How to Make an Archetype Quiz

Let’s talk through how to create an archetype quiz.

I’m using roughly the following definition of archetypes.

An archetype is a recurrent motif, a “first” form, or a set pattern of behaviour.

“Archetypes,” Carl Jung says, “are the living system of reactions and aptitudes that determine the individual’s life in invisible ways.”

We observe archetypes in every character of our personal dreams, the stories we read, the films we watch, the art we admire, and the collective myths we share.

Examples of common character archetypes include The Mother, The Father, The Child, The Shadow, The Persona, The Magician, The Hero, and The Trickster, among others. Each character acts out certain patterns of behaviour that we have become attuned to over time.

“The archetypes,” says Jungian psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz, “are inherited dispositions, which cause us to react in a typical way to basic human problems, inner or outer.”

Archetype Mag

1. Define your archetypes

The best way to do this is by analyzing your audience and figuring out what commonalities are among them. I typically would say 4-6 archetypes is plenty for a quiz. In terms of how you actually make the groupings, it comes down to what your audience thinks about.

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Images Courtesy: Advice With Erin

You want your archetype descriptions to be as brief as possible. You want to use as few words as you can to make the archetype description very clear. You want the archetype description to be both precise and also not make anyone feel alienated. It’s a piece of word-smithing where it will be entirely obvious if you don’t know your audience at a personal level because you are talking about them.

2. Create questions to determine which archetype someone is.

You will want to ask pinpointed questions so you can figure out which archetype someone is. Each answer choice will correlate to one or more archetypes, and whichever archetype has the most correlations is the one that will be shown as the person’s result.

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Here’s what that looks like in practice. You will want an equal number of possible correlations between questions and archetypes so the quiz is accurate.

archetype (800 x 450 px)

The art of asking good questions for an archetype quiz involves making the questions specific enough where you can get good data from the quiz takers in order to inform your outcome recommendation, but also the questions have to be about topics that your quiz taker already knows their opinion on. You want to make people think, but only in the sense that they are introspective for answers to questions they already have formed opinions on for themselves. You do not want to stump people where they have to stop and consider their answers, because they won’t they’ll just leave your quiz.

3. Generate leads from your archetype quiz

Here’s the thing with a quiz. If your questions demonstrate a truly deep understanding of your audience and you ask them about topics that they really care about on a personal level, they will feel rapport towards you. If you then offer to give them more of an analysis and continuing advice if they are willing to join your email list and become a lead, roughly 40% of people say yes, even if you make it optional and let them skip that step.

With Interact, we integrate directly with your email service provider. So you can add new leads to your list automatically, and segment them based on which archetype they are.

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Archetype quizzes are popular because people always want to learn more about themselves. If you can do that analysis to know what archetypes your audience falls into and how you can ask questions to determine which archetype each person is, you are going to make something your audience loves.

You can create your own archetype quiz with Interact Quiz Maker.

Josh Haynam

Hi I'm Josh, CEO and Co-Founder at Interact. My Co-Founders and I started interact with the idea that it should be easy for any business to create recommendation systems and benefit from the value of personalization for every customer interaction.

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