Big 5 Personality Traits

Course Instructor: Aneeq Inam

 What is Personality?

Personality is defined as an individual’s consistent patterns of

feeling, thinking, and behaving.
Personality does not include physical or behavioral characteristics,
skills or abilities, or changes in mood.
The tendency to perceive personality is a fundamental part of
human nature, and a most adaptive one.
 What is
Personality?

• Understanding personality can also

help us better understand
psychological disorders and the
negative behavioral outcomes they
may produce.
• In short, personality matters because
it guides behavior.
• Psychology’s first attempts at
explaining personality were based on
the theories of Sigmund Freud and
his followers.
 Learning Objectives

1. Define the term trait.

2. Describe the Big Five Model of personality traits and distinguish among openness, conscientiousness,
extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
3. Explore how the Big Five traits change over the lifespan.
4. Describe how the Big Five traits predict behavior.
 Traits

• Traits are relatively enduring characteristics that influence our

behavior across many situations.
• Personality traits, such as introversion, friendliness,
conscientiousness, honesty, and helpfulness are important
because they help explain consistencies in behavior.
• The most popular way of measuring traits is by administering
personality tests on which people self-report about their own
characteristics.
• There are at least 18,000 English words that can be used to
describe people
 Five Factor Model of Personality.

• According to this model, there are five fundamental underlying trait dimensions that are stable across time, cross-
culturally shared, and explain a substantial proportion of behavior.
• You can remember them using the watery acronyms OCEAN or CANOE.
• The Big Five dimensions also accurately predict behavior. For instance, a pattern of high conscientiousness, low
neuroticism, and high agreeableness predicts successful job performance (Tett, Jackson, & Rothstein, 1991).

• Conscientiousness was found to be as important as intelligence in the prediction of both secondary and college
academic achievement (Dumfart & Neubauer, 2016; Poropat, 2009).
• An advantage of the five-factor approach is that it is parsimonious.
Big 5 Personality Traits
Dimension Sample items Description Examples of behaviors predicted by the trait
Individuals who are highly open to
A general appreciation for art, experience tend to have distinctive and
“I have a vivid imagination”; “I have a
Openness to emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, unconventional decorations in their home. They
rich vocabulary”; “I have excellent
experience imagination, curiosity, and variety of are also likely to have books on a wide variety of
ideas.”
experience topics, a diverse music collection, and works of
art on display.
A tendency to show self discipline, Individuals who are conscientious have a
“I am always prepared”; “I am exacting
Conscientiousness act dutifully, and aim for preference for planned rather than spontaneous
in my work”; “I follow a schedule.”
achievement behavior.
“I am the life of the party”; “I feel A tendency to experience positive Extroverts enjoy being with people. In groups
Extraversion comfortable around people”; “I talk to a emotions and to seek out stimulation they like to talk, assert themselves, and draw
lot of different people at parties.” and the company of others attention to themselves.
Agreeable individuals value getting along with
“I am interested in people”; “I feel A tendency to be compassionate and
others. They are generally considerate, friendly,
Agreeableness others’ emotions”; “I make people feel at cooperative rather than suspicious
generous, helpful, and willing to compromise
ease.” and antagonistic toward others
their interests with those of others.
Those who score high in neuroticism
A tendency to experience negative are more likely to interpret ordinary
“I am not usually relaxed”; “I get upset emotions, such as anger, anxiety, or situations as threatening and minor
Neuroticism
easily”; “I am easily disturbed.” depression; sometimes frustrations as hopelessly difficult. They may
called “emotional instability” have trouble thinking clearly, making decisions,
and coping effectively with stress.
 Big 5 Personality Traits

• Openness predicts more traveling, studying abroad, liberal political views, and
choosing a career in the arts
• Conscientiousness predicts workplace and academic success, less drug-use, and a less
likelihood of divorcing
• Extraversion predicts being more talkative, happier, a higher social status, and greater
volunteerism
• Agreeableness predicts less swearing, criminal behavior, and divorce, but higher
volunteerism
• Neuroticism predicts depression, higher rates of divorce, and more conflict in
relationships
Gender Convergence
• While pop psychology books with titles such as
“Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus”
(Gray, 1992) would suggest that men and women
differ in personality, the reality is that gender
differences, when present, are small, and tend to
get even smaller with age. This is a phenomenon
called gender convergence. When differences are
found, women tend to score slightly higher than
men on conscientiousness, agreeableness, and
neuroticism, and some studies show women may
be slightly higher on extraversion, but only on the
aspects of extraversion that involve
gregariousness, warmth, and positive emotions,
while men score higher on the assertiveness and
excitement seeking aspects of extraversion (Costa,
Terracciano, & McCrae, 2001; Weisberg,
DeYoung, & Hirsh, 2011).