What Are The Big 5 Personality Traits? Inside Psychology's Core Personality System

An individual's "personality" refers to their patterns of behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. To help capture the seemingly infinite number of personalities that appear across humankind, researchers have developed models for measuring their most common manifestations.

Many psychologists consider the so-called Big Five personality traits the most reputable. This model states that personality comes down to five core factors: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

The Big Five personality traits are openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. These five fundamental traits attempt to summarize the human personality on a comparative scale. 

"Personality is defined as someone's usual patterns of behaviors, feelings, and thoughts. While these usual patterns are complex, there are some personality traits that organize our understanding of someone's personality," explains licensed clinical psychologist Ernesto Lira de la Rosa, Ph.D., of the Hope for Depression Research Foundation.

That's where personality frameworks like the Big Five, also known as the Five Factor model, come in.

The Big Five personality framework was first developed in 1949 by personality psychologist D.W. Fiske. Later, other scientists, including Warren T. Norman, Robert McCrae & Paul Costa, Gene M. Smith, and Lewis R. Goldberg, further developed Fiske's theories and research.

As with any personality test, there is controversy over the model itself and how it is best applied, says psychotherapist Lee Phillips, Ed.D., LCSW, CST. That said, today, the Big Five personality traits are widely accepted as an accurate way of understanding human personality among most psychologists in the United States and in the broader Western world, supported by ample research.

As one 2020 paper in The Wiley Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences notes, "The five factors have provided a framework for understanding psychopathology. Neuroscience has identified neural correlates of the five factors, and cross-cultural research has underscored how people across the globe are both similar and different."

Openness to experience represents intellectual curiosity, creative imagination, and valuable insights. This trait includes thinking outside the box and being willing to learn new things. 

Conscientiousness indicates organization, productivity, responsibility, and impulse control. Highly conscientious people have goal-oriented behaviors. Phillips says, "Conscientiousness measures the organizational skills of the individual. For example, it looks at how careful, deliberate, and self-disciplined they are. Conscientiousness looks at the foretelling of employee productivity."

Extroversion looks at how sociable and outgoing a person is, and where they feel most energized. High scores indicate a person energized by the company of others and excited by being the center of attention. Low scores indicate a more reserved person who enjoys solitude.

Agreeableness is aligned with attributes like kindness, affection, and trust. People with high scores are interested in others. They are emphatic and enjoy contributing to others' happiness.

Neuroticism indicates emotional instability. It often refers to sadness and moodiness. 

The Big Five personality traits model helps people identify on a spectrum, recognizing that all people exhibit some of these traits at some point in their lives.

"These traits are important because they are useful in understanding our social interactions with others. They are also helpful in increasing our self-awareness and how our personality traits may impact how others perceive or experience us," Lira de la Rosa tells mbg.

The Big Five model has evolved with time, research, and technology. These days, it's regularly applied in social, academic, and professional contexts. 

The Big Five personality traits are foundational to personality tests that have become popular in dating, family, and work. Drawing from the same scientific research that generated the Big Five, the Myers-Briggs (MBTI), Likability Test, and the Difficult Person Test are related personality assessments meant to understand how an individual's traits manifest in relationships with others. Tools and tests like these are often used to build relationships, romantic or professional.

Using newfound knowledge of your personality, you can craft relationships and opportunities around your strengths. People with a low openness score, for example, might target jobs in an office where they can become subject matter experts rather than roles that entail rotating into various areas of the company.

The Big Five personality model is widely reputed; however, self-assessment tests always have an element of bias. Also, it is important not to take the results of any personality test as any kind of definitive diagnosis.

These tests are simply meant to help you learn about yourself and identify possible areas for personal growth.