THE BIG FIVE David Normansell

Overview Intro to the Big Five History & Development Dimensions Examples of Tests Psychometric Properties Personality Studies Job Performance Counterproductive Behaviors Leadership

What are the “Big Five”? Personality The “Big Five” Enduring characteristics of a particular individual The “Big Five” Broad dimensions used to categorize and describe personality. Each dimension consists of a range of more specific traits. Synonymous: Five-Factor Model (FFM) Developed by Costa & McCrae (1988)

History of the Big Five The study of personality is derived from the Lexical hypothesis. Important human personality dimensions will be represented in every language. The more important the attribute, the more synonyms it will acquire. E.g., for dominance: bossy, assertive, powerful, pushy, forceful, domineering, etc. Cattell introduced the lexical hypothesis, that human language has recorded all aspect of human behavior that matter. Problem: some important behaviors may be discarded because they lack synonyms

History of the Big Five Allport and Odbert: Cattell: Eysenck: Often credited as being the first to use the lexical approach to define personality. Went through an English-language dictionary - obtained 17000 traits which were then reduced to about 4500 words that described specific personality traits. Cattell: Reduced 4,000 terms to about 171 clusters by a rating scheme. Used factor analysis to identify “bipolar pairs” of traits that were closely related to one another Eventually reduced his list to 16 key personality factors. Eysenck: Three dimensions Introversion-extroversion Neuroticism-emotional Psychoticism

History of Big Five Tupes & Christal Goldberg Air Force Researchers Factor analysis using Cattell’s traits and suggested that only 5 traits were predominant Goldberg Replicated Cattell’s methods 5 factors: Surgency, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Culture

History of Big Five Costa & McCrae Somewhat intuitively consolidated traits Factor Analysis Discovered Extroversion, Neuroticism, and Openness. Added Agreeableness and Conscientiousness to fit with the 5 factors of Goldberg

Extraversion High Pole Low Pole Active Assertive Seek Stimulation Outgoing Talkative Energetic Low Pole Reserved Quiet Shy Unexpressive Characterized by positive emotions, surgency, and the tendency to seek out stimulation and the company of others. More resistant to distraction, cognitive interference, and perform better on tasks requiring divided attention. On the positive side, this trait is associated with being sociable. On the negative side this trait is associated with being Impulsive

Neuroticism High Pole Low Pole Anxious Self-pitying Tense Touchy Worrying Low Pole Calm Stable Relaxed Positive Often when used in the workplace, renamed “Emotional Stability” Poles are reversed The tendency to experience negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, or depression Individuals high on Neuroticism have more bad feelings and psychological distress because… Generate more stressful situations by getting into arguments, etc. React more strongly negatively to stressful events. Direct bad feelings associated with Neuroticism even without stressors. Individuals have more psychosomatic symptoms, irritation, anger, and nervousness.

Openness to experience High Pole Artistic Curious Imaginative Insightful Original Cultured Low Pole Traditional Simple Routine A general appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, curiosity, and variety of experience. Alternately labeled culture, intelligence, openness. High in very creative people. Correlated with… Active intelligence Education # of career changes Aesthetic interests and sensitivity Intellectual absorption Broad values Which best fits depends in part on whether factors are derived lexically like (intelligence) or via questionnaire like (openness). Active intelligence is just liking to think. With education the causal direction is unclear. Intellectual absorption is being fully engaged in what one is doing. The aesthetic and feeling components may lead to greater susceptibility to depression. If depressed, individuals high on openness to experience are more likely to cope through intellectualization.

Agreeableness High Pole Low Pole Appreciative Forgiving Generous Kind Trusting Low Pole Cold Aggressive Uncaring Tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others. Includes altruism, affection, humaneness, sincerity Most related to good parenting in mothers. High agreeableness and low neuroticism make the best mothers

Conscientiousness High Pole Low Pole Efficient Organized Reliable Attentive to detail Low Pole Lazy Careless Frivolous Tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement. Most related to success across jobs and situations. College level individuals high in Conscientiousness predicts job success years in the future Related to good scores on integrity tests

Personality Tests NEO Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) (Costa & McCrey , 1988) NEI-PI-R – (Costa & McCrea, 1992) Revised NEO personality inventory Big Five Inventory (BFI) (John & Srivastava, 1999) Trait Descriptive Adjectives TDI (Goldberg, 1992)

Psychometric Properties John and Srivastava (1991): Looked at the validity and reliability of three commonly used instruments: NEO-FFI TDA BFI NEO-FFI is the NEO Five Factor Inventory and it is a shorter version than the original NEO instrument. It also shows the most validity for the Big 5 dimensions of the instruments available. TDA is Trait Descriptive Adjectives. It consists of 100-items and is the most commonly used measure consisting of single adjectives. BFI is the Big 5 Inventory. It measures core features of the Big 5 with short phrases rather than one word traits and is frequently used in research settings because the items provide more context than one word items.

Reliability This table shows the reliabilities of the three instruments for measuring the Big 5. Of the 3, The TDA scales showed the highest reliability. The dimensions with the highest reliability were Extroversion, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism.

Validity This slide shows the convergent and discriminant validities across the 3 instruments. From these validities, the mean convergent validity across all of the instruments was .75, which suggests a good amount of equivalence between the instruments. And the two that showed the highest convergence were the BFI and the TDA. For the discriminant validities, none for the three instruments was much higher than .2, and correlations between dimensions were not high either, which did not support theories that specific dimensions are related, such as agreeableness and conscientiousness. Altogether these findings show that the Big Five are fairly independent dimensions.

Important Personality Studies Robins, et al. (2001) A longitudinal study of personality change in young adulthood. College Students NEO-FFI Agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness increased. Extroversion: no change Neuroticism: decreased Problems with the study? NEO-FFI: NEO-Five Factor inventory Problems: changes due to college, simple maturation, or historical cohort

Personality and Job Performance Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991) Conscientiousness: consistent relation with all job performance criteria (i.e., turnover or tenure) and occupational group (i.e., police) Extroversion: predicted success in management and sales Openness and extroversion predicted training proficiency Agreeableness and Neuroticism: some evidence to suggest that they contribute to performance in group settings.

Personality and Counterproductive Behaviors Salgado, J. F. (2002) conducted a meta-analysis of studies investigating the relationship of the big five to counterproductive work behaviors Results Conscientiousness: predicted deviant behaviors and turnover Emotional Stability (N) and Conscientiousness were the strongest predictors of turnover

Personality and Leadership Judge et al. (2002) studied the relationship between the Big 5 leadership emergence and leadership success Extroversion and Conscientiousness predicted leader emergence Judge & Bono (2000): Transformational Leadership TL is the ability to inspire followers with a vision beyond their own self interest. Idealized influence Charisma Inspirational motivation Articulation of vision Agreeableness, extroversion, and openness all correlated with Transformational Leadership. Leadership emergence: selected or viewed as a leader by others Leadership success: team, group effectiveness