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The covariance of the Big 5 and MBTI is high. This means that if you give both inventories to the same population you can do a factor rotation of one onto the o
by wutf 10y ago
The covariance of the Big 5 and MBTI is high. This means that if you give both inventories to the same population you can do a factor rotation of one onto the other with much of the variance being preserved. This has been demonstrated multiple times in the academic literature. I have never read an article against the MBTI that mentioned this, and that's because the people who write these articles do not understand statistics. The MBTI is approximately as valid as the Big 5.
- anbende 10y agoThat's very interesting. I'm in psychology and I've never heard this. Do you have a source for that covariation? Thanks!
- wutf 10y agoIIRC the first one was done in the original McCrae & Costa paper introducing the Big 5. Will dig it up in a bit. Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator#Big_Five https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...
- bradleyjg 10y agoWhat's the mapping?
- wutf 10y agoYou can see the original mapping here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator#Big_Five https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...
- bradleyjg 10y agoInteresting. Looks like extroversion is the best correlated (.74) which I suppose makes sense. But nearly as strong (.72) is intuition/sensing to openness to experience, which I would not have predicted. Conscientiousness to judging/perceiving is only .49 and agreeableness to thinking/feeling is only .44. MBTI has no good correlate for neuroticism. I'm no statistician, but "is approximately as valid" looks to be overselling the situation.
- wutf 10y agoYou're no statistician or psychologist. Those loadings are huge.
- AstralStorm 10y ago0.5 correlation means it is maybe perhaps correlated given Emax view of the statistics. For normal variates you should aim for R=0.95 at least. Both MBTI and Big Five are approximately normal variates. Also correlation is a linear operator which is not particularly sensitive to anything nonlinear. Use a good statistical test instead.
- jessriedel 10y agoYea, it's very frustrating that this sort of article gets written when the author does not even address the arguments on the wikipedia page! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator#Big_Five https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi... That said, I don't think it's quite true that "The MBTI is approximately as valid as the Big 5". It seems to me that the Big 5 is a strict improvement on the MBTI. First, the discrete nature of the MBTI incorrectly suggests that the distributions are bimodal, when I don't think anyone thinks that's true. Second, I'm willing to bet that even if we just concentrate on the 4 factors of the Big 5 that correlate with the (non-discrete version of the) MBTI factors, we'd find significantly higher validity for the former, if only because there have been many more serious scientists studying and refining it over many years. Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-myers-briggs-personality-test-is-pretty-much-meaningless-9359770/#hzApBS3IkVv6vvsa.99 http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-myers-briggs-pe... Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
- wutf 10y agoThey both have strengths and weaknesses. Strengths of the MBTI include the text descriptions, which are very valuable, and that it focuses on positive psychology. Of course, if you rotate the MBTI onto the Big 5, you see that it does in fact measure neuroticism, although not that strongly.
- wutf 10y agoPS: I'm the one who added that table to Wikipedia - many years ago.
- jessriedel 10y ago> Strengths of the MBTI include the text descriptions, which are very valuable, and that it focuses on positive psychology You're describing salesmanship and/or popularizing techniques, not scientific validity.
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- YeGoblynQueenne 10y agoThat's probably a very good argument against the Big 5.