Personality Traits Notes

1. PERSONALITY TRAITS (BIG FIVE PERSONALITY FACTORS)
 One of the most popular, widely used and best ways of understanding and conceptualizing
people’s personalities the big Five Personality Traits
 It represented by this acronym ocean (OCEAN model) O stands for openness, C=
Conscientiousness, E=extroversion, A=Agreeableness and N stands for Neuroticism
Definition of Personality
 Personality in psychology describes an individual’s characteristics, emotional responses,
thoughts and behaviors that are relatively stable over time and not much the moment-to-
moment emotions generally across time and space.
 The Big Five Approach is a trait approach that is used to categorize people but its not so
much a categorical approach but a dimensional approaching such that within a given trait
you show characteristics of another trait.
 You can be on spectrum where you exhibit contrasting traits (dimensional traits approach)
 This dimensional trait approach is used in understanding and quantifying people's
personalities
 It uses five key dimensions and these five key traits are used in Psychology to describe all
sorts of different aspects of people and relates to all sorts of real behaviors and real world
outcomes.
OPENESS
 It is tendency to enjoy new experiences and ideas some people refer to this as open-
mindedness which focuses more on the ideas and aspect of new experiences
 Relates to qualities or some aspects of openness in terms of wanting to experience new,
openness to new kinds of ideas.
 People who score high in openness are open to new ideas and are not always consistent to
their pre-existing ideas (e.g trying new foods)
 They are curious and have a wide range of interests and open to new experiences.
 Low scoring people in openness tend to be very practical and conventional, they prefer
routine rather trying new things (if it ain't broke why fix it this is a low openness kind of
people) e.g eating the same food in restaurant.
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
 Those associated with the conscientiousness dimension tend to have a sense of duty,
disciplined (orderliness is not necessarily cleanliness).
 If you are very clean and organized then chances are you are very conscientious
 Conscientiousness is associated with things like competence, self-discipline and having
clever and clear and thoughtful goals
 People who are high in conscientiousness work hard, are dependable and well organized.
 High conscious correlates with other important outcomes, like people high in
conscientiousness tend to live longer perhaps because they're conscientious about their

2. health and exercising, they tend to do well in school and get good grades, have better lasting
marriages
 In contrast people who are low in conscientiousness tend to be more impulsive, careless at
times and more disorganized and this is associated with risky and criminal behaviors at
times (low conscientiousness does not mean you will be a thief/criminal, these just
correlations)
EXTROVERSION
 Extroversion is the tendency to seek stimulation and company (extroversion is sometimes
misunderstood in society)
 Extroversion is associated with things like sociability, being really assertive and tendency to
express emotions
 People who score very high in extroversion, assumed to be extroverts tend to be very
outgoing, very warm, seek adventure, they are stimulating (energized), tend to be energized
by social interaction and sensory stimulation
 In contrast people who score very low on this extroversion dimension (introverts) tend to
be quieter, more reserved and withdrawn.
 The get their energy from being alone from having some quiet time and instead of being
energized by sensory stimulation, they can find stimulation exhausting
 It is good to make it clear that introversion is not shyness or socially inept or lacking social
abilities as commonly used in our society (it is a misconception)
 Extroverts can be shy and introverts can be very talkative
 Introverts get energy by being alone while extroverted and energized being around people.
AGREEABLENESS
 This is the degree to which you are willing to work with other people
 Agreeableness is associated with things like being cooperative, trustworthy
 If you are good-natured and if you score high in agreeableness you tend to be more helpful
toward other people, trusting and trustworthy and more friendly, more compassionate and
more empathetic as well
 Agreeable people tend to avoid conflict at their own expense, willing to comprise which can
be self-defeating and bad in the long run (this is a downside)
 In contrast people who score low in agreeableness tend to be more critical, a little bit less
cooperative and perhaps even suspicious of other people but very resolute in their beliefs
 These tendencies for low agreeable people are good and bad
NEUROTICISM
 Neuroticism is the tendency to experience and express unpleasant emotions like anxiety,
pain depression etc
 People who score very high in neuroticism dimension tend to be pretty anxious relatively
unhappy and pretty prone to negative emotions and they might have great fluctuations in
their moods.

3.  High neuroticism is correlated with psychopathology i.e psychological disorders such as
anxiety disorders and mood disorders which obviously you want to avoid as much as
possible
 In contrast people who score very low in neuroticism tend to be pretty calm, even
tempered and more secure especially emotionally secure
NOTE:
 These traits can change across the lifespan, your personality can change.
 You can change your personality and we find that traits are fairly volatile before age 30 and
but are relatively stable after age 50.
 As people get older but not everybody, agreeableness and conscientiousness tend to
increase whereas the other three traits tend to decrease so openness extraversion and
neuroticism tend to decrease
QUESTION
As a journalist why do you think knowledge on personality trait is important?