We value your privacy

We use cookies to improve functionality, analyze traffic, and support marketing efforts. By selecting “Accept All,” you agree to our use of cookies for these purposes. For more details, see our Privacy Policy or manage your preferences on our Opt-Out Preferences page.

A Brief Overview of the Five-Factor Model of Personality 

Posted on by Dave Tomar

*This is a single installment in a larger series dedicated to examining some of the most popular, influential, and historically important personality testing models and assessment tools.

The Five-factor Model of Personality is a highly influential framework for helping us understand human personality. The Five-factor Model (FFM) is based on the idea that much of human personality can be understood through factored analysis of 5 distinct personality traits:

  • Openness
  • Conscientiousness
  • Extraversion
  • Agreeableness
  • Neuroticism

For this reason, the model is sometimes also referred to as The Big Five. Other common names for this model include the acronyms OCEAN and CANOE. 

A Note on the Role of The Big Five in the Evolution of Personality Assessment

Contrary to some of the personality assessment models that preceded it, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the Five-factor Model is rooted in empirical findings. While many personality scholars have taken steps to add nuance to, or expand upon this model, there is a general consensus that this framework passes basic scientific muster. 

It also differs from the MBTI in its origin story. Where the MBTI emerged to rapid and widespread popularity before enduring subsequent decades of withering scrutiny, the Five-factor Model was little recognized in its earliest stages. Over time, however, it has gained prominence and widespread acceptance. 

This model is by no means the final word on personality assessment. Some of its harshest detractors are not so much critical of the content of this model, but critical of the near unilateral acceptance it enjoys. This level of acceptance may suggest that the Five-factor Model is a definitive view of personality assessment. 

Of course, decades of investigation prove otherwise. Indeed, our Success Portraits Personality Tests (SPPT) use 19 traits to measure personality. But the discussion below will demonstrate that the Five-factor Model is a foundational building block in the structure of personality assessment, and that with recognition of its limitations, the FFM still remains useful today.

What is the Five-factor Model?

The Five-factor Model is a framework used to understand and describe human personality based on five broad dimensions. Each of these dimensions is meant to capture the areas in which there are greatest variations in human behavior. The hypothesis behind the Five-factor Model holds that through factor analysis of these variations, we can arrive at a reliable measurement of human personality. 

What are the Big Five-factors?

  1. Openness to Experience is often equated to intellect and imagination, and refers to one’s curiosity and receptiveness to new experiences. The spectrum of possible scores is often expressed as a contrast between imaginative and philosophical vs. uncreative and unintellectual. 
  2. Conscientiousness refers to an individual’s tendency toward qualities like self-discipline, organization, reliability, responsibility and goal-orientation. Conscientiousness is often expressed as a contrast between those that are efficient and organized vs. those who are haphazard and careless.
  3. Extraversion measures how outgoing, energetic, and sociable respondents are. Extraversion is generally associated with those who are talkative, assertive, and comfortable in a wide range of social situations. Extraversion is often expressed as a contrast between those who are bold and energetic vs. those who are shy and reserved.
  4. Agreeableness indicates an individual’s compassion, cooperativeness, and empathy towards others. Agreeableness is associated with qualities like kindness, trustworthiness, and the ability to cooperate. Agreeableness may be expressed as a contrast between those that are sympathetic and cooperative vs. those who are inconsiderate and combative.
  5. Neuroticism refers to an individual’s emotional stability and one’s vulnerability to negative emotions like anxiety, anger, or sadness. Neuroticism can be expressed as a contrast between those who are moody and nervous vs. those who are calm and resilient.

Note that the spectrum of possible variations for each factor is expressed in extremes. However, respondents to FFM-based assessment will often fall somewhere on a sliding scale between these extremes. 

How does the Five-factor Model Work?

Measurement of the Big Five-factors is typically conducted through self-report questionnaires. In most cases, the Five-factor personality test will provide respondents with a series of statements, each relating to one of the five traits. Respondents may be asked to identify their level of agreement or disagreement with each statement on a sliding scale. 

This level of agreement is used to provide a score–higher or lower–in a variety of behavioral dimensions. These dimensions have been identified and correlated to the Big Five-factors using a statistical method called factor analysis. 

What is factor analysis?

In the simplest terms, factor analysis is a method of statistical analysis that identifies hidden patterns in data by grouping items that are related to each other. You might think of it as sorting a big pile of puzzle pieces into smaller groups as a way of helping to see the big picture. 

In this analogy, those puzzle pieces are the many different sub-traits that might make up each of the five-factors. For instance, Extraversion is shown to be correlated with sub-traits like high energy, enthusiasm, gregariousness, and assertiveness. Each of these subtraits is one puzzle piece that can be sectioned off into the Extraversion pile. 

Factor analysis demonstrates that these pieces will consistently fit together to reveal a meaningful part of the picture. Taken together, these parts can reveal a fuller picture–something that we would call a personality. 

One of the reasons that the Five-factor Model has gained widespread acceptance is because factor analysis of the Big Five traits has shown consistency across sample groups from a wide range of age ranges and cultural backgrounds. 

This, and the relatively simple structure used to yield personality assessment, have helped to popularize the Five-factor Model in personality psychology, employee assessment, career development, and academic research. 

But the model hardly achieved this popularity overnight. In fact, its emergence was quite gradual.  

The Origins of the Five-factor Model

The Five-factor Model grew out of a combination of theoretical and experimental developments over the course of several decades. Certainly, the number of ideas that contributed to and emerged from the development of this model have filled many volumes of scholarly literature. So for the sake of practicality, the following is a brief timeline that includes just a few of many highlights from an otherwise very long story. 

  • 1884: British scientist Sir Francis Galton was greatly influenced by the work of his cousin, Charles Darwin, and is considered a pioneer in the later field of behavioral genetics. He is also the likely originator of the “lexical hypothesis” which holds that it may be possible to identify human personality traits by sampling language patterns. 
  • 1932: British psychologist William McDougall is likely the first noted scholar to assert that personality could be understood using “five distinguishable but separable factors”. McDougall identified intellect, character, temperament, disposition and temper as the key factors. Though McDougall did not use the factor analysis methodology that provides the basis for the FFM, his idea is seen as an early building block on the way to this model.  
  • 1936: Seizing on Sir Galton’s lexical hypothesis, American psychologists Gordon Allport of Harvard University and Henry Odbert of Dartmouth College compiled as many adjectives as they could find describing observable human behavior by literally combing through Webster’s Dictionary. The result was a list of over 4500 adjectives that they believed could be used to identify relatively permanent individual traits. 
  • 1943-1948: Raymond Cattell of Harvard University used Allport and Odbert’s list as a starting point, then eliminated redundancies, used factor analysis to identify personality clusters, and ultimately drilled their assessment method down to a measurement of 11 or 12 factors.
  • 1949: Cattell and colleagues identified four additional factors and used the resulting sum to create the groundbreaking 16PF Questionnaire. This questionnaire would undergo multiple updates over the coming decades.
  • 1968: The most important update came with the release of the 4th edition of the 16PF Questionnaire. This edition indicated that all sixteen factors were derived from 5 global factors: Extraversion, Independence, Anxiety, Self-control and Tough-mindedness. These factors have sometimes been referred to as the original Big 5.
  • 1980-1981: The 1970s saw personality assessment tests fall out of favor in mainstream personality psychology. But a group of psychologists that included Lewis Goldberg, Naomi Takemoto-Chock, Andrew Comrey, and John M. Digman reviewed, analyzed and reaffirmed the work of Cattell and others. They asserted that the validity of the “five-factors” theory held up to scientific scrutiny. They consequently identified the key factors as Friendly Compliance vs. Hostile Non-compliance; Extraversion vs. Introversion; Ego Strength vs. Emotional Disorganization; Will to Achieve; and Intellect. Their findings helped to spark a new wave of confidence in personality testing. 
  • 1984: British psychologist Peter Saville including a five-factor model as part of his Occupational Personality Questionnaires (OPQ). This assessment tool identified the five-factors as Extroversion, Vigorous, Methodical, Emotional Stability, and Abstract. This marks the first use of the Big Five model in a commercially available assessment tool. 

Though the idea of five global personality factors was many decades in the making, this would mark the beginning of its popular ascent. The 1980s and 1990s would see various adaptations to the language used to identify the five-factors as well as innumerable applications in commercial personality assessment tools. 

The Real-World Applications of the Five-factor Model

The Five-factor model has enjoyed widespread popularity and credibility in the time since its commercial introduction. Thanks to its relatively simple framework and its robust history of scientific investigation, the FFM has been applied in a wide range of settings for various practical applications.

For instance:

  • Personality Psychologists have used the FFM widely to measure dimensions of personality and their correlations with other psychological phenomena, like emotional intelligence, motivation, and mental health. Many researchers consider the FFM a reliable framework for predicting behavior across diverse populations.
  • Employers often use FFM-based tools to assess candidates for hire or promotion. FFM questionnaires may help employers evaluate individual personality traits in areas that are correlated with higher job performance. For instance, if conscientiousness is linked to desirable traits like organization, dependability, and goal orientation, a higher Conscientiousness score may predict stronger job performance. 
  • HR Professionals can also use FFM-based tools to identify training goals and support career development. Personality assessment can help to identify areas of strength and help channel individuals into career paths and positions that match these traits. 
  • Clinical Psychologists have also used the Five-factor Model to assess personality disorders and tailor treatment plans. For instance, individuals with high levels of Neuroticism may be more prone to anxiety, depression, or stress. Scoring individuals in particular areas of Neuroticism can help to yield targeted therapies and treatment strategies. 

A Note on Practical Use of the Five-factor Model

As we frequently note in our discussions on personality assessment, it is never wise to rely on the findings from a single personality testing method, regardless of the context. The Five-factor Model is merely one of many personality testing methods that may be used for functions like employee evaluation or career development. Whether you are assessing an individual’s fitness for a job or tracing the roots of a mental health disorder in search of effective treatment strategies, it is vital that you consider personality testing in concert with a number of other meaningful assessment strategies. 

Common Critiques of the Five-factor Model

The Five-factor Model was a genuine improvement over some of the assessment strategies that came before it. And its evolution from ideation to empirical validation to commercial popularization is readily traceable, which does give it lasting credibility. 

However, there are some valid critiques of the Five-factor Model, some of which have contributed to a continued evolution beyond this approach. The following are among the more common critiques: 

Oversimplification

The Big Five model is designed to offer a broad framework for understanding human personality, and in doing so, it  relies on a method that is valid and reliable across diverse populations. However, critics argue that in its broadness, it may fail to account for the many important nuances that influence individual behavior. While the FFM sets out to measure our propensities across certain permanent traits, it fails entirely to account for the way that our individual behaviors may be influenced by cultural, environmental, and situational factors. This, in turn, means it fails to account for what our situational behavior says about our personalities. 

Theoretical Weakness

Some critics have argued that factor analysis is not alone a robust enough methodology to determine with certainty the number or nature of factors which should be included in a personality assessment. While few critics would go so far as to call the use of five-factors arbitrary, many would observe that the selection of this specific number of factors (i.e. 5) is subject to some analytical subjectivity. While there is scientific support for the correlations between the selected five-factors and personality assessment, it is not clear that there is a universally accepted, scientifically supported theory dictating that these are the only five-factors which should be measured. 

Cultural Bias

Once again, one of the supposed strengths of the Five-factor Model is that it may be applicable across a wide variety of populations. However, some researchers have shown that populations may perform higher or lower in certain areas based on far-reaching cultural or environmental factors. For instance, it can be argued that traits associated with Openness to Experience are distinctly Western. Populations in cultures which place a higher value on collectivism over individualism may score observably lower on Openness than respondents in countries with traditional Western values. This suggests that, in some instances, outcomes may be more indicative of political and cultural context than individual personality.

The Five-factor Model Today

The Five-factor Model remains a foundational model in the teaching of personality psychology as well as a useful research instrument in the field of practice. Moreover, employers and HR professionals also continue to use some form of the FFM in recruitment, career planning, and leadership development. 

Personality testing tools like the NEO-PI (NEO Personality Inventory) and the Big Five Inventory (BFI) are both widely used in organizational settings today. In fact, thanks to advances in machine learning and AI, many organizations are now using predictive analytics to draw deeper and more meaningful conclusions from FFM testing. 

Perhaps more importantly, the limitations of FFM have helped give way to meaningful developments in personality assessment. Personality psychologists and scholars continue exploring ways of leveraging FFM’s strengths and accounting for its weaknesses. 

For instance, the SSPT corrects for the FFM’s oversimplification by measuring behavior within four distinct workplace dynamics and offsets the risk of cultural bias by spreading its measurement across 19 distinct personality traits. We invite you to check out our interview with SPPT creators Fred Switzer and Jo Jorgenson for a deeper discussion on the steps we’ve taken at Success Portraits to overcome the flaws inherent in this and other historical testing methods.