We often think about traits when we try to discuss personality. One the most widely used assessments of personality is The Five-Factor Model of Personality (the Big Five). Pick ONE of the following to discuss:
How was the Big Five developed?
How was the research done?
Why is it used so much, and why is it used for psychological research?
OR
Take one of the online Big Five tests, such as the test available at outofservice.com. If you prefer not to use an online test, look at the Five-Factor Model list of high and low scores.
Which aspects can you relate to?
The Research Process
The development of the Big Five involved a process of factor analysis, a statistical technique used to identify underlying factors or groups of variables that are correlated with each other. Here's a breakdown of the key steps:
Initial Word Lists: Researchers started with the extensive lists of personality-related words.
Subject Ratings: They then had people rate themselves or others on these thousands of adjectives. For example, a person might rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 5 for words like "sociable," "kind," "anxious," and "organized."
Factor Analysis: Researchers used factor analysis to sift through the data. They looked for words that tended to be rated similarly. For example, someone who rates themselves high on "sociable" would also likely rate themselves high on "outgoing" and "talkative."
Identifying the Factors: The factor analysis revealed that these thousands of words could be boiled down into five main, independent clusters or dimensions. These dimensions are what we now call the Big Five:
Openness to Experience
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
This statistical method allowed researchers to move beyond specific adjectives and identify the overarching, universal traits that structure human personality. The model wasn't created from a single theory but emerged from the data itself, which is a major reason for its widespread acceptance and use in psychological research.
Why It's Used So Much
The Big Five is widely used for several reasons:
Empirical Foundation: It's based on extensive, repeatable research using a large and diverse set of data, rather than on the clinical observations of a single theorist. This makes it a very robust and reliable model.
Comprehensiveness: The model is broad enough to encompass a wide range of human personality traits. Researchers have found that most specific personality traits can be related back to one of the five factors.
Universality: The Big Five structure has been replicated across different cultures and languages, suggesting that these five dimensions are a fundamental aspect of human personality. This makes it a valuable tool for cross-cultural psychological research.
Predictive Power: The model is a strong predictor of real-world outcomes, including job performance, academic success, and relationship satisfaction. For example, people high in conscientiousness tend to be more successful at work and school. This makes it highly valuable for both research and practical applications.
Sample Answer
How the Big Five Was Developed and Researched
The Big Five personality model was developed through a systematic and data-driven approach, a process that distinguishes it from many earlier personality theories. Instead of starting with a pre-existing theory, researchers used a linguistic approach to identify the most fundamental traits.
The Lexical Hypothesis
The foundation of the Big Five is the lexical hypothesis, which states that the most important personality traits are encoded in our language. The idea is that over time, humans have developed words to describe significant differences in personality. If a trait is important for people to discuss and understand, there will be words for it in our vocabulary. Early researchers, such as Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert in the 1930s, identified thousands of words in the dictionary that described personality traits. They compiled a list of over 4,500 such adjectives.