The Big Five Predominant
Personality Factors

The Big 5 Personality Types

by Gary Ames

People seem to come in endless varieties.  Each one of us has constructed our own personality classification system to reduce all the complexity.  Thus, I believe it is astounding news that now scientists finally agree on the discovery of the 5 major personality factors!!  These 5 dimensions such as extroversion–introversion were truly discovered based on tons of observation and powerful computers using statistical factor analysis.  This gives us an accurate objective set of organizing concepts to make sense of our diversity.

Alert the Media!

In 500 BC the father of medicine started the debate with his four temperaments.  I'm boldly saying that not only Hippocrates, but that all the philosophers' speculations and all the four factor typologies (including the currently popular Myers-Briggs) are wrong, and I can prove it!  Frankly, our analog brains have not been up to the task of looking at all kinds of people and distilling out the basic universal continuums that most purely and completely describe how we differ from one another.  There is now substantial consensus on the top level of the taxonomy of behavior.  The Big 5 form an efficient, reliable, and valid vocabulary of behavioral phenotypes.

Whoa there Big Fella

I know, this resembles the crock of psych that you have smelled before.  You have every reason to be skeptical with hot news from a fad addicted field full of speculation ruled by P.T. Barnum.  But hear this:  the same 5 factors are replicated by many researchers and are consitently revealed across diverse ages, classes, races, cultures, languages, and both sexes.  The same dimensions are stable over time in longitudinal studies.  Those few detractors not on the band wagon don't disagree with The Big 5, but deride it with the slur: "factor-analytically developed, lay person, self-reported, single-word, adjectival descriptors of global characteristics."  I can live with that. 

Even the identical and fraternal twin studies prove a 29-41% genetic contrubution for all The Big 5 between  There isn't a scientist in the field who doesn't believe at least 2 of The Big 5 are genetically encoded.  There are hard wired personality traits.  This is much better evidence than psychology is accustmed to seeing.  The measurements and evidence are that good.  By the way, there are tons of new validity studies coming into the journals, textbooks, and course syllabi.  It’s a hot field of study.

Meaning is as Meaning Does

The Big 5 is not a personality theory, it is only a classification scheme.  Here are all are the assumptions:  1) adjectives describe people, 2) the meaning of a word is based on how it is used to describe people, 3) computers and factor analysis are a powerful team to identify statistical clusters.  That's it.  No other conjecture is required.  Factor analysis is an atheoretical approach that extracts groups of similarities. 

Here's the basic study.  Take a ton of descriptive adjectives, then apply them to either yourself, spouse, stranger, whatever.  Toss all the results into the computer.  Just as a centrifuge whirrs around until it squeezes components into layers – factor analysis forms layers of word groups based on how they were used.  It aligns the functional synonyms along with their opposites.  It keeps on spinning trying to detect synonym-antonym clusters with distinct meanings.  The point is that that factor analysis objectively discerns functional adjectives on bi-polar continua. 

All the permutations of the study consistently find the same thing:  you can account for the largest amount of variance in the attributions of descriptors with the same 5 clusters.  There are regularly more than 4 clusters.  No clump of meaning emerges coherently to be a 6^th.  Moreover, each of The Big 5 may have 6 facets or components. 

The Envelope Please…

The standard vocabulary in this taxonomy of behavioral phenotypes uses 5 words to stand for the 5 continuous, normally distributed bi-polar dimensions. 

(Emotional) Stability.  Remain emotionally steady under stress.  Calm and hardy.  Versus lower stress tolerance creating negative feelings of anxiety, worry, anger, sadness, or impulsive tendencies: neuroticism.

Extroversion. Preferred quantity and intensity of interpersonal interaction; activity level.  Social, outgoing, talkative.  Also tendency to feel joy and optimism.  Introversion means reserved, sober, aloof, task-oriented, retiring, quiet.

Openness (to experience, or Culture)  Curiosity, receptivity to new ideas, and emotional experiences.  Willing to learn new tasks, change, and participate in new activities.  Versus conservative, conforming, subdued, down-to-earth, unartistic, and not inclined to analysis, change, or questioning.

Agreeableness.  Tendency to show compassion rather than indifference or antagonism in thoughts or feelings.  Contrast kind, supportive, and compliant with cynical, rude, and suspicious.  At the extreme is hostile action toward others.  “Yo, you got a problem with that?”

Conscientiousness  Work ethic, commitment to goals.  Responsible, hard working, and organized.  Versus present-oriented, disorganized, and unreliable.  Heedless of others and committments.

MBTI Magic Decoder Ring

Myers-Briggs did a lot of things right, and several things wrong.  Update your understanding of each dimension to separate out the confounding overlaps (i.e. reflection is not a part of the introversion type, it is on the openness trait.)  Realign your understanding of Sensing-iNtuitive to Openness.  Modernize Thinking-Feeling to become Agreeableness without the negative emotionality contamination.  Judging-Perceiving is better understood as Conscientiousness, but this is not decisiveness, it is more the need for structure.  Be careful, moving mental furniture can stress you out.  Remember, these aren't fixed types, but degrees on continuous dimensions shaped like the bell curve.  

Think "low, medium, or high" on the acronym OCEAN or CANOE.  Or consider the 5 critical blind date questionswhich is the quick and dirty approach:  Is he / she: 
crazy, friendly, outgoing, smart, reliable? 
Here's another mnemonic:

Negative Affect, Neurotic & Nervous;

Extroversion, Energy, & Enthusiasm;

Openness, Originality, & Openmindedness;

Agreeable, Altruistic, & Affection; and

Conscientiousness, Control, & Constraint.

Why haven't I heard of this before?

Academics are excited; researchers are having a love-fest.  But popular, no.  The reason is not clear to me, but they might include:

   Irrelevant or Not user friendly.  Are you excited to learn that there are 3 dimensions for color (brightness, hue, saturation) 4 for sound (pitch, loudness, fullness-volume, timbre) 6 for a graphical image, etc.?

   It is not sexy and it's hard to grasp.  There is no intuitive wisp to unite the odd number of concepts, nor any underlying gimmick to romance the imagination.  Popular psychologies usually ride a wave of some theoretical charm.

   It is blunt.  Good and bad are not veiled as in the popular 4 type schemes that fit into a square.  Can you imagine a trainer telling an executive that he is neurotic?

   It is hard to sell.  You can buy tests for $2.50, or you can take it for free on the internet.  (URL below.)  I've found only one consulting firm hyping it up.

So, now what?

There are many potential advantages to having a powerful high tech lens to view individual differences.  Don’t confuse this introductory teaser with understanding.  For this to be useful, you must get a good feel for the instrument and concepts, then find your favorite applications from among: sales strategy, customer service, job analysis, selection, training design, management and professional development, coaching, counseling, career development, team building, leadership development, conflict management, etc.

Selling Yourself with The Big 5

To fully communicate your robust value as a prospective employee in a job interview, use The Big 5 to create a well-rounded picture.  Take the OCEAN acronym as a checklist to cover all The Big 5 bases in a communications plan.  Expressing a position, sometimes, any position, on each of The Big 5 will span the personality spectrum objectively.  This will project information that will feed into any individual's custom-constructed personality theory.  Presenting the full range of individual personality differences provides a complete memorable impression and will minimize doubt about who you really are.

Don't go Overboard

While psychologists can get carried away with correlations that predict global career success, the associations are generally modest.  Yes, emotional stability is preferred for most business careers.  But even conscientiousness isn't the big success predictor you might expect.  With correlations of only .20, there must be many ways to be successful.  While conscientiousness predicts performance in some jobs, it impedes success in investigative, artistic and social jobs that require innovation, creativity and spontaneity.  Agreeableness has nearly zero correlation with executive success – proving that while it may not hurt, you don't need to be an S.O.B. in order to be a good manager. 

To Learn More…

Here are some starting points.

http://pmc.psych.nwu.edu/personality   The Personality Project.

http://centacs.com/quik-prt.htm  The Big Five Quickstart: An Introduction to the Five-Factor Model of Personality for Human Resource Professionals.  Good section on contrasts with the MBTI.

Use your favorite search engines with the following terms:

Five factor model, The Big 5 personality, Openness Conscientiousness Agreeableness.

Take the complete internet questionnaire for free.  There are 60 questions on each of the 5 pages, each asking you to mark a position on a five point scale.  It provides robust feedback on your results by assigning high, medium or low levels of the basic 5 traits and each of their 6 facets: that’s 35 categories.  The URL is

http://cac.psu.edu/~j5j/test/ipipneo1.htm

A quick quiz is at

http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive

Consider each question using a reference group of people who are your same sex and about your own age.

What are the Rest of These Pages?

The following pages describe The Big 5 in different ways.  Starting with tables:

1)     An introductory name of the Style or realm of life. 

2)     Standard, validated questions.  The two columns of questions are validated questions used to measure a position on the continuum.  The instrument is given with a 5-point scale.  If you want accurate scores and norms use the test URLs above.

This scale is for questions on the right side.

Disagree Strongly | Disagree | Neither Agree Nor Disagree | Agree | Agree Strongly
1           2               3             4       5  

This scale is for questions on the left side.

Disagree Strongly | Disagree | Neither Agree Nor Disagree | Agree | Agree Strongly
5           4               3              2      1  

3)     Next, in bold is the name of the trait with its opposite.

4)     Next is a summary of each global dimension. 

5)     The 6 components or facets of the personality dimensions.  These 6 concepts cluster within the global factors.  Each are somewhat distinct, yet correlate very well within the personality dimension. 

Finally is a summary of The Big 5 and 6 components on one page.

Emotional Style Questions

Tendency to react to stress with mental distress or emotional suffering.

Higher frequency, intensity and duration of feeling tense, bitter, dejected, or desperate.

Expressive Style Questions

Preferred amount of social and external stimulation.

Tendency for more engagement with external world with greater length, frequency and intensity

Intellectual Style Questions

Interpersonal Style Questions

Cooperative, seek harmony.  Believe that people are inherently good.

Willingness to accept, or propensity to seek diverse sources, attitudes, norms, and standards of moral behavior.

Work Style Questions

Conscientiousness vs. Heedlessness