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---
name: The Big Five
slug: the-big-five
type: personality_framework
status: running
version: 3.1.0
released: 1961-01-01
maintainer: trait_psychology_consortium
dependencies:
- self_report_surveys
- factor_analysis
- human_variance
- questionable_honesty
license: Public Domain (disputed in clinical contexts)
tags:
- personality
- psychology
- measurement
- acronyms
- OCEAN
---
# The Big Five
## What it actually is
A five-dimensional coordinate system for locating a person in [personality space](/personality-space), on the assumption that personality is a place you can be located.
## How it works
Researchers noticed that [adjectives](/adjectives) humans use to describe each other cluster into five stable factors. They named the factors, built questionnaires, ran the numbers across cultures, and declared the architecture of personhood mapped. The five dimensions:
| Dimension | High score looks like | Low score looks like |
|---|---|---|
| **Openness** | collects obscure interests, reads everything | prefers the known, suspicious of abstract |
| **Conscientiousness** | the person who actually follows up | the person who will "circle back" forever |
| **Extraversion** | energized by rooms full of people | drained by the same rooms |
| **Agreeableness** | gives benefit of the doubt, sometimes too much | tells you the food is bad. to the chef. |
| **Neuroticism** | experiences [anxiety](/anxiety) at full resolution | experiences it at a lower resolution, maybe |
Acronym: OCEAN. The naming committee was having a good day.
## Features
- Continuous scores, not categories. You are not a "type." You are a vector.
- Reasonably consistent across the lifespan after age 30, with slow drift
- Predicts job performance, relationship longevity, and health behaviors better than horoscopes and slightly worse than watching someone drive
- Conscientiousness is, quietly, the most predictive dimension for almost everything people care about
- Neuroticism is the most predictive dimension for everything people don't want to talk about
## Known bugs
- Self-report bias: respondents describe who they want to be, not who they are. This is a feature if you're studying [self-concept](/self-concept). A bug if you're studying behavior.
- Agreeableness scores from agreeable people are especially untrustworthy. They agreed with the questions.
- Does not capture dark triad traits without supplementary modules. See: [narcissism](/narcissism)
- Cultural calibration is ongoing. "Assertive" is not a universal
- The model explains variance. It does not explain you. Important distinction
## FAQ
**Is this the same as Myers-Briggs?**
No. [Myers-Briggs](/myers-briggs) uses types. The Big Five uses dimensions. One was built by psychologists using factor analysis. The other was built by a mother-daughter team inspired by [Carl Jung](/carl-jung) and a wartime hiring crisis. Both remain popular. Only one has replication behind it.
**Can I game the test?**
Yes. The results will then describe who you wish you were, which is also useful data.
**Which trait should I improve?**
Conscientiousness. Everyone says Openness but they are wrong.
## Changelog
- `v1.0.0` (1961): Tupes & Christal publish initial factor structure for the US Air Force. Classified for a decade.
- `v2.0.0` (1981): Goldberg names the Big Five. OCEAN enters the vocabulary.
- `v2.5.0` (1992): Costa & McCrae release the NEO-PI-R. Subscale granularity added.
- `v3.0.0` (2000s): Cross-cultural validation. Partial success. Known edge cases filed.
- `v3.1.0` (present): Online quizzes proliferate. Signal-to-noise ratio under review.