Big five traits theory

Big 5 Personality Traits | Psychology Today

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

The differences between people’s personalities can be broken down in terms of five major traits—often called the “Big Five.” Each one reflects a key part of how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. The Big Five traits are:

• Openness to experience (includes aspects such as intellectual curiosity and creative imagination)
• Conscientiousness (organization, productiveness, responsibility)
• Extroversion (sociability, assertiveness; its opposite is Introversion)
• Agreeableness (compassion, respectfulness, trust in others)
• Neuroticism (tendencies toward anxiety and depression)

Individual personalities are thought to feature each of these five broad traits to some degree. When the traits are measured, some people rate higher and others rate lower: Someone can be more conscientious and less agreeable than most people, for instance, while scoring about average on the other traits. These traits remain fairly stable during adulthood.

People can also differ on the more specific facets that make up each of the Big Five traits. A relatively extroverted person might be highly sociable but not especially assertive.

The five-factor model is widely used by personality researchers, but it is not the only model. A more recently introduced six-factor model known as HEXACO adds the factor of honesty-humility to the original five traits.

Contents

• Measuring the Big Five
• Why the Big Five Matter
• Other Personality Tests

How the Big Five Personality Traits Are Measured

The Big Five traits are typically assessed using one of multiple questionnaires. While these tests vary in the exact terms they use for each trait, they essentially cover the same broad dimensions, providing high-to-low scores on each: openness to experience (also called open-mindedness or just openness), conscientiousness, extroversion (the reverse of which is introversion), agreeableness, and neuroticism (sometimes negative emotionality or emotional stability).

One test, the latest version of the Big Five Inventory, asks how much a person agrees or disagrees that he or she is someone who exemplifies various specific statements, such as:

• “Is curious about many different things” (for openness, or open-mindedness)
• “Is systematic, likes to keep things in order” (for conscientiousness)
• “Is outgoing, sociable” (for extroversion)
• “Is compassionate, has a soft heart” (for agreeableness)
• “Is moody, has up and down mood swings” (for neuroticism, or negative emotionality)

Based on a person’s ratings for dozens of these statements (or fewer, for other tests), an average score can be calculated for each of the five traits.

What does your score on the Big Five tell you?

Scores on a Big Five questionnaire provide a sense of how low or high a person rates on a continuum for each trait. Comparing those scores to a large sample of test takers—as some online tests do—offers a picture of how open, conscientious, extroverted (or introverted), agreeable, and neurotic one is relative to others. 

How were the Big Five traits determined?

Analyzing English words used to describe personality traits, researchers used statistical techniques to identify clusters of related characteristics. This led to a small number of overarching trait dimensions that personality psychologists have scientifically tested in large population samples.

Who developed the Big Five personality traits?

The Big Five were not determined by any one person—they have roots in the work of various researchers going back to the 1930s. In 1961, Ernest Tupes and Raymond Christal identified five personality factors that others would reanalyze and rename. Lewis Goldberg used the term Big Five in 1981 to describe these broad factors. 

Do Big Five tests measure more specific traits?

Some Big Five questionnaires break the five main traits down into smaller sub-components or “facets,” which are correlated with each other but can be independently measured. In the Big Five Inventory, for instance, “sociability” and “assertiveness” are distinct facets of extroversion, while “organization” and “responsibility” are facets of conscientiousness.

Why the Big Five Personality Traits Are Important

The five-factor model not only helps people better understand how they compare to others and to put names to their characteristics. It’s also used to explore relationships between personality and many other life indicators. These include consequential outcomes such as physical health and well-being as well as success in social, academic, and professional contexts. Personality psychologists have observed reliable associations between how people rate on trait scales and how they fare or feel, on average, in various aspects of their lives.

What can Big Five scores tell us about other outcomes?

Quite a lot, at least in Western samples. There is reliable evidence, for example, that extroversion is associated with subjective well-being, neuroticism with lower work commitment, and agreeableness with religiousness. Certain traits have been linked to mortality risk. However, these are overall patterns and don’t mean that a trait necessarily causes any of these outcomes.

Can Big Five personality traits change?

Yes. While personality trait measures tend to be fairly consistent over short periods of time in adulthood, they do change over the course of a lifetime. There’s also reason to believe that deliberate personality change is possible.

The Big Five and Other Personality Tests

Various ways of representing major traits have been proposed, and personality researchers continue to disagree on the number of distinct characteristics that can be measured. The five-factor model dominates the rest, as far as psychologists are concerned, although multiple types of assessments exist to measure the five traits.

Outside of academic psychology, tests that aim to sort people into personality types—including the Myers-Briggs/MBTI and Enneagram—are highly popular, though many experts take issue with such tests on scientific grounds. The five-factor model has conceptual and empirical strengths that others lack.

How do Big Five tests compare to the Myers-Briggs?

For a number of reasons, many personality psychologists consider Big Five tests superior to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. These include concerns about the reliability of the types assigned by the Myers-Briggs and the validity of the test—though there is some overlap between its dimensions (which include extroversion-introversion) and the Big Five.

Do the Big Five capture personality types?

It depends on how strictly you define a “type.” Research indicates that for any given trait, people fall at various points along a continuum rather than fitting neatly into categories. While some identify wholeheartedly as a total extrovert or introvert, for example, there are many shades in between, and most of us would score somewhere in the middle.

Do Big Five tests have known limitations?

Yes. Some have criticized the five-factor model for its origins in data rather than in theory and argued that it does not encompass all fundamental traits (see HEXACO). There is also evidence that current tests provide less reliable results outside of Western, industrialized countries.

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What are the Big Five Personality Traits? - Learn all about the Theory

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Why do people respond differently to the same situations? In contemporary psychology, the Big Five personality traits are five broad domains which define human personality and account for individual differences. This article tells you more about the Big Five personality theory and the personality traits it distinguishes. After reading it, take our free personality test to determine your own Big Five personality type.

History of Big Five personality theory

Several independent sets of researchers discovered and defined the five broad personality traits based on empirical, data-driven research. Ernest Tupes and Raymond Christal advanced the initial model, based on work done at the U.S. Air Force Personnel Laboratory in the late 1950s.¹ J.M. Digman proposed his five factor model of personality in 1990², and Goldberg extended it to the highest level of organizations in 1993.³ In a personality test, the Five Factor Model or FFM⁴ and the Global Factors of personality⁵ may also be used to reference the Big Five traits.

Big Five personality traits

Human resources professionals often use the Big Five personality traits dimensions to help place employees. That is because these dimensions are considered to be the underlying traits that make up an individual’s overall personality.

The Big Five personality traits are:

• Openness
• Conscientiousness
• Extraversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism

or OCEAN:

• Openness - People who like to learn new things and enjoy new experiences usually score high in openness. Openness includes personality traits like being insightful and imaginative and having a wide variety of interests.
• Conscientiousness - People that have a high degree of conscientiousness are reliable and prompt. Personality traits include being organized, methodic, and thorough.
• Extraversion - Extraverts get their energy from interacting with others, while introverts get their energy from within themselves. Extraversion includes the personality traits of energetic, talkative, and assertive.
• Agreeableness - These individuals are friendly, cooperative, and compassionate. People with low agreeableness may be more distant. Personality traits include being kind, affectionate, and sympathetic.
• Neuroticism - Neuroticism is also sometimes called Emotional Stability. This dimension relates to one’s emotional stability and degree of negative emotions. People that score high on neuroticism often experience emotional instability and negative emotions. Personality traits include being moody and tense for example.

Free Big Five personality test

Want to learn more about yourself and your strengths? Take a free Big Five personality test

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Big Five personality traits visually explained

Download the full Big Five infographic here

How to use results from the Big Five personality test

The Big Five personality test gives you more insight into how you react in different situations, which can help you choose an occupation. Career professionals and psychologists use this information in a personality career test for recruitment and candidate assessment.

What's your personality?

Find out more about you and your strengths.

Take a free big 5 personality test

Test personality free

To determine your Big Five personality traits, take our free online personality test. It tells you more about yourself and what your strengths and weaknesses are. This personality test measures the Big Five personality factors developed over several decades by independent groups of researchers. It is the most scientifically validated and reliable psychological model to test personality. You can also take our career test to test personality.

Recommended books on personality

• Big Five Assessment: For students, researchers, and practitioners of psychology and related fields, a detailed guide to the various instruments that are used to evaluate the conventional Big Five personality factors. Authors: Boele De Raad & Marco Perugini
• Personality in Adulthood, Second Edition: A Five-Factor Theory Perspective: This influential work examines how enduring dispositions or traits affect the process of aging and shape each individual’s life course. Authors: Robert R. McCrae & Paul T. Costa Jr.
• The Five-Factor Model of Personality Across Cultures: The Five-Factor Model Across Cultures was designed to further an understanding of the interrelations between personality and culture by examining the dominant paradigm for personality assessment - the Five-Factor Model or FFM - in a wide variety of cultural contexts. Authors: Robert R. McCrae &‎ Juri Allik

References

• ¹ Tupes, E.C., Christal, R.E.; "Recurrent Personality Factors Based on Trait Ratings," Technical Report ASD-TR-61-97, Lackland Air Force Base, TX: Personnel Laboratory, Air Force Systems Command, 1961.
• ² Digman, J.M., "Personality structure: Emergence of the five-factormodel," Annual Review of Psychology, 41, 417-440, 1990.
• ³ Goldberg, L.R., "The structure of phenotypic personality traits," American Psychologist, 48, 26-34, 1993.
• ⁴ Costa, P.T., Jr., McCrae, R.R.; Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources, 1992.
• ⁵ Russell, M.T., Karol, D.; "16PF Fifth Edition administrator's manual." Champaign, IL: Institute for Personality & Ability Testing, 1994.

 

"Big Five": what qualities really define our character

April 8, 2022 Likbez Life

One of the few psychological concepts whose personality tests can be trusted.

What is the essence of the "Big Five"

"Big Five" is a model for assessing individual differences in human personality on five indicators. These include extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. These characteristics, to varying degrees, may or may not be inherent in any personality, and they can also be measured. However, they do not affect each other and are not interconnected in any way.

The first such classifications were developed in ancient times - for example, Hippocrates' theory of temperament. Later, the Carl Jung model, socionics and typology Myers-Briggs (MBTI) appeared.

These concepts have always been very popular, as they have been used by scientists to explain why people behave differently and how it affects their lives. They tried to answer questions about what qualities a leader should have, what makes some people psychologically more stable, or how temperament affects physical health.

However, today the five-factor model, or the “Big Five”, is still considered to be the most complete and accurate description of human character.

It was created by two groups of American psychologists in the 1970s. They interviewed thousands of people and came to the conclusion that it is possible to determine a person's temperament using the indicators listed above.

To understand how these qualities are developed in each individual, psychologists have developed special tests. They don't have right or wrong answers. The participant is asked to compare his character with the descriptions of the personality or answer how close the presented statements are to him.

Based on this, it turns out how strongly each of the qualities of the big five is developed in a person. You can take these tests too - here are the short and long questionnaires.

What is included in the "Big Five"

1. Extraversion

In fact, extraversion is not only sociability. This indicator reflects how sociable a person is, cheerful, proactive, independent. Is he able to finish what he started and is he ready for adventure. In general, this characteristic indicates how active an individual lives.

People with low extraversion tend to be introverted and more inclined to obey authority. They may also have problems with abstract thinking. Those who get high scores are sociable, assertive and more likely to strive to become leaders.

At the same time, extroverts and introverts in their pure form practically do not exist. The scores of the vast majority of people on the test will fall somewhere in between these extremes—this is commonly referred to as ambivalence.

2. Openness

This characteristic shows how open a person is to new experiences, and it can also serve as a measure of creativity. People with a low level of openness are usually more committed to traditions, they clearly distinguish between “right” and “wrong” for themselves, they tolerate the routine more easily or even prefer it. Those who are very open, on the contrary, do not accept monotony, are more curious, and they like to invent new ways to solve problems.

3. Goodwill

This sign shows how we treat other people, how much we trust them, how often we show sensitivity and warmth - a kind of measure of good nature. The most benevolent people are more likely to adhere to religious beliefs. They try to avoid conflict and help others. Those who are shy, suspicious, or self-centered tend to score low in this category.

4. Conscientiousness

This parameter helps to understand how organized a person is. A high level of conscientiousness is observed in those who are motivated, disciplined, productive, responsible. These people love order in everything. They usually plan ahead and take care not to break the promise. Therefore, they are more likely to be trusted. Low scores in this category go to irresponsible and easily distracted individuals.

Also, a study by Finnish psychologists showed that people with low scores in this category have a 14% higher mortality rate. As scientists say, the reason for this is the inability to control oneself and the general irresponsibility. They push a person onto the path of self-destruction.

5. Neuroticism

This indicator measures a person's emotional stability. A high level of neuroticism is observed in anxious, inhibited, moody or insecure people. They react more strongly to failures and life shocks, often suffer from low self-esteem. Those who get low scores in this category are calm, satisfied with life and self-confident.

What are the advantages of the "Big Five"

Reliability and accuracy

The main advantage of the "Big Five" is that it is better than all personality typologies formulated from a methodological point of view. And also confirmed experimentally.

The researchers emphasize that the characteristics of the "Big Five" are formulated most accurately and clearly, and they can be fixed by repeated tests. Such reliability of results, for example, cannot be achieved using the well-known Myers-Briggs typology (MBTI).

Universality

The "Big Five" demonstrates that attempts to create some kind of classification of human characters or personality types are most likely futile. Especially if in them any trait of temperament can take only one of two positions.

In addition, the behavior of each individual may differ within one of the characteristics. For example, he can be sociable but not very assertive, although both of these qualities are related to extraversion. Some questionnaires take this into account and break down the characteristics into smaller components.

We also need to understand that sometimes we can consciously and not really change our behavior depending on the circumstances or environment - for example, we communicate differently in different companies.

Practical benefits

The Big Five can be useful both for ordinary people and for researchers of the human psyche. First, it helps to better understand yourself and characterize your personality. The second is interested in how our temperament can be associated with physical health, financial well-being, social and professional success.

So, psychologists say that there is a strong relationship between what results a person receives on a five-factor scale, and his sense of self.

For example, we can already say with great certainty that people with high extraversion feel more prosperous. And those who are emotionally less stable are also less productive. True, all these data only show a statistical pattern.

The other side of research within the "Big Five" considers the question of what factors influence the formation of personality. So, Canadian scientists analyzed the test data of several hundred pairs of twins and came to the conclusion that our character is equally shaped by heredity and the environment.

Also, working with the indicators of the "Big Five" helped to understand how the character of people changes over time. So, with age, we basically become less sociable, less likely to want to change something. But at the same time we become more good-natured and more stable emotionally.

Find out more 👧👩👵🏻

• Why do people become more conservative with age

Despite its popularity, the Big Five is not the only measure of character. For example, there is the six-factor model of personality, also known as HEXACO. In it, in addition to the five traits, the parameter of honesty - modesty is added: how much a person is ready to promote his selfish goals.

Some psychologists have criticized the Big Five for not doing enough theory and blindly following the data. There is also evidence that outside of industrialized Western countries, the Big Five questionnaires are less reliable.

Nevertheless, this concept remains dominant and has been shown to be effective in 56 different cultures. Therefore, the Big Five is a reliable and effective tool for understanding our minds.

Read also 🧐

• What is the difference between morality, morality and hypocrisy
• What is social intelligence and why it is worth developing it
• How learned helplessness spoils life and how to deal with it

The Big Five - a five-factor model of personality and the online 5PFQ test

I like to exercise I completely agree Partially agree Not sure Partially disagree Completely disagree

People consider me a sympathetic and friendly person I completely agree Partially agree Not sure Partially disagree Completely disagree

I value cleanliness and order in everything and do not allow myself to be sloppy I completely agree Partially agree Not sure Partially disagree Completely disagree

Potential troubles and little things in life do not bother me, I am not worried that something might happen I completely agree Partially agree Not sure Partially disagree Completely disagree

Often something new makes me irritated rather than interested I completely agree Partially agree Not sure Partially disagree Completely disagree

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