THE DEVELOPMENT OF BIG FIVE
MODEL IN PERSONALITY TRAIT
THEORY
Prepared by
Dr. SARATH P
• Big Five model has been used to develop robust personality
assessments for use in research, business, and personal
development
• Today, many researchers believe that there are five core
personality traits.
• Evidence of this theory has been growing for many years,
beginning with the research of D. W. Fiske (1949) and later
expanded upon by other researchers including Norman
(1967), Goldberg (1981), and McCrae & Costa (1987).
Big Five model
1. Openness to Experience: the tendency to be imaginative, independent,
and interested in variety vs. practical, conforming, and interested in
routine.
2. Conscientiousness: the tendency to be organized, careful, and
disciplined vs. disorganized, careless, and impulsive.
3. Extraversion: the tendency to be sociable, fun-loving, and affectionate
vs. retiring, and reserved.
4. Agreeableness: the tendency to be soft-hearted, trusting, and helpful
vs. ruthless, suspicious, and uncooperative.
5. Neuroticism: the tendency to be calm, secure, and self-satisfied vs.
anxious, insecure, and self-pitying.
The Big Five personality traits
the five-factor model (FFM)
the OCEAN model
taxonomy
for personality traits.
Early research
• In 1884, Sir Francis Galton was the first person - taxonomy of
human personality traits by sampling language: the lexical
hypothesis.
• In 1936, Gordon Allport and S. Odbert put Sir Francis Galton's
hypothesis into practice by extracting 4,504 adjectives - from
the dictionaries at that time.
– CARDINAL- person’s dominant trait
– CENTRAL - basic building blocks
– SECONDORY TRAIT- plentiful but are only present under specific
circumstances
Early research
• In 1940, Raymond Cattell and Sixteen Personality Factor
Questionnaire.
– intercorrelations of the 16 primary trait measures
themselves
– found no fewer than five "second-order" or "global
factors“
• Eysenck and three dimensional model- (1965, 1976)
– extraversion, neuroticism and psychotism
Acceptance of five factor model
• Today, many researchers believe that there are five core
personality traits.
• Evidence of this theory has been growing for many years,
beginning with the research of D. W. Fiske (1949) and later
expanded upon by other researchers including Norman
(1967), Goldberg (1981), and McCrae & Costa (1987).
• In the 1980s, Lewis Goldberg started his own lexical project,
emphasizing five broad factors once again. He later coined the
term "Big Five" as a label for the factors.
Paul T. Costa, Jr. and Robert R.
McCrae
• Costa and McCrae acknowledged the important role that Eysenck
played when he identified extraversion and neuroticism as secondorder personality factors. later, he included psychoticism
• However, Costa and McCrae disagreed with Eysenck regarding
psychoticism. They initially proposed a different factor
called openness.
• When they discussed this issue with Eysenck, he felt that openness
might be the opposite pole of psychoticism, but McCrae and Costa
believed the factors were significantly different (see Costa &
McCrae, 1986).
• Since that time, Costa and McCrae have moved beyond the third
factor of openness, and added two more second-order
factors: agreeableness and conscientiousness (see Costa & McCrae,
1989; Costa & Widiger, 1994; McCrae & Allik, 2002; McCrae &
Costa, 2003).
Paul T. Costa, Jr. and Robert R.
McCrae
• Initially, they found evidence of the existence of the broad
and agreed-upon traits of
– Neuroticism (N) and Extraversion (E)
– but factor analysis also led them to add a third broad trait, Openness
to Experience (O)
• The Neuroticism-Extroversion-Openness Inventory (NEO-I)
was designed to measure these traits.
• Later, Costa and McCrae recognized two more factors:
– Agreeableness (A) and Conscientiousness(C)
– Revised the NEO to include all five traits and renamed the NEO
Personality Inventory (NEO PI).
• They published a Revised NEO (NEO-PI-R) manual, including
six facets for each factor (30 total)
BIG FIVE and six facets
Neuroticism – Anxiety, Hostility, Depression, Self-Consciousness,
Impulsiveness, Vulnerability to Stress
Extraversion – Warmth, Gregariousness, Assertiveness, Activity,
Excitement Seeking, Positive Emotion
Openness to Experience – Fantasy, Aesthetics, Feelings, Actions, Ideas,
Values
Agreeableness – Trust, Straightforward-ness, Altruism, Compliance,
Modesty, Tendermindedness
Conscientiousness – Competence, Order, Dutiful ness, Achievement
Striving, Self-Discipline, Deliberation