5 Factor Model In the Dispositional Domain

The 5 Factor Model also known as The Big Five or even humorously labelled The High Five(Costa & McCrae,1995; Goldberg, 1981; McCrae and John, 1992; Saucier & Goldberg, 1996) has been the taxonomy of personal traits. It has received the most support and attention from personality researchers. So, what is the 5 Factor Model(FFM) all about? Let's take a look briefly on how this model came to be.

Originally based on combinations of lexical and statistical approach by researchers. The lexical approach was started in the 1930's with Allport and Odbert(1936) who identified from the dictionary some 17,953 trait terms in the English language. They then divided the terms into 4 lists under the original set of trait terms. The 5 traits that are commonly used today are;

1. Extraversion or Surgency : e.g. talkative - silent, sociable - reclusive, adventurous - cautious, open - secretive.
2. Agreeableness : e.g. good natured - irritable, cooperative - negativistic, mild/gentle - headstrong.
3. Conscientiousness : e.g. responsible - undependable, scrupulous - unscrupulous, persevering - quitting
4. Emotional Stability : e.g. calm - anxious, composed - excitable, poised - nervous/tense.
5.Openness : e.g : intellectual - unreflective/narrow, artistic - nonartistic, polished/refined - crude/boorish

Today, this 5 FFM is one of the measurement tools that is used when carrying out a personality research. FFM has been used by many researchers using different research and samples and has been replicated in a variety of languages and formats for decades in the past half a century. Popular personality inventory questionnaire such as Eynseck's Personality Inventory Test, The Hogan's Personality Inventory which is popularly used in banks to determine a characters eligibility for financing based on spending behaviors. Each question have been carefully designed to reflect an individual's personality based on the FFM.

FFM can help a person predict many life outcomes such as career prospects; deciding what types of job suits a person better and more importantly, understanding oneself better. This will put us in a better position in social context when dealing with other individuals by giving us an idea on their personality and allowing us to handle situations better. However, one should not take the results of this tests as the ultimatum because personality do change over a course of time and due to social and environmental factors.