HHH: A New Personality Test

Introducing a better alternative to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator — the Hogwarts Heterogeneity Helix. 

You have many questions, the first of which is likely “wtf do those words mean?” To get the uncomfortable out of the way:

1. It’s inspired by Harry Potter, as you will soon find out.

2. Any good model, framework or legislation in 2023 requires a certain style of related-yet-not-obvious translatability from mouthful of capitalized words —> easy to remember acronym. (Examples include 538’s RAPTOR and CARMELO models for basketball analytics¹, as well as the Inflation Reduction Act.

3. The acronym is great. Triple-H rolls off the tongue (MBTI is terrible!) and will instantly remind fellow 90s WWE fans of one of the best heels in pro wrestling, who IMHO peaked athletically and professionally right around the time JK Rowling drove millions of kids to line up at midnight outside of Waldenbooks, a concept that seems completely alien two decades later.

4. (Bonus point 1) The Helix part makes it sound scientific, for intuitive reasons that no one can fully grasp.

5. (Bonus point 2) There are a lot of important H’s in Harry Potter, like Hagrid, Hermione, Hungarian Horntail and, obviously, Harry. So it passes the “feels right” test.

Here’s the v1 of the HHH framework, produced by my new friend, ChatGPT. The idea is pretty simple: a 4x4 matrix of the Hogwarts houses, used to describe different personality types, with each cell representing a mix of two houses or a double dosage of a single house. (Hold that thought). 

The v2, which is really the crown jewel of this endeavor and required human intervention, modifies the matrix to have a strong house and a weak house. In other words, each cell (personality type) has a tendency towards one house over the other. Here is the update, with columns representing the dominant house and rows representing the secondary house. 

I don’t recommend scrutinizing each cell; rather, take a look at where you, your significant other or your best friends fall. Then, after you’ve hmmphd and nodded in agreement, take a more honest look at the cell you actually belong to in the bottom row or right hand column.²

Here is a print-friendly worksheet if you are supremely bored.

The HHH is similar to the MBTI in that it produces 16 personality types, and that’s honestly where the similarities end. I asked ChatGPT to summarize the differences:

Then I tried this, which kinda blew my mind:

And to have some fun, we plotted famous humans onto the matrix, producing some pretty spot-on (and I promise, unadulterated) results:

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Why HHH is better than MBTI, and why HHH won’t replace MBTI

MBTI is the gold standard for personality descriptions, used by everyone from corporate HR departments to the CIA. For those not familiar, this is a good primer. The reason MBTI is so embedded in our society is that it’s simple, ubiquitous and *good enough* – sure, there are much more detailed assessments that no one has heard of, where even the people who have been assessed, have no one to share their outputs with because it’s too complicated and/or isn’t used by anyone else. Those more obscure personality assessments trade greater functionality or accuracy for lower societal integration, much like the guy in the friend group who insists on using an Android.

So in short, MBTI is the standard because of network effects and the 80/20 rule. 

As we have seen with disruptive technologies, it’s possible to displace the dominant player(s) in your space by beating them on what Disruption Grandaddy Clay Christensen describes as new “vectors” of competition. Southwest Airlines never had the scale of a United or Delta, focusing instead on lower costs and a superior customer experience. Google Docs might not have the full functionality of Word or PowerPoint, but it blows Microsoft out of the water from a collaboration standpoint.

The HHH clearly beats MBTI on at least one performance vector: fun. 

Thus, the question of replacing MBTI becomes two fold: 

1. Can HHH be *good enough* on MBTI’s core features — simplicity, ubiquity, predictive power, etc. —  to pass a broad user acceptability test? 

2. Is “fun” a valuable enough differentiator to validate a refresh of our personality type mapping from MBTI to HHH?

If the answer to both of these is “yes”, well, then consider yourself lucky to have heard it here first, and get ready for the revolution.

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Sober thinking about the future

Alas, we can be reasonably sure that “fun” is not a strong enough vector, especially in the post-ZIRP times we find ourselves in. Yet there is still hope for the HHH as an additional lens through which we view personality types – as a complement to MBTI rather than as a substitute. So instead of being a boring INTJ, perhaps you now consider yourself an INTJ-Rh. Perhaps you even put this on your Bumble profile and see a higher match rate. The possibilities are endless. 

To bring things full circle while escaping the tongue-in-cheek fiction about fiction we’ve been swimming in – I suspect this idea of becoming a complementary product, rather than a straight up substitute, will become an attractive strategic option for individuals, small businesses and startups that have a hard time over the next couple of years if we head into a recession. 

In a scenario where budgets are tighter and risk tolerance drops, it is usually better for self-preservation to start off with a complementary mindset – ie, build on top of the existing platform, don’t build a new platform. Get your foot in the door and earn the right to expand your customer’s wallet share after proving out the value of your product or service. This is the safe option, especially if markets get really nasty.

But if there’s anything I’ve taken away from playing around with ChatGPT the past few months, it’s that there is always a window to build the next platform or the next killer, standalone product. That’s exactly what OpenAI did by releasing what has now become the most successful software product launch ever. 

It’s harder now than it was a couple years ago, for sure. But for the sake of dynamism and progress, I hope there are enough people and teams out there ready to go Double-Gryffindor mode and take the risk.

1. These are both words that have meaning in basketball circles — the Toronto Raptors being one of the NBA 30 franchises and Carmelo Anthony being a celebrated star from 2003-2015ish. 

2. One of the most important non-WWE epiphanies I had in researching this piece was that Slytherins get a bad rap. Yes, most of the evil guys and gals in the series wore green but it doesn’t mean you should feel lousy about yourself if you are ambitious or enjoy dark humor or wear lots of hair gel. I mean, Michael Jordan was clearly a double-Slytherin, right?