Robert McCrae & Paul Costa

Define each of the Big Five personality traits.

• Openness: How curious, imaginative, and open-minded a person is.

• Conscientiousness: How organized and disciplined a person is.

• Extraversion: How outgoing and sociable a person is.

• Agreeableness: How cooperative, empathetic, and kind a person is.

• Neuroticism: How emotionally unstable a person is.

List the basic tenets of trait theory.

• Personality is made up of stable traits.

• Traits are consistent over time.

• Traits differ between individuals.

• Traits influence and predict behaviour across situations.

• Traits can be measured and studied scientifically.

Indicate some of the criticisms of the Five-factor model.

• Describes personality but does not explain why people are the way they are.

• Oversimplifies personality by reducing it to only five traits.

• Does not account for situational influences on behaviour.

• Does not account for personality change over the lifespan.

• Some factors do not replicate across different cultures and languages.

• Factor analysis may mask individual differences.

• Relies heavily on self-report, which can introduce social desirability bias.

List and explain four assumptions the Five-factor theory make about human nature.

1. Knowability: Personality can be studied scientifically.

2. Rationality: People are generally capable of understanding themselves and others.

3. Variability: People differ from one another in important ways.

4. Proactivity: The source of behaviour comes from within the person.

Describe the core and peripheral components of the personality system, according to the Five-factor theory.

Core Components

• Basic Tendencies: Your traits.

• Characteristic Adaptations: How you express those traits.

  • Self-Concept: The most important characteristic adaptation; knowledge, views, and evaluations of the self.

Peripheral Components

• Objective Biography: The actual things you did in real life.

• External Influences: Situational and environmental factors.

Explain why the Five-factor theory has little to say about the biological bases of traits.

FFT acknowledges that traits have biological bases (i.e., genes and brain structures), but it does not specify the precise developmental, neuroanatomical, or psychophysiological mechanisms underlying these traits.

Provide an example of a characteristic adaptation for each basic tendency.

• Openness: You like to try new things.

• Conscientiousness: You like to plan things in advance.

• Extraversion: You like to talk a lot.

• Agreeableness: You love to help others.

• Neuroticism: You tend to replay conversations in your head and worry about what you said.

Provide an example of an objective biography for each basic tendency.

• Openness: Booking a last-minute trip to a country you’ve never been to before.

• Conscientiousness: Getting straight A’s on your report card.

• Extraversion: You introduced yourself to everyone at a party and made a bunch of new friends.

• Agreeableness: You helped take care of a sick family member.

• Neuroticism: You dropped a course after the first midterm despite passing it.

Briefly explain how the personality components interact.

Basic tendencies interact with external influences to cause characteristic adaptations, which then lead to specific behaviours.

Review and describe the 16 postulates of the Five-factor Theory.

Basic Tendencies

• Individuality: People differ from each other in terms of their personality traits.

• Origin: Personality traits are internal but can be affected by external factors.

• Development: Traits are mostly set early in life but can continue to change over the lifespan.

• Structure: Traits are organized hierarchically, from narrow and specific to broad and general.

Characteristic Adaptations

• Adaptation: People evolve thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that help them react to their environment (i.e., adaptations).

• Maladjustment: These adaptations don’t work all the time.

• Plasticity: We are free to change our adaptations as we see fit.

Objective Biography

• Multiple Determination: What a person does is influenced by multiple adaptations at once.

• Life Course: People’s life choices and path tend to reflect their underlying personality traits.

Self-Concept

• Self-Schema: People generally know who they are.

• Selective Perception: People focus on things that align with their traits and self-concept.

External Influences

• Interaction: The environment interacts with personality to shape adaptations and behaviour.

• Apperception: People perceive the same situation differently based on their traits.

• Reciprocity: People influence their environment just as much as the environment influences them.

Dynamic Processes

• Universal Dynamics: All people use the same basic mental processes to function.

• Differential Dynamics: These processes operate differently from person to person, due to differences in personality traits.

Specify which 3 postulates have been challenged by recent literature?

1. Structure: There may be even broader traits than the Big Five.

2. Development: Traits continue to show mean-level changes across the lifespan.

3. Origin: Traits are not purely biological and can be affected by the environment.

Indicate whether there is cross-cultural evidence in favor of the Five-Factor theory.

There is strong cross-cultural evidence in favor of FFT. Lexical studies show that the Big Five traits appear in many cultures. Large-scale observer-rating studies have found factor replications in over 50 cultures. In addition, trait development patterns, sex differences, and self-other agreement are highly similar across cultures.

However, cultures do differ in average trait levels, and these differences are not just because of shared ancestry. Acculturation studies show that people who grow up in a new culture tend to resemble that culture in personality. For example, ethnic Chinese students born in Canada show personality traits more similar to European-Canadian students than to students living in China. This suggests that while the Big Five traits are universal, culture influences how those traits are expressed.

Indicate whether the big five personality traits are a byproduct of evolution.

FFT acknowledges that traits have a biological basis and that humans are products of evolution, so it is possible that the Big Five are a byproduct of evolution. However, there is no compelling evolutionary explanation for the Big Five. Evolutionary theories struggle to explain individual differences in personality traits, identify the adaptive core of each trait, or determine when and how these traits evolved. Overall, evolutionary explanations of the Big Five remain inconclusive.

Indicate what the Five-factor Theory say about individual uniqueness (if anything). 

FFT has little to say about individual uniqueness. Personality profiles are useful for understanding a person’s life patterns, but they are not designed to predict specific behaviours in specific situations. Interpreting individual behaviour is considered a speculative process, because the operation of traits at the individual level is complex and often inconsistent.

Indicate whether personality is simply the subjective experience of an individual (Also see Cloninger, 2019).

No. Personality is not simply the subjective experience of the individual, nor is it just a reflection of how others see us. Instead, personality traits are inferred from consistent patterns of behaviour and experience, using multiple sources of information rather than relying only on self-report or observer reports.

Specify the differences between the terms Big Five, Five-Factor Model, and Five-Factor Theory.

The Big Five are a taxonomy of personality traits discovered through factor analysis.

Five-Factor Model is a descriptive framework for the Big Five.

Five-Factor Theory is an explanatory account of the role of the Big Five factors in personality.

Evaluate the Five-Factor Theory through the lens of a "scientific theory" (considering key principles such as testability, falsifiability, empirical support, predictive power).

FFT is a strong scientific theory in terms of testability and falsifiability, because it allows researchers to generate specific hypotheses, such as relationships between traits and outcomes (e.g., high conscientiousness → academic success). These hypotheses can then be tested and potentially falsified. FFT also has strong empirical support, as the Big Five have been consistently replicated across cultures. In addition, the theory shows good predictive power, as personality traits reliably predict important life outcomes such as career success, relationship stability, and health.