Big Five Model Assessment

Introduction

The Big Five model of personality traits derives its strength from two lines of research, the psycholexical and the factoranalytic tradition, from which the interchangeably used names Big Five model and Five Factor model respectively originate. The two traditions have produced remarkably similar five-factor structures that mark a point of no return for personality psychology. An extensive review of history and theory with respect to the Big Five can be found in De Raad (2000).

The Big Five factors have been endorsed with a distinctive status, derived from the extensive, omnibus-character of the underlying psycholexical approach, and based on two characteristics, namely its exhaustiveness in capturing [Page 139]the semantics of personality and its recourse to ordinary language. Though both these characteristics may be improved upon, in ...