The Big Five

The Big Five Trait Theory of Personality

So many psychology research articles have included the Big Five personality theory. Personality is a big topic, but the Big Five makes it easier to understand and measure. This theory combines all possible personality traits under five categories, making personality theory more universal and applicable. Each trait is measured on a continuum.

So even though there are only five traits, these continuums turn the five traits into ten. It is important to remember that the Big Five is a trait approach to personality and not a typology approach. You won't be able to figure out your personality type by taking a Big Five assessment. Instead, you will find out more about your personality based on how high or low you score on the Big Five traits.

This personality theory is one of the most cited psychology topics. Over the years, it has been through many revisions, and many psychologists have helped refine the theory. Some of the main contributors to The Big Five theory are psychologists Paul Costa, Donald McRae, Warren Norman, Lewis Goldberg, and Ann Arbor. The earliest version of the theory was created by D. W. Fiske (1949).

Definitions of The Big Five Traits

So what is neuroticism? How about extraversion? What does it mean if you score low on agreeableness or openness? How conscientious are you?

Fg. 1 The Big Five traits, pixabay.com

The Big Five: Openness

Openness to experience is the willingness to engage in new social interactions, cultures, and perspectives. If you score low on openness, you are more hesitant to try new things. You might choose to go to a familiar place rather than somewhere new. If you score high, you love exploring, trying new things, and experiencing other cultures.

The Big Five: Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness is all about responsibility, intrinsic motivation, and self-control. If you score high in this trait, you are driven to achieve goals, determined, organized, and take life seriously. You care a lot about doing your best and handling your responsibilities well. If you score low in this trait, you struggle with being disciplined and self-controlled. Duties are optional to you; you put little pressure on yourself to do your best in everything.

The Big Five: Extraversion

Do you feel energized after interacting with the world and other people? If yes, you would probably score high on extraversion. Highly extroverted people enjoy engaging socially with others and are usually outgoing and friendly. Do you feel drained and depleted after talking to lots of people? Those who score low on extraversion are considered introverted. Introversion means you need time alone to re-energize and be ready to socialize again.

The Big Five: Agreeableness

Scoring high in agreeableness means that you are generally positive, cooperative, and kindhearted. You may be so agreeable that you often put the needs of others above your own. What if you score low in agreeableness? This means you are harder to get along with. You like things a certain way, and you get frustrated having to work on a team. You are likely to argue with others or confront them.

The Big Five: Neuroticism

This trait sounds bad, doesn't it? Neuroticism just means being highly emotional. If you score low on neuroticism, you are emotionally stable and tend to be pretty serious or unaffected. If you score high, you go through many emotional highs and lows. Moodiness is pretty typical for you, and sometimes you feel distressed or out of control emotionally.

The Big Five Aspects Scale

After reading through the Big Five traits, you might be wondering how you would score. An official Big Five test measures how you score on each trait based on self-report questions. Tests like this are very useful in psychology research, and some of history's most famous psychologists helped develop it. The Big Five Aspects Scale contains 100 questions with a 5-point Likert scale for responses. The most recent version of the test was revised by Peterson et al. (2022).

Criticisms and Limitations of the Big Five Personality Theory

Even though the Big Five personality theory has been widely-supported and used in psychology research, the theory still has some limitations and criticisms. One of the big ones is that it only contains five traits to describe every single person in the world. Some researchers believe that five traits are just too few to accurately describe personality, even though the traits are continuums.

Another criticism is that The Big Five theory is static or fails to account for the growth and development of personality over time. Humans are constantly learning and changing, but the Big Five traits only tell us what we are like when we take the test. You could retake the test in a few years and compare your new results to your old ones, but that still doesn't take into account all the time in between. This means that The Big Five may not be reliable or generalizable.