It's enough to make a grown woman (or man) cry, or at least scratch our heads as they spin in confusion. Help! But don't despair. This barrage of seemingly confusing and contradictory concepts is easier to make sense of than it looks!
A special issue of National Geographic
(Your Personality Explained. Washington: National Geographic, 2014.)
gives brief descriptions of the traits. On p. 20 we are told that openness to experience "...reflects the tendency to seek out new experiences and knowledge." Activities such as going to concerts and art galleries, and learning for its own sake, reflect this trait which has a link to education and intelligence. High scores on this trait are said to predict such things as receiving more years of education and achieving more success in artistic jobs.
High scores on conscientiousness predict success at school and work, great health and a long life.
"People who score high on conscientiousness measures are industrious, organized, and reliable. They have excellent impulse control (p. 23)."
Extraversion on the Big Five has similarities and differences to the concept of the same name portrayed by the MBTI tool. According to National Geographic, "People who score high in extraversion enjoy social attention and experience strong positive emotions. They are typically active, talkative, more likely than others to chat up romantic partners, and more inclined to take on leadership roles at work (p.18)." While these may be characteristics of extraversion, what seems to be missing from this depiction is the fact that extraversion primarily refers to deriving one's energy from the outer environment.
High scores on agreeableness have to do with sensitivity to other people's feelings and being "cooperative, empathetic, trusting and modest (p. 24)." It would be tempting to see a connection between this trait and the Feeling preference described by the MBTI tool, but I believe there is a subtle difference. Feeling has to do primarily with making decisions based on their impact on others. Agreeableness seems to be a broader term describing one's daily habits and behavior, such as speaking well of others, donating to charity and working well in groups.
Neuroticism is sometimes called emotional stability. Those with high scores are worriers, at risk for depression, and tend to suffer from less stability in jobs and relationships than do other people. "High scores...are linked to phobias, risky behavior, fatigue, and poor health (p. 27)."
So how are these traits assessed? The Big Five consists of a series of personality trait pairs, and the test - taker indicates how much he or she agrees or disagrees with them. Each question has five possible answers, ranging from disagree strongly to agree strongly. While taking an online version, of which there are several, I gave midrange answers to most of the questions, except the ones that really evoked strong feelings in me.
I find the MBTI tool to be easier to take and probably more reliable than the Big Five, because each question consists of choosing between only two answers. We either choose which answer comes closest to describing how we usually act or feel, or which word in a pair appeals to us more. Yes, some guessing can take place, but because there is less thinking involved I think the answers are more likely to be reliable when the questions consist of only two choices.
In fact, I found my scores on the Big Five to be less accurate than my scores on the Indicator. The exception to this is my low Big Five score on Extraversion, which seems to be consistent with my MBTI Step II score which showed a clear preference for Introversion.
But in all the other traits I received moderate scores, and it seems unlikely I could really be moderate in all of them. How could such a score in openness to experience, for example, be correct, when the description I read of it sounds quite a bit like Intuition for which I have a clear preference? Indeed anyone who knows me and my love for art, music, adventurous activities and coming up with ideas would probably be much more likely to see me as high in openness to experience.
The process of taking these assessments is just one of the differences between them. But before exploring these, let's consider a few ways in which they are alike. In neither are their scales necessarily correlated. A person's results on the MBTI instrument can consist of any combination of preferences. Likewise, an individual's scores on the Big Five can be made up of any combination of high and low scores on the different traits.
Both assessments embody a recognition that people are more than personality. Although the Big Five may predict some general outcomes as described above, it can't "...predict individual responses to any given situation or describe every subtle variation in human personality." The five traits "...represent broad categories, not individual life histories (p. 16)." The MBTI does not and was not designed to predict success, which is why it shouldn't be used in hiring decisions, for example.
Both models also depict personality as a mixture of factors. Big Five adherents see every personality as a mixture of all five traits, while users of the MBTI instrument regard every personality as a combination of all eight preferences.
But while the Indicator predicts nothing, and the Big Five does not predict individual outcomes, all five Big Five factors have been used to make general predictions about health. On p. 27 of National Geographic, for example, we read that "...high conscientiousness is strongly linked to superior health and longevity....Highly extraverted people...are more likely to smoke, to drink excessively, and to have risky sex."
This is just one example of the differences in what the two assessments can tell us about personality. Among the others is the Big Five's stance that all the traits it deals with can be measured on a scale from very low to very high. According to National Geographic, "Today, most psychologists recognize one extraversion scale, encompassing the silent loner (introvert) at one end and the party animal (extravert) at the other (p. 18)." Of course, these depictions of both introversion and extraversion are inaccurate not to mention being stereotypes!
They also highlight what is possibly the most crucial difference between these two assessments - that the Big Five really is a test, with scores at one end of the scale being regarded as more desirable than those at the other end. On the other hand, all scores on the MBTI tool are regarded as equally desirable, therefore it is not a test.
But more importantly, the MBTI assessment is an indicator: it simply indicates whether we prefer Extraversion or Introversion, etc. Any discussion of amount or strength one has of any preference is foreign and inappropriate to what the MBTI tool is all about. While the Big Five is a trait assessment, the MBTI tool is not.
So is the Big Five a friend or foe of the MBTI tool? Which assessment is better? Neither!!! Both are worthy and helpful tools, as long as they are used appropriately and it is kept firmly in mind what they can and can't do.
Getting back to my question in the first paragraph, I cast my vote for learning our preferences first and taking the Big Five later if desired. There is so much pressure in our society to have preferences for ESTJ that many people adapt to this expectation and have no idea what their true preferences are. I feel that knowing our preferences is the foundation upon which all other knowledge of our personalities is based. It is like the outlines in the drawing I made above, and the information provided by the Big Five is like the shadings I used to fill in those outlines.
The MBTI instrument has received a lot of criticism in recent years because it does not do what the Big Five does - measure and predict. This makes about as much sense as criticizing women because we are not usually as tall or strong as men, or criticizing men because they don't have babies!
I highly recommend an excellent article, "The MBTI - My Most Valid Tool", written by Hile Rutledge, who happily uses both assessments. His point is that while it's true that the Indicator does not do what the Big Five does, the things it does do are of equal or even greater value.
Just as men and women were designed differently but both make equally valuable contributions to our world, so do the Big Five and MBTI assessments.