# Going 1 level deeper than MBTI, what makes people within any given type different?



## CasusBelli (Feb 25, 2015)

StunnedFox said:


> Do you have any specific literature you can point me to? I don't believe I've seen any with the suggestion of high Extraversion being strongly linked to low Neuroticism (and/or vice versa) before, and to assert as much would be especially odd given the nature of the scales as conceptually independent dimensions...
> 
> Even taking such an unusual claim at face value, though, I don't see that a statistical relationship (even a quite strong one) between those two dimensions undermines the claim about the Enneagram you're putting forward. A correlation says nothing about individuals directly, so there could be plenty of simultaneously highly extraverted and highly neurotic people out there (and, likewise, plenty of people low on both scales); if the problem is that you want to say _every_ person with a specific Enneagram type has a particular trait (here, "deep anxiety issues, just under the surface"), then I'd say the theory asserting a mere statistical link (and thus leaving plenty of room for ordinary human variance) warrants favour over the one with the blanket assertions about a large swathe of people. All of this is conjecture, of course, given I'm not sure a strong link between Extraversion and Neuroticism has been purported...


Since I haven't fixated recently on the topic, I can't recall any specific documentation I've read. Yet, from what I did read, or just by googling "Big 5 neurotic extravert", I didn't find any material that enlightened me back at the time, save the recurring conjecture that extroversion and neuroticism negate each other, a claim I found personally preposterous. You are more than welcome to look it up… hopefully *someone* was eager enough to have researched it for their doctorate by now. :wink:

For my part, I am always intrigued with practical tools that can help me explain fictional characters and people, alike. "Big five" gives us the emotional states of a person, a 'snapshot' of the emotional landscape, if you will, that may vary day-in-and-day-out due to arbitrary circumstances whereas enneagram (and its gradual health levels within each type's description) offers a much more consistent undertone as to why someone does the things they do. Therefore, I believe it’s a much more powerful tool in defining the psyche of a person, and applying a practical strategy as to that individual.


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