Beyond the Big Five: Why Personality Isn’t a Box to Cram Yourself Into

Personality psychology has long been obsessed with frameworks. From the Big Five to MBTI, from DISC to the Enneagram, we’ve built neat boxes to put people into, and then congratulated ourselves on how tidy the world looks when everyone fits into categories.

The problem? Humans don’t.

The Big Five and the Box Problem

Let’s start with the heavyweight: the Big Five personality traits (conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, extraversion). For decades, this model has dominated psychological research because it works, up to a point. The Big Five is statistically derived from factor analysis and replicated across cultures, which makes it far more scientific than the MBTI, DISC or Enneagram (which have little to no empirical validity; see Pittenger, 2005; Furnham, 1996).

But here’s the rub: the Big Five is a top-down model. It assumes five overarching traits and then funnels human behavior into them. That means if someone scores high in openness, we assume a general disposition, whether they’re at work, at home, or trekking the Andes. The messy reality of human behaviour gets squeezed into abstract categories.

A new study from Vanderbilt University (Christensen et al., European Journal of Personality, 2024) challenges this very structure. Using Taxonomic Graph Analysis (TGA), the researchers built personality maps from the bottom up, starting with individual responses, letting connections emerge naturally. The result? Evidence that our traditional hierarchies miss how traits interact, shift, and overlap.

In other words, the map we’ve been using for decades doesn’t capture the terrain.

Article reference https://neurosciencenews.com/personality-trait-data-psychology-29624/ 

Context Matters More Than Categories

Consider openness. Are you equally open when talking politics at a family dinner, brainstorming at work, or choosing a new restaurant with friends? Probably not. Research shows that personality is context-dependent (Mischel, 1968; Fleeson & Gallagher, 2009). You can appear extraverted at a party and introverted in a boardroom. The Big Five assumes stability across situations, but the science says otherwise.

Even within the same trait, there’s variation. A person might be open to artistic experiences but closed to new foods. Do we label them “high in openness” or “low”? Both are true, depending on where you’re looking.

The Danger of Static Labels

The urge to fix people with permanent labels is seductive but flawed. The MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), for example, has been criticised for poor reliability and validity. Up to 50% of people get a different result if they retake the test after a few weeks (Pittenger, 2005). Yet it’s beloved in boardrooms because it feels simple: a tidy four-letter code instead of the messy, shifting dance of human behaviour.

The Enneagram goes even further, rooted more in spiritual mysticism than empirical science. It offers archetypal “types” that may feel insightful but lack replicable data (Hook et al., 2021).

The DISC assessment has little scientific support, with poor reliability and weak predictive validity (Furnham, 1990; Carson et al., 2000). Still, it remains popular in business settings because its four colourful types offer an easy story that looks convincing in training sessions, even if it tells us little about real behaviour.

When we treat these frameworks as gospel, we commit the error of essentialism, believing that personality is a fixed essence rather than a dynamic interplay of biology, context, and experience.

A Better Way: From Boxes to Networks

So what should personality science look like?

The Vanderbilt research points us toward a networked view of personality. Instead of cramming people into boxes, we can:

1. Start with data at the granular level. Look at behaviours, not broad assumptions.

2. Map connections dynamically. Which behaviours co-occur? Which shift with context?

3. Embrace change. People aren’t static; traits fluctuate over time and situation (Fleeson, 2001).

4. Think combinations, not categories. Someone’s openness might combine with their conscientiousness in unique ways depending on the task.

This doesn’t just give us a richer psychological picture, it makes personality research more useful. If we understand how traits interact in specific contexts, we can predict behaviour more accurately than a blunt “you’re an extravert.”

Conclusion: People Aren’t Filing Cabinets

Frameworks like the Big Five, MBTI, or Enneagram aren’t useless, they’re starting points. But when we reduce people to acronyms or five-point scales, we stop seeing the moving parts. Humans are dynamic systems, not filing cabinets.

The future of personality psychology lies not in boxing people in, but in mapping the networks of behaviour that change across time and space. That’s a challenge, but one worth embracing, because no one wants to live their life defined by a test result they took at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday. Exhausting for the observer at times but aims to stick as closely as it can to the facts. 

For my insight on effective ways to create personal insight. Check this out! our collaboration with Bob Pointer and the Behavioural Intelligence Academy Pro Comms

Further Reading if you would like

• Christensen, A. et al. (2024). European Journal of Personality.

• Fleeson, W. (2001). Toward a structure- and process-integrated view of personality: Traits as density distributions of states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

• Fleeson, W., & Gallagher, P. (2009). The implications of Big Five standing for the distribution of trait manifestation in behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

• Mischel, W. (1968). Personality and Assessment.

• Pittenger, D. J. (2005). Cautionary comments regarding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research.

• Hook, J. N. et al. (2021). The Enneagram: A systematic review of the literature and directions for future research. Journal of Personality Assessment.