This article is the paper I read at the Evangelical Theological Society annual conference in 2021. It's pretty long but is organized with lots of headings. If you want shorter content, here's an article I wrote on the accuracy of the enneagram and another one discussing why it seems to work if it's not accurate. This paper has also been adapted for oral presentation so citations may have been removed in adapting this paper as these are not always relevant for oral presentations, but I still have attempted to cite my work to avoid the appearance of plagiarism. Where I am merely reporting what others have done or said compared to my own ideas should be clear from the context and content of each statement. It is a product of my current research and is still limited in the scope of its analysis of the enneagram.
Introduction
What is the enneagram?
In the most basic sense, an
enneagram is a shape. The prefix ennea- is nine in Greek just like hexa- is six
and penta- is five in Greek, so enneagram just means nine-sided figure. The
enneagram as a personality system gets its name because it has 9 different
personality types, which are organized in ascending order on a circle. Think of
it as a clock with 9 at the 12 o’clock position. Type 1 Description
For the sake of time and lack of
necessity, I won’t go through all nine types but I will give a brief
description of types 1s to give a better idea of how the system describes
people and how it functions. Type 1s are referred to as The Reformers (Riso
& Hudson, 1996), The Good Person (Wagner 2021), and The Perfectionist (Cron
& Stabile, 2016; Palmer 1988), but they all describe type 1s as good,
conscientious, perfectionistic, and idealistic, amongst a long list of other
attributes. Scientific Testing
Reliability
When psychologists evaluate a scale for accuracy, they immediately look at the consistency of the scale. Wagner and Walker (1983) were among the first to develop and test their own version of the enneagram, the WEPSS. Their results yielded low consistency within the types with scores ranging from α = .37 to .78. For reference, .70 is typically considered the lowest acceptable value for this metric.Multi-test Consistency
Another common
way to evaluate a scale is by checking to see how consistent it is between
multiple tests or human raters. If enneagram theory is correct, there should be
very high agreement. If the enneagram types are more like shades of brown, low
agreement would be expected. Validity
Applied Tests
A handful of
studies have sought to test the efficacy of the enneagram in practical
situations. Godin (2013) found no significant effect on psychological
well-being or unconditional self-acceptance after training participants on the
enneagram. Why does the enneagram seem to work?
At this point, you might be wondering, if the scientific
evidence against the enneagram is so strong, then why are so many people so strongly
convinced that it works and how has it withstood the test of time? Once again,
we can find answers to these questions from psychological science. However,
to do this, I want to try something a little out of the ordinary for this type
of forum. Rather than just tell you, I want to show you.
As I read the following list of personality descriptions,
count how many of them apply to you.- You have a tendency to be
critical of yourself.
- You have a great deal of
unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage.
- While you have some
personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them.
- Disciplines and
self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside.
- You pride yourself as an
independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without
satisfactory proof.
- At times you are
extroverted, friendly, sociable, while at other times you are introverted,
wary, reserved.
Here’s a fun video from an old
Dateline episode showing the same thing.
For this next one, I’m going to need everyone to participate by trying to remember a list of words. When I’m done reading them, write down as many as you can remember.
door |
glass |
pane |
shade |
ledge |
sill |
house |
open |
curtain |
frame |
view |
breeze |
sash |
screen |
shutter |
Quickly, try to write as many as you can remember.
Let’s skip right to the point. Please raise your hand if you had the word window on your list. If you did, you are like 84% of people. Unfortunately, window was not on the list. All the words related to window, but I didn’t say it. This is known as the DRM procedure, and it demonstrates how easily our memory can be selective or misled.
There are countless other ways that our minds are unconsciously tricked. When we watch a video of someone saying fa-fa-fa but the sound is dubbed over with the sounds ba-ba-ba, our brain overrides the auditory signal for the visual signal and we hear the F-sound even when we know it’s incorrect. This is called the McGurk effect. Then there’s confirmation bias, self-fulfilling prophecy, the false-consensus effect, belief bias, the backfire effect, the placebo effect, attribution errors, and several other observed effects that can explain how and why so many can believe something that is demonstrably false.
The book Thinking, Fast and Slow is perhaps the best-known book that popularizes these types of cognitive biases but plenty of others do the same and discuss different biases (see You and Not So Smart, Think Again, Predictably Irrational, Blindspot, Fooled by Randomness, and many more).
Putting these biases together, several simpler explanations seem adequate to explain the popularity and alleged efficacy of the enneagram.
- The enneagram hasn’t
really helped people as much as they think it has.
- Introspection and talking
to others about their strengths and weaknesses has helped people, the
enneagram was just the thing that led them to do that but wasn’t the
actual cause of the growth.
- People in the most need of
change are most likely to improve even if doing nothing (regression to the
mean).
- Coincidence. Even a broken clock is right twice a day so for some people, it likely has had revolutionary benefits for some people.
Negative Effects
Anyone who’s heard of the enneagram
has probably heard several anecdotal stories about how helpful it has been, but
what about stories of its harm? In 1949, Egas Moniz won the Nobel prize in
medicine for the prefrontal lobotomy. It helped a huge number of people, but at
the same time, it did severe damage to others. Any potential good that might come
from the enneagram has to be balanced in light of the potential harm.
Unfortunately, the people it harms are unlikely to come forward in a group of
people who rave about it.
Since there
is no empirical research on the harms of the enneagram, we have to rely on
indirect evidence and the same type of personal testimonies used to promote it. Conclusion
I once mediated a disagreement
where two of the people were heavily into the enneagram. Their knowledge of the
enneagram, and the other person’s type, led them to believe they understood
what the other person was really trying to say. After the meeting, they felt
the conversation went well and explained how the enneagram had helped them get
to the bottom of the issue. On the other hand, when I spoke to the person who
was stereotyped by the enneagram, he felt like he wasn’t heard or understood by
the other two. Same conversation, two drastically different interpretations of
the outcome because a tool that promises to give understanding led to false beliefs
and expectations. References
Bland,
A. M. (2010). The Enneagram: A review of the empirical and transformational
literature. The Journal of Humanistic Counseling, Education and
Development, 49(1), 16-31. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1939.2010.tb00084.x
Cortina,
J. M. (1993). What is coefficient alpha? An examination of theory and
applications. Journal of applied psychology, 78(1), 98.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.78.1.98
Daniels,
D., Saracino, T., Fraley, M., Christian, J., & Pardo, S. (2018). Advancing
ego development in adulthood through study of the Enneagram system of
personality. Journal of adult development, 25(4),
229-241. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10804-018-9289-x
Edwards,
A. C. (1991). Clipping the wings off the enneagram; a study in people's
perceptions of a ninefold personality typology. Social Behavior and
Personality: an international journal, 19(1), 11-20. https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.1991.19.1.11
Forer,
B. R. (1949). The fallacy of personal validation: a classroom demonstration of
gullibility. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 44(1),
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Furr,
R. M. & Funder, D. C. (2021). Persons, Situations, and Person-Situation
Interactions. In Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp.
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Google
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research. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 77(4),
865-883. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23097
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O. (2021). History, Measurement, and Conceptual Elaboration of the Big-Five
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Koocher,
G. P., McMann, M. R., Stout, A. O., & Norcross, J. C. (2015). Discredited
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M. L. (2012). Interrater reliability: the kappa statistic. Biochemia
medica, 22(3), 276-282.
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H. (1988). The enneagram: Understanding yourself and others in your life.
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E., & Payne, J. D. (2017). The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) task: A
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D. R. & Hudson, R. (2003). Discovering your personality type: The
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K. S. (2018). The use of Cronbach’s alpha when developing and reporting
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Handout
Enneagram Types from the Riso & Hudson (Enneagram Institute)
1 THE REFORMER
The Rational, Idealistic Type:
Principled, Purposeful, Self-Controlled, and Perfectionistic
2 THE HELPER
The Caring, Interpersonal Type:
Demonstrative, Generous, People-Pleasing, and Possessive
3 THE ACHIEVER
The Success-Oriented, Pragmatic
Type: Adaptive, Excelling, Driven, and Image-Conscious
4 THE INDIVIDUALIST
The Sensitive, Withdrawn Type:
Expressive, Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temperamental
5 THE INVESTIGATOR
The Intense, Cerebral Type:
Perceptive, Innovative, Secretive, and Isolated
6 THE LOYALIST
The Committed, Security-Oriented
Type: Engaging, Responsible, Anxious, and Suspicious
7 THE ENTHUSIAST
The Busy, Fun-Loving Type:
Spontaneous, Versatile, Distractible, and Scattered
8 THE CHALLENGER
The Powerful, Dominating Type:
Self-Confident, Decisive, Willful, and Confrontational
9 THE PEACEMAKER
The Easygoing, Self-Effacing
Type: Receptive, Reassuring, Agreeable, and Complacent
Summary of scientific tests for accuracy of the enneagram
- Internal
consistency: Questions for same types should receive similar scores.
- Mixed
results ranging from bad to good.
- Test-rest
reliability: People should be typed the same when retested.
- Mixed
results from low to acceptable.
- Interrater
reliability: Different sources (people or scales) should type people
the same way.
- Scores
were generally very to low
- Convergent
validity: The enneagram types should correlate with other personality
measures in expected way and not correlate with measures it should be
different from.
- Results
are mixed. The enneagram types often correlate with personality measures
that they should correlate with, but it fails to correlate with some, the
strength of the correlations are lower than expected.
- Predictive
validity: The enneagram should predict behaviors and attitudes of
people better than other personality systems.
- Results are
mostly negative. The enneagram weakly predicted some outcomes, but
typically, it did not and other tests typically performed better.
Further Resources:
I
have already written about the enneagram on my website (www.jaymedenwaldt.com) and will add
this paper to it, along with more in-depth analysis.
For
more information on the enneagram’s dubious origins or the theological concerns
with it, see Enneagram Theology: Is it Christian? by Rhenn Cherry or The
New Age Trojan Horse by Chris Berg.
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