Index
INTRODUCTION
OPENNESS
EXTRAVERSION
AGREEABLENESS
CONSCIENTOUSNESS
NEUROTICISM
FURTHER READING
INTRODUCTION
In this essay I will summarize interesting tidbits about the Big 5 personality theory and related topics based on my laymans reading of different studies. The information presented is based on peer reviewed studies that used a wide array of methods to investigate different matters, such as age group and gender differences. The five traits are Openness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientousness and Neuroticism. These traits are further differentiated into two aspects each and the aspects are spread into individual facets that border on specific emotional and behavioral outputs. The emphasis in this essay will be on the traits and the aspects. I have used direct quotes from the studies without indicating the quotes, but I have collected the studies to the end of the essay for further reading.
The Big 5 personality system builds on the concept of the ”Huge 2” called Plasticity and Stability. Stability appears to represent a general tendency to regulate or restrain potentially disruptive emotion and behavior, whereas Plasticity appears to represent a general tendency to explore and engage with possibilities. Plasticity is generally related to dopaminergic systems, which means that plasticity deals with things that are more approaching-a-goal -oriented, whereas stability is related to serotonin, which, instead of having to do with approaching a goal is related to getting to the goal and consuming the reward. The Big 5 traits Openness and Extraversion are related to Plasticity and the rest of the traits to Stability. For example, people high in stability are lower in externalizing behaviors, higher in conformity, higher in morningness, and lower in divergent thinking, and people high in plasticity are the opposite.
It should be noted, that everything claimed is in text is general information and does not take into account specific instances of people having unexpected personality configurations. This means that a statement like ”Women are more agreeable than men” doesn't mean that a specific man can't be more agreeable than a specific woman, it means that that is generally the case.
As it happens to be relevant to me, Neuroticism got the most attention.
OPENNESS
Openness is a Big 5 trait that is broken down into Intellect and Openness, which respectively reflect the interest in ideas and the interest in aesthetics. Openness explains such things as the sense for fantasy, aesthetics and feelings, which are more closely related to the Aspect Openness, whereas interest in ideas and working memory relates to Intellect . Women have been found to score higher than men on the facets of Esthetics and Feelings, whereas men tend to score higher on the Ideas facet. More broadly: women scored higher than men in Openness and men scored higher than women in Intellect. In adolescents interest in ideas declines and in young adults it increases. In boys openness to aesthetic experience grows as they age.
Intellect is associated with implicit learning, which is the ability to detect covariance patterns in sensory information automatically. It is associated with high verbal skill and langauge acquisition. An interesting phenomenon related to Openness is apophenia, which is basically implicit learning gone astray. It means the perception of patterns or causal connections where none exist. It is a preceding symptom of psychosis and schizophrenia. It has been argued that apophenia is linked to high levels of Openness and that General Intelligence (IQ) works as a kind of regulatory system for it. This means that IQ, the ability to solve problems generally helps to test the patterns that apophenia creates, keeping the apophenic person functional. However, low IQ combined with high apophenia means that the person might be incapable of distinguishing between working (therefore at least pragmatically true) and false patterns. It is suggested that because of apophenia, high levels of Openness might produce high levels of Neuroticism, so that Neuroticism works as a buffer system, that carefully weeds out the harmful ideas caused by apophenia.
EXTRAVERSION
The aspects of extraversion are Assertiveness and Enthusiasm. Enthusiasm reflects sociability, gregariousness, and experiences of positive emotion. Women score higher than men in Enthusiasm, whereas men score higher than women on Assertiveness and Excitement Seeking. Men tend to be more dominant and agentic than women which is due to higher Assertiveness. Enthusiasm covaries with Agreeableness Aspect Compassion due to their relatedness to social interaction.
Extraversion is positively associated with brain activity at rest or in response to positive or rewarding stimuli, which might mean something like daydreaming and goal attainment, especially in social situations giving high hormonal rewards.
Assertiveness, Intellect and Conscientousness Aspect Industriousness are strongly correlated. These aspects are more typical of men, which in part explains why there are more men in leadership positions. Roughly speaking, self-confident, assertive, smart and hard working people become succesful better than many others.
Extroverted people are usually initially ranked higher in social situations, compared to Neurotic people. This is due to Extroversion related behaviors such as dominance, expression of confidence and Enthusiasm creating a high level of expectations and Neuroticism with it's aspect Withdrawal low expectations. This creates a situation, where Extraverted people are punished more easily if they only do the required amount of work, whereas Neurotic people gain social status slowly but surely, as they surpass the (low) expectations they so painstakingly try to fulfill. In other words Extroversion offers short term benefits that might create larger future expectations and Neuroticism creates lower expectations. Also Extraverted people can be seen as poor listeners in the long run, which can be detrimental in leadership positions for the group.
It has also been found that Extroversion with it's positive social element (wanting positive social interactions and Neuroticism with it's negative element (avoiding negative social situations) produce two pathways to social cooperation: Extroverts cooperate because they like it and Neurotics cooperate because they fear the consequences of not cooperating.
AGREEABLENESS
The two Aspects of Agreeableness are Compassion and Politeness. Compassion, for example, is clearly marked by the tendency to affiliate with others emotionally and to take interest in others’ emotions, whereas Politeness contrasts the tendency to respect others with the tendency to pursue one’s own desires at the expense of others, even to the point of belligerence. As people get older they get more Agreeable.
Women are more Agreeable than men in both Aspects. An imPolite person may have narcissistic and Machiavellianic tendencies, which means that these tendencies are more typical of men. Gender differences in Agreeableness may be related to gender differences in self-construal. Men tend to have an independent self-construal, or a sense of self that is separate from cognitive representations of others. Women have a more interdependent self-construal, in which their sense of self includes others.
All of the traits encompassed by Agreeableness appear to reflect a tendency toward altruism and cooperation as opposed to antisocial and exploitative behavior. Agreeable people are interested in and considerate of others’ needs, desires, and feelings, and they avoid aggressing or imposing their will on others. Such behavior requires the ability to understand others’ emotions, intentions, and mental states, and Agreeableness has been found to predict tests of empathy, theory of mind, and other forms of social information processing.
Agreeableness also appears to be associated with the ability to suppress aggressive impulses and other socially disruptive emotions. Presumably because aggression is often driven by anger, trait anger is correlated with Agreeableness as well as with Neuroticism, and anger has sometimes been seen as a component of low Agreeableness.
CONSCIENTOUSNESS
Industriousness and Orderliness are the Aspects of trait Conscientousness. Conscientousness is defined as individual differences in the propensity to follow socially prescribed norms for impulse control, to be goal-directed, planful, able to delay gratification, and to follow norms and rules
Conscientousness is associated with better health, lower criminal activity, and better economic, interpersonal, and workplace outcomes. Orderliness is generally the tendency to keep things in their right place (think of a tidy mom) and Industriousness the tendency to work hard (think of the dad who never has a vacation). As people age they get more Conscientous.
Conscientous individuals are clean and tidy, work hard, follow the rules of society and social decorum, think before acting, and are organized. For example, Conscientous people tend to write down important dates, comb their hair, polish their shoes, stand up straight, and scrub floors. People who are less Conscientous exceed their credit limit, watch more television, cancel plans, curse, oversleep, and break promises.
Conscientousness appears to reflect the ability to exert self-control in order to follow rules or maintain goal pursuit. Women score somewhat higher than men on some facets of Conscientousness, such as orderliness, dutifulness, and self-discipline.
If out of two equally Industrious people one has higher Orderliness, they are likely to be also more high in Neuroticism. This supports the finding that women are generally more Neurotic than men. Also if one examines a group of people with equal levels of Orderliness, the men in that group will on average score higher in Industriousness than the women.
NEUROTICISM
The final trait, Neuroticism, is differentiated into Volatility and Withdrawal. Depression and anxiety ar typical for Withdrawal, whereas getting angry, upset or irritated relates to Volatility. Women are more Neurotic than men, especially when measuring Withdrawal. This is related to things like depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. The only thing related to Neuroticism that men score higher is anger and it's expression. As people age, they get less Neurotic, especially women, who generally get more Neurotic during puberty: depression and anxiety decrease over time. During male puberty anxiety generally goes down and depression stays the same.
Neuroticism and Conscientousness are linked in the following way: both predict positive job performance, both are related to feelings such as frustration and work related motivation and behavior, like investing effort but usually they correlate negatively when comparing persons (i.e. more Conscientousness in a person, therefore less Neuroticism). This suggests that individuals who tend to be more Neurotic compared to others in the same population, also tend to be less Conscientous than others in the same population. However, at the level of the individual this relationship was reversed, suggesting that when individuals experience Neurotic tendencies, such as negative affect, they tend to engage in Conscientous behaviors. Therefore, I think, that it requires careful assessment when claiming either one as the cause of negative emotion, e.g. a highly Industrious man would be frustrated at doing nothing, but the frustration wouldn't necessarily be a sign of high Neuroticism.
Negative affect (associated with Neuroticism) has been shown to promote a more bottom-up, detail-oriented, systematic thinking style; while positive affect has been shown to facilitate a more top-down, schemabased and generative thinking style. Also negative affects such as sadness indicate the capability to remember things better, make less judgemental errors and produce persuasive arguments. Neuroticism therefore helps when working on tasks that require systematic, bottom-up processing and the incorporation of new knowledge.
Neuroticism is a combination of social and genetic factors. Low Neuroticism predicts longevity after controlling for age, sex, education, smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, and baseline health. Neurotic people perform well when social expectations are high, because they prepare intensively, since they want to avoid social situations where they are punished or threatened, either formally or informally.
Neuroticism is the single most important factor associated with many forms of psychopathology and behavioral health, in particular the common mental disorders including anxiety, depressive, and substance use disorders. It is related to a negative bias in attention and interpretation, although mood or stress induction seems to be required to activate these biases. Moreover, it is associated with stressful event generation and ineffective coping, increased momentary negative affect, less momentary positive affect, and probably with increased reactivity and affect variability. What this means is that a more Neurotic person will likely feel worse for the same negative event than a less Neurotic person, feel less joy for a positive event, ruminate more about possible negative situations and use emotional tools more unpredictably and inefficiently when trying cope.
Neurotic people like to be pre-emptive and well prepared and they prefer encountering familiar problems rather than previously unknown situations. Although some individuals feel little discomfort when facing the unknown, those high in Neuroticism find it aversive. This is based on the idea that what is unknown is actually the thing one has to be most prepared for, from an evolutionary perspective, because the severity of an unknown threat might exceed everything that has been encountered (and succesfully fended off) thus far. Therefore Neuroticism is advantageous, since a general stress response is needed for all-around preparation.
Neuroticism is associated with brain activity at rest or in response to aversive or novel stimuli. So compared to the the day dreaming Extrovert, a Neurotic person thinks more about possible bad things happening and keeps on going through negative events that are in the past.
Neuroticism has been associated with higher baseline levels of the stress hormone cortisol, but with reduced phasic increases of cortisol in response to specific stressors. This pattern suggests that those high in Neuroticism tend to be not only chronically stressed but also less able to mobilize resources to deal with particularly stressful situations.
Neuroticism has been associated with lower levels of serotonergic function. Which, if I understand correctly, would mean less positive emotion acquired from consuming a reward, such as delicious food, satisfying sex or a pay raise.
Parents who manifest higher levels of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientousness, and Openness and lower levels of Neuroticism engage in more warm and structured parenting.
FURTHER READING
The Relations Between Parents’ Big Five Personality Factors and Parenting:
A Meta-Analytic Review
The Devil You Know
Neuroticism Predicts Neural Response to Uncertainty
Openness to experience, plasticity, and creativity: Exploring lower-order,
high-order, and interactive effects
Personality Neuroscience and the Biology of Traits
Gender differences in personality across the ten aspects of the Big Five
What do conscientous people do? Development and validation of the
Behavioral Indicators of Conscientousness
From madness to genius: The Openness/Intellect trait domain as a
paradoxical simplex
The biological and psychological basis of neuroticism: Current status and future
directions
Extraversion, neuroticism, and the prisoner’s dilemma
The Downfall of Extraverts and Rise of Neurotics: The dynamic process of status allocation in task groups
Interpreting neuroticism scores across the adult life course: immutable or
experience-dependent set points of negative affect?
It depends how you look at it: On the relationship between neuroticism
and conscientousness at the within- and the between-person levels of analysis
Age Differences in Personality Traits From 10 to 65:
Big Five Domains and Facets in a Large Cross-Sectional Sample
Between Facets and Domains: 10 Aspects of the Big Five
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