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Personality psychology—with its different ways of organizing, measuring, and understanding individual differences—can help people better grasp and articulate what they are like and how they...
- Personality Traits
Explore the basics of personality traits, including distinct...
- Personality Tests
The psychology of personality promises to help people better...
- Theories of Personality
Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff. From Aristotle to...
- Personality and Life Outcomes
Explore how personality factors are linked to life outcomes...
- Can Personality Change
Almost by definition, personality traits are thought to be...
- Personality Disorders
Personality disorders are deeply ingrained, rigid ways of...
- Myers-Briggs
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is an assessment of...
- Personality Traits
Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff. From Aristotle to Sigmund Freud and Abraham Maslow, countless theories and concepts for understanding personality have been proposed.
- The theory was first proposed in the 1990s by psychologists Robert McCrae and Paul Costa Jr. McCrae and Costa also created the NEO Personality Inve...
- Though they have similar names, the model (which is embraced by many researchers) is a way of describing how personality traits are organized—that...
- Multiple researchers have helped develop it. One proponent is psychologist Brent Roberts, who with colleagues in the ’00s, wrote about a “social in...
- In a new job, one may be rewarded for being punctual and putting in work to complete tasks, or incentivized to get along with others. Interpersonal...
- Yes: The social investment view suggests that people with certain traits will be more drawn to and more likely to invest in certain kinds of roles....
- CAPS was developed by psychologists Walter Mischel and Yuichi Shoda in the 1990s. They sought to resolve an apparent conflict between findings of b...
- No. A person may be more aggressive, reserved, or energetic in some situations and less so in others. But across many different situations, the per...
- The psychologist most associated with narrative identity is Dan McAdams. In the 1990s, he developed a view of personality in which three levels coe...
- In a recent study, proponents of the narrative identity view offered evidence for a tentative “Big Three” factors: autobiographical reasoning, or c...
Personality traits are usually considered distinct from mental abilities (including general intelligence) that are assessed based on how well one responds to problems or questions.
- Openness (also called openness-to-experience or open-mindedness) reflects, roughly, how receptive a person is to new ideas and the robustness and c...
- Conscientiousness is a person’s tendency to control impulses and act responsibly and productively. It may be reflected in a person’s preference for...
- Extroversion can be thought of as the level of energy with which a person interacts with the outside world and other people. Aspects of extroversio...
- Agreeableness is a person’s degree of positivity and helpfulness toward other people. Facets of agreeableness include one’s respectfulness toward o...
- Neuroticism (sometimes called negative emotionality) is a person’s disposition to experience challenging emotional states such as anxiety and depre...
- Narcissism is generally one’s sense of self-importance and entitlement relative to others. High narcissism may be reflected in attention-seeking or...
- Psychopathy captures a lack of empathy, remorse, and impulse control, along with other specific facets. Someone who is highly psychopathic may tend...
- Machiavellianism refers to a person’s tendency to treat others in a calculating way, including using manipulation in order to achieve goals. It is...
- Conscientiousness
- Agreeableness
- Extraversion
- Openness to Experience
- Neuroticism
- New Research on Media and Technology
- Critical Evaluation
- History and Background
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Conscientiousness describes a person’s ability to regulate impulse control to engage in goal-directed behaviors (Grohol, 2019). It measures elements such as control, inhibition, and persistence of behavior.
Agreeableness refers to how people tend to treat relationships with others. Unlike extraversion which consists of the pursuit of relationships, agreeableness focuses on people’s orientation and interactions with others (Ackerman, 2017).
Extraversionreflects the tendency and intensity to which someone seeks interaction with their environment, particularly socially. It encompasses the comfort and assertiveness levels of people in social situations. Additionally, it also reflects the sources from which someone draws energy.
Openness to experience refers to one’s willingness to try new things as well as engage in imaginative and intellectual activities. It includes the ability to “think outside of the box.”
Neuroticism describes the overall emotional stability of an individual through how they perceive the world. It takes into account how likely a person is to interpret events as threatening or difficult. It also includes one’s propensity to experience negative emotions.
Openness to experience predicted preferences for complex movies (e.g., documentaries) and unconventional books (e.g., philosophy).Conscientiousness was associated with a preference for informational books.Agreeableness predicted liking for conventional genres such as family movies and romance books.Neuroticism only correlated with a preference for light books, not movies.Cross-Cultural Validity
Although the Big Five has been tested in many countries and its existence is generally supported by findings (McCrae, 2002), there have been some studies that do not support its model. Most previous studies have tested the presence of the Big Five in urbanized, literate populations. More research on illiterate and non-industrialized populations is needed to clarify such discrepancies.
Gender Differences
Differences in the Big Five personality traits between genders have been observed, but these differences are small compared to differences between individuals within the same gender. Another interesting finding was that bigger gender differences were reported in Western, industrialized countries. Researchers proposed that the most plausible reason for this finding was attribution processes. They surmised that the actions of women in individualistic countries would be more likely to be attribu...
Factors that Influence the Big 5
Like with all theories of personality, the Big Five is influenced by both nature and nurture. Twin studies have found that the heritability (the amount of variance that can be attributed to genes) of the Big Five traits is 40-60%. Such twin studies demonstrate that the Big Five personality traits are significantly influenced by genes and that all five traits are equally heritable. Heritability for males and females does not seem to differ significantly (Leohlin et al., 1998). Studies from dif...
The Big Five model resulted from the contributions of many independent researchers. Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert first formed a list of 4,500 terms relating to personality traits in 1936 (Vinney, 2018). Their work provided the foundation for other psychologists to begin determining the basic dimensions of personality. In the 1940s, Raymond Catte...
Ackerman, C. (2017, June 23). Big Five Personality Traits: The OCEAN Model Explained. PositivePsychology.com. https://positivepsychology.com/big-five-personality-theory Buecker, S., Maes, M., Denissen, J. J., & Luhmann, M. (2020). Loneliness and the Big Five personality traits: A meta–analysis. European Journal of Personality, 34(1), 8-28. https://...
McCrae, R. R., & Terracciano, A. (2005). Universal features of personality traits from the observer’s perspective: data from 50 cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(3), 547.Cobb-Clark, DA & Schurer, S. The stability of big-five personality traits. Economics Letters. 2012; 115(2): 11–15.Marsh, H. W., Nagengast, B., & Morin, A. J. (2013). Measurement invariance of big-five factors over the life span: ESEM tests of gender, age, plasticity, maturity, and la dolce vita effects. Develo...Apr 1, 2020 · This article addresses the longstanding problem that the field of personality psychology remains in need of a consensus formulation of its core subject matter, that of the nature of “personality” itself.
- Raymond M. Bergner
- 2020
The field of personality psychology studies the nature and definition of personality as well as its development, structure and trait constructs, dynamic processes, variations (with emphasis on enduring and stable individual differences), and maladaptive forms.
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Jun 22, 2022 · Here's the personality definition and all you need to know about its development and meaning in psychology. Traits and thought patterns make up your personality.
