What This Test Measures
The Big Five, also called the five-factor model or OCEAN, is the personality model most used in academic psychology. It describes personality with five broad traits, each on a continuous scale.
| Trait | High scorers tend to be | Low scorers tend to be |
|---|---|---|
| Openness to experience | Curious, imaginative, open to new ideas | Practical, conventional, prefer the familiar |
| Conscientiousness | Organised, disciplined, dependable | Spontaneous, flexible, less structured |
| Extraversion | Sociable, energetic, talkative | Reserved, quiet, enjoy solitude |
| Agreeableness | Warm, trusting, cooperative | Direct, sceptical, competitive |
| Neuroticism | Emotionally sensitive, prone to worry | Calm, stable, resilient |
Unlike type tests, the Big Five does not put you in a box. Everyone has a score on every trait, and most people are near the middle on most of them. For why researchers prefer scales to categories, see do personality types exist?
How The Test Works And How It Is Scored
You rate 50 short statements, ten for each trait, on how accurately they describe you, from “Very inaccurate” to “Very accurate”. About half are reversed: agreeing with “Don’t talk a lot” lowers your Extraversion score.
Each answer is worth 0 to 4 points. Each trait is shown as a percentage of the maximum, with a reading for high, average or low:
| Score on a trait | Reading |
|---|---|
| 65% and above | High |
| 36% to 64% | Average |
| 35% and below | Low |
About these questions: unlike our other tests, this one uses an established research instrument: the 50-item IPIP representation of Goldberg’s Big-Five factor markers. The items are in the public domain and are used here word for word, as researchers intended. Credit: International Personality Item Pool (ipip.ori.org), Lewis R. Goldberg.
Our scores are percentages of the maximum, not percentiles compared with a population sample. They show where you sit on each scale, not how you rank against other people.
The Model Behind It
The Big Five grew out of the “lexical hypothesis”: the idea that the most important personality differences become words in everyday language. In the 1930s, Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert listed thousands of English personality words. Over the following decades, researchers including Raymond Cattell, Ernest Tupes, Raymond Christal, Warren Norman, Lewis Goldberg, Paul Costa and Robert McCrae used statistics to find that these words cluster into five broad factors.
In 1996, Goldberg launched the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP), a free, public-domain collection of personality items, so that researchers anywhere could measure the Big Five without paying for commercial tests. The 50 items used here are among the most widely used IPIP scales.
What The Research Says
The Big Five is the most thoroughly researched personality model:
- It appears across cultures, in studies from dozens of countries and languages.
- It is fairly stable in adulthood, though traits change slowly. On average, people become more conscientious and agreeable and less neurotic with age.
- It predicts real outcomes. Conscientiousness predicts job performance and health; neuroticism predicts risk of anxiety and depression; extraversion predicts social activity and positive mood; agreeableness predicts relationship quality.
- It is partly heritable, with twin studies suggesting genes explain around 40% of the differences between people.
What Each Trait Means In Daily Life
Openness To Experience
High scorers enjoy art, ideas, travel and change. Low scorers are practical and value tradition. Openness is the trait most linked with creativity and with liberal political attitudes.
Conscientiousness
High scorers plan, organise and finish what they start. Low scorers are more spontaneous. Of the five traits, it is the best predictor of success at work and school.
Extraversion
High scorers seek people and excitement. Low scorers, introverts, prefer calm settings and smaller groups. Neither is better; they suit different situations.
Agreeableness
High scorers are kind and cooperative and avoid conflict. Low scorers are tougher negotiators and more willing to challenge others.
Neuroticism
High scorers feel negative emotions more strongly and more often. Low scorers are calm under pressure. It is sometimes reversed and called “emotional stability”.
How To Read Your Result
- Look at your highest and lowest traits. These describe your most distinctive tendencies.
- Remember that average is normal. A score in the middle means you show the trait in some situations and not others.
- Think in combinations. High conscientiousness with high neuroticism often looks like a hard-working worrier. High extraversion with low agreeableness often looks like a confident, assertive leader.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Big Five better than the 16 personality types?
For research, yes. The Big Five measures traits on scales and predicts real outcomes more reliably. Type tests, like our 16 personality types test, are easier to talk about. Four of the type dimensions map onto four of the Big Five traits.
What is a good Big Five score?
There is no good or bad profile. Each trait has benefits and costs depending on the situation.
Why are the questions so short?
These are the original IPIP items, written as brief phrases so they work across many studies. Answer as they apply to you, imagining “I” in front of each one.
Can my Big Five scores change?
Yes, slowly. Traits shift with age and life experiences, and research shows deliberate effort and therapy can change them too.
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For self-reflection only. This is not a clinical assessment. See how we build our tests.