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Chapter 2 of 10

The five factor model

The research standard.

The five

Openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. They emerged from analysing how people describe each other, and recur across languages and cultures.

  • Each is a continuous scale, not a category.
  • People sit somewhere along each of five dimensions rather than in a box.

What they predict

Conscientiousness relates to job performance and health behaviours. Neuroticism relates to negative emotion and stress. Correlations are consistent and small to moderate.