Male Archetype Test
Each of the twenty-four situations, from a stalled project to a quiet evening alone, comes with four ways a man might respond. Pick the one you would go for. The test takes about 5 minutes, and at the end it names the archetype your answers point to.
Lover
A Lover builds his days around closeness with the people near him.
At work he knows whose kid started school this fall and whose parent is ill, and coworkers talk to him because he asks and remembers the answer. He remembers birthdays and shows up with a cake. When a friend goes quiet, he texts first and keeps the thread going.
He names feelings out loud, his own included. When something bothers him he says so that day, and when he is glad he says that too. Before a big choice he thinks about who it will touch and how they will take it, and he asks them before he decides.
Friends and family lean on him, because he stays with them through low moods. When a relationship goes quiet or strained he loses his own footing and stays caught up in a strong feeling for days.
It helps a Lover to spend one evening a week at the pool, swimming laps alone.
Magician
A Magician keeps asking how things work beneath the surface.
When a problem comes back, he stops repeating the old fix. He reads up on it or calls someone who knows the field, and tries a different approach.
With people he listens for what sits behind the words, and colleagues bring him the tangled cases nobody else wants to open. He seeks out mentors in unfamiliar fields and takes notes on how they think. In meetings he draws the diagram nobody asked for.
On a team he brings insight and a readiness to change course. He also circles a problem when acting would settle it, and he keeps a step back from the action while others stand in the thick of it.
Colleagues watch him move from one framework to the next and wonder which one he will settle on.
A Magician does well to carry a pocket notebook for the questions that come up on a walk.
King
A King takes responsibility when no one else steps up.
On a team project he ends up holding things together, setting the schedule and checking that every task has a name beside it. He follows up by phone when a task slips. When a meeting drifts, he asks who is doing what by when.
When two people disagree he hears both sides before he rules, and he weighs how the decision will look in five years. He gives up a quick gain for an arrangement that lasts.
People rely on him, because when a call needs making he makes it. He carries the weight quietly and keeps a calm face in meetings.
He keeps control longer than others want him to, and on other decisions he steps back from a choice that is his to make, leaving it to whoever speaks first.
Letting a friend pick the restaurant and following the choice without comment is worth trying for a King.
Warrior
A Warrior goes straight at whatever is hard.
After he commits to something, he keeps going when pressure builds, through a long project or an unwelcome phone call. Tired or not, he files the report on Friday. He trains before work and keeps the session on bad weeks too.
He raises uncomfortable subjects himself, even with a boss or an old friend, and when an opportunity carries risk he weighs the odds and goes ahead.
Others count on his discipline and follow-through, and he finishes what he takes on. People credit a single decisive moment before they credit steady effort, and they notice his daily persistence only when it stops.
He has little patience for a problem that needs time to sit unresolved, and when a conversation has to happen he can make it harsher than it needs to be, and he apologizes the next day.
A Warrior would do well to leave a difficult message in drafts overnight and reread it the next morning.
Keys 1–4 pick an answer
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Five tests, five results, and not one tells you why the same things keep happening to you. The CoreTypes system gives the answer many people spend years looking for: why your life plays out exactly the way it does.
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About the test
Methodology
Four archetypes give the test its frame: King, Warrior, Magician and Lover. They were popularized by a book from the early 1990s that applied archetypes, a concept of analytical psychology, to men’s lives. The test adapts that set to everyday situations.
The twenty-four questions range from the workplace and the household budget to quarrels, friendships, family ties and evenings alone. Each question offers four answers, one per archetype, and their order changes from question to question. A chosen answer adds a point to its archetype. The archetype that collects more points than the other three is the result, and a tie goes to the one listed first in the system: Lover, Magician, King, Warrior.
The names mark four sectors of one ring, and the result shows the sector where a person’s answers gather. The test relies on the answers a person gives about themselves.
The term itself is defined in the APA Dictionary of Psychology entry on archetype.
Author: Lex Tarrel, Creator of the CoreTypes system
Sources
- Moore, R. L., & Gillette, D. (1990/1991). King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine. HarperSanFrancisco.
- Mahalik, J. R., Locke, B. D., Ludlow, L. H., Diemer, M. A., Scott, R. P. J., Gottfried, M., & Freitas, G. (2003). Development of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 4(1), 3–25. doi:10.1037/1524-9220.4.1.3
- Roesler, C. (2023). Deconstructing Archetype Theory: A Critical Analysis of Jungian Ideas. Routledge.
Frequently asked questions
What are the male archetypes?
The test uses four: King, Warrior, Magician and Lover. Kings take charge and keep a group steady, Warriors push hard things through, Magicians look for the insight behind a problem, and Lovers put closeness and open feeling first. They come from a popular book of the early nineties on mature masculinity.
How many male archetypes are there?
Four, in the model behind this test. Each answer belongs to one of them, so every question gives King, Warrior, Magician and Lover an equal chance.
What is my male archetype?
It is the archetype your answers lean toward. Every choice adds to one of the four, and the result names the one that collected more choices than the others.
What does the male archetype test measure?
It looks at how a person responds to ordinary situations, from a team project and a money decision to a quarrel with a friend or an evening alone. Taking charge, pushing through, seeking insight and drawing close each point to one archetype, and the answers show which of them leads.
Where does the idea of archetypes come from?
Archetype is a term from analytical psychology for a recurring pattern in human character and experience. The book behind this test took that idea and described four of those patterns as roles in a man’s life. The test turns them into everyday situations, so each pattern can be recognized in ordinary choices.