The Big Five Personality Test

The Big Five is the most widely accepted theory in personality psychology, and is used as the basis of the vast majority of scientific research on personality. The Big Five describes personality traits along five common dimensions: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. In the Big Five system, we each have varying levels of these key personality factors that impact our thoughts, decisions and behavior.

Openness describes a person's tendency to think abstractly. Those who are high in Openness tend to be creative, adventurous and intellectual. They enjoy playing with ideas and discovering novel experiences. Those who are low in Openness tend to be practical, traditional and focused on the concrete. They tend to avoid the unknown and follow traditional ways.

Conscientiousness describes a person's level of goal orientation and persistence. Those who are high in Conscientiousness are organized and determined, and are able to forgo immediate gratification for the sake of long-term achievement. Those who are low in this trait are impulsive and easily sidetracked.

Extraversion describes a person’s inclination to seek stimulation from the outside world, especially in the form of attention from other people. Extraverts engage actively with others to earn friendship, admiration, power, status, excitement and romance. Introverts, on the other hand, conserve their energy and do not work as hard to earn these social rewards.

Agreeableness describes the extent to which a person prioritizes the needs of others over their own needs. People who are high in Agreeableness experience a great deal of empathy and tend to get pleasure out of serving and taking care of others. People who are low in Agreeableness tend to experience less empathy and put their own concerns ahead of others.

Neuroticism describes a person's tendency to respond to stressors with negative emotions, including fear, sadness, anxiety, guilt, and shame. This trait can be thought of as an alarm system. People experience negative emotions as a sign that something is wrong in the world. Fear is a response to danger, guilt a response to having done something wrong. However, not everyone has the same reaction to a given situation. High Neuroticism scorers are more likely to react to a situation with strong negative emotions. Low Neuroticism scorers are more likely to brush off their misfortune and move on.

The Big Five is sometimes called the OCEAN model of personality, which is an acronym for the five dimensions of personality described within the theory.

The Big Five personality test measures your individual levels of five key traits which have been determined by psychologists to compose the fundamental makeup of your personality. When you take a Big Five test, you will receive scores for five dimensions of personality:

• Openness - How open you are to new ideas and experiences
• Conscientiousness - How goal-directed, persistent, and organized you are
• Extraversion - How much you are energized by the outside world
• Agreeableness - How much you puts others' interests and needs ahead of your own
• Neuroticism - How sensitive you are to stress and negative emotional triggers

Each of the Big Five personality traits is considered to drive a significant aspect of cognition (how we think) and behavior (how we act). Each trait is completely distinct and independent of the other four traits; for instance, a highly Extraverted person is no more or less likely to be highly Conscientious as well.

Each of the Big Five personality traits is measured along a spectrum, so that one can be high, medium, or low in that particular trait. This makes the Big Five model distinct from many pop psychology systems that classify people in terms of personality "types." In a Big Five test, rather than being sorted into types, people are described in terms of how they compare with the average across each of the five personality traits.