Assessment of the Five Factor Model

Abstract

We review the current state of the science with respect to the assessment of the Five Factor Model (FFM), a robust structural model of personality that emerged from two distinct traditions: The lexical and questionnaire traditions. The lexical tradition is predicated on the hypothesis that important individual differences in personality are encoded as single words in language. This bottom-up tradition has suggested that five broad factors account for much of the personality variation observed among individuals: Extraversion (or Surgency), Agreeableness, Conscientiousness (or Dependability), Neuroticism (vs. Emotional Stability), and Openness to Experience (or Intellect/Culture). The questionnaire tradition emphasizes the measurement of similar constructs, largely through top-down development of measures. We examine the strengths and limitations associated with existing measures of the FFM and related models, focusing on measures rooted in the lexical and questionnaire traditions. We also consider maladaptive FFM measures and conclude by analyzing important issues in the FFM assessment literature.