Five factor model

The Big Five personality traits, also known as the five factor model (FFM), is a model based on common language descriptors of personality (lexical hypothesis). These descriptors are grouped together using a statistical technique called factor analysis (i.e. this model is not based on scientific experiments). This widely examined theory suggests five broad dimensions used by some psychologists to describe the human personality and psyche. The five factors have been defined as openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, often listed under the acronyms OCEAN or CANOE. Beneath each proposed global factor, a number of correlated and more specific primary factors are claimed. For example, extraversion is said to include such related qualities as gregariousness, assertiveness, excitement seeking, warmth, activity, and positive emotions.

People who don't exhibit a clear tendency towards specific characteristics chosen from the above-mentioned related pairs in all five dimensions are [considered] adaptable, moderate and reasonable personalities, but can be perceived as unprincipled, inscrutable and calculating.

The Big five personality traits was the model to comprehend the relationship between personality and academic behaviors. This model was defined by several independent sets of researchers. These researchers began by studying relationships between a large number of known personality traits. They reduced the lists of these traits (arbitrarily) by 5–10 fold and then used factor analysis to group the remaining traits (using data mostly based upon people's estimations, in self-report questionnaire and peer ratings) in order to find the underlying factors of personality.

The initial model was advanced by Ernest Tupes and Raymond Christal in 1961, 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. These five overarching domains have been found to contain and subsume most known personality traits and are assumed to represent the basic structure behind all personality traits.

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