Personally I don't see why it lags behind MBTI in popularity. These are the primary reasons I prefer it over MBTI:
Basically I think a lot of misinformation about Big Five has become quite pervasive, which is unfortunate because I consider it a far superior tool to MBTI. I don't think that MBTI is on par with astrology or anything like that, but I only give it credit for the portions of it that line up with Big Five and don't really give any credit to the more befuddling parts that don't add up. I particularly have never given any credit at all to any of the cognitive functions and have seen a number of studies trying to verify the function stack for each type, with these studies always failing to prove that the theoretical stack in the MBTI model is anywhere close to accurate. I often get the response of "they probably don't understand the functions well enough to test them" which is a pretty arrogant and unconvincing response, and I don't get why people feel so justified in throwing away entire scientific studies that found results that don't jive with their beliefs, with basically no analysis whatsoever on what they may have done wrong.
Anyway that was quite the rant lol. I wish people could know me as the low extraversion, high openness, high conscientiousness, high agreeableness, high neuroticism person that I am, but instead they all want to call me an INFJ instead and then wonder if I'd be really into witchcraft and I just always go off my gut and all these other stupid inaccurate stereotypes about what an INFJ does.
- It enjoys a great deal more validity from the psychological community and is generally their go-to when trying to assign any sort of "personality" rubric to a person. There are numerous scientific studies across the globe that have tested people and found at least some semblance of validity. MBTI does not enjoy this level of scientific verification, and rather most scientific studies seemingly disprove the model entirely.
- It allows for spectrums, meaning that you aren't really locked into one side or the other and can understandably be only a minor user of a trait. This just makes so much more sense when you think about people in general, how for example, some people are REALLY loud and outgoing, some people are less so but still very social, some people like going out but prefer to be quiet, and some people you practically have to drag past their door to get them to come hang out with you. People try to claim that MBTI allows for these spectrums also, but that just isn't true because of how it ties into the cognitive functions which define an entire hierarchy based on where you stand with its four traits. In MBTI, if you slide just a hair up one of the traits, it potentially leaves you with an entirely new set of functions (it changes at least 1 and possibly all 4) and thus a completely different personality, whereas in Big Five you can readily slide up and down any of the traits and it doesn't have any kind of global change on your personality, which of course it shouldn't.
- It also allows you to actually change your personality over time which honestly does make sense. There is a reason why older generations really do not engage in as many new activities over time, and that's because their openness to experience just decreases over time. In MBTI, you'd have to explain that by saying they turned from an Intuitive into a Sensor, something MBTI says isn't possible and also quite frankly makes no sense at all...I don't see why getting older makes you more likely to rely on your senses rather than rely on your internal intuition, especially considering all of our senses degrade over time. Older generation would be forced to rely LESS on their senses.
- I also just find it much easier to wrap my brain around than MBTI, and not even because it is more simplified (it is not), but just because of how well-defined each trait is. Every one of the Big Five has 2 subcategories and 6 facets that all encompass different traits, and they more thoroughly give you a better sense of what each item is all about. No MBTI trait has any ability to be broken down in greater detail like this. For example, I have always been confused about whether I am sense-oriented or intuition-oriented, as well as whether I really rely on a sense of intuition or not (and really the concept of intuition is almost impossible to describe). But it has ALWAYS been clear as day to me that I'm high in openness to experience, and I can look at all the individual facets and see a more complete picture of how I stand.
- As a final note, I repeatedly see this claim that "Big Five is not predictive and just regurgitates your answers back to you, like it asks "do you like control" and you say yes and it says "you're a person who likes control", for example. Sorry but, there is actually much greater detail in each trait than that, and on top of that, you absolutely CAN predict things based on type. Here I'll do it right now: someone high in openness and conscientiousness but low in extraversion WOULD be willing to go to that party with you, definitely, but you just have to give him a time and a place and verify it with him beforehand. See? Absolutely you can use the traits to predict behavior. I question it 100% of the time when people say they can't and I feel like I could readily demonstrate how you CAN predict it every single time.
Basically I think a lot of misinformation about Big Five has become quite pervasive, which is unfortunate because I consider it a far superior tool to MBTI. I don't think that MBTI is on par with astrology or anything like that, but I only give it credit for the portions of it that line up with Big Five and don't really give any credit to the more befuddling parts that don't add up. I particularly have never given any credit at all to any of the cognitive functions and have seen a number of studies trying to verify the function stack for each type, with these studies always failing to prove that the theoretical stack in the MBTI model is anywhere close to accurate. I often get the response of "they probably don't understand the functions well enough to test them" which is a pretty arrogant and unconvincing response, and I don't get why people feel so justified in throwing away entire scientific studies that found results that don't jive with their beliefs, with basically no analysis whatsoever on what they may have done wrong.
Anyway that was quite the rant lol. I wish people could know me as the low extraversion, high openness, high conscientiousness, high agreeableness, high neuroticism person that I am, but instead they all want to call me an INFJ instead and then wonder if I'd be really into witchcraft and I just always go off my gut and all these other stupid inaccurate stereotypes about what an INFJ does.
