Which of the following is one of the five factors included in the Big Five model?

Discover the definitions of the Big Five Personality traits, learn some examples, and see how knowing the Big Five can help you understand everyone’s behaviors - including your own!

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There are few things more complicated than human personality, but that hasn’t stopped psychologists from trying to describe and categorize it. In the field of personality psychology, one of the most enduring theories defines personality according to how much (or how little) we demonstrate each of five traits – known as the Big Five personality traits. I bet you’re curious to know more about your own personality! Read on to learn what the Big Five traits are, discover findings about how the Big Five are related to the rest of our lives, and what your own Big Five profile might mean for you.

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What Are The Big Five Personality Traits?

The five-factor model of personality, known as the Big Five Personality Traits, consists of extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience (sometimes just called openness), agreeableness, and conscientiousness (Costa & McCrae, 1992). If some of these names seem unfamiliar to you, read on for more detail.

The Big Five Personality Traits Defined

Below are definitions of each of the Big Five personality traits. As you read them, keep in mind that all of us fall somewhere on a spectrum from having very little to quite a lot of each trait. For example, we often call people high in extraversion extroverts, while somebody low in extraversion might identify themselves as an introvert. But many of us may fall somewhere in between.
 

• Neuroticism is how much negative emotion a person experiences and how much those emotions impact them. People who experience lots of depression, anxiety, or self-consciousness, for example, would be described as high in neuroticism.

• Extraversion is the trait of being warm and enthusiastic in social interactions, and assertive and sensation-seeking in general. You can probably easily think of people you know who are high in extraversion – they tend to be the life of the party, talk more than others, and drive the activity in a group.

• People high in openness to experience show curiosity and interest regarding a variety of ideas, values, ways of thinking, and behaviors. A person low in openness might hesitate to try a new restaurant, travel to a different country, or listen to a speech expressing a political perspective with which they don’t agree.

• People high in agreeableness want to get along with others; they are trustworthy, modest, and generous with their time and resources. They may also hesitate to express opinions that would cause conflict or put their needs above those of others. 

• Finally, conscientiousness is the trait of being disciplined, orderly, and striving to do what is right. Think of your fellow student or work colleague whom you are certain would never cheat, intentionally manipulate others, or forget to complete a task.​

Big Five Personality Traits Theory

Why are these five traits considered the Big Five? While psychologists disagree to an extent about the Big Five – just like they do about most everything! – there is a general consensus, driven by research, that the Big Five traits are a useful and effective way to think about personality (McCrae & Costa, 1990; McCrae & John, 1992).

This consensus is based on several scientific findings. First, research tells us that these traits are consistent. They are fairly stable over long periods of time (Cobb-Clark & Schurer, 2012); for example, your personal level of extraversion has likely not changed much over the course of your life. There also seems to be a genetic basis for these traits (Digman, 1990; McCrae et al., 2000), and they appear to be consistent across cultures (McCrae & Costa, 1997).
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Second, when psychologists measure these traits, there is very consistent agreement. Research into how to best classify our characteristics suggests that it is best to organize our traits into these five dimensions (e.g., Soldz et al., 1993). Also, if I asked you and some of the people closest to you to rate you on each of these traits, there would be a high level of agreement between you and your friends, family, or partner (Funder & West, 1993; McCrae & Costa, 1987).

Big Five Personality Traits Examples

We can find examples of how these traits influence us by looking at any part of our lives. If I think about my experiences in graduate school, for example, my particular combination of Big Five traits becomes immediately apparent to me, in ways both good and bad. 

First, I am relatively high in openness and agreeableness. These characteristics have generally served me well as a therapist-in-training, enabling me to be curious, compassionate, and non-judgmental with clients. At the same time, however, they have sometimes caused me to say yes to tasks and responsibilities that would later stress me out, or give somebody the benefit of the doubt in a situation where risk might be involved.

Additionally, I noticed in graduate school that most of my peers were slightly more conscientious than I was. As my responsibilities (and my stress levels) increased over time, I found myself wanting to cut corners and cut back on commitments I had made. I imagine a student higher in conscientiousness would not have experienced the same level of temptation that I did.
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Here is a short video with more examples; I recommend watching it before starting to apply the questions to yourself.

Video: The Big Five Personality Traits

Okay, your turn. Having seen all these examples, perhaps you are starting to get a sense of how much each trait applies to you. For example, you’ve probably thought before about whether you are more of an introvert or an extrovert. Let’s dive deeper.

Where does your conscientiousness show most clearly? Where have you noticed that your conscience differs from that of others? Most of us are not Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela – what are the limits of your commitment to your morals?

To get a sense of your levels of neuroticism, you might ask yourself how often you find yourself experiencing negative emotions, compared to the people around you. Do things in your environment frequently make you irritated or anxious? Or maybe you often wonder what everybody else is so stressed about – in that case, you might be low in neuroticism.

Since you’re reading this article, you are probably higher in openness, but how open to experience do you think you are? Do you notice yourself sticking to your routines again and again, or are you the kind of person who gravitates to the newest food on the menu, the quirky-looking TV show, or the thrift store shirt that truly sticks out?
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If you have a hard time answering these questions, I suggest asking someone who knows you well how much they think each trait applies to you. Remember, research has shown that our friends and family are pretty consistent reporters of our personalities (McCrae & Costa, 1987).

Are the Big Five Personality Traits Inherited?

To an extent, we do inherit our levels of the Big Five personality traits. Research suggests between 40 and 60 percent of our Big Five is heritable (Jang et al., 1996). What this means is that of all the differences across people in their Big Five traits, between 40 and 60 percent of that difference is due to genetics.
 
What that also means is that the other 40 to 60 percent of factors influencing your Big Five traits comes from other sources. As the study of epigenetics tells us, this means that your life experiences – and how those experiences influence your genes over time – also account for how extraverted or agreeable you are, for example.
 
In thinking about the heritability of these traits, I am reminded of a friend of mine, a woman low in extroversion and high in neuroticism who worked for several years as a barista. Initially, she found the job very stressful and tiring, but over time she grew to tolerate and even sometimes enjoy the high level of social interaction her work required. While she continues to prefer work that is less stimulating and fast-paced, she is grateful that she developed that capacity to tap into her extroverted side.

Why Are the Big Five Personality Traits Important?

Once researchers could classify something as fundamental as the different parts of one’s personality, they were naturally excited to see how differences from one person to the next in their Big Five traits might predict their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. The Big Five traits have endured as an important topic in psychology for just this reason: they are very effective predictors of many other human experiences. 
 
For proof of this, we need look no further than a study of 163 men that measured their personality traits over 45 years and related those traits to many characteristics of the men’s lives. Soldz and Vaillant (1999) found that people’s Big Five traits stayed fairly consistent across that entire time period. Even more importantly, their Big Five traits predicted aspects of their lives as diverse as their political attitudes, career success, mental health and substance abuse experiences, and the quality of their social connections.

Lots of research suggests that people’s likelihood of experiencing psychiatric disorders is related to one’s Big Five traits (Dyce, 1997). For example, people low in agreeableness and conscientiousness are more likely to ignore social conventions and laws; individuals extremely low in conscientiousness may even be diagnosed as psychopaths or sociopaths. At the same time, people high in neuroticism and conscientiousness may be more likely to demonstrate obsessive-compulsive thoughts and behaviors or be diagnosed with depression.

If that’s not enough, research has shown that people’s parenting styles and the quality of their close relationships are reliably related to their Big Five traits (Prinzie et al., 2009; White et al., 2004). It seems that most, or maybe all, of our behaviors as humans are determined in part by the unique combination of traits that is our personality.

Big Five Personality Traits and Job Performance

Have you ever had to fill out questionnaires about yourself as part of applying for or starting a new job? It’s likely that the employer was interested in your personality traits, and with good reason: there are hundreds of studies by organizational psychologists – people who apply psychological knowledge to helping companies and other organizations function better – relating the Big Five personality traits to workplace performance.
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As it turns out, some Big Five traits are better predictors of success than others. For example, one study found that people high in conscientiousness fared better throughout their careers, while people high in neuroticism were less successful in some key ways (Judge et al., 1999).

Big Five Personality Traits and Leadership Styles

Similarly, organizational psychologists have learned a lot about how leadership styles are related to the Big Five traits. In one study, people rated their supervisors as more “authentic” leaders when they were high in extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience – but supervisors rated as more neurotic were seen as less authentic (Shahzad et al., 2021). In another study, school principals who were perceived as “transformational” leaders were high in openness and agreeableness and low in neuroticism (Garcia et al., 2014).

Big Five Personality Traits and Culture

As we’ve already learned, research suggests that people across cultures can generally be described in terms of these five traits (McCrae & Costa, 1997). While this is generally borne out by reviews of the research (e.g., Poortinga et al., 2002), it is difficult to be certain that people across different cultures have the same understanding of each trait (Carlo et al., 2014). In other words, the fact that being “agreeable” means something different culturally in Japan versus in the United States makes it hard to be certain that these traits are truly universal.

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Final Thoughts on The Big Five Personality Traits

I have found the Big Five personality traits to be a helpful way to understand how I and others behave. I hope that having read this article, you can see ways that these characteristics determine your own behavior, or that of the people closest to you. And on that note: I suggest you hold back from judging yourself or others for whether you are high or low in each trait. Our personality traits are pretty stable and fundamental to who we are – you wouldn’t be your unique self if any of them changed!

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References

• Carlo, G., Knight, G. P., Roesch, S. C., Opal, D., & Davis, A. (2014). Personality across cultures: A critical analysis of Big Five research and current directions. In F. T. L. Leong, L. Comas-Díaz, G. C. Nagayama Hall, V. C. McLoyd, & J. E. Trimble (Eds.), APA handbook of multicultural psychology, Vol. 1. Theory and research (pp. 285–298). American Psychological Association.​
• Cobb-Clark, D. A., & Schurer, S. (2012). The stability of big-five personality traits. Economics Letters, 115(1), 11-15.
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• Poortinga, Y. H., Van de Vijver, F. J. R., & Van Hemert, D. A. (2002). Cross-cultural equivalence of the Big Five: A tentative interpretation of the evidence. In R. R. McCrae & J. Allik (Eds), The Five-Factor Model Across Cultures (pp. 271-292). Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
• Power, R. A., & Pluess, M. (2015). Heritability estimates of the Big Five personality traits based on common genetic variants. Translational Psychiatry, 5, e604.
• Prinzie, P., Stams, G. J. J. M., Dekovic, M., Reijntjes, A. H. A., & Belsky, J. (2009). The relations between parents’ Big Five personality factors and parenting: a meta-analytic review. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(2), 351-362.
• Rantanen, J., Metsäpelto, R.-L., Feldt, T., Pulkkinen, L. & Kokko, K. (2007). Long-term stability in the Big Five personality traits in adulthood. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 48, 511-518. 
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