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Five-Factor Model

Table of Contents Five Major Dimensions Theorists Table References Links Home

The five-factor model is comprised of five personality dimensions (OCEAN): Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. The five dimensions are held to be a complete description of personality. A competing model with three dimensions based on psychophysiology is the PEN Model. Extraversion and Agreeableness are only rotations of the dimensions in Interpersonal Theory.
 

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Five Major Dimensions of Personality

A trait is a temporally stable, cross-situational individual difference. Currently the most popular approach among psychologists for studying personality traits is the five-factor model or Big Five dimensions of personality. The five factors were derived from factor analyses of a large number of self- and peer reports on personality-relevant adjectives and questionnaire items.

The following are some of the important characteristics of the five factors. First, the factors are dimensions, not types, so people vary continuously on them, with most people falling in between the extremes. Second, the factors are stable over a 45-year period beginning in young adulthood (Soldz & Vaillant, 1999). Third, the factors and their specific facets are heritable (i.e., genetic), at least in part (Jang, McCrae, Angleitner, Riemann, & Livesley, 1998; Loehlin, McCrae, Costa, & John, 1998). Fourth, the factors probably had adaptive value in a prehistoric environment (Buss, 1996). Fifth, the factors are considered universal, having been recovered in languages as diverse as German and Chinese (McCrae & Costa, 1997). Sixth, knowing one's placement on the factors is useful for insight and improvement through therapy (Costa & McCrae, 1992).

The differences between two empirically related yet conceptually distinct models, the Big Five and the five-factor model, are summarized below.

• MAJOR PROPONENTS
  
  • B5: Goldberg
    
  • FFM: McCrae and Costa

• THEORETICAL BASIS
  
  • B5: Lexical hypothesis--those individual differences that are most salient and socially relevant will come to be encoded as terms in the natural language.
    
  • FFM: Theoretical contexts--traits are situated in a comprehensive model of genetic and environmental causes and contexts.

• POSITION ON CAUSATION
  
  • B5: Phenotypic--no stance on causation.
    
  • FFM: Biosocial--genetic as well as environmental.

• NAMING OF FACTORS
  
  • B5: Surgency, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Intellect.
    
  • FFM: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience (OCEAN).

• MEASUREMENT MODEL
  
  • B5: Circular--many items have non-zero correlations (loadings) on two factors rather than just one.
    
  • FFM: Hierarchical--lower-level facets combine to form higher-level domains.

• QUESTIONNAIRES
  
  • B5: Big Five Markers (recently, International Personality Item Pool, or IPIP).
    
  • FFM: Revised Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R).

• TYPE OF QUESTIONNAIRE ITEMS
  
  • B5: Adjectives (recently, sentence stems).
    
  • FFM: Sentences.

Saucier and Goldberg (1998) presented evidence that nearly all clusters of personality-relevant adjectives can be subsumed under the Big Five. Paunonen and Jackson (2000), however, argued that this study used too loose a criterion for inclusion in the Big Five--namely that the Big Five account for at least 9% of the variance in the adjective cluster. Reanalyzing the same data using a stricter criterion of 20% explained variance resulted in nine clusters of traits that fell outside of the Big Five: Religiosity, Honesty, Deceptiveness, Conservativeness, Conceit, Thirft, Humorousness, Sensuality, and Masculinity-Femininity. These analyses do not imply that the clusters are unrelated; for example, Honesty and Deceptiveness may be highly (negatively) related as opposite sides of the same dimension. Nevertheless, these results suggest that several important personality traits lie beyond the Big Five.

In addition, theoretical reasons suggest the importance of other personality traits that are poorly captured by terms in the natural language, such as impulsive sensation-seeking (Paunonen & Jackson, 2000). Moreover, traits may be only a limited means of studying a "psychology of the stranger"--that is, they may include only the personality-relevant information that would be apparent about someone about whom one knew very little else--leaving uncovered other important constructs such as the narrative life-story (McAdams, 1992).

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Theorists Table

	Extraversion/ Surgency	Agreeableness	Conscientiousness	Emotional Stability	Intellect/ Openness
Adler	Superiority Striving	Social Interest			Superiority Striving
Bakan	Agency	Communion			Agency
Bales	Dominant Iniative	Social-Emotional Orientation	Task Orientation
Bartholomew	Model of Other (Avoidance) (r)			Model of Self (Anxiety) (r)
Block	Low Ego Control		High Ego Control	Ego Resiliency
Buss and Plomin	Activity		Impulsivity	Emotionality (r)
Cattell	Exvia (vs. Invia)	Pathemia (vs. Cortertia)	Superego Strength	Adjustment vs. Anxiety	Independence vs. Subduedness
Comrey	Extraversion and Activity	Femininity	Orderliness and Social Conformity	Emotional Stability	Rebelliousness
Costa and McCrae	Extraversion	Agreeableness	Conscientiousness	Neuroticism (r)	Openness
Digman	Beta	Alpha			Beta
Erikson		Basic Trust
Eysenck	Extraversion	Psychoticism (r)		Neuroticism (r)
Fiske	Confident Self-Expression	Social Adaptability	Conformity	Emotional Control	Inquiring Intellect
Freud		Psychosexual Development
Goldberg	Surgency	Agreeableness	Conscientiousness	Emotional Stability	Intellect
Gough	Extraversion	Consensuality	Control		Flexibility
Guilford	Social Activity	Paranoid Disposition (r)	Thinking Introversion	Emotional Stability
Hogan	Ambition and Sociability	Likeability	Prudence	Adjustment	Intellectance
Horney		Moving Toward
Jackson	Outgoing, Social Leadership	Self-Protective Orientation (r)	Work Orientation	Dependence (r)	Aesthetic / Intellectual
Leary	Control / Dominance	Affiliation / Love
Maslow	Self-Actualization				Self-Actualization
McAdams	Power Motivation	Intimacy Motivation			Power Motivation
Myers- Briggs	Extraversion vs. Introversion	Feeling vs. Thinking	Judging vs. Perception		Intuition vs. Sensing
Peabody	Power	Love	Work	Affect	Intellect
Rank	Individuation	Union			Individuation
Rogers	Personal Growth				Personal Growth
Skinner		Socialization
Tellegen	Positive Emotionality		Constraint	Negative Emotionality	Absorption
Watson		Socialization
Wiggins	Agency	Communion			Agency
Zuckerman	Extraversion		Psychoticism, Impulsivity, Sensation Seeking (r)	Neuroticism (r)	Psychoticism, Impulsivity, Sensation Seeking
	Extraversion/ Surgency	Agreeableness	Conscientiousness	Emotional Stability	Intellect/ Openness

Note: (r) means "reversed scored." (This table is adapted from Digman [1997], Griffin & Bartholomew [1994], John [1990], and McCrae & Costa [1996].)

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References

Buss, D. M. (1996). Social adaptation and five major factors of personality. In J. S. Wiggins (Ed.), The five-factor model of personality: Theoretical perspectives (pp. 180-207). New York: Guilford.

Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Normal personality assessment in clinical practice: The NEO Personality Inventory. Psychological Assessment, 4, 5-13.

Digman, J. M. (1997). Higher-order factors of the Big Five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 1246-1256.

Griffin, D. W., & Bartholomew, K. (1994). The metaphysics of measurement: The case of adult attachment. In K. Bartholomew & D. Perlman (Eds.), Advances in personal relationships (Vol. 5, pp. 17-52). London: Jessica Kingsley.

Jang, K. L., McCrae, R. R., Angleitner, A., Riemann, R., & Livesley, W. J. (1998). Heritability of facet-level traits in a cross-cultural twin sample: Support for a hierarchical model of personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1556-1565.

John, O. P. (1990). The "Big Five" factor taxonomy: Dimensions of personality in the natural language and in questionnaires. In L. A. Pervin (Ed.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 66-100). New York: Guilford.

Loehlin, J. C., McCrae, R. R., Costa, P. T., Jr., & John, O. P. (1998). Heritabilities of common and measure-specific components of the Big Five personality factors. Journal of Research in Personality, 32, 431-453.

McAdams, D. P. (1992). The five-factor model in personality: A critical appraisal. Journal of Personality, 60, 329-361.

McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T., Jr. (1996). Toward a new generation of personality theories: Theoretical contexts for the five-factor model. In J. S. Wiggins (Ed.), The five-factor model of personality: Theoretical perspectives (pp. 51-87). New York: Guilford.

McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T., Jr. (1997). Personality trait structure as a human universal. American Psychologist, 52, 509-516.

Paunonen, S. V., & Jackson, D. N. (2000). What is beyond the Big Five? Plenty! Journal of Personality, 68, 821-835.

Saucier, G., & Goldberg, L. R. (1998). What is beyond the Big Five? Journal of Personality, 66, 495-524.

Soldz, S., & Vaillant, G. E. (1999). The Big Five personality traits and the life course: A 45-year longitudinal study. Journal of Research in Personality, 33, 208-232.

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Five-Factor Model Links

Five-Factor Model: Student Papers in This Website

"Contributions and Limitations of Cattell's Sixteen Personality Factor Model"
This paper discusses an early 16-factor model that was a precursor to the current five-factor model. By Heather M. Fehringer.

"The Five-Factor Model: Emergence of a Taxonomic Model for Personality Psychology"
This paper discusses the five-factor model and evaluates the model's merits, concluding that it cannot be considered a great theory--not because it is not great--but because it is not a theory. By Nathan C. Popkins.

"The Five-Factor Model of Personality in the Workplace,"
This paper relates the five-factor model to motivation and performance on the job. By Sean P. Neubert.

Five-Factor Model: Papers Elsewhere

"The Big Five Taxonomy"
This paper is a review of the Big Five. By Frank Fujita.

"The NEO Five Factor Model and Skimming the Surface of the Wetlands of Personality"
This paper in Psybernetika criticizes the five-factor model on many grounds. By Darek Dawda.

Five-Factor Model: Websites Elsewhere

The Big Five
This website introduces the Big Five model, describes its differences from other models, and evaluates its merits and limitations. By students of Mike Jordan.

Big Five Personality Test
Here is a free, on-line, 50-item personality questionnaire that will tell you how you score on the dimensions of the five-factor model (but not their specific facets). By Frank J. Sulloway.

Big Five Quickstart
This website is an introduction to the five-factor model for human resources professionals. By Pierce J. Howard and Jane Mitchell Howard.

Google Web Directory: Five-Factor Model
This page contains numerous links to websites on the five-factor model rank-ordered by popularity. By Google.

International Personality Item Pool: A Scientific Collaboratory for the Development of Advanced Measures of Personality and Other Individual Differences
This website is an attempt to develop "a broad-bandwidth, public-domain personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models." By Lewis R. Goldberg.

IPIP Representation of the NEO-PI-R
Here is a free, on-line, 300-item personality questionnaire that will tell you how you score on the dimensions of the five-factor model and their specific facets. A 120-item short form, although available, can be expected to be less reliable than the long form. By John A. Johnson.

On-Line Personality Test
Here is another free, on-line, 50-item personality questionnaire that measures the dimensions of the five-factor model (but not their specific facets). If you have already taken this test before, the authors request that that you use the retest version. By Tom Buchanan, Lewis R. Goldberg, and John A. Johnson.

Open Directory: Five-Factor Model
This page contains numerous links to websites on the five-factor model ordered alphabetically. By the Open Directory Project.

Five-Factor Model: Reference Source

Suggested Readings
A list of suggested readings on this topic is also available. By G. Scott Acton.

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Last modified January 2001
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