Talk:Big Five personality traits/Archive 2

POV
I have added the POV tag: After reading the first page, I am uncertain whether I am on a commercial Big-Five website or on Wikipedia. 94.220.243.217 (talk) 07:48, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm removing the POV tag because after reviewing the first few paragraphs, I have no idea what the problem is. This POV tag was inserted by an anonymous editor and is so vague as to be otherwise unactionable. (And it's possible that the offending material is gone now.)   If the original poster or anyone else has specific concerns, post them here and add this tag again.Amead (talk) 19:11, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Scientifically Discovered
To this layman, it seems like a sparkly adverbial phrase to place before the idea of a subset of psychological experts... on categorizing some things (here, "personality traits"). If I can make my own generalization, categorizations are things that humans do... not things that are scientifically discovered. Whether my own generalization here is true or not...

Can we get some review of whether to leave it as it is, taking this "theory" as a "scientifically discovered" one? The article doesn't mention any theoretical underpinning... i.e., understanding of what would make a theory scientifically valid. I'm sure there are some philosophies of science (current among scientists/philosophers of science) in which this is not scientifically valid. --68.126.63.194 (talk) 06:31, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I have problem with the opening sentence too. This is obviously a _model_ to classify and examine personalities. It isn't product of scientific discovery, but rather starting point for it. I can't even imagine what kind of scientific discovery would tell us that these dimensions "define" human personality. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.93.142.158 (talk) 03:46, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I think it is completely accurate to describe the Big Five as a "discovery" -- that these five categories classify most adjectives ascribed to personality by personality psychologists, analogous to the "discovery" of the periodic table. Prior to Goldberg's advocacy for the Big Five, there was very little agreement about this: Cattell found five factors, but he spurned them for his 16 "primary" factors; Eysenck had three factors; the NEO originally had three dimensions (N, E and O); etc. As an example of how this is useful, the MBTI typology fits fairly well into the four of the five (EI=Extraversion, SN=Openness, TF=Agreeableness, and JP=Conscientiousness) suggesting that the MBTI left out one dimension (and that the strong "type" orientation of Myers and Briggs and their sycophants is probably silly). As a second example, it's not overstating matters to say that the Big Five has revolutionized industrial psychologists' understanding of the criterion-related validity of personality scales used to screen applicants.Amead (talk) 17:38, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Goldman
Who is this "Goldman" mentioned at the beginning of the article? Is it supposed to be Goldberg? Use a full name. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.5.237.191 (talk) 13:17, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Context needed for heritability
The heritability section is unclear because the percentages are just numbers without context. Is 50% pure chance? If so, what are the 95% confidence intervals for the percentages and are any statistically significant? SDY (talk) 14:34, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The paper is here if you want to check it. . These are just mean heritability ratings from self-report measures based on several twin studies. 95% confidence intervals or t-tests would be meaningless. If a trait has a heritability of 0.5, it means that the phenotypic variation is 50% due to genetic variation

--122.108.139.250 (talk) 03:41, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Conscientiousness and NAch
The article currently contains an assertion, unsupported by citation, that conscientiousness "Conscientiousness includes the factor known as Need for Achievement (NAch)." Depending on whose NAch you're talking about, I think the concept is far broader than Conscientiousness and the research I have examined (I don't have a citation handy) shows fairly small correlations with the big five. Does anyone have any evidence for, or against, this statement? Amead (talk) 02:32, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Acronyms
"common acronyms are OCEAN, NEOAC, or CANOE" - the first two are obvious, but why NEOAC? Does 'neo AC' mean something to psychologists, or is there some reason to put the five traits in that order? --109.154.163.81 (talk) 10:28, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Positive or Neutral?
reading this the implication is that these are five positive traits that are 'good' to have. However, this is not so. They are neither positive or negative. They just 'are'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.81.199.45 (talk) 04:00, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

learning styles info in intro
I removed this from the article lead:

"There is some evidence that personality and motivation are intricately tied with individual differences in learning styles, and it is recommended that educators go beyond the current emphasis on cognition and include these variables in understanding academic behavior."

For three reasons. First, while this may or may not be appropriate info for later in the article, it's out of place in the lead, which otherwise simply defines the model and provides very general information. Second, the reference provided for the claim doesn't seem to support it, as it's simply a (somewhat speculative) article about using the FFM with therapy clients, not in a classroom setting. Third, the "it is recommended that..." phrase is weasel-wordish at best and POV at worst. Zefryl (talk) 17:45, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Faulty sourcing
As one example of sourcing issues here, selected according to whom and by what crieria? (See WP:OR). This section reports in many cases on primary studies, resulting in publishing of original thoughts, not what Wikipedia does. (See for example, a primary study). By what criteria are these "Selected findings" included? By what process are we extracting conclusions from primary studies, unreviewed and unreported by secondary sources? The criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia should be whether they have been subjected to secondary review; Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought. See No original research and RS: "Wikipedia articles should be based mainly on reliable secondary sources. ... Primary sources are often difficult to use appropriately. While they can be both reliable and useful in certain situations, they must be used with caution in order to avoid original research. Material based purely on primary sources should be avoided." Please review the article throughout for same: the merges that need to happen in this suite of articles will be easier if all of the original research and content cited to primary studies is reduced to what has been covered by secondary sources. Writing secondary reviews discussing primary data is something professionals do in journals: Wikipedia doesn't do that, we report what secondary sources say. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 05:46, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Proposed mergers April 2012
It appears that User:MathewTownsend initiated proposal to merge both Big Five personality traits and culture here and Hierarchical Structure of the Big Five here into this article. Discussions were started at Big Five personality traits and culture and at Hierarchical structure of the Big Five.

Both of the proposed merge from articles were created as part of an education program at Wake Forrest University.

This section is being created to provide a central point to address both proposed mergers. Please add general discussion in threaded fashion here and indicate Support or Oppose positions below. SBaker43 (talk) 18:49, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Why only "mid-importance"?
It seems like a joke to me, that this Big Five article has only "mid-importance" in the category of Psychology on Wikipedia, but the MBTI article has "high-importance". MBTI doesn't play any role in academic psychologic research, whereas the Big Five are currently the single most used psychologic tool in academic reasearch. However, if it is about familiarity and popularity with laypersons, its quite vice versa. But this shouldn't be the only marker for the importance of an article.

Wikipedia sasy high importance means "Subject contributes a depth of knowledge to the field of psychology. Most experts in psychology will be familiar with the topic. The subject can be found in most academic studies of psychology, and a significant amount of published research exists for it."

Without a doubt this all applys for the Big Five.PeerD (talk) 16:07, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Thousands of papers have been written about the Big Five. I have changed the importance rating accordingly.--Smcg8374 (talk) 03:28, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Future Research
In the "Future Research" section, it would be helpful to include research about the Big Five as density distributions. Some research (Fleeson, 2001) suggests that the Big Five should not be conceived of as dichotomies (such as extraversion vs introversion) but as continua. Each individual has the capacity to move along each dimension as circumstances (social or temporal) change. He is or she is therefore not simply on one end of each trait dichotomy but is a blend of both, exhibiting some characteristics more often than others.Msbeaulieu (talk) 17:30, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Have you read this article? Do you know the basics of the Big Five? The Big Five ARE continua, thats why they are called factors or traits. They are not dichotomies and this is nowhere claimed in the article. PeerD (talk) 13:52, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Added separately: This "Big Five" Business looks awfully suspicious... it looks in fact very much like what Corporatia would have funded to get it on the map as a central set of concepts by which everything else ought to be defined. It is just the perfect set of axes for indicating a potential corporate prole. MBTI though is a much more established and central set of ideas that don't sound nearly as super-market tabloidish. It is based on Jungian theory, has lots of research behind it, and it has a lot of practical application in career counseling as well. 63.153.116.98 (talk) 21:38, 6 April 2012 (UTC)S. Kildore

You are getting it completely wrong. The Big Five are scientific, they are not about selling anything. MBTI is about selling tests. MBTI is advertised, the Big Five are not, because they were created for the purpose of research, not for the everyday use. Jungian theory is no solid base, because Jungs theories themselves are not based on research, but simply on, well, Jungs ideas. MBTI has many studies, yes, but they are often not vaforable for the system, and professional science completely ignores the MBTI, because it isn't exactly scientific, but household psychology for the layperson. Ask a psychology professor or professional psychologic researcher about the mbti and they will tell you exactly that (outside th US they most probably don't even know about MBTI).In comparsion there are estimated a hundred or more new scientific studies every year which use the Big Five. PeerD (talk) 14:04, 26 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I suspect that what Msbeaulieu is getting at is Fleeson's density distribution approach to traits theory. This theory proposes that although a person may have a definite score on a given trait representing their general level of the trait, their day-to-day behaviour can fluctuate enormously along the trait continuum. E.g. a person might have an extraversion score that represents the average of how extraverted they are in general, but at different times within a given day their behaviour can range from very introverted to very extraverted. Fleeson did not state that traits are dichotomous in any way, so perhaps Msbeaulieu as just trying to illustrate that people are more flexible than would be indicated by their general trait score alone. In regards to the MBTI, I concur that this test has a poor scientific foundation compared to the Big Five, as it is not clear that the MBTI is even a valid measure of Jungian concepts (which are largely not accepted by mainstream psychology anyway).Smcg8374 (talk) 03:25, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Support or Oppose merge from Big Five personality traits and culture
It will be helpful to use the following format for your positions. *Support -  ~ See initial discussion at Talk:Big Five personality traits and culture.
 * Oppose -  ~

I see no mention here of Karl Jung and Psychologische Typen, 1921, or the Meyers Briggs System. Maybe, the Big Five is trying to reinvent a wheel that is already there.

Alanhines1 (talk) 23:01, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
 * There have been research papers correlating the Big Five with the Myers-Briggs types. As I recall, this is discussed in the Myers-Briggs article. There's no reason why this article can't mention this. --Smcg8374 (talk) 23:23, 22 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Support - I support this merge because the cultural context of the Big Five Personality Traits should be discussed. I see the cultural aspect as a category under the big branching article. There is no reason to have a separate article for this since it only discusses the culture. I have also seen other pages for topics which include culture as a category within the main article so merging would also help keep formatting throughout articles the same. BriannaMaxim (talk) 02:46, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Support or Oppose merge from Hierarchical Structure of the Big Five
It will be helpful to use the following format for your positions. *Support -  ~ See initial discussion at Talk:Hierarchical structure of the Big Five.
 * Oppose -  ~

Proposed Edit
Hello everyone, User:Saehee0908 and I are working on editing this article and we wanted to write a summary of the content that we wanted to improve. Please give us feedback or let us know if you wanted to add something in or wanted to discuss the changes. Thank you.

While we were going through the article we noticed that the section labeled 'Validity of the Big Five' doesn't actually give much information and almost has nothing to do with validity as of right now. It is just an overview of the content that doesn't explain how the Five Factor model was validated. We did find the citation needed, as well as two other articles that we will use to flesh out this section a little more. We also noticed that some of the phrasing in the article could be improved. Thank you for your time! BriannaMaxim (talk) 00:26, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

The HEXACO
Hi everyone, I have added "The HEXACO" section under "Criticism". Could anyone can take a look at it and write a comment for me? Thank you! Saehee0908 (talk) 01:53, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
 * At a glance, there seems too much information on HEXACO for this article, and it doesn't fit well where it was placed. --Ronz (talk) 05:03, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I've removed it because it is misplaced here. It simply describes an alternative model and compares it with the Big Five. It may be interesting material for another article, but not for this one. --JorisvS (talk) 10:29, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Copying
The March 4 2013 addition by user Salkkim http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Big_Five_personality_traits&diff=542099967&oldid=542091824 contained almost a word-for-word copy of a copyrighted paper's abstract. For example the Wikipedia sentence "These findings clarify the nature of gender differences in personality and highlight the usefulness of measuring personality at the aspect level." is almost indistinguishable from the original paper's sentence "These findings clarify the nature of gender differences in personality and highlight the utility of measuring personality at the aspect level." http://www.frontiersin.org/Personality_Science_and_Individual_Differences/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00178/abstract I have removed only the part that was clearly a copy.Peter Gulutzan (talk) 15:23, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Big five and Personality Disorders
The third paragraph in this section that begins with, "Dr. Paul T. Costa, Jr., a professor on the faculty at the Department of Psychiatry", and ends with, "Chapter 24 'Treatment of Personality Disorders from the Perspective of the Five-Factor Model'" should be taken out. This section feels more like a propmotion of the book rather than an explanation for why the Big 5 relates to personality disorders. Instead of promotion the book chapters, just discuss the research the book presents.

Secondly, the format of the section that starts out with: "A study entitled, "The Convergent Structure of DSM-5 Personality Trait Facets and Five-Factor Model Trait Domains," published in September 2012 states" should be changed. The whole section about personality disorders are written in paragraph form but this one part suddenly states its findings in bullet point format.

Please give me your opinions on these two issues and then I'll go ahead and make the changes. Thank you! BriannaMaxim (talk) 17:32, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The first paragraph is indeed totally useless and not at all encyclopedic. The second one is part of two paragraphs that use quotations rather excessively and I can't figure out the point that these are intended to convey. I've gone ahead and removed these. --JorisvS (talk) 18:02, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you! BriannaMaxim (talk) 22:25, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Heritability
So I've noticed that we have a 'clean up' request under this section and figured it would be beneficial to discuss how we could fix this section.I think it is a good idea to discuss twin studies as this section currently attempts to do, but I was also thinking about adding how heritability relates cross-culturally. Should that go under this section or maybe a sub section? Thank you for your input! BriannaMaxim (talk) 22:25, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Archive
Hi everyone! This talk page is getting kinda long, and it's hard to find the stuff. I was wondering if when it is appropriate to archive things on this talk page? If you guys want me to create the archive, I will do it! Saehee0908 (talk) 00:22, 11 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Automatic archiving is now set up. 28bytes (talk) 01:17, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Added Citation
I added a much needed citation in the Extraversion section of the article because the paragraph contained a lot of useful facts but it did not have any source to confirm those facts. The citation that I added was from the SA Journal of Industrial Psychology because the source article explained the characteristics of extraversion and introversion that were outlined in the section I edited.Villasa4 (talk) 21:34, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I also added a much need citation in the Agreeableness section of the article because the first paragraph did not have a source to confirm the many facts it was asserting. The source I added is a reputable peer-reviewed journal article from the SA Journal of Industrial Psychology because it contained the information that was covered by the section.Villasa4 (talk) 22:03, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Complete Mess: 3 articles in 1 and none good
This is three entirely different articles smushed into one confused, semi-useless mess. Articles: Big Five personality traits, Big Five personality models, Big Five Inventory. Those are very, very different topics, even if sharing the same knowledge basis. You cannot conflate them. While interdependent, they are wholly distinct as topics. The traits and basic presumptions & conclusions are one topic. Functional personality models built upon those traits comprise another. The pyschological inventory forms a third distinct topic. The relationships between them are as follows: Traits are data driven. The inventory is wholly dependent upon the traits and associated data, but completely independent of models. Models are attempts to interpret the traits as a coherent whole and they have a significant amount of influence over trait research by way of experimental design and query choice. Model proponents tend to interpret inventory data as semi-reliable as compared to "pure" trait research. A number of trait researchers embrace an inventory-based feedback loop, feeling the "basic" science is done and that the collection of further data through the inventory and focus on refinement of the inventory and experimental control is necessary to move the Big Five forward into its inevitably necessary revision after decades of research.

How can this get fixed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.174.140.154 (talk) 00:09, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi! I am currently working on editing this article as a class assignment, could you leave some recommendations of exactly what should be done to this article?Saehee0908 (talk) 21:36, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I think we should distinguish between three types of content. One page (this one) should describe the five traits.  A separate page (perhaps "Hierarchical structure of the Big Five") should talk about the relationship of the five traits to superordinate traits (like alpha and beta) and subordinate facets (like talkativeness, energy).  Finally, there should be separate pages for EACH measure of the five traits (for example, NEO-PI-R).  I'm not sure if the relationships between the five traits and other variables (such as personality disorders) belong in ANY of these articles.  What do the wikipedia guidelines say about that?  Kim Barchard (talk) 22:30, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Reversal
This isn't explained anywhere and is obviously a psychological theory. Don't find a current article on it, presume it's from the late 19th early 20th century, but how a trait manifests as it's opposite needs some comment, ref, whatever. Too big a feature of the article to let go as implicitly clear because it's not. Compensation (psychology) is closest I could find and not the same thing. 76.180.168.166 (talk) 23:09, 28 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Or what in fact is meant by "reversed" in the item lists. If it's just a survey technique, not a psych theory at all, that also needs to be make clear. 76.180.168.166 (talk) 23:22, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't get it.
1. Of the Big Five: are they all supposed to be good traits? It seems like neuroticism would be bad, so given that, shouldn't the Big Five personality traits be a list of DESIRABLE traits, with the last being something like 'anti-neuroticism'?

2. If 'some studies show that neuroticism and extraversion are negatively correllated' doesn't that imply that neuroticism and extraversion are not orthogonal? Wouldn't you want to list traits that are independent of each other?

Seems like a half-baked idea. 71.139.173.203 (talk) 22:03, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
 * 1. The traits are not good or bad, they're just traits. Each end has positive and negative consequences for behavior.
 * 2. Because there may be some common antecedents or origins for these traits (as with most psychological dimensions), full orthogonality is unrealistic. --JorisvS (talk) 08:25, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Misleading ?
The first and second sentence in this article are misleading:

" In psychology, the Big Five personality traits are five broad domains or dimensions of personality that are used to describe human personality. The theory based on the Big Five factors is called the Five Factor Model (FFM).[1] "

My comments:  The Big Five are generally agreed public domain ideas based on analysis of words/language rather than directly psychology; and there are many theories stemming from the Big Five, not just 'one theory' the FFM. This sentence looks like a commercial promotion of one in particular: the referenced FFM.

Simon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.195.185.212 (talk) 04:55, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Suggestions
I have a few suggestions for this article. First, I would consider making a major rearrangement of the sections. The explanations of the five TRAITS are fine, but then the measurements sections should explicitly define the FFM and other models. Then everything that is talking about the FFM or the other model should go in those sections. Other than that I would recommend just having links in the text not saying 'main article:' and give the link again. I also see quite a few quotes throughout the article. Swimmermroe (talk) 19:11, 14 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your suggestions, we are currently working on condensing or completely eliminating the long quotes throughout the article. We are also working on rearranging a few of the sections, I have added a 'Measurement of the Big 5 Personality Traits' that has the measurements sections for the traits and we are linking the FFM and other models to another article altogether to promote more clarity throughout the article. Villasa4 (talk) 05:23, 15 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Sounds good! That will work well I think.Swimmermroe (talk) 16:49, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I suggest to rewrite some parts of the subchapter "Openness to experience". In my opinion there are to many recurrences of the same content. For example that open people have a higher appreciation respectively higher interest in art is written five times! In my opinion once would be enough. 2A02:1205:5010:78C0:ECA5:4D5D:D997:7E83 (talk) 20:08, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Possible statistical bias in design
Since this methodology was based on data, it is possible that some of the rarer personality types as designated by other tests were underrepresented. And like said already in the article, the standard questions especially in a job related situation are presented in a way that could tempt to bias the responses as well - though by taking that into account one might be able to split the questionnaire into two parts such that the bias would have a chance of standing out, but only as long as this was unexpected.

I also think the descriptions (on a particular test site I visited, not from the wiki) seem a bit biased. To illustrate I turn them around, painting the positives in negative and other way around:

1.energetic vs reserved (people who waste time in meetings vs people who get things done) 2.friendly/trusting vs aggressive (sheeple vs independent) 3.methodical vs less careful (inflexible vs adaptive but not infallible) 4.relaxed vs neurotic (happy with status quo vs desiring better) 5.Openness AKA Culture or Intellect (since the tests may be interpreted relative to others responding and the questions are so biased, if you don't answer them in biased manner the computer will spit out a result indicating you are probably of "low intellect") — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.181.252.67 (talk) 04:47, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Rename to Big Five Personality Factors
The article itself makes it clear that these are five factors, five groups of traits, not five single traits, and that professionals call them the Big Five personality factors. Please weigh in before I move this article. Doczilla @SUPERHEROLOGIST 11:21, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I think you have a good point and that 'factors' is a more technically correct term. However, I wonder if lay readers who are not familiar with the concept of factor analysis might find the term less accessible. On the other hand, probably not a big deal as long as the article were to include a clearly worded explanation of the reason for the use of the term factors.Smcg8374 (talk) 00:37, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Dr. Proto's comment on this article
Dr. Proto has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"After

"Moreover, individuals high in neuroticism tend to experience more negative life events,[46][51] but neuroticism also changes in response to positive and negative life experiences"

I would add:

The relationship between income and positive affects seem to be modulated by neuroticims (Boyce and Wood, 2011; Proto and Rustichini 2015)

Proto, Eugenio & Rustichini, Aldo, 2015. "Life satisfaction, income and personality," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 17-32

Boyce, Christopher J. & Wood, Alex M., 2011. "Personality and the marginal utility of income: Personality interacts with increases in household income to determine life satisfaction," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 183-191."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Proto has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:
 * Reference : Eugenio Proto & Aldo Rustichini, 2012. "Life Satisfaction, Household Income and Personality Theory," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 453, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 12:37, 7 June 2016 (UTC)


 * isn't this the definition of "original research"?

Learning Styles
As there is no evidence of learning "styles", proposed personality factors cannot be associated with any of the promised many learning styles. Humans pretty much process information the same way as they have very similar cognitive systems. Cognitive styles, involving differences in how humans think, are different than learning styles and only slightly less questionable. I suggest that whole section be deleted or reduced to a mention that learning styles lack empirical support so "research" into links to personality traits are not valid.Robotczar (talk) 21:58, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Conscientiousness
There is no main section on Conscientiousness. Gypsydoctor (talk) 03:47, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I stuck it back in. It was deleted about a month ago without explanation and that must have gone unnoticed. EricEnfermero (Talk) 04:07, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Openness to experience
I removed parts of this section because the sources do not support the conclusions. The Boileau reference basically states that gay computer-literate males who have higher scores on the "openness" factor are more likely to be accepting of an "other" race partner. The conclusion that "There is a strong connection between liberal ethics and openness..." hardly follows.

In the McRae reference, some 277 people were asked to describe themselves and others using 80 adjective pairs, two of which were "liberal/conservative" and "analytic/unanalytic". There was a slightly significant tendency for raters in the group who opined that another member was conservative to also consider them to be unanalytic. The conclusion that political conservatives are in fact less capable of symbol manipulation hardly follows.

Which is not to say its not true. PAR (talk) 03:46, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

The Openness to Experience portions of the article need reworking.
Granted, a person low in openness (to actions) will try to avoid risks, and as such, be a cautious person. However, it should be understood that this just partially reflects the slightly negative correlation that exists between openness to experience and conscientiousness, for "cautious" is generally descriptive of someone who scores high in the deliberation facet, or also known as the cautiousness facet of conscientiousness (depending on whether it's the Costa and McCrae's NEO PI-R or the IPIP scale). For this reason, and the fact that Openness to Experience comprises 6 facets, namely: Aesthetics, Actions, Values, Ideas, Fantasy & Feelings (and not just actions) it would be best to find another term that would adequately exemplify the average of those who are or tend to be low in openness (e.g. ordinary, usual, down-to-earth, etc.). Unless, of course, that someone can support such lexical claim with sufficiently strong evidence. Now, I might be wrong in my estimation that "Openness to actions" accounts for most of the variance in the negative correlation between cautiousness and openness to experience, but even then, the correlation between openness to experience and deliberation doesn't seem to be strong. And more generally, to be insightful about the source of the problems that I've encountered while reading this, I think there is probably a confusion between Novelty seeking and Openness to Experience, which are nonetheless correlated.

I would like to add as well that a person high in openness to experience can be data-driven, after all mystics and skeptics are prone to be more open to new experiences than the rest...... One more thing, the Sample items for Openness to Experience are disproportionately skewed towards the intellect aspect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.217.168.167 (talk) 17:20, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Five factors
Please review the following paragraph from section:

"No Strong Preferences (all five dimensions): are adaptable, moderate and reasonable personalities, but can be perceived as unprincipled, inscrutable and calculating.[4]"

English is not my mother tongue, anyway I think it needs clarification and it also contains grammatical and syntactic issues:

- I think there's wrong use of colon punctuation (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Colons.htm)

- Why is "No Strong Preferences" capitalized? What is it?

- What is the meaning of whole paragraph? If I understand well, it could be rephrased as "People who don't exhibit clear tendency towards specific characteristics chosen from above-mentioned related pairs in all five dimensions are [considered] adaptable, moderate and reasonable personalities, but can be perceived as unprincipled, inscrutable and calculating.[4]".

I would like to read what you think. As I stated before I need help with language before considering editing, especially where I'm not so accustomed to. Unfortunately, psychology is one of these fields.

Fabio Maria De Francesco (talk) 12:45, 10 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Hello . I believe that was written to be a bulleted list item (hence the capitalization, the colon, and the brevity), but for some reason it was left unbulleted by itself. I agree that the colon use is not correct (I'd do away with the "are" if it were part of a bulleted list that established this format). I think your interpretation is correct (I might add a "the" before "above-mentioned" and an "a" before "clear tendency", but the meaning is clear). Thank you for pointing that out! Me, Myself &#38; I (☮) (talk) 17:48, 10 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Hello Me, Myself &#38; I (☮). Thank you for your reply. I'm going to make the proposed changes and add the missing articles you pointed out to me. I just want to wait till tomorrow in case some more indications would come. Fabio Maria De Francesco (talk) 18:41, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Openness to experience and perseverance
The absence of a reference made me skeptical about this statement : "Conversely, those with low openness seek to gain fulfillment through perseverance ." How can you explain this ? One can seek creativity, or being inventive without perseverance ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.158.72.212 (talk) 18:31, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't buy the Big Five approach, but what I think they are saying is "artists get satisfaction from splashing paint; accountants get satisfaction from making the numbers add up; inventors get satisfaction from flashes of brilliance; craftsmen get satisfaction from building and repairing" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.56.36.162 (talk) 22:55, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

clarify please
" Raymond Cattell retained the adjectives, and eliminated synonyms to reduce the total to 171.[9] He constructed a self-report instrument for the clusters of personality traits he found from the adjectives, which he called the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire. Based on a subset of only 20 of the 36 dimensions that Cattell had originally discovered,"

i just get confused over this. he reduced the number to 171, then further reduced that to 16. then from where originate the 36 in the next sentence to be reduced to 20? i am missing here the link between the earlier mentioned 16 and the later 36.176.63.176.112 (talk) 21:13, 17 March 2017 (UTC).


 * and besides, the story of how a rather low number (5 traits) is supposed to be based on 4500 sounds like a rather ridiculous attempt to enhance the credibility of the resulting 5-trait system. with stress on riduculous. i cant help the feeling that this story doesnt really fit the encyclopedical style. 176.63.176.112 (talk) 21:21, 17 March 2017 (UTC).

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"Five Fold Reduction"?
"They reduced the lists of these traits (arbitrarily) by 5–10 fold and then used factor analysis to group the remaining traits (using data mostly based upon people's estimations, in self-report questionnaire and peer ratings) in order to find the underlying factors of personality.[7][8][9][10][11]" I'm sorry, you can't reduce anything by more than 100%. Once you've taken it away once it's all gone. Would somebody fix this please? I assume they mean "eighty or ninety percent," or something of the sort. As it stands, it's just plain stupid. David Lloyd-Jones (talk) 08:05, 3 August 2017 (UTC)


 * 5-10 fold means by a factor of 5-10, not by 500%-1,000%. i.e. it means divide by 5-10.  It makes sense to use the word "fold" because we have already used factor to mean something else.  Yaris678 (talk) 14:14, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

lead too big?
I don't feel that the five factors should be explained in detail in the lead, it comes across as overwhelming. Should the detailed explanation of the five factors in the lead be removed and be given its own section (which it already seems to have)?--Megaman en m (talk) 16:38, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Extraversion
Since introversion-extraversion probably accounts for most variance of the Big Five, should this be listed first? Or should the traits be listed in alphabetical order, in which case, agreeableness should come first? Vorbee (talk) 17:22, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

This section comes across as mhm very anti-introversion. someone more experienced with edits please apply the more balanced view from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversion to this section... especially saying extroverts are "marked by pronounced engagement with the external world," is insulting introverts, since we have just as much of that as long as it's not a social situation. The most balanced, non-insulting view is that extroverts gain energy in social situations, whereas introverts lose energy and can get exhausted in such situations. Depending on conscientiousness, introverts can be quite the workaholics in fields such as engineering and computer science where they don't depend on human interactions. In wiki's en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversion section it says quite nicely that "The archetypal artist, writer, sculptor, scientist, engineer, composer, and inventor are all highly introverted." Please add that to this section so it doesn't read like introverts are all useless depressives.

also, the previous comment about extroversion/introversion "probably" accounting for the most variance or alphabetized, the reason for the order is to go along with the acronym OCEAN. One could choose CANOE instead, since conscientiousness (feeling bad when one is not working) is the only trait of the big 5 with any correlation to achievement. e.g.: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1317&context=ij-sotl — Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.112.67.0 (talk) 13:25, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

reason for undo of post of original research
I have undone this edit, for the following reasons.

The edit recounted primary original research that was freshly published in a research journal, the edit having been made by the researcher. Such an edit violates Wikipedia policy WP:OR in several ways. Wikipedia requires that original research be posted as a report from a reliable source, such as a respected textbook. Secondly, posting of research by the researcher himself involves conflict of interest or promotion, which are prohibited by Wikipedia policy.

This is not to say that I am criticising the research, nor that I think it should not eventually find its way into a Wikipedia post. It is a matter of how the research should find its way there. It may be observed that if the original researcher were to arrange for someone else to post the research, such would count as meat puppetry, and be a reprehensible action against Wikipedia conduct policy, and would likely call for sanction.

I will now, for the sake of clarity, give my personal opinion on the research: I think it is probably suitable as material, eventually, by proper process, with properly qualified expression, to find its way into Wikipedia. I am, however, obviously, not the kind of reliable source to post such material.Chjoaygame (talk) 21:03, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Extraversion or extroversion?
Hi! I noticed in the bullet point list of traits and a little bit later in the last line of the first paragraph there are different ways of writing this word being used. Should we edit this and make the spelling consistent?

(Newbie here, so not sure if I am doing this right :D ) Vlaeko (talk) 15:34, 4 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree that the spelling of extraversion/extroversion should be consistent in the article. Feel free to make that edit! Some1 (talk) 22:11, 4 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I made the edit. Thanks a lot for your input! Should we clear this part of the talk page now? Vlaeko (talk) 13:54, 8 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Weird, I didn't get your ping, but at least I was watching this page. And no, we usually leave the talk page discussions as it is (even if the discussions are resolved). Some1 (talk) 15:53, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Position of footnote reference
"Researchers[5] have found conscientiousness, extroversion, openness to experience, and neuroticism to be relatively stable from childhood through adulthood." Should the [5] be moved to the end of the line? I don't know if the reference pertains to the whole sentence, but the current position seems odd. Jtbox (talk) 07:04, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, and done. Some1 (talk) 15:56, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Gender differences
The section on gender differences is biologically essentialist – citing only "evolutionary pressures" and failing to mention social factors. Either any speculation on reasons for gender differences should be cut, or feminist perspectives should be included alongside biologically essentialist theories. Also, the claim that "males require more resources than females in order to reach their full developmental potential" is controversial and should be cut.
 * Apparently 'biologically essentialist' has a meaning, though I didn't know it. So I include a wiki-link here in case others may be unfamiliar with the term also. UnderEducatedGeezer (talk) 05:15, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what is meant here, or rather I don't understand why this would be considered biologically essentialist. If anything the article seems to point out traits only seem 50% heritable. Generally research on the big five is done with surveys, these surveys usually ask participants to provide their gender (usually male, female, other, rather not say, etc.) researchers are able to split participants into these groups and do statistical analysis between groups. I doubt the experiments cited go so far as to suggest that inherently if you are male or female you will definitely be more or less. Observations in gender differences, if statistically significant at all (they arent very large in the first place), are largely in comparing statistical averages. I will say it seems sociocultural factors are at play as there has been some research on gender differences in personality across cultures. --Dabrams13 (talk) 17:47, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * In academia there is no such thing as a "feminist perspective" because "feminism" is a metaphysical philosophy and not a line of research with the two elements of a quantifiable theory and verifiable conclusions. I am aware that there are "feminist" peer-reviewed journals, however these masquerade as science rather than really being science; science equals having these two elements.

Splitting Up the Big Five
I've seen a few papers about splitting up the individual factors of the big five. None of these I'd consider a defacto way in which the big five are split up, or certainly not from what I've seen in my textbooks. I am seeing a few papers on google scholar about "Orderliness" "Industriousness" "Politeness" etc, anyone know if this is a standard most personality researchers stand by? --Dabrams13 (talk) 17:48, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Changing zeitgeist?
"During the late 1960s to 1970s, the changing zeitgeist made publication of personality research difficult."

What changing zeitgeist would this be? I've read many such books published in this period (examples on request). A reference would be a fine thing.

Paul Magnussen (talk) 20:56, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Suggest removing: "Family life and upbringing will affect these traits."
The Blank Slate makes a pretty strong argument in the chapter called "Children" that the family a person grows up in does not actually affect these personality traits significantly.

While "about half of the variation between individuals results from their genetic inheritance and half from their environment" is true, behavioral geneticists have determined that most or all of this environment is a person's unique environment, not the environment they share with their siblings.

Maybe this sentence in the article could be revised, but I think removing it is a pretty simple fix since the rest of the paragraph seems to accurately summarize the topic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Evan R. Murphy (talk • contribs) 21:31, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

By Whom?
This article, in its very first paragraph, refers to how empirical research has establish the five traits by factor analysis, and has a note saying "By whom?" Costa and McCrae have done research suggesting the five factors, so the first paragraph could mention them. Vorbee (talk) 20:09, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Good Idea! I look into that. I think it could use some more sources in the introduction — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brandilandy (talk • contribs) 03:32, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Sample items
A recent edit brought my attention to the sample items. All items source ipip.ori.org, but its not clear, which dataset is used and some questions, do not even exist in any dataset on ipip.ori.org. Items also lack continuity across the traits (count, having reversed etc.).

In my opinion the sample items should not be Wikipedians summarization of the traits or arbitrary handpicking and reformulation, but present some actual questions in a easily identifiable dataset used in the psychometric literature.

Can someone provide me with an explanation or a counter argument? Otherwise my suggestion would be to find a specific dataset, fx this on ipip.ori.org, and cite the 10-item scale for each trait. Anton.t.gregersen (talk) 11:32, 13 August 2021 (UTC)


 * I chose to be bold. Sample items are now following the 50-item IPIP representation of the Goldberg (1992) markers as listed here. Anton.t.gregersen (talk) 19:14, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Childhood development
I thought it was interesting in the article how there was a breakdown of specific behaviors children show that are linked to extraversion. I wondered why extroversion was the only one with a breakdown of childhood behaviors? Is it too hard to show the other 4 personality traits in the behavior of children? 06:36, 20 January 2022 (UTC)06:36, 20 January 2022 (UTC)06:36, 20 January 2022 (UTC)~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nrpm (talk • contribs)

Scoring Section?
Does this article need a section on scoring? I looked at the List of U.S. states ranked per five-factor model personality trait article to see an example of this in use and was unable to reliably interpret the scores. I just saw a list of numbers that ranged from (possibly) -5 to (possibly again) +5.

How are these numbers to be interpreted? Would +5? in Openness mean that they will hide nothing, or could it mean that they will not even tell you the colour of grass? Is zero a mean, but a mean of what? Is the scale linear? etc. etc.. etc...?

So I checked back to this article for enlightenment and found nothing to help me on this. It seems to me that an article on the 'Big Five personality traits' should include such a section? So could someone add a section on how these traits are scored. I ask because, for obvious reasons, I am unable to. kimdino (talk) 19:11, 22 April 2022 (UTC)