Five Factor Model Personality Profile

Psychology continues to gather data about the human personality in many different forms, experiments and observations.  One such model is called the Five Factor Model which attempts to estimate the "Big Five" personality traits.  Since I believe in making sure data correlates, which matches my Intuition trait in INTJ, I like taking multiple/different tests to gather a consensus.  The Five Factor Model (FFM) test not only includes an extraversion aspect but it also includes conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness and openness.  I am a firm believer that it is important to understand yourself in order to more accurately find the things in life that make you happy (such as picking the right job/position to fit your personality among many other things).

There are many FFM tests out there and here is one that I took recently (again, please always seek professional testing as the accuracy of internet tests should not be considered necessarily accurate):

http://personality-testing.info/tests/BIG5.php
(Readers: I would love to hear your opinion about the accuracy of this test in comments!)

The scale for results ranges from 1 (low) to 5 (high).  For those interested, here are my results with an attempt at a description for each:

Extraversion: 1.6
This has been covered well in other articles on this blog but I am surprised that my score isn't a bit lower (more introverted) in this test as I usually score between 90-100% introverted on other tests.

Conscientiousness: 4.6
I agree that these traits describe me pretty well:
- self-disciplined
- dutiful
- planned rather than spontaneous behavior
- prepared
- detail oriented
- ordered
- follow a schedule

Neuroticism: 2.0
This result actually surprises me.  I thought I would be higher on the neuroticism scale but this test puts me below the middle point.  Someone highly neurotic would be easily stressed, worry, have anxiety, experience negative emotions and such.  Either the test isn't accurate or the world is more full of neurotic people than I thought.  This is food for thought/future investigation for sure!

Agreeableness: 3.2
I came out near the middle score on this trait so in general I would extrapolate this to mean...
- generally friendly and tactful but...
- sometimes put own interests ahead of the feelings of others and sometimes distant
It is never fun to admit to negative-sounding traits but I can see this as being pretty realistic for me.

Openness: 4.4
This seems pretty accurate to me:
- intellectually curious
- creative
- likely to hold unconventional beliefs
- facility for thinking in symbols and abstractions far removed from concrete experience
- vivid imagination

This is a chart showing the average results from test takers:

Studies have shown that these traits are roughly 50% inherited genetically (kind of punting on the old genetic vs society/environment debate).  The breakdown for each trait is as follows:

• Extraversion - 54% hereditary
• Conscientiousness - 49% hereditary
• Neuroticism - 48% hereditary
• Agreeableness - 42% hereditary
• Openness - 57% hereditary

Age plays a factor in the trait ratings as well.  As one gets older (on average):

• Agreeableness and Conscientiousness rise
• Extraversion, Neuroticism and Openness decrease

In addition, brain structure plays a part in traits (which makes sense right?  Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits for more details):

• Neuroticism: negatively correlated with ratio of brain volume to remainder of intracranial volume, reduced volume in dorsomedial PFC and a segment of left medial temporal lobe including posterior hippocampus, increased volume in the mid-cingulate gryus.
• Extraversion: positively correlated with orbitofrontal cortex metabolism, increased cerebral, volume of medial orbitofrontal cortex.
• Agreeableness: negatively correlated with left orbitofrontal lobe volume in frontotemporal dementia patients, reduced volume in posterior left superior temporal sulcus, increased volume in posterior cingulate cortex.
• Conscientiousness: volume of middle frontal gyrus in left lateral PFC.
• Openness to experience: No regions large enough to be significant, although parietal cortex may be involved.