The Scientific Method

"The Enneagram is about motivation, not behavior."
- Anonymous Nonsense

The above delusion has led people to believe that someone's Enneagram type is easily determined by an online test or general reflection. Because of trends we’ve found in our research, we believe that the way we humans see ourselves is riddled with subjectivity, preventing us from seeing the actual structures that underpin the way we exist and behave in the world. Our solution to this problem is simple: we can only truly discover type structure by way of external observation.

It was this idea that prompted our team to begin researching the way these nine structures manifest in reality. Through what has become a database of over a thousand video interviews collected since 2019, we've learned how to map the personality structures of the Enneagram unfolding in others around us moment by moment. We've invested years carefully tracking behavioral patterns through interviewing hundreds of people ourselves, having real conversations, catching discrepancies.

Our process began with a simple but effective format: we hypothesized that if we (the typists) could begin separately observing the same person and finding the same result, then we must be measuring something behaviorally objective. What we found is that we typists could be tracking the same behaviors, but attributing them to different functions of the personality. We’ve now spent years collecting an ever-increasing dataset that reveals our errors in judgment, refining — and redefining — the way we understand the types. As this process continues, we’re on an ever-improving track to accuracy.

This process taught us to measure type by pinpointing the alarmingly consistent patterns of behavior that arose immediately as we began collecting interviews and organizing the data. Type structure manifests through language patterns, facial expression, eye movement, body language, content of speech, emotional state, etc. We believe these behaviors appear without exception, and the nine types each have their own respective hallmarks and touchstones which we use to identify someone's type. At this point, our question is not whether type is behaviorally observable — it’s whether we have the correct interpretation and attribution of the behaviors we’re seeing.

Because of how reliably these patterns manifest, we now believe someone's type is an objective truth, a fact we aim to uncover. We saw the same mannerisms and heard the same narratives over and over, which taught us to depend on these external markers of type over the subjective explanations and labels people give for their problems. Humans have so many reasons we have the issues we have, believing our experience to be singular. But we’ve found that when someone’s behaviors, reactions, linguistic patterns, and overall story are contrasted with another whose type structure is the same, the overlap is astounding. People of the same type preach the same ideals, arguing in defense of their way of existing. So when we each rise to defend and validate our own story, we rarely realize we are actually repeating the narrative of others we know who carry the same type structures in their biology. Similar to your blood type, it takes unbiased measurements taken by professionals to identify your personality's "antigens" that float all throughout your behavior. That's where we come in.

With such a comprehensive dataset (of well over a thousand people) that we have collected, organized, and analyzed firsthand, we truly believe that we offer the most accurate typing service available anywhere. We identify someone's specific type setup by comparing their behaviors with others on the spectrum of type combinations. We allow data — real people — to define our understanding of the function of type structure, not the other way around. Objective observation informs our theory.

Our typings have improved these past several years as we’ve discovered more texture, nuance, and language to comprehend the actual functions of the types. And while we can’t promise perfection, we can promise that our competitors aren’t doing what we’re doing: with every new interview we receive, we incorporate the behaviors we observe into our standard of what defines each type. We make errors in this process, but they inevitably surface the more videos we get. When two people we’ve typed the same way have a noticeable, significant difference in behavior, we believe there’s likely a mistake we’ve made. We regularly revisit the interviews we’ve collected, catching what mistakes have slipped through the cracks. We wholeheartedly believe that this commitment to tracking our data and triangulating accordingly will necessarily ameliorate any current shortcomings we have in typing. That said, we still believe we are the first (and currently, only) team devoted to this method.

At this time, we believe that our accuracy rate, attribution of behavior to the types, and comprehensive definitions of Enneagram theory (based on our observations) allows us to say that we offer the best typing services available to the public. We’ve worked long and hard at this process, and we believe in our duty to type by minimizing bias as much as possible.

These unconscious mechanisms are real and trackable, and we want to be your statistically backed third-party, offering our analysis of what your behaviors say about your personality's function. If you're not sure of your type structure — or even if you think you are — we encourage you to reach out to us for our professional, informed perspective.