The Enneagram and Empathetic Development: How Personality Indexes May Explain and Predict Empathetic Interactions in a Professional Working Environment

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between an individual’s Enneagram type
and their empathetic capacity within interpersonal relationships in a professional environment.
As a personality index, the Enneagram is a relatively new concept that typifies human
interactions and emotions into a set of nine types. For this study, a population of Community
Assistants at Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University were observed in their
development of empathy with respect to their Enneagram types. Both qualitative and quantitative
measures were analyzed. The results of the study indicate that there was a significant
development in the empathy quotient of the subjects, suggesting that the Enneagram could be
used as a helpful tool to understand the interpersonal interactions in a demanding workplace.