Personality Measures and the Big 5
Although different personality theorists have used different terms to describe the important (non-cognitive) dimensions of personality, it is possible to organize these dimensions in terms of 5 broad dimensions of personality. A useful review of the development of the Big 5 is available from Frank Fujita.. The following table has been adapted from Oliver John's excellent review in Pervin's Handbook of Personality.
| Theorist/ Inventory | I Surgency |
II Agreeableness |
III Conscientiousness |
IV Emotional Stability |
V Intellect/ Openness to Experience | |
| Bales | Dominant- Initiative | Social- Emotional Orientation | Task Orientation | |||
| Block | Low Ego Control | High Ego Control | Ego Resiliency | |||
| Buss & Plomin EASI | Activity Sociability | Impulsivity (r) | Emotionality (r) | |||
| Cattell 16PF | Exvia (vs. Invia) | Pathemia (vs. Cortertia) | Super Ego Strength | Adjustment vs. Anxiety | Independence vs. Subduedness | |
| Comrey CPS | Extraversion and Activity | Femininity | Orderliness and Social Conformity | Emotional Stability | Rebelliousness | |
| Costa & McCrae NEO-PI | Extraversion | Agreeableness | Conscientiousness | Neuroticsm (r) | Openness | |
| Eysenck EPQ | Extraversion | Psychoticism (r) | Neuroticism (r) | |||
| Goldberg FFI | Extraversion | Agreeableness | Conscientiousness | Emotional Stability | Openness | |
| Gough CPI Factors | Extraversion | Consensuality | Control | Flexibility | ||
| Guilford | Social Activity | Paranoid Disposition (r) | Thinking Introversion | Emotional Stability | ||
| Hogan HPI | Ambition and Sociability | Likeability | Prudence | Adjustment | Intellectance | |
| Jackson PRF | Outgoing, Social Leadership | Self Protective Orientation (r) | Work Orientation | Dependence (r) | Aesthetic- Intellectual | |
| Myers-Briggs | Extraversion vs. Introversion | Feeling vs. Thinking | Judging vs. Perception | Intuition vs. Sensing | ||
| Tellegen MPQ | Positive Emotionality | Constraint | Negative Emotionality | Absorption | ||
| Wiggins IAS | Power/ Dominance | Love/ Warmth | ||||
| Zuckerman | Extraversion | Psychoticism/ Impulsivity/ Sensation Seeking (r) | Neuroticism (r) | P-Imp-SS | ||
For further reading, see:
Eysenck, HJ. (1991). Dimensions of personality: 16: 5 or 3? criteria for a taxonomic paradigm. Personality and Individual Differences, 12, 773-90.
Goldberg, LR. (1992). The development of markers for the big-five factor structure. Psychol. Assessment, 4, 26-42.
Goldberg, LR (1993a). The structure of phenotypic personality traits. Am. Psychol., 48, 26-34.
Goldberg, LR. (1993b). The structure of personality traits: vertical and horizontal aspects. In DC Funder, RD Parke, C Tomlinson-Keasey, & K Widaman (Eds.), Studying lives through time: personality and development (pp. 169-88). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
John, OP. (1990). The "Big Five" factor taxonomy: Dimensions of personality in the natural language and in questionnaires. In LA Pervin (Ed.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research . New York: Guilford.
Revelle, W. (1995). Personality Processes, Annual Review of Psychology.
Zuckerman, M. (1991). Psychobiology of personality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zuckerman, M. (1994). Impulsive unsocialized sensation seeking: The biological foundations of a basic dimension of personality. In JE Bates & TD Wachs (Eds.), Temperament: Individual differences at the interface of biology and behavior (pp. 219-55). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
For a more complete list of references to the "Big 5" or the "Five Factor Model", see the section on taxonomies in John Johnson's syllabus for Personality Theory . A series of challengesto trait theory in general have appeared over the years as have specific critiques and defenses of the Five Factor model have appeared in Psychological Bulletin and elsewhere.
Prepared as part of The Personality Project