Re:How to talk about autism respectfully
by dragonwriter on Thursday December 30, 2021 @05:10AM
(#29735363)
Anything (and much more!) you can explain (justifiably) with MBTI you can explain with Big 5 because (1) the only actual empirical merit MBTI has is that a couple of its divides are strongly correlated with Big 5 traits, and (2) there is lot of research on practical implications of Big 5 traits on interpersonal interactions.
It's possible that there are some “just so” stories with no empirical basis you can build around the woo that is the MBTI dimensions that don't correlate well with validated personality measures and the unvalidated narratives constructed around both the coincidentally useful and totally invalid MBTI dimensions, but that's of equivalent value to “explanations” drawn from astrology or theory of humors.
From what I know of the Big 5, it's not very useful for explaining these kind of miscommunications. You can't explain people misunderstanding each other by saying that one is more agreeable and the other less agreeable, because the Big 5 doesn't say much of anything about why those people have those observed traits.
On the other hand, you can explain people misunderstanding each other using the MBTI by for example saying that one is Fe dominant, while the other is Te dominant, as this model posits distinct underlying cognitive processes which cause the person to literally perceive and interpret the world differently (especially in cases where the stimulus (or language) is ambiguous).