Personality/Individual Differences

Five-Factor Model

Although personality psychologists do not agree upon a single definition of personality, the most commonly used definitions consider the relatively permanent traits and characteristics that give consistency to an individual's behavior. Traits refer to individual factors that consistently influence behavior across time and situations. Even though elaborate theories and classifications were developed and used by researchers suggesting the structure and implications of personality traits, including Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory and Alfred Adler's individual psychology, no overarching theory or classification system was consistently used by personality researchers until the development of the five-factor model.

In the 1980s, researchers factor analyzed almost every major personality inventory available, including the commonly used Myers-Briggs Indicator and the Eysenck Personality Inventory. The five-factor model, developed through the factor analyses being conducted, attempted to answer the two burning questions at that time. First, with so many personality inventories being used, each with its own scale, how was a common language to emerge for personality researchers to use? With researchers using different inventories, with different measures, and each having its own unique labels and terms, making comparisons between studies was incredibly difficult. The five-factor model also provided an answer to another pressing question: What is the structure of personality? Researchers were arguing about the number of factors involved in the structure of personality. Was personality best understood by 3, 5, or even 16 factors? The development of the five-factor model answered both of these questions by providing a common framework for researchers to discuss empirical findings and providing a theory of the structure of personality.

Although the idea of personality consisting of five factors was originally suggested by Lewis Goldberg in the late 1970s, in response to the consistent findings from early factor analyses, the publication of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory by Paul T. Costa Jr. and Robert R. McCrae in 1985 provided the first common taxonomy, a scientific technique for classification, for a five-factor model. Research using the five-factor model, and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, has found permanence in the five factors with age. That is, people tend to maintain their personality structure throughout their lives. Additionally, cross-cultural research has found the five factors across a variety of cultures. The five factors in this model are extra-version, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and neuroticism.

...