Chat-GPT Made Us A New Enneagram

…and a bunch of us typed ourselves

I recently gathered my friends and fellow "Big Five" members— Tripp Fuller, Myron Penner, Sarey Concepcion, and Sarah Lane Ritchie — for a special episode. Our goal? To playfully mock and critically examine the Enneagram, a popular personality typing system I've long been skeptical of.

A bit of context: we were celebrating the fifth anniversary of our friend group, originally convened by Sarey via Fuller Seminary at a “theology and psychology” event in 2019 — thanks Sarey! Sarah joined us from an airport lounge, adding a touch of cosmopolitan flair (and some day drinking) to our conversation.

I introduced my own special personality assessment that I dubbed the “Danneagram,” a twist on the Enneagram that I'd created using ChatGPT. This AI-generated personality system featured nine personality types, each with its own Greek letter (Myron’s idea!), colors, personality traits, and other types to which each type “moves toward” when in a healthy or unhealthy place — if you know much about the Enneagram, you will recognize a lot in that description. We each typed ourselves and talked through the implications of Chat-GPT’s ability to come up with something fairly plausible along these lines.

Throughout the discussion, we oscillated between riffing on personality tests (listen for Tripp’s "soul signatures" to come up a lot) and making more serious critiques of the Enneagram and similar systems. I maintained my skeptical stance, arguing that while the Enneagram might provide helpful language for self-understanding, its claims to accuracy and ancient origins are unfounded.

Perhaps surprisingly, Sarah Lane Ritchie emerged as the strongest defender of the Enneagram, sharing a personal story about how meaningful it had been in her life, and challenged me to consider why people find the Enneagram so compelling and whether science could create something equally engaging but more rigorous. All of this brings up an interesting and important question, especially for those of us who find personality systems like the Enneagram helpful: are personality tests or systems valuable even if they aren’t scientifically valid?

Our conversation covered a lot of ground including birth order, the anthropology of religious practices, and the history of personality testing. Tripp kept us laughing with his committed role-playing as an Enneagram true believer and his "Lord of the Rings" character associations. We even touched on the possibility of developing a more scientifically sound version of the Enneagram in the future.

Ultimately, we all agreed that, while we may disagree on the specifics, the search for self-understanding and connection with others is an invaluable and deeply human endeavor. Whether through "soul signatures" or more conventional means, we all share a desire to make sense of ourselves and our place in the world.

Listen (and laugh) along. As always, you’re invited to join my Patreon to support my work and get access to all my content, completely ad-free.