The Relationship between Developmental Factors and the Big Five personality Traits

Abstract

The Big Five personality traits theory is a well-accepted taxonomy of personality traits in personality psychology, which consists of five dimensions: openness to experiences, conscientiousness, neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness. Understanding the Big Five personality theory is critical to recognizing each individual's underlying nature and characteristics. While there is a plethora of research on the impacts and influences of the Big Five personality traits, little is known about the relationship between an individual's developmental factors and their Big Five personality traits. Without understanding the behaviour between development and personality, accurate and reliable causational experiments in personality psychology cannot exist. This study attempts to provide insight into how an individual's developmental factors are correlated with their Big Five personality traits. The original data was collected from surveys distributed to high schoolers studying in an American curriculum. This exploratory study concluded that an individual's familial relationship quality during childhood was correlated with some of the most significant deviations from the mean score of each Big Five personality trait. Individuals with married but separated parents had the highest scores in agreeableness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and openness to experiences than any other developmental factor. Overall, the findings of this research indicated the complex relationship between an individual's Big Five personality traits and their development factors, providing information necessary for future causation experiments in personality psychology.