Big Five vs. 16 Personalities: Which Test Should You Take First?
Big Five and 16 Personalities start from a different decision about how to describe a person: one uses continuous scales, the other uses closed categories. That design choice, more than the content of the questions, explains almost every practical difference between them.
How each model organizes information
Big Five describes personality through five dimensions measured on a spectrum: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. No one is simply “extraverted” or “introverted”: each person sits at a specific point on that scale, and most people cluster toward the middle.
16 Personalities comes from the typological tradition popularized by the MBTI: it turns four preferences (introversion/extraversion, for example) into binary choices and combines them into 16 named types, like INTJ or ESFP. It’s easier to remember and share precisely because it simplifies a continuum into a label.
What the research says about each approach
The empirical evidence doesn’t treat the two models equally. Big Five’s five dimensions emerge consistently when large banks of personality traits are statistically analyzed across different cultures, giving it solid factorial grounding. The 16 types, on the other hand, haven’t been confirmed as real, discrete categories in that same kind of research: the line separating an introvert from an extravert, according to Big Five, isn’t a natural boundary but a cut the typological model imposes on a continuum.
That has a well-known practical consequence: if someone retakes the 16 Personalities test weeks later, it isn’t unusual for at least one of the four letters to flip, especially when the original score sat close to the midpoint of that dimension. With Big Five, that “jump” doesn’t happen the same way, because there’s no boundary to cross: any change shows up as a small shift within the same scale.
What each one is better for
Neither is “the good one” in absolute terms, because they aren’t competing for the same job.
16 Personalities works especially well as an entry point into self-knowledge: it gives a memorable, shareable result that’s easy to compare with someone else’s, and it tends to spark more curiosity to keep reading about yourself. It’s also useful as shared language in team settings, as long as everyone knows the label is a simplification.
Big Five performs better when precision matters: comparing the same person at different points in their life, or capturing nuances a closed type can’t, like being moderately extraverted but very low in openness to experience. It’s also the model used in serious academic research on personality, wellbeing, and performance.
So which should you take first?
If you want a quick, memorable, easy-to-share result, start with 16 Personalities. If you’re after a more nuanced, time-stable portrait, or you simply want to check your typological result against something more granular, follow up with Big Five. They aren’t incompatible: plenty of people end up taking both, and a 16 Personalities result makes more sense once you read it as a simplified snapshot of the same spectrums Big Five measures.
Sources
- McCrae, R. R. and Costa, P. T. (1987). Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
- Pittenger, D. J. (1993). The utility of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Review of Educational Research.
- Digman, J. M. (1990). Personality structure: emergence of the five-factor model. Annual Review of Psychology.
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Frequently asked questions
Do Big Five and 16 Personalities measure the same thing with different labels?
No. Big Five places you on five continuous scales (more or less extraverted, for instance). 16 Personalities assigns you to one of 16 closed categories built from four binary preferences. They're different ways of organizing the same underlying information about personality, not the same data under another name.
Which one is more reliable if I retake it months later?
Big Five tends to show stronger test-retest stability in the available research. In typological models like 16 Personalities, it's common for a share of people to land on a different type when they retake it, especially on dimensions where their score sat close to the midpoint.
Can I take both tests?
Yes, and they don't contradict each other: you can treat your 16 Personalities result as a memorable translation of a pattern that, underneath, still moves along continuous spectrums like the ones Big Five measures.
