BIG FIVE FACTORS OF

PERSONALITY
PRESENTED BY,
SAM THOMAS MATHEW
Personality

 According to Larsen & Buss, Personality can be described as the

set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual
that are organized and relatively enduring and that influence his
or her interactions with, and adoptions to, the intrapsychic,
physical, and social environments
Approach

 Major approaches to study personality are

Psychodynamic approach, trait approach, learning
approach, humanistic approach, cognitive approach
and Biological approach.
 Big five factors come under trait approach, which gives
importance to the characteristic features of a person
which make him unique.
 History

 History of five factor theory can be traced back to the lexical work
of Allport and Odbert in 1936 ,who identified 17,953 trait terms from
the English language.
 Cattell in 1943 reduced it into 4,500 word and lexical analysis has
conducted and he reduced the list to a smaller set of 171 clusters
(groups of traits) by eliminating some and grouping together
others. And then he again reduced into 35 cluster.
 Fiske in 1949 took a subset of 22 of Cattell’s 35 clusters and through
factor analysis he found five factor model. But its structure was not
precise.
History

 Tupes and Christal in 1961 give the next major contribution

to the five-factor model. They examined the factor structure
of the 22 clusters and created a five-factor model.
 Five traits were Surgency, agreeableness,
conscientiousness, emotional stability, and culture.
 It was replicated by Norman, Botwin & Buss, Goldberg,
Digman & Inouye, and McCrae & Costa.
Five factors

 The five factors after the replication are:

1. Openness to experience
2. Conscientiousness
3. Extroversion
4. Agreeableness
5. Neuroticism
 In short, it can be called as OCEAN.
 Openness

 It refers to openness to experience.

 It include an active imagination, a willingness to accept new ideas,
divergent thinking, intellectual curiosity, willingness for adventure,
unusual ideas, new experience etc.
 People who have openness to experience will be intellectually curious
and have a willingness to try new things.
 They tend to be more creative and they are more likely to hold
unconventional beliefs.
Conscientiousness

 It to how much disciplined and self-control the person is.

 It is a tendency to act dutifully, and aim for achievement and
also to the way in which people regulate, control, and direct
their impulses.
 People who have high score will be organized, well planned,
and determined.
 Those who score low will be careless, and easily distracted from
tasks.
Conscientiousness

 Arthur and Graziano found that people who have low

conscientiousness will be more prone to have
automobile accident.
 Kern & Friedman found that those who have high
scores typically live more than the people with low
scores.
Extraversion

 Extraversion is characterized by sociability, energetic,

optimistic, friendly, and assertive.
 Introverts are reserved rather than unfriendly,
independent rather than followers, even paced rather
than sluggish.
 Extroverts will be more sociable, fun-loving, affectionate
and friendly, take the lead in livening up dull
gatherings, and enjoy talking a lot.
Extraversion

 According to Jensen-Campbell & Graziano, they often

assume leadership positions.
 Fleeson, Malanos, & Achille says that extroverts tend to
be happier and this positive feeling is experienced most
intensively when the person acts in extroverted manner.
 But they drive vehicle faster and do multi-tasking in
between. So there is a chance for accident.
Agreeableness

 It reflects the general concern of an individual for social harmony.

 High agreeable persons are helpful, trusting, get along with others
and sympathetic. They generally consider others, are kind,
generous, and trustworthy.
 Helpfulness, and willingness to compromise their interests with
others are their feature.
 People who are highly agreeable will be preferring cooperation
than competition.
Agreeableness

 People who score low in this dimension tend to be

antagonistic and skeptical. These people like to fight to
others for their interest and belief.
 Those who are high in agreeableness favor using
negotiation to solve the problem while others try to
assert their power to resolve social conflicts.
Neuroticism

 Neuroticism dimension places an individual in

continuum, where emotional stability and emotional
instability stands in two ends.
 Individuals who scored high in neuroticism have a
tendency to experience emotional distress, negative
emotions, such as anger, anxiety, or depression.
 Neuroticism is sometimes called emotional instability
 Characteristics

1. The factors are dimensions and not types. So people may vary
continuously on them.
2. It place people somewhere in between a continuum.
3. Soldz & Vaillant found that the factors are relatively stable
4. Jang, McCrae, Angleitner, Riemann, Livesley, Loehlin, McCrae,
Costa, & John, the factors and their specific facts are heritable or
genetic at least in part.
5. The factors are considered universal.
 Measurement

 Goldberg has done research based on self-rating on adjective traits

like talkative, sympathetic, disorderly etc
 Costa and McCrae has developed a tool which use sentence length
item format. It is called NEO-PI-R – the neuroticism extraversion-
openness (NEO) Personality Inventory (PI) Revised.
 International Personality Item Pool (IPIP), by Oregon Research Institute
 Big Five Inventory (BFI), by Oliver P. John and Benet-Martinez.
 Application

 Research studies also suggests that it is used for diagnosing clinical

disorder and working with therapy patients.
 Low conscientiousness and low agreeableness predicts delinquency
and externalizing problems while high neuroticism & low
conscientiousness predicts internalizing problems like depression and
anxiety.
 It can also be used to identify problems in health behavior.
 Application

 According to Hampson & Friedman, conscientiousness predicts heath

habits & longevity.
 Bogg & Roberts found that individual with low conscientiousness has
an increased chance for engaging in risky behaviors like smoking,
substance abuse etc.
 Low agreeableness predicts cardiovascular disorders.
 It can also be worked in organizational and academic places.
 Application

 Conscientiousness predicts higher academic grade and choosing the

appropriate job.
 Agreeableness and neuroticism predicts performance in jobs where
employees work in jobs, where employees work in group. Extraversion
predicts success in sales and managerial positions.
 Openness predicts artistic jobs.
 Highly neurotic individuals will have frequent burnout and change in
job, whereas less neurotic individuals will feel satisfied in jobs.
 Reference

 Baron, R A. (2011). Introduction to Psychology. New Delhi: Pearson publishers.

 Burger, G M. (2011). Introduction to Personality. Canada: Cengage Learning.
 Hall C. S; Lindsey G. (1998). Theories of Personality. New York: John Wiley and Sons
Inc.
 John, O. P., Naumann, L. P., & Soto, C. J. (2008). Retrieved from
https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~johnlab/pdfs/2008chapter.pdf
 Larsen, R. J; Buss, D. M. (2011). Personality Psychology. New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill
Education Pvt. Ltd.
 Schultz, D P; Schultz, S E. (2013).Theories of Personality. New York: Cengage learning