[SuperfluousNinja]

Personally I don't see why it lags behind MBTI in popularity. These are the primary reasons I prefer it over MBTI:

• 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.

 

[Robert2928]

"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 "

You really answered your own question right here. Ain't nobody got time for that lol MBTI just seems easier to pick up for newbies yet there are more complicated answers for more seasoned people to discuss. That's the key... discussion. For better or worst, people talk about MBTI...and there is plenty to talk about be it the many inconsistencies or Dario Nardi's EEG scans. To someone like me the Big Five 5 just looks like a test that you take and show your results and it ends there.

 

[integra]

big five doesn't tell you where you fit in it just tells you what you are.
mbti promises to tell you where you fit in but it fails at that half the time, but that is only half the time with a far more promising premise than simply "what am i" via self report. mbti will also pretend to know what half the people are which as it turns out is good enough to remain relevant in the public consciousness.
all these personality typing concepts are human at the end of the day so they'll all be flawed one way or another, but isn't that half the fun, all those shades of grey in between.

 

[The Dude]

The majority of Big 5 assessments are impersonal. There is no label or profile...it's just numbers.

The link below is to a Big 5 test with types, and thankfully isn't Sloan related.

https://www.idrlabs.com/big-five-types/test.php

 

[Judson Joist]

For one, it defines introversion as the absence of extroversion and defines that term in a non-Jungian fashion even though Carl Jung coined those terms (though he spelled it "extravert") and was, himself, an introvert.

 

[Guest]

I'm tired of always reading the same bullshit about the MBTI and its lack of precision ... You repeat bullshit that is over 50 years old without ever verifying the origin of this bullshit by yourself. And you are happy. The online MBTI certifies an accuracy of 90% minimum. That's say, without the normal practitioner consultation.


MBTI has a solid support by it metrics. Maybe for this reason it is used by NASA...

 

[xwsmithx]

My take on it is that it is judgement loaded, and that judgement is from a distinctly left-wing perspective. MBTI is morally neutral, it doesn't label you bad for being an introvert or extrovert, sensor or intuitive, thinker or feeler, judger or perceiver. The Big Five absolutely labels you bad for being "low" in openness, "high" in "neuroticism", "low" in conscientiousness, and "low" in agreeableness. Conservatives tend to be low in both openness and agreeableness, but that doesn't make being conservative bad. The Big Five would say that it does. Writers and artists tend to be introverts and high-strung. That doesn't make them bad, but the Big Five would say that it does. If someone came along and redefined the terms used in the Big Five, people might be more inclined to embrace it.

Second, the Big Five doesn't define personality types. Several people have tried to define some of the characteristics of people high in some categories and low in others, but they are incomplete, in that they don't cover all 32 possible combinations, and the similarities of people who match with each other across categories is actually quite low, with one I saw saying only about 30% of people with similar traits across all five dimensions could be described as a single personality type. MBTI defines personality types, in broad strokes, it's true, but most people can recognize themselves in one or two descriptions and can recognize who they aren't in several of the others. Unlike astrology, for example, you won't find traits that describe you in all of the other personality descriptions.

 

[Zye]

I don't actually have much against the Big Five itself, it's just five scales that indicate how you behave most of the time. The problem I have is with the people saying things like "don't use the Meyers-Briggs types, use the Big Five instead" because one of the fundamental differences between the two is that one classifies you into a type and the other doesn't (also, it's not like they are incompatible...)

 

[Inveniet]

Big-5 have zero interest in actually helping a person cope with their life of all things.
It is about putting data into databases, and to then play with that data.
The people who contribute to this is of little relevance, and little effort has been made to accommodate them.
This doesn't mean that Big-5 is useless, just that someone who want to use it, is pretty much on their own.
It is hard to break into.

 

[Grey Wolf]

It just tells you how you measure up to some unattainable version of perfection that the test creators invented. It gives you no sense of identity like a real personality type, nor do I think it can really help you understand either your own strengths and weaknesses or those of others. Any system that starts with this is how you should be or this is how you deviate from some standard had better be from a deity, or I'm going to laugh at it. MBTI and Socionics start with a more believable system of strengths and weaknesses.

 

[tanstaafl28]

@SuperfluousNinja

You missed the most obvious part: it's not as much fun. Big 5 isn't all that exciting, in point-of-fact, it's actually kind of boring. There's only so much you can squeeze out of it before it dries up. MBTI is much more multifaceted, and it has really good marketing. People respond to it because they can recognize aspects of it in themselves. How much fun can one hope to have with: Openness, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Intra/extraversion, and Neuroticism? It just peters out pretty quickly.

Also, being able to say I'm an "ENTP" seems easier than trying to explain: I have "above average extraversion, extremely high openness, low conscientiousness, average agreeableness, and low neuroticism" person, and you're an "INFJ" seems easier than saying you're "low extraversion, high openness, high conscientiousness, high agreeableness, high neuroticism" Person. You see how that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue? People want a "handle" they can grab. Big-5 doesn't really have one that people can sink their teeth into the way they can with MBTI.

Also, MBTI isn't so much about one's personality as it is their cognitive preferences. It says things about how we prefer to look at things. It doesn't actually completely define who a person is. No personality profile system can claim to do that. Therefore, it isn't like someone is "locked" into a personality so much as they have tendencies to favor certain cognitive processes over others.

​

 

[FiniteJest]

I'm tired of always reading the same bullshit about the MBTI and its lack of precision ... You repeat bullshit that is over 50 years old without ever verifying the origin of this bullshit by yourself. And you are happy. The online MBTI certifies an accuracy of 90% minimum. That's say, without the normal practitioner consultation.


MBTI has a solid support by it metrics. Maybe for this reason it is used by NASA...

Just needed to point out that this is false. NASA used PCM, not MBTI. I have actually taken the PCM myself and it's super useful and very much different from MBTI as a personality model. Look up "Process Communication Model" and you'll see that that is actually what NASA used.

That and I'm very skeptical about this 90% accuracy claim, as I have also seen a lot of scientific studies of MBTI and they are often, well, very far below 90% accurate.

 

[Alice Alipheese]

becuase its boring, tells you nothing but surface leel information (which is why its "validated" by the psychological community) and its just the "5 most obvious things" about a person. by contrast even though im not super into profiles for certain types (there are to many variables for a person to fit into 1 out of 16 boxes perfectly) it can gie you a good overview of a person and how to interact with them. enneagram is even better since its good at learing about your own underlying behaviors, fears, and motivations.

 

[Soul Kitchen]

The Big Five isn't a "typology". It's five separate dimensions which map preferences as a continuum, in direct contrast to the MBTI which both groups dimensions together into types, and also attempts to delineate preferences into binary labels. Many MBTI practitioners will defend the MBTI by claiming that letters only represent preferences, not strength of preferences. By doing so, this allows them to preserve the purported value of the MBTI, which is its goal to foster understanding of similarities and differences between people.

The grouping of dimensions into types is arguably the main attraction of MBTI over the Big Five. Having sixteen types with which to assign archetypes reduces the ambiguity when compared to the Big Five. Following from this, one can see the goal of the MBTI in the way profile descriptions often idealise the types they describe; the aim is to foster appreciation of differences between types. Critics sneer at these profiles, accusing them of Forer Effect, but an introvert is less likely to identify with profiles describing extraverts, so I don't think that's an issue here. I think the idealisation of types represents a different philosophy from the Big Five.

Unlike the MBTI, the Big Five doesn't have any kind of "mission", so to speak. It merely describes dimensions through a process of factor analysis, with the five dimensions being the byproduct of categorising adjectives in the English language into distinct groups. Sometimes, dimensions will be laden with negative adjectives, which can seem demeaning to some people even when the Big Five has no immediate social agenda in the first place.

One other key difference is the MBTI was conceived for general use. It was designed to be accessible to the general public for the sake of fostering understanding. The Big Five, on the other hand, wasn't designed to be palatable for mainstream psychology, so it retains a niche interest.

 

[dark.blue]

I find it boring. It also seems more difficult to type people with Big 5 than with MB.

 

[Octavarium]

I’d like to have more Big Five discussion on here, but I struggle to come up with topics to talk about. There’s less to get your teeth into. The MBTI has more concepts, and despite, or perhaps because of, the problems with those concepts, there’s more that can be said about it. In addition, the many differing interpretations give rise to debates about which version of the theory is best.

I think other posters in this thread are right to point to the contrast between the MBTI being a typology, and the Big Five having each trait on a continuum, as a major factor. The MBTI gives people labels to identify with. It also tells more of a story, so that each type comes to life as a character, which can make the Big Five seem a bit dry by comparison. Discussions can be had about where the boundaries are; if you’re debating the type of a celebrity or fictional character, you might ask “is this person INFJ or INFP?” If they have a mix of J/P traits, or if it’s not clear whether they use Fi or Fe, but With the Big Five, you’d have to ask questions like “Would they score above or below 50% conscientiousness?” “Are they high or only moderately high in agreeableness?” Who’s going to even care about having that conversation?

 

[incision]

Big Five is similar to a psych eval, evidencing positive and negative traits. People don't like their negatives on display.

MBTI and Jungian concepts provide people with identities, whether accurately represented or aspirational. The profiles written for types or archetypes are usually positive in nature, disregarding the negatives or explaining them away as a type issue, hence people don't have to address their issues.

 

[PathSeeker]

It's just not as useful. Things don't have to be 100% accurate as long as they're useful. Big Five just doesn't provide much that's relatable. Of course, you can put in the work to improve your Big Five traits, but there's little that's just already there.

Additionally, it's one-sided, which makes people feel bad when they score low (or high in the case of N).

The lack of an emergent description from OCEAN just makes it a brutally honest measure, and people either find it boring, hurtful, or unhelpful.

Edit: You'll see that criticisms of MBTI, Enneagram, etc. are that they aren't very scientifically rigorous. Then you get Big Five, and it's criticized for its lack of types and complex categories.

 

[xwsmithx]

People who are good at this kind of thing can identify people by their MBTI type after a short discussion, even in print. Can anyone say the same about being able to identify people by their Big Five results in the same way? Or can someone's Big Five results only be determined by a lengthy questionnaire? I suspect it's the latter, which already makes the MBTI better. And as I've already pointed out, the Big Five is not morally neutral. It picks a side which is "better" and weighs you against that measure, including extroversion being better than introversion.

 

[Abraxas]

The fact that big 5 is not morally neutral is actually to it's benefit in my opinion. MBTI in striving so hard to be super user friendly, fails to present you with information about yourself from the perspective of society and the real world. It tells you useful things about how you process information, but it does miserably bad in making predictions about how all of that aligns with other people. This means I feel like I'm abandoned and on my own when it comes to MBTI, whereas with big 5, I know what the statistical average is for every trait, so I can use my own personal judgement on deciding if I want to "improve" a trait or not.

I prefer the HEXACO model. It has a lot of traits grouped into domains. Domains cover the big 5 traits everyone knows, plus one more. Each domain has four traits to work with so you won't get bored so quickly.