The Five Personality Traits

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A recent BBC Future article by Laurie Clarke describes a six-week experiment in which she tried to deliberately tweak her personality using techniques from a growing body of research that suggests core traits are not fixed for life. Her starting point, like much of this research, was the Big Five model, the most widely accepted framework for understanding personality today.

Annabelle G.Y. Lim from Simply Psychology explains that this model breaks personality into five broad dimensions, often remembered through the acronym OCEAN: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

The five-factor model of personality is a hierarchical organization of personality traits in terms of five basic dimensions: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. Research using both natural language adjectives and theoretically based personality questionnaires supports the comprehensiveness of the model and its applicability across observers and cultures. This article summarizes the history of the model and its supporting evidence; discusses conceptions of the nature of the factors; and outlines an agenda for theorizing about the origins and operation of the factors. We argue that the model should prove useful both for individual assessment and for the elucidation of a number of topics of interest to personality psychologists.

– National Library of Medicine (PubMed)

Below are key highlights:

  • The Big Five as a spectrum, not a category. Annabelle emphasizes that each of the five traits sits on a continuum rather than being a fixed type. People score somewhere between the two ends on each dimension, and the combination produces a personality profile. Twin studies cited in the article place heritability at roughly 40 to 60 percent, which means genes matter but environment leaves real room for change.
  • What each trait captures. Openness reflects curiosity, imagination, and willingness to try new things. Conscientiousness covers self-discipline, organization, and goal-directed behavior, and is the strongest Big Five predictor of job performance. Extraversion measures sociability and energy drawn from other people. Agreeableness describes warmth, empathy, and cooperation. Neuroticism captures the tendency to feel anxiety, stress, and mood swings, and is the strongest Big Five predictor of mental health risk.
  • Personality can shift with effort. Clarke notes that psychologists once believed traits were largely set by age 30. Newer studies, including work by Nathan Hudson in 2019 and Stieger in 2021, found that people who pick a trait and complete weekly challenges aligned with that goal can produce small but real changes, with some effects still present three months later.
  • Clarke’s six-week experiment. Clarke says she scored high in neuroticism, openness, and conscientiousness, average in agreeableness, and low in extraversion. Determined to lower her neuroticism, raise her extraversion and agreeableness, and soften her perfectionist streak, she turned to a toolkit that included meditation, gratitude journaling, yoga, attending social events, talking to strangers, and opening up to friends. Some exercises felt awkward, especially offering to buy a stranger’s coffee, and self-affirmations often felt unnatural.
  • Modest but real results. By the end of six weeks Clarke retook the test and saw her scores shift in the directions she wanted. She felt more outgoing, calmer, and a bit more agreeable, though she acknowledges the gains may fade without continued practice.

Finally, Clarke shares that personality is shaped by genes and environment, yet it is closer to a fitness level than to eye color. Targeted, repeated practice can nudge Big Five traits in a chosen direction, but the change is gradual and depends on real willingness to keep doing the small uncomfortable things.

Acknowledgement: This summary was generated using AI writing tools as part of my AI Explorations process. For more information, please refer to the original articles listed below.

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