its deeper properties, such as integration/distintegration, that reflect the way the types relate to one another. Nor did he pick up on how the types develop as childhood survival strategies (which is not as simple as you're suggesting).

The MBTI starts with Jung's already incomplete system and just messes it up further.

Someone will probably ask me whether the Enneagram has been objectively validated. It has not been, and can never be, because it contains an inherent element of subjectivity. The way you know your Enneagram type is not by taking tests. Tests can provide useful hints, but if all you have is a test result -- even if it's correct! -- you do not know your type. The way you know is by studying the types until one of them clicks for you, and you see yourself in a new way: then you know.

The Enneagram does talk about our dark sides, and that's important; but it isn't only about that by any means. It can also show us positive aspects of ourselves that we have not accepted, and it's very much about how to develop those aspects further.

ETA: if you would like help figuring out your type, I would be delighted to assist. My email address is in my profile.

What you mention about Jung/enneagram correlation is interesting. You'd think that since he's based on different partitioning scheme (2 * 2 * 2) he should end up without any types matching exactly, but you seem to suggest that it's the case and he's just missing one. I guess it could make sense provided he based his type descriptions on empirical evidence (clustering his patients) that he later artificially pushed into 8 categories. I don't know M-B well, but since it's a M-B thread and it may be useful to other readers, I tried to pursue your exercise and based on type descriptions tried to match it. Here's what I managed to do, based on vague Jung type descriptions I've found on the internet: ET - 1,IT - 5, EF - 3, IF - 9?, ES - 8, IS - ?, EI - 7, II - 4

Does it make some sense? Where are the gaps?

Are there any Eneagram specific resources that you'd recommend? I've found A.H. Almaas and Eli Jaxon-Bear books the most insightful. I'd love to read/hear something original on the topic that doesn't come from the echo chamber of people who are in these circles, make money from it etc.

As to the type, just as you said one of them "clicked" with me strongly and I'm almost 100% sure which one is mine.

Here are my pairings. (I'm at work and don't have my copy of Psychological Types handy, so this is going off someone else's interpretations [0]. But I think this is probably right.)

  ES - 7
  IS - 9
  EI - 8
  II - 4
  ET - 1
  IT - 5
  EF - 2 (but see below)
  IF - 6

The EF description does have some Three-sounding qualities to it; it's a fair guess that Jung lumped many Threes in with the Twos, since, after all, a lot of Threes (a majority, in my experience) lean toward Two, and after all he had to put them somewhere. (Some of them probably wound up in EI and ES as well.) Still, based on the descriptions in his book, I concluded that he overlooked the Three.

[0] http://www.watchwordtest.com/types.aspx

The wikipedia article has way too little psychology references (I counted none - did I miss some?), and way too many theology references. No problem with the later one, except that it should bias researchers into getting many of the first ones, yet those are missing.

I tend to doubt classifications with dimensions that lack opposing extremes. Yes, I can imagine how is a person with heavy reforming personality, but how is one with very little of it? Besides the idea that those traits are formed at the infancy, or that they crystallize at all is so opposed to my experience that I can't take the idea seriously.

Indeed the Wikipedia article doesn't paint it in a great light. The system itself seems to be quite old, but I'd love to see some serious studies of it. The only thing I can add here is that our understanding of human mind is really basic at this point and we have to wisely balance between what we can already measure and our intuitions. That's how all sciences evolved.

I understand your point about classifications, but it assumes that Enneagram spectrum is a result of random distribution of X values in some vector. In such case indeed each dimension should have 2 extremes. However, according to my vague intuition Enneagram is somewhat different. Rather than describing the whole space in which each solution (personality type) is equally possible, it seems to describe specific points in the space that seem to act like attractors. For some reason these specific behavioural patterns crystalize, because they tend to create very specific meaning/identity and way of making sense of the world around us. You can't create an identity/self around 'lack of something', it needs to be some specific quality that allows to interpret reality in given fashion.

The example you bring up (type 1, the Reformer) is not about reforming vs not reforming, but rather about seeing the world in terms of perfection: this is perfect and this is not perfect. Hence they may end up as a reformer or just someone overly pedantic. Other types have completely different perspective (eg. this is safe and this is not safe), so in a way each type is a separate according to which a given person interprets the same reality.

This is very subtle and more complex than M-B. In M-B we have one 'objective' world and set of values in which various types rank differently. In Enneagram each type has a different way of defining the world/experience so in each case the measuring axes are different. It's as if you had different formal systems based on different axioms - each would end up with different consequences and you wouldn't be able to compare their statements directly. You'd have to compare the properties of the systems as a whole.

Your last point about infancy - that was my mistake, I shouldn't write 'early childhood' (edited). The theories I heard mentioned some formative, sometimes traumatic (single, or repetivie) experiences in childhood/adolescence that shaped given perspective.

The origins of the MBTI are closely related to the Enneagram, and much of what MBTI is getting decried for is far removed from its history - Jung and Myers both laid down an incredible foundation for psychology and introspection. It's a shame MBTI has been swept up by pop culture as there is a great deal of insight to be had both in learning of the cognitive functions and Jung's works on the unconscious.

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