16Personalities vs Big Five: Which test fits your needs?
A type name is easy to remember. A Big Five profile shows how your answers fall across five traits. Here is what the two presentations can tell you.
How is it different from the MBTI?
16Personalities uses its own NERIS model with five scales inspired by the Big Five. Its letters resemble the MBTI, but these are different instruments. Findings about the classic MBTI do not automatically apply to today’s 16Personalities assessment.
Is 16Personalities unvalidated?
That is too broad a claim. The provider publishes reliability statistics and relationships between scales for its English assessment. These are provider-reported findings. They do not by themselves establish 16 naturally distinct kinds of people or substantiate every statement about careers and relationships.
Why can your type change?
Imagine two nearly identical scores just below and just above a boundary. They can receive different letters despite very similar answers. In 1989, McCrae and Costa found that classic MBTI scores related to personality dimensions, but did not support distinct types. Their study did not assess today’s 16Personalities test.
OCEAN: five traits, 16 or 32 types?
OCEAN stands for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Each trait varies continuously. Splitting four traits into two groups each creates 2⁴ = 16 combinations. Doing that with all five creates 2⁵ = 32, not 25. 32 combinations distinguish more profiles than 16 when the fifth trait was previously omitted. They do not improve measurement accuracy: each group still hides differences in degree. This arithmetic does not establish natural types. Our 16 Types test shows emotional stability as a fifth scale and adds a description of stress response to the type name. This creates up to 32 profile variants. Scores near the midpoint do not receive a definite additional variant.
What does medtests offer?
Our illustrated 16 Types test uses 20 Mini-IPIP items. It shows a type name, an illustration and the five underlying scores. The letters are our own conversion, which has not been independently validated. Our 50-item IPIP Big Five test offers a longer profile. The German questions in both tests are working translations for which we do not claim separate validation.
How can you use your profile?
Use the traits as questions about everyday life: When do you seek company? Which tasks do you like to plan? How do you handle change? Compare the descriptions with concrete situations. A score does not determine your abilities or your future. A description that feels right is not, on its own, proof of measurement accuracy.
Sources
medtests editorial team · Updated September 8, 2026