The Big Five Fundamental Factors of our Personality

'The Big Five' is the commonly used term for the model of personality which describes the five fundamental factors of our personality.

This summary and explanation has been provided by psychologist and psychometrics expert Paul Sinclair.

The Big Five "super traits" have been researched and validated by many different psychologists (WT Norman 1963, McCrae & Costa 1987, Brand & Egan 1989, LR Goldman 1990 and P Sinclair 1992) and are at the core of many other personality questionnaires.

The Big Five Factors have been replicated in studies across the world and give us a confident summary of our mental building blocks, according to trait theory.

This had led to a number of slightly different 'translations' of the Big Five model, although each version essentially deals with the same theory and content. The words describing the characteristics change, but the basic characteristics do not.

Trait theory, on which many of our occupational questionnaires are based (for example, Cattell's 16PF and Saville & Holdsworth's 'OPQ' Occupational Personality Questionnaire), states that by the time we are in our early 20s and start work, our personality traits become more stable and reliable. 

This does not necessarily mean we become more stable or reliable, but that our individual personality traits become more fixed and are thus capable of being reliably measured. 

For example, loud, confident, creative people tend to remain loud, confident and creative people throughout their careers. Quiet, unassuming, dependable people tend to remain so also.

When the first Big Five questionnaire was launched the UK in 1990, people were surprised and a little sceptical about the speed of the personality profiler; it took under 10 minutes to complete. This was because it was only measuring five factors and not sixteen or thirty-two personality factors.

Suffice it to say, validation studies were published and presented to the British Psychology Society by the end of the 1990s the Big Five was established as a significant and fundamental personality testing model.

The strengths of the Big Five Factor model lie in its speed and ease of use and this makes it a very useful tool for gaining a rapid overview of a person's key drivers.

The Big Five Factor model has been very well validated, and while it has shown correlations with performance in jobs, studies indicate that the correlation with particular jobs does not exceed 0.30, which accounts for no more than 15% of the variables.

When using this model, as with many other personality concepts, it is the combination of scores from all of the scales that shows us how people operate and identifies their underlying preferences. Looking at a single scale in isolation tells us hardly anything, and can be very misleading. 

Here is a free Big Five mini-test (5 mins max) on the excellent website of Professor George Boeree (pronounced boo-RAY). This test gives a very quick Big Five profile and is more for understanding the model thank for serious personality assessment, although as a quick simple guide it works well.

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/bigfiveminitest.html

Explanations of the Big 5.

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God bless your family and your marriage.

Jim Stephens