Psychology › Personality & intelligence
The Big Five personality traits
1961; consensus by 1990s· Theory or model
Well replicatedStrong, repeated evidence.
The leading scientific model of personality: five broad traits, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, each measured on a continuous scale.
See it on the Psychology map →What it says
It started with language: in 1936 Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert listed about 18,000 English words describing people. When researchers analyzed which descriptions cluster, five factors kept appearing, first clearly in a 1961 US Air Force report by Ernest Tupes and Raymond Christal. Lewis Goldberg named them the 'Big Five' in 1981, and Paul Costa and Robert McCrae's questionnaires spread them. Everyone scores somewhere on each scale (remembered as OCEAN), and the pattern appears in dozens of cultures.
Why it matters
The traits predict longevity, divorce and career attainment about as well as income or IQ do, giving personality research a common, measurable language.
The evidence
Thousands of studies, agreement between self- and peer-ratings, twin studies showing about 40 percent heritability, and a 2005 study across 50 cultures. A 2007 review by Brent Roberts compared its predictive power with income and IQ.
Open questions
Some researchers argue for a sixth trait, honesty–humility (the HEXACO model), and the five do not emerge cleanly in some small-scale, non-literate societies such as Bolivia's Tsimane.
Inside this (4)
Connections (8)
▸Temperament in infants is an early root of The Big Five personality traitsWell replicated
The connection
Infant temperament dimensions map onto adult traits: negative emotionality resembles neuroticism, surgency (energetic, outgoing behavior) resembles extraversion, and effortful control resembles conscientiousness. As children grow, experience elaborates these early tendencies into fuller personality traits.
Who showed it and when
Mary Rothbart's temperament model from the 1980s; New Zealand's Dunedin study of about 1,000 children born in 1972–73; a 2003 review by Rebecca Shiner and Avshalom Caspi.
The evidence
In the Dunedin study, temperament observed at age 3 modestly predicted personality at age 26. The structural overlap is well documented.
Open questions
Whether temperament and personality are the same thing at different ages, and why links from infancy to adulthood are only modest.
▸Conscientiousness as a life-outcome predictor is one of The Big Five personality traitsWell replicated
The connection
Conscientiousness, being organized, dependable, disciplined and goal-directed, is the 'C' in the Big Five. Of the five, it best predicts job performance across occupations, and conscientious children tend to live longer, partly through healthier habits.
Who showed it and when
Identified in Big Five research from the 1960s to 1990s; Murray Barrick and Michael Mount's 1991 job meta-analysis; the Terman study of Californians born around 1910.
The evidence
It emerges in factor analyses across languages and cultures, and its links to job performance and health hold up in meta-analyses.
Open questions
Whether 'grit,' a popular newer idea, is anything more than conscientiousness under another name; a 2017 meta-analysis found the two overlap heavily.
▸Neuroticism and emotional stability is one of The Big Five personality traitsWell replicated
The connection
Neuroticism is the 'N' in OCEAN, the trait for emotional reactivity. Hans Eysenck identified it as one of the first broad traits in the 1940s, and every major personality model since includes it, sometimes reversed and labeled emotional stability.
Who showed it and when
Eysenck in London from 1947; Paul Costa and Robert McCrae's NEO questionnaires, 1978–1985, which gave it six facets including anxiety and depression.
The evidence
Neuroticism appears in factor analyses of personality data in dozens of cultures, and its scores predict anxiety and depression over time.
Open questions
How best to divide it: Colin DeYoung and colleagues proposed in 2007 two linked aspects, withdrawal (anxiety, sadness) and volatility (anger, irritability), while the NEO uses six facets.
▸Personality changes with age (maturity principle) describes lifelong shifts in The Big Five personality traitsWell replicated
The connection
The maturity principle describes how average Big Five scores move across life: conscientiousness and emotional stability rise in young adulthood, agreeableness rises later, and openness peaks young. People's rank relative to peers is fairly stable, so change is mostly a shared drift.
Who showed it and when
Brent Roberts, Kate Walton and Wolfgang Viechtbauer's 2006 meta-analysis of 92 samples; Avshalom Caspi, Roberts and Rebecca Shiner named the 'maturity principle' in 2005.
The evidence
Longitudinal studies in many countries find similar patterns. Therapy can also shift traits, especially emotional stability, within months.
Open questions
Whether biology or social roles like work and parenting drive maturing; similar age trends reported in chimpanzees hint at biology.
▸Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is less valid than The Big Five personality traitsWell replicated
The connection
When researchers compared the two, MBTI's four scales lined up with four Big Five traits: extraversion–introversion with extraversion, sensing–intuition with openness, thinking–feeling with agreeableness, judging–perceiving with conscientiousness. The Big Five measures these as continuous scales, adds neuroticism, and predicts outcomes better.
Who showed it and when
Robert McCrae and Paul Costa's 1989 study at the US National Institute on Aging, of several hundred adults who took both tests.
The evidence
Correlations between matching scales were substantial, and later studies show Big Five scores predict job performance and well-being better than MBTI types.
Open questions
Whether 'types' exist at all. Statistical tests of MBTI data find continuous dimensions, not distinct groups, though some defend types as useful shorthand.
▸Twin and adoption studies show about 40% heritability in The Big Five personality traitsWell replicated
The connection
Twin and adoption studies find that about 40 percent of the variation in each Big Five trait is linked to genes. Surprisingly, shared home environment adds almost nothing; the rest comes from experiences unique to each person, plus measurement error.
Who showed it and when
Studies by Thomas Bouchard in Minnesota, John Loehlin in Texas and Kerry Jang in Canada, plus twin registries in Germany and Australia; a 2015 meta-analysis by Croatian researchers Vukasović and Bratko.
The evidence
The 2015 meta-analysis, pooling dozens of twin, family and adoption studies, put average heritability at about 40 percent.
Open questions
Why siblings raised together end up barely more alike in personality than if raised apart, and why DNA studies find only small genetic signals.
▸Personality disorders are increasingly described with The Big Five personality traitsMixed evidence
The connection
Most personality disorders look like extreme, rigid versions of normal traits: borderline maps to very high neuroticism, antisocial to low agreeableness and conscientiousness, avoidant to high neuroticism and introversion. ICD-11 (2022) and DSM-5's alternative model describe people by severity plus trait domains closely resembling the Big Five.
Who showed it and when
Proposed by Thomas Widiger, Paul Costa and colleagues from the 1990s; adopted in DSM-5's alternative model (2013) and the WHO's ICD-11 (2022).
How solid is it?
Meta-analyses show each disorder has a fairly consistent Big Five profile, and trait models predict functioning at least as well as categories.
Open questions
Clinicians find labels like 'borderline' useful shorthand, and how to carry decades of category-based research and treatment into a trait system is contested.
▸Emotional intelligence overlaps heavily with The Big Five personality traitsMixed evidence
The connection
Self-report emotional intelligence questionnaires correlate substantially with Big Five traits, especially emotional stability (low neuroticism), extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Once personality and IQ are counted, they add little to predicting job performance. Ability tests of emotional intelligence overlap less with personality but correlate partly with general intelligence.
Who showed it and when
Konstantinos Petrides's 'trait emotional intelligence' model placing it within personality, early 2000s; Dana Joseph and Daniel Newman's 2010 meta-analysis; Ernest O'Boyle and colleagues' 2011 meta-analysis.
How solid is it?
Meta-analyses of hundreds of studies estimate the overlap; O'Boyle's found emotional intelligence adds some prediction beyond personality and IQ, though modest.
Open questions
Whether emotional intelligence is a distinct ability or largely a new label for familiar traits; the answer depends on which test is used.