The Big 5 Personality Traits and MBTI

[La Sagna]

I am taking a university personality psychology course. We just discussed the MBTI, particularly in relation to the Big 5 Personality Traits. I found it very interesting and wanted to share the professor's thoughts on the MBTI.

The MBTI is not recognized or used in psychology. The commonly used personality inventory is the Big 5 Personality Traits, which are:

OPENNESS
Intellectual, complex, unconventional, creative, original
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
Dependable, disciplined, organized, careful
EXTRAVERSION
Enthusiastic, outgoing, talkative
AGREEABLENESS
Sympathetic, warm, accepting, friendly
NEUROTICISM
Anxious, easily upset, moody

Here is a good 5 factor personality test provided by the professor:

http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/ipipneo300.htm

I did an official one as well for the class but I haven't received my results yet.

The professor explained that the first four personality traits correlate strongly to the MBTI letters: Openness being the N, Conscientiousness being the J, Extraversion obviously the E and Agreeableness the F. So being high in these traits would give you these letters and being low on these traits would give you the opposite.

Neuroticism is then not included in the MBTI, which, according to the professor, is what keeps it on a positive note.

According to the professor, the positives about the MBTI is that it is simple and paints everybody in a positive light, making it good for marriage therapy and office dynamics.

The problem with the MBTI according to him is that it is too black and white. The 5 factor puts you on a scale and doesn't put you in an either/or situation like the MBTI. This means that with the MBTI you can have two people that are both just beside the middle on either side and one will be categorized as a J while the other a P, even though they are very close, and the P will be put in the same category as someone who has a much higher percentage of P.

So my results for my Big Five test correlates very well with my MBTI, with low extraversion, high openness, high agreeableness and high conscientiousness (low neuroticism as well).

I think the addition of the neuroticism can help explain the differences in people of the same MBTI type.

 

[charlatan]

Big 5 goes well with the MBTI dichotomies but not the cognitive functions types. Another good way to see these are ultimately not the same though Isabel Myers started initially by trying to make them get at the same thing.

There's lots of functions models out there, and the most common one utilised is the Beebe one, to those familiar with MBTI (albeit they use the first 4 of the 8 function model without studying the archetypes behind all 8). That abridged version is due to Harold Grant.

Big 5 T/F and Agreeableness correlate less than do the other dimensions. So in a sense, it's easy to find accommodating thinking types and egocentric feeling types (especially easy to picture in Fi-dominants).
And functions-wise, there's plenty of high openness people who are more sensation than intuition in functioning.

 

[Trifoilum]

I agreed.

At the same time I think OCEAN personality test is much more specific in nature (workplace, iinn...?). In MBTI; this 4 codes becomes your entirety.

And exactly due to it being placed on the scale; it became less black and white and more flexible than MBTI.