Social Behavior and Personality, 1991, 19 (1), 11-20. © Society for Personality Research (Inc.) CLIPPING THE WINGS OFF THE ENNEAGRAM; A STUDY IN PEOPLE’S PERCEPTIONS OF A NINEFOLD PERSONALITY TYPOLOGY ANTHONY C. EDWARDS University of Lancaster, England The Enneagram is a personality typology stating that there are nine basic of personality, each represented by a different number fie one to nine, According to Riso (1987), in addition to being one basi type, people also have a wing of (i.e. p traits of) one of the two types represented by a number adjacent to that representing the basic type. If Riso’s argument is correct, people presented with brief descriptions of the nine types should perceive maximal similarity between types which are resented by adjacent numbers. This hypothesis was examined in the resent study, but was not supported. Since time immemorial, attempts have been made to understand human nature by classifying people into personality types. Evidence of ancient attempts to classify personality is evident from astrology, Chinese as well as occidental, and from the famous Hippocratean doctrine of the four humours. In the twentieth century, Jung (1921/1946) has developed a typology which groups people according to their basic attitude type, introvert or extrovert, and their basic function type, sensation, feeling, thinking and intuition. More recent typologies have sometimes employed simpler, dichotomous groupings, such as Rotter’s (1966) distinction between internal and external locus of controls, Snyder's (1974) distinction between high and low self-moni- tors and Friedman and Rosenman’s (1974) Type A versus Type B distinction. Contributions to personality typology have also come from child psychology, such as the distinction Thomas, Chess and Birch (1970) make between three types of children, the easy, the difficult and the slow to warm up. The above list is not intended to be an exhaustive list of personality typologies, but does indicate an interesting fact, personality theories {112 EDWARDS differ not only in the criteria by which they classify people, but also in the number of types they employ. Locus of control theory and self- monitoring theory, at least in their original formulations, imply the existence of just two types. Hippocratean theory implies the existence of four types, Jungian theory the existence of eight types and astrology the existence of twelve types. A considerable amount of factor analytic research has established the existence of five basic human personality traits (Digman, 1990), and while these traits are generally conceptual- ised as dimensions rather than types, it is not difficult to see how an excessive tendency to show any one of these traits could be conceptual- ised as a type (cf. Cantor and Mischel, 1979). This raises the question as to how many types of human personality exist, or indeed, whether the number of types implied in a personality theory is a purely arbitrary number. If the latter is the case, it follows that a personality theory may adopt literally any number of types in its classification scheme. Few personality theories have adopted a nine-fold classification scheme; such a scheme can be found in the typology of the Enneagram (Beesing, Nogosek and O'Leary, 1984: Riso, 1987). The Enneagram appears to be an ancient system of personality, which, according to Beesing et al., may have developed in Afghanistan during the early years of the Christian era, influenced Islamic thought and been passed down by oral tradition by the Sufis. It comes from the Greek word ennea, nine, and this has led to Riso (1987) to suggest some possible neo- Platonic influence on its development. The Enneagram was first made known to modern Western thought by Ichazo (Beesing et al., 1984) who views each of the nine personality types as being characterised by a “trap” or “ego fixation”. In terms of modern psychology, this may roughly be stated as a motive which, if followed to the exclusion of all other motives, interferes with the full moral, spiritual and psychological development of a person. Thus, the Enneagram may be seen as a system of nine basic motivations, a system not too far removed Murray’s idea of needs, and this is certainly the viewpoint taken by Beesing et al. However, they view the nine motiva- tions of the Enneagram in a negative sense, i.c. as motivations to avoid something, rather than as motivations to achieve anything. If we are to believe modern writings on the Enneagram, one of the curious elements of this system is that these nine types were never actually given names, but merely given numbers. The avoidance of each type, as offered by Beesing et al., is as follows: ONES avoid anger, TWOS avoid admitting they have needs (compensating by seeing needs in others), THREES avoid failure, FOURS avoid ordinariness, FIVES avoid emptiness (i.e. mental emptiness, for they are perenially trying to fill their minds with knowledge), SIXES avoid deviance (they want to be loyal to group demands), SEVENS avoid pain, EIGHTS avoid weakness and NINES avoid conflicts. (This is only a very general outline of thePERCEPTIONS OF A PERSONALITY TYPOLOGY 13 “avoidances” of each type, any one who really wants to understand the approach taken by Beesing et al. to the Enneagram should consult the original source). A somewhat different approach to the Enneagram is taken by Riso (1987), whose treatise on the subject offers some rather more systemat- ic, detailed descriptions of each of the nine types. Unlike Beesing et al., Riso gives each type a name as well as a number, the reformer, the helper, the status seeker, the artist, the thinker, the loyalist, the general- ist, the leader and the peace-maker. Any one who has a brief acquaint- ance with the ideas of Beesing et al. will almost immediately be able to work out which of these names correspond to which number (the names are represented here in order, i.e. the reformer corresponds to ONE, the helper to TWO and so forth). However, it should be noted that Riso's descriptions of the types do not form perfect matches with those given in Beesing et al. Indeed, the only reference Riso gives to the book by Beesing et al. (except for a reference in his bibliography) is in a brief footnote, stating his disagreement with many of the interpretations of the types given by Beesing et al. Riso seems in basic agreement that the nine types can be described in terms of their key motivations. At the start of each chapter, he lists key motivations of each type. However, when reading the descriptions he Presents in more detail, coupled with a reading of the introductory sections of his treatise, one gets the impression that his approach to the Enneagram is a trait theory, rather than a motivational one. Thus, each of the nine types are described by Riso in terms of traits, rather than Motives. One of the most interesting elements of Riso’s approach to the Enneagram is his description of the wing of each type, something not found in Beesing et al. According to this idea, while people belong to one and only one of the nine basic types, each person has a wing of his/her adjacent type, for example, some one who is a FIVE must have either a SIX wing or FOUR wing. This means that such a person will show, as well as characteristics of the basic type, considerable displays of traits of the wing-type. The wing-type is always, Riso argues, adjacent to one’s main type. The fact that the wing is always the wing of an adjacent type (for example, one can be a THREE with a FOUR wing, but not a THREE with a SEVEN wing) is quite an important idea in Riso’s thought. In a late section in his treatise discussing the wing, he implies the Enneagram must have been worked out quite carefully, because types possessing mutually exclusive traits are never found next to each other (he gives the example of THREE and SEVEN). Yet, this appears to contradict much of what he says in the main body of his thesis, where he willingly admits that traits of adjacent types do conflict with each other. To try to allow for this problem, Riso tries to make a distinction between traits14 EDWARDS conflicting with each other and traits being mutually exclusive. Yet, in at least one case, one of the basic types may have a wing which Riso readily admits possesses traits which not only conflict with, but are diametrically opposed to, the basic type. This is NINE, the passive, self- effacing, accommodating peace-maker, which may have a wing of the EIGHT (the confrontational, assertive leader). The presence of the EIGHT besides the NINE in the Enneagram makes one wonder whether Riso’s arguments about each type having a wing can really be taken seriously. Indeed, one wonders whether, had the types of the Enneagram being scrambled to form a different order, Riso would still have argued, equally confidently, that each type may have a wing of its basic type. In short, one may wonder whether, in direct opposition to the implications of Riso’s argument about wings, a type may share traits with any of the other eight types, regardless of where the other type falls on the Enneagram. If the Enneagram really had been devised in such a way as to allow for each type to have a wing of its adjacent type, it follows that when people with no acquaintance with the Enneagram are presented with thumb- nail descriptions of the nine types, and asked to think about the ways in which such descriptions overlap with one another, people should notice most overlap between types which really are adjacent on the Enneagram. This hypothesis was examined in the current study. METHOD SUBJECTS Forty-eight students at the University of Lancaster (twenty-four males and twenty-four females) who were approached in snack-bars and common rooms around the campus acted as subjects. PROCEDURE AND MATERIALS Each subject was handed a set of nine cards, each bearing a descrip- tion of one of the nine types. These descriptions were based on those in Riso (1987) (the exact wording on each card may be obtained on request from the author). Subjects were asked to read through the cards, and to be thinking about similarities between different descriptions. They were then given the following instructions. What I would like you to do now is to arrange these cards into a circle in such a way that any pair of adjacent cards describe attributes that could exist, or are likely to exist, in the same person. Do not worry if you feel that some cards do not really fit into your circle, although you must use all cards. Just make sure that at least some pairs contain certain similarities. When subjects had completed their circles, their responses were recorded by jotting down a list of nine numbers, indicating where eachPERCEPTIONS OF A PERSONALITY TYPOLOGY 15 subject had placed each card. (A coding system was used, where each card was represented by its Enneagram number, and these were the numbers used in the list. The numbers did not, of course, appear on the cards, but the experimenter had enough familiarity with the Enneagram to be able to translate each description into a number quickly). Subjects were also asked whether they found it easier to place some cards in the circle than others, and whether they found it especially difficult to place any particular cards in the circle. If they ever indicated that it had been difficult for them to place a card in the circle, this was noted by circling the appropriate number. RESULTS The frequencies with which each card had been placed next to one of the other eight cards are given in Table One. Since there were forty-eight Subjects, each card had been placed next to another card ninety-six times (forty-eight times on either side). Thus, the expected number of times (in the purely statistical sense) for any two cards to have been paired up would have been 12 (96 divided by 8). TABLE 1: FREQUENCIES OF PAIRINGS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 = 2 10 = 3 9 2 _— 4 10 17 10 _ 5 24 13 4 31 _ 6 3 28 7 0 5 _— 7 5 10 23 lL 9 9 _ 8 26 2 39 i 7 2 13 _— 9 9 14 2 10 3 42 16 0 a Frequencies with which any two pairings were placed together is indicated by dinding the place in the above diagram represented by the appropriate column and row. For example, to find the frequency with which ONE and FIVE were paired together, go to the column headed by a 1 and the row preceded by a 5 (the frequency of this pairing was 24). The most interesting part of this table for the purposes of the present Study is the diagonal indicating the frequencies with which adjacent types were placed together. Only in the case of FOUR and FIVE were two types placed together much more frequently than chance would Predict. In other cases, frequencies of adjacent pairings were around16 EDWARDS, chance-based expectation, or, in the case of TWO and THREE, FIVE and SIX and EIGHT and NINE, considerably below chance-based expectation (in fact, the latter possibility was, along with FOUR and SIX, the only combination which never occurred). Analysing Table One more thoroughly, one can see a number of pairings which were well above chance based expectation. These were (in order of frequency) — SIX and NINE; THREE and EIGHT; FOUR and FIVE; TWO and SIX; ONE and EIGHT; ONE and FIVE and THREE and SEVEN. When asked whether they had experienced any difficulty placing any cards in the circle, subjects most frequently indicated that they had difficulty with SEVEN (a total of nine subjects indicated difficulty with this description). The numbers of subjects who indicated difficulty with each of the other types were as follows: ONE — one subject; TWO — two subjects; THREE — one subject; FOUR — two subjects; FIVE — three subjects; SIX — two subjects; EIGHT — two subjects; NINE — three subjects. DISCUSSION The present study suggests that certain cards were placed together far more frequently than chance would predict, and this certainly suggests that certain Enneagram personality descriptions do overlap with one another, or at least, are perceived to overlap with one another. Howev- er, for Riso’s argument about each type having a “wing” to have been supported, most of these above-chance-level pairings should have con- sisted of cards represented by adjacent numbers on the Enneagram. This was the case for only one of the seven most frequent pairings, that of personality types FOUR and FIVE. Thus, Riso’s arguments about wings are very much called into question. A counter-argument to this position is that the Enneagram might not actually arrange personality types so that the best possible overlaps between adjacent types can be found, but only in a way which makes it possible for overlaps for adjacent types to be found. This would be consistent with Riso’s position, and would have been consistent with the results of the present study had frequencies with which adjacent types were placed beside one another been equal to or greater than chance-based expectation. However, this counter-argument is not sup- ported by the present study, since for at least two adjacent types, the frequency of pairing was much below chance-based expectation. These were TWO/THREE and EIGHT/NINE; the fact that the EIGHT and NINE were never placed together is particularly damaging to Riso’s concept of wings. (Riso seems to provide evidence to the contrary by suggesting some examples of Eights with Nine-wings and Nines with Eight-wings. Since his list of Eights with a Nine-wing includes people as diverse as Pablo Picasso, Martin Luther King, Johnny Cash, OthelloPERCEPTIONS OF A PERSONALITY TYPOLOGY 17 and Darth Vader, however, one wonders how seriously one can take this type to be a homogeneous personality type). This raises the question as to whether, contrary to Riso’s assertions, it may be possible for someone to belong to a basic type and still have a “wing” from a non-adjacent type. The high frequencies with which certain non-adjacent pairs were placed together suggests the affirmative. For example, it may be possible that someone whose basic type is ONE, that of a perfectionistic, controlled reformer, may also show characteris- tics of FIVE (the thinker) or EIGHT (the leader), since the personality descriptions of ONE and FIVE were placed together frequently, as were the descriptions of ONE and EIGHT. One of the clearest instances where the current study contradicts Riso is in the high frequency with which THREE (the success-orientated status seeker) was placed beside SEVEN (the fun-loving generalist). Riso argues quite explicitly that one never encounters people who combine the traits of these two types, the present study suggests otherwise: It may, therefore, be quite possible for a status seeker to be hedonistic and pleasure-loving, contrary to Riso’s assertions. However, it should be recalled that the card which most frequently presented difficulty to subjects when placing cards in the circle was that describing SEVEN. It may be the case, therefore, that anyone who is a true SEVEN is unlikely to have a wing of any other type, adjacent or non-adjacent to the Enneagram. (One should remember, however, that although the SEVEN was the card which most frequently presented difficulty for subjects, the subjects who did, in fact, indicate difficulty with it formed only a small sample of the subjects, indeed less than a quarter of the subjects who took part in the study. Thus, the SEVEN might be perceived by some people as possessing attributes shared by other types). Since some cards were placed together very frequently it seems fair to question whether the Enneagram is really justified in treating them as two distinct types. The prime example of this is SIX/NINE (the most frequent pairing, which all but six subjects paired together). It is noteworthy here that Riso draws parallels between Jungian typology and the Enneagram. Riso argues that SIX and NINE correspond to Jung’s introverted feeling and introverted sensation types respectively, and goes on to criticise Jung for confusing traits of these two types. A possibility that neither Jung nor Riso may have realised, however, is that there may be no real distinction between these two types. Riso also criticises Jung for confusing traits of the extroverted and introverted thinking types, which he equates with ONE and FIVE respectively. However, the high frequency with which these two types were paired in the present study suggests that there may not, in fact, be any real distinction between these two types. If certain types cannot really be distinguished, a question that must be asked is why the Enneagram employs a nine-fold typology. (It should be18 EDWARDS remembered that the Enneagram differs from many other personality theories in this respect.) It is possible that the answer to this question has less to do with psychology than with mathematics. Since there are, of course, nine one-digit integers in the Arabic numerical system (excluding zero, which suggests too many value connotations to be included in a system such as that of the Enneagram), it follows that whoever it is who originally devised the Enneagram may have adopted a nine-fold scheme because that was the number of available one-digit integers. (Had the Enneagram been devised in a culture using Base Six, for example, a five-fold scheme may have emerged.) It has been said that there are not really seven colours in the rainbow, since there is no real distinction between indigo and violet; Sir Isaac Newton, it has been claimed, liked the magic number seven and so distinguished between these two colours. In a similar manner, whoever developed the Enneagram may have attached great significance to the number nine, and so may have made an a priori decision to map a nine-fold classification scheme on to human personality. It seems quite possible that this is so, since, if the Enneagram really had been passed down by Sufis, it may well have been influenced by the Arabic numerical scheme. As a consequence, certain distinctions may have been made which have less to do with actual, objective differences between personality types than with the need to construct personality descriptions for each of nine digits, Even if the actual number of types (nine) the Enneagram employs is a non-arbitrarily chosen number, one may still wonder whether the actual ordering of the types within this scheme is completely arbitrary, there may be no reason, for example, why the FIVE should precede the SIX any more than the NINE. Riso’s argument about wings suggests other- wise, but, the present study has provided little support for this argu- ment. One may be inclined to conclude, therefore, that the numbers assigned to each type are quite arbitrary, type ONE, for example, could equally well have been called type SIX. However, before jumping too rigidly to this conclusion, it should be noted that the concept of wings is not the only feature of the Enneagram which suggests a non-arbitrary numbering system for each type. There is an alternative reason for giving each type a certain number rather than another, and it concerns what is called by Riso (1987) “the direction of integration and disinte- gration” and by Beesing ct al. “moving against and with the arrows of compulsion”. According to this concept, the Enneagram types are related in such a way that, if one follows the basic motivation of one’s own type to an unhealthy degree, one will begin to show characteristics of another type — whereas if one resists the temptation to do this, one will show signs of another, different type. Unhealthy following of one’s temptation is called by Beesing et al. “moving with the arrows of one’s compulsion”,PERCEPTIONS OF A PERSONALITY TYPOLOGY 19 while resistance to such temptation is called “moving against the arrows of compulsion”. The moves that each type makes when following the arrows of compulsion can be understood by remembering the two sequences, 1-4-2-8-5-7-1 and 3-9-6-3. Thus, a ONE becomes like a FOUR, a FOUR like a TWO and so on. (The reverse order indicates moving against the arrows of compulsion; e.g. a NINE will become more like a THREE when showing a healthy resistance to the basic temptation associated with NINE.) These two sequences of numbers are not arbitrary. The 1-4-2-8-5-7-1 sequence reflects the Law of Seven, i.e. that any integer from | to 6 will, when divided by 7, result in this series of numbers, starting at different points in the series for each different integer. It may well be the case that the numbering of the Enneagram types was actually based on beliefs about how the types would react when acting in unhealthy manners, and that this, coupled with the Law of Seven, forms the basis of the Enneagram numbering, rather than any concept of “wings”. Indeed, an informal conversation with one of the subjects in the present study revealed that she had placed ONE besides FOUR on the grounds that, if a perfectionistic ONE felt unable to uphold high ideals (which are typical of ONES), then such a person might become depressive and moody (traits typical of FOUR). This is an example of moving with the arrows of compulsion, as the 1-4-2-8-5-7-1 sequence indicates. Howev- er, it appears from the books by Beesing et al. and Riso that this process is something done by psychologically unhealthy members of each type. Thus, the present study should not be thought of as being informative as to whether the types really are perceived by people as moving in the directions specified by the sequences 1-4-2-8-5-7-1 and 3-6-9-3, since the subjects were not given any hints as to the levels of health supposed by each personality description. Nevertheless, the possibility that these sequences might underlie the true reason for the Enneagram numbering may prove to be a fruitful avenue for future research. In conclusion, one can see that whether the Enneagram types are numbered arbitrarily or not remains undecided. However, the present study suggests that should the latter prove to be the case, it scarcely seems likely that this will be because of anything to do with the concept of wings as outlined by Riso. REFERENCES Nogosek, R. and O’Leary, P.H. (1984). The Enneagram: A journey ‘overy. New Jersey: Dimension Books. Cantor, N. and Mischel, W. (1979). Proto-types in person perception. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 12, 3-52. Digman, J.M. (1990). Personality structure: Emergence of the five factor model. Annual Review of Psychology 41, 417-40.20 EDWARDS, Friedman, M. and Rosenman, R. (1974). Type A behavior and your heart London: Wildwood House. Jung, C.G. (1921/1946). Psychological types, or The Psychology of Individuation. Trans. by H.G. Baynes, London: Kegan Paul. Riso, D.R. (1987). Personality types: Using the Enneagram for self-discovery. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Rotter, J.B. (1966). Generalised expectancies for internal versus external rein- forcement. Psychological Monographs 80 (1), Whole no. 609. Snyder, M. (1974). Self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personal- ity and Social Psychology 30 (4), 526-37. Thomas, A. Chess, S. and Birch, H.G. (1970). The origins of personality. Scientific American 223, 102-9. Requests for reprints should be addressed to: ANTHONY C. EDWARDS Department of Psychology, University of Lancaster, Bailrigg, Lancs, LA! 4YF EnglandCopyright of Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal is the property of Society for Personality Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.