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Not exactly, because we don’t experience people’s big five, we experience a personality. You can argue that personality isn’t a real thing, and that differences

Not exactly, because we don’t experience people’s big five, we experience a personality. You can argue that personality isn’t a real thing, and that differences can be reduced to five traits but have you ever wondered why five? Why not one? Personality as we experience it is something closer to mbti, but that also boils down to traits and isn’t very reliable. Personality doesn’t really change, but mbti does. People who downplay personality, social psychologists, will point to numerous studies where behavior is determined by social forces or external circumstances alone. There’s not a lot of experimental evidence that people differ from one another, despite our entire legal/ethical system holding that as a fundamental truth. From an empirical perspective is looks like determinism is, if not in the lead, having a good run at the moment.

Jensson 3y ago
> Personality as we experience it is something closer to mbti What, how is mbti a personality but big five isn't?
- 2devnull 3y ago
  It’s hard to answer that concisely but one way to answer it concisely might be: mbti are often described as personality types, “The INFP tends to like x and often does y, they dislike z, …” the big five are just five arbitrary dimensions arrived at through factor analysis, they are descriptive more than predictive, they were not developed by Jung, a personality theorist. My point is that the things we can easily measure are not what we think of as personality. Your wife, daughter, dog, are not reducible to the big five. Whatever the extra stuff is, beyond those five dimensions, that’s specific to individuals and persistent, what we call a personality, is a very real thing that cannot be demonstrated empirically. That should humble us to the limits of our ability to understand the human mind, and complicated human mental processes like learning.

Jensson 3y ago

> Personality as we experience it is something closer to mbti What, how is mbti a personality but big five isn't?

2devnull 3y ago
It’s hard to answer that concisely but one way to answer it concisely might be: mbti are often described as personality types, “The INFP tends to like x and often does y, they dislike z, …” the big five are just five arbitrary dimensions arrived at through factor analysis, they are descriptive more than predictive, they were not developed by Jung, a personality theorist. My point is that the things we can easily measure are not what we think of as personality. Your wife, daughter, dog, are not reducible to the big five. Whatever the extra stuff is, beyond those five dimensions, that’s specific to individuals and persistent, what we call a personality, is a very real thing that cannot be demonstrated empirically. That should humble us to the limits of our ability to understand the human mind, and complicated human mental processes like learning.