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 | ||
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.