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Many contemporary personality psychologists believe that there are five basic dimensions of personality, often referred to as the “Big 5” personality traits. The Big 5 personality traits are extraversion (also often spelled extroversion), agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. Extraversion is sociability, agreeableness is kindness, openness is creativity and intrigue, conscientiousness is thoughtfulness, and neuroticism often involves sadness or emotional instability. Understanding what each personality trait is and what it means to score high or low in that trait can give you insight into your own personality—without taking a personality traits test. It can also help you better understand others, based on where they fall on the continuum for each of the personality traits listed. An Easy Way to Remember the Big 5 Some use the acronym OCEAN (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) to remember the Big 5 personality traits. CANOE (for conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extraversion) is another option.

The Big Five personality traits were the model to comprehend the relationship between personality and academic behaviors.[7] This model was defined by several independent sets of researchers who used factor analysis of verbal descriptors of human behavior.[8] These researchers began by studying relationships between a large number of verbal descriptors related to personality traits. They reduced the lists of these descriptors by 5–10 fold and then used factor analysis to group the remaining traits (using data mostly based upon people’s estimations, in the self-report questionnaires and peer ratings) in order to find the underlying factors of personality.[9][10][11][12][13]

The initial model was advanced by Ernest Tupes and Raymond Christal in 1958 but failed to reach an academic audience until the 1980s. In 1990, J.M. Digman advanced his five-factor model of personality, which Lewis Goldberg extended to the highest level of organization.[14] These five overarching domains have been found to contain and subsume the most known personality traits and are assumed to represent the basic structure behind all personality traits.[15]

At least four sets of researchers have worked independently within lexical hypothesis in personality theory for decades on this problem and have identified generally the same five factors: Tupes and Christal were first, followed by Goldberg at the Oregon Research Institute,[16][17][18][19][20] Cattell at the University of Illinois,[11][21][22][23] and Costa and McCrae.[24][25][26][27] These four sets of researchers used somewhat different methods in finding the five traits, and thus each set of five factors has somewhat different names and definitions. However, all have been found to be highly inter-correlated and factor-analytically aligned.[28][29][30][31][32] Studies indicate that the Big Five traits are not nearly as powerful in predicting and explaining actual behavior as are the more numerous facets or primary traits.[33][34]

Each of the Big Five personality traits contains two separate, but correlated, aspects reflecting a level of personality below the broad domains but above the many facet scales that are also part of the Big Five.[35] The aspects are labeled as follows: Volatility and Withdrawal for Neuroticism; Enthusiasm and Assertiveness for Extraversion; Intellect and Openness for Openness to Experience; Industriousness and Orderliness for Conscientiousness; and Compassion and Politeness for Agreeableness.[35] People who do not exhibit a clear predisposition to a single factor in each dimension above are considered adaptable, moderate, and reasonable, yet they can also be perceived as unprincipled, inscrutable, and calculating.[36]