The Big Five Personality Dimensions

Lecture 6

Personality Theories - Trait versus Type

personality type = psychological classif. of different people e.g. introverts vs extroverts

personality trait = psychological classif. of different levels e.g. introversion + extroversion continuum; many people in middle.

assumes personality relatively stable over time/across situations.

Lexical Hypothesis (Francis Galton)

important individual differences become encoded as single terms. number of words for each trait = importance of trait.

term to describe personality trait will be in any/all languages.

Eysenck’s PEN Model

measure psychoticism-normality, extroversion-introversion, neuroticism-emotional stability dimensions on a continuum.

Big Five Factors (Costa & McCrae, 1992)

extroversion = gregarious, assertive, positive

neuroticism = anxiety, depression, hostility

agreeableness = trustful, honest, altruistic

conscientiousness = competent, disciplined, considerate

openness = open to feelings, novel actions, ideas

Social Correlates of Openness

Colbert et al. (2013) - trait included as leadership quality

Berry & Hansen (1996) - associated w/ disclosure in social interactions

Brandt et al. (2015) - more tolerant of diverse views. intolerant if not in line with own views.

Social Correlates of Conscientiousness

Tang et al. (2018) - associated with low Facebook addiction

Bogg & Roberts (2013) - evidence supports integration of conscientiousness into public health and medical research. optimal traits may foster better health

Social Correlates of Extroversion

Eisenkraft & Eifenbein (2010) - 48 workgroups - each group 4-5 individuals. complete big five measure. high extraversion/low agreeableness = more likely to elicit neg. emotions in colleagues.

Social Correlates of Agreeableness

Witt et al. (2002) - agreeableness associated with improved job performance via improved cooperation.

Liu et al. (2018) - anger promotes neg. interpersonal relationships. moderated by agreeableness.

Social Correlates of Neuroticism

Mandelli et al. (2014) - neuroticism (in stress) correlated with depressive severity - independent from current depressive state.

Denissen & Penke (2008) - neurotic individuals react with heightened sensitivity to threatening social cues.

Big Five - Advantages

• same factor structure across diff. languages, racial groups, ages (Costa & McCrae)

• has predictive validity e.g. conscientiousness predicts fidelity/faithfulness in relationships

atheroetical approach + traits derived from data = minimises researcher bias

Big Five - Critique

lack of explanatory power - cannot explain why structure of personality traits falls into five clusters.

does not include evaluative traits e.g. moral/immoral → HEXACO model adds honesty-humility to Big Five.

• Boyle et al. (1995) - found questionable methodological decisions e.g not testing simple structure of factor analytic solutions/weighting self-report data more heavily.

• Cattell et al. (2002) - evidence changes to personality occur across lifespan; is not constant

Big Five/Personality Critique - Walter Mischel

personality traits not stable across situations - behaviour product of situation, not personality.

personality one variable among many that influence behaviour - danger in relying too heavily on personality measures.

Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1987)

stress = interplay between individual and environment. 

primary appraisal (significance) → secondary appraisal (controllability) → coping efforts:

• problem-focused = managing stressful encounter

• emotion-focused = regulating emotional responses to stressful encounter

Emotion Regulation

person’s ability to manage emotions/respond to emotional experience.

context/experience may influence emotional regulation strategy.

Process Model of Emotion Regulation (Gross & Thompson, 2007)

• situation selection = act to make emotional experience more/less likely

• situation modification = problem-focused coping

• attentional deployment focus = redirect attention within situation

• reappraisal = change thought process to modify emotional impact

• response modulation e.g. suppression = down-regulating aspects of emotion

Personality Traits and Emotional Intelligence (Hughes et al., 2020)

• high neuroticism → sensitive to neg. affect, seek to reduce immediately.

• high agreeableness → heightened sensitivity to others’ emotions

• conscientiousness correlated with problem-solving

• openness correlated with thought-based strategies e.g. reappraisal