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    Big Five personality traits

    大五人格

    Model
    Also called
    Five-factor model, FFM, OCEAN model

    The Big Five is a trait model that organizes personality into five broad dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Each broad dimension can be broken down into narrower traits.[1]

    Select a dimension to see what high and low scores look like. Each one is a scale from low to high, not a pair of boxes.
    The five Big Five dimensions, each a continuous scale from low to high. Pole descriptions follow Soto (2019). Point at or tap parts of the figure for details
    The five Big Five dimensions, each a continuous scale from low to high. Pole descriptions follow Soto (2019). Save as image (PNG)

    Key points

    • The five initials spell OCEAN: openness (O), conscientiousness (C), extraversion (E), agreeableness (A), and neuroticism (N).[1]
    • Each dimension is a continuous score from low to high, so a result describes degree, not membership in a type.[1]
    • A meta-analysis of behavior genetic studies covering more than 100,000 people attributed about 40% of individual differences in personality to genes.[2]
    • A large replication project retested 78 links between traits and life outcomes; 87% were significant in the expected direction, though effects were typically about 77% as strong as first reported.[3]

    An example

    Lin completes a Big Five questionnaire and scores a little below average on extraversion and high on conscientiousness. She reads this as her position relative to other people, not as being “an introvert type,” and uses it to think about why she likes to plan ahead.

    Misreadings and limits

    Neuroticism, also called negative emotionality, runs from worrying, pessimistic and temperamental at the high end to calm and stable at the low end. Emotional stability is the low pole, so labeling neuroticism “emotional stability” reverses the scale.[3]

    Sources

    1. 1 McCrae, R. R., & John, O. P. (1992). An introduction to the five-factor model and its applications. Journal of Personality, 60(2), 175–215. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.1992.tb00970.x
    2. 2 Vukasović, T., & Bratko, D. (2015). Heritability of personality: A meta-analysis of behavior genetic studies. Psychological Bulletin. doi:10.1037/bul0000017
    3. 3 Soto, C. J. (2019). How replicable are links between personality traits and consequential life outcomes? The Life Outcomes of Personality Replication Project. Psychological Science. doi:10.1177/0956797619831612

    Last checked against sources: October 26, 2026