Behavioural and Interpersonal Skills

BBA IV Semester
Unit 3 Notes

Amit Kumar Bhanja

Assistant Professor,
School of Management Sciences,
Varanasi.
 PERSONALITY

Introduction
People tend to have a general notion that personality refers to a personal appearance with
charming smile, or outlook. But psychologists view the concept as dynamic in nature concerned
with growth and development of a person’s whole psychological system. Personality can be
defined as the consistent psychological patterns within an individual that affect the way they
interact with others and the situations they encounter. Personality is defined as relatively stable
and enduring characteristics that determine our thoughts, feelings and behaviour. Personality
is a complex phenomenon and there are various perspectives of personality construct. One
common and simple definition of Personality is: It is the consistent psychological patterns
within an individual that affect the way they interact with others and the situations they
encounter. "Personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those
psychophysical systems that determine his characteristics behaviour and thought" (Allport,
1961, p. 28). “The characteristics or blend of characteristics that make a person unique”
(Weinberg & Gould, 1999).

Personality Determinants
There are several factors that determine the formation or shaping of our personality. Among
them the three major factors are:
i) Heredity: The genetic components inherited from our parents at the time of
conception determine strongly the personality characteristics of an individual. The
color, height, physical statutory, facial attractiveness, gender, temperament, muscle
composition, inheritable diseases etc are considered to be inherited from our
parents.
ii) Environment: The culture in which people are brought up in their lives and they
type of socialization process such as family’s child rearing practices, socio
economic status of the family, number of children in a family, birth order, education
of the parents, friends and peer group pressures, religious practices, the type of
schooling and recreational activities, pastime behavior etc play a critical role in
shaping our personalities.
iii) Situation: The type of specific situation which a person encounters also equally
shapes the type of personality characteristics. For example, an individual’s exposure
to a job interview and the type of experiences encountered during that time will
 shape certain personality characteristics. Similarly, going for a picnic with friends
and encountering the type of experiences whether pleasant and unpleasant will
shape the personality characteristics of individuals.

Personality Traits

Popular characteristics including shy, aggressive, submissive, lazy, ambitious, loyal and timid.
Those characteristics, when they exhibited in large number of situations, are called personality
traits or enduring characteristics that describe on individual’s behavior. Primary Traits Cattel
(1973) identified 16 source traits/Primary Traits. These traits were found to be generally steady
and constant sources of behaviour. But there was found to be no scientific relevance.

Sixteen Source Traits

1. Reserved - Outgoing
2. Less intelligent - More intelligent
3. Affected by feelings - Emotionally stable
4. Submissive - Dominant
5. Serious - Happy go Lucky
6. Expedient - Conscientious
7. Timid - Venturesome
8. Tough minded - Sensitive
9. Trusting - Suspicious
10. Practical - Imaginative
11. Forthright - Shrewd
12. Self-Assured - Apprehensive
13. Conservative - Experimenting
14. Group-dependent - Self-sufficient
15. Uncontrolled - Controlled
16. Relaxed – Tense
In the type approach, several behaviours are seen as cluster characterising individuals with high
degree of stability.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

MBTI describes four dimensions of Personality Types:

(a) Extroversion versus Introversion: (The ways in which people relate to the world)
(b) Sensing versus Intuition: (Becoming aware of and perceiving information)
(c) Thinking versus feeling: (Ways of deciding and prefer to make judgments)
(d) Judging and Perception: (The amount of control exercising and organizing people)

a) Extroversion and Introversion: This deals with whether the focus of attention is
directed towards outwardly or inwardly. Where do you prefer to focus your attention?

Extroversion: Extroverted attention flows outward to the world of objects and people
or external ideas. They are interacting more with people.

Characteristics associated with people who prefer Extraversion are:

• Attuned to external environment
• Prefer to communicate by talking
• Work out ideas by talking them through
• Have broad interests
• Sociable and expressive
• Readily take initiative in work and relationships Extroverts are usually active,
sociable, like variety and stimulation, and are often good speakers, sales people or
public relations professionals.

Introversion: Introverted attention focused on the subjective, inner world of thoughts,

feelings and ideas. Introverts like quit reflection, can concentrate on one idea or thought
for longer than an extrovert, and are less active and prone to change.

Characteristics associated with people who prefer Introversion are:

• Drawn to their inner world
 • Prefer to communicate in writing
• Work out ideas by reflecting on them
• Learn best by reflection, mental “practice”
• Focus in depth on their interest
• Private and contained Research scientists, academicians and librarians are often
introverts.

b) Sensing Versus Intuition: This aspect deals with the ways of collecting information
and ideas.

Sensing: A person with a sensing preferences focuses on the specific, practical and
tangible. The sensing person relies more on the physical or material reality of the world
of the five senses: touch, sight, sound, taste or smell. Sensing managers take in
information through their senses and attend to the details of the problem. They like to
solve problems in standard ways. They are patient with routine details and are precise
in their work. They distrust creative inspirations and usually work all the way through
to reach conclusions. They emphasize action, urgency and bottom-line results.

Characteristics associated with people who prefer Sensing:

• Oriented to present realities
• Factual and concrete, precise and practical
• Focus on what is real and actual
• Observe and remember specifics
• Build carefully and thoroughly toward conclusions
• Understand ideas and theories through practical applications
• Trust experience

The sensing person is likely to provide a practical solution to problems. They may be
good at repairing machines, sports, building, handicrafts, or keeping the detailed
records of a business.

Intuition: This person relies more on their insights and based on that they guess,
assume and draw the inferences. Ideas, associations or creative process often
accompany the presence of intuition. They focus on the relationships and connections
 between facts. Intuition manager like solving new problems and are impatient with
routine details. They perceive the problem in its totality and consider several
alternatives simultaneously. They are imaginative and futuristic, enjoying mind testing
games.

Characteristics associated with people who prefer Intuition:

• Oriented to future possibilities
• Imaginative and verbally creative
• Focus on the patterns and meanings in data, sees beyond the surface
• Remember specifics when they relate to pattern
• Move quickly to conclusions, follow hunches
• Want to clarify ideas and theories before putting them into practice
• Trust inspiration

The intuitive person is likely to have an affinity for music, literature, the arts, higher
mathematics, and science and abstract theories. People with high level of intuition are
also likely to be creative, adaptable and open to new ideas, and they are often artists,
musicians, strategic players or architects

c) Thinking versus Feeling: These deals with the way people make decisions.

Thinking: The person with a preference for thinking tends to be objective, analytical
and impersonal in decision and judgments. Thinking managers are logical and
analytical in their problem solving and search for additional information in a logical
manner.

Characteristics associated with people who prefer Thinking:

• Solve problem with logic,
• Use cause and effect reasoning
• Strive for an objective standard of truth
• Can be “tough-minded”
• Fair – want everyone treated equally
 Feeling: People who use feelings to make decision are more likely to be empathetic,
loyal, and appreciative and tactful. Feeling types consider the person and are likely to
bend the rules if the situation warrants. Feeling managers heavily emphasize the human
aspects in dealing with organizational problems and is more process oriented. They
enjoy pleasing people and avoid conflicts.

Intuitive Feelers have personal charisma and commitments to the people they lead.
They communicate their caring and enthusiasm. They are comfortable in an
unstructured, group centered management system that lets employees participate in the
decision making process. If adequate they are not available in organization, an
organization will become cold, sterile and dull. Possible Shortcomings; make decision
on the basis of personal likes and dislikes. They often try to please others all the time.

Characteristics associated with people who prefer Feeling:

• Empathetic
• Guided by personal values
• Assess impacts of decisions on people
• Strived for harmony and positive interactions
• Compassionate
• May appear “tender-hearted”
They like helping other people and often work as nurses, counsellors and artists. They
use past experiences and values and seek harmony when making judgments.

d) Judgment versus Perception This aspect deals with the amount of control a person
has over events and organizing things.

Judgment: The strong Judgment oriented people tend to live in a planned, decided and
orderly way, wanting to regulate their life and control events. They are given more
responsibility and authority because their operating mode is stable and predictable.

Characteristics associated with people who prefer Judging:

• Scheduled
• Organize their lives
• Systematic
• Methodical
• Make short and long term plans
• Like to have things decided
• Try to avoid last-minute stresses
The person with a strong orientation for judgment will therefore be good at making
decision and planning. They usually make good managers, engineers and lawyers.

Perception: Perceptive people tend to live in a flexible, spontaneous way, wanting to

understand life and adapt to it. They often appear to be more relaxed and less organized
than judging types and are less attracted to schedules and routines.

Characteristics associated with people who prefer Perceiving:

• Spontaneous
• Flexible
• Casual
• Open-ended
• Adapt, change course
• Like things loose and open to change
• Feel energized by last minute pressures.

The perceptive type, on the other hand, may wait until all the information and aspects
of situation are seen before they make a decision. Artists, consultants, musicians and
counsellors tend to be perception oriented.

Big Personality Traits

There are five Big Personality Traits which have a significant impact in individual’s
life. They are as follows:
a) Extroversion: Extroverts are sociable, lively, and gregarious and seek outward
interaction. Such individuals are likely to be most successful working in marketing
division, public relations etc. where they can interact face to face with others. Introverts
are quite, reflective, introspective and intellectual people, preferring to interact with a
small intimate circle of friends. Introverts are more likely to be successful when they
can work on highly abstract ideas (accountant, R&D work etc) in a relatively quite
atmosphere.
b) Agreeableness: This refers to the extent to which individuals agreeing and
cooperating with others. Highly agreeable people are cooperative, warm and trusting.
People who score low on agreeableness are cold, disagreeable and antagonistic. This
characteristic is very important and critical in attaining a successful achievement in
their life.
c) Conscientiousness: This refers to the extent to which people are responsible and
dependable in their work and life. A highly conscientiousness person is responsible,
organized, dependable and persistent. They are likely to move upward direction very
quickly and attain remarkable achievement in their life. Those who score low on this
dimension are easily distracted, disorganized and unreliable.
d) Emotional Stability: This refers to the extent to which people have the ability to
withstand stress. People with positive emotional stability tend to be calm, self confident
and secure. Those with highly low level of emotional stability tend to be nervous,
anxious, depressed and insecure.
e) Openness to experience: This refers to the extent to which people are more
imaginative, artistic sensitivity and intellectualism. Individuals tend to vary widely
ranging from conservative to creative or artistic. Extremely open people are creative,
and artistically sensitive. Whereas not so open category personnel are very conservative
and find comfort in the familiar or routine activities.

Major Personality Attributes

Locus of control: People are assumed to be of two types: `Internals' and `Externals'.
Internals are people who believe that much of what happens to them is controlled by
their destiny. Externals believe that much of what happens to them is controlled by
outside forces.
Machiavellianism: High Machs tend to take control, especially in loosely structured
situations; Low Machs respond well to structured situations. High Machs tend to be
more logical, rational and Pragmatic. They are more skilled in influencing and coalition
building.
Self-esteem People differ in the degree to which they like or dislike themselves. This
trait is called self-esteem. Individuals with high self-esteem will take more risks in job
selection and more likely to choose unconventional jobs than people with low self-
esteem.
Self-monitoring A personality trait that measures on individuals ability to adjust his or
her behavior to external, situational factors. Individuals high in self-monitoring show
considerable adaptability in adjusting their behavior to external situational factors.
They are highly sensitive to external cues and can behave different situations.
Risk Taking This refers to the extent to which people are willing to take chances. This
propensity to assume or to avoid risk has been shown to have an effect on their decision
making capabilities and information gathering process. High risk taking managers
made more rapid decision and used less information in making their choices than did
the low risk taking managers.
Type ‘A’ or Type ‘B’ People who are Hard-driving, impatient, aggressive, and super
competitive are termed as Type `A' Personality. Those who are easy-going, sociable,
laid-back and non-competitive are termed as Type `B' Personality. Type A people tend
to be very productive and work very hard. They are workaholics. The negative side of
them is that they are impatient, not good team players, more irritable, have poor
judgment. Type B people do better on complex tasks involving judgment, accuracy
rather than speed and team work.

DEFINITION OF THE BIG FIVE FACTORS

Personality has been conceptualised from many theoretical perspectives. Each has
contributed to understanding of individual differences in behaviour and experience.
However so many personality scales to measure personality came about as a result of
continuing research and one had not overall rationale to use a particular scale. Thus
personality psychology needed a descriptive model, a taxonomy of its subject matter.
One of the goals of taxonomy is to bring a number of specific instances within a domain
so as to understand it in a simple way. Thus in personality the taxonomy will help to
study specified domains of personality characteristics, instead of examining separately
thousands of particular attributes that make individuals unique. The Big Five
personality dimension is the result of finding a general taxonomy and these dimensions
do not represent a particular theoretical perspective but derived from people’s
description of themselves and others in their natural language. The Big Five instead of
replacing the earlier systems, serves as an integrative mechanism and represents the
various and diverse systems of personality description in a common framework. Allport
and Odbert’s classifications provided some initial structure for the personality lexicon.
Since taxonomy has to provide a systematic framework for distinguishing, ordering and
naming individual differences in people’s behaviour and experience, they took a list of
a large number of personality traits used in common parlance. The size of that list was
so huge that Cattell (1943) began with a subset of 4500 trait items. Using semantic and
empirical clustering procedures Cattell reduced the 4500 items to a mere 35 variables.
He used these small set of variables to identify 12 personality factors which eventually
became a part of his 16 PF questionnaire
Discovery of the Big Five in Cattell’s Variable List
Cattell’s work gave impetus to many research investigations and many were involved
in the discovery and clarification of the Big Five dimensions. First, Fiske (1949)
constructed simplified description from 22 variables of Cattell. The factor structure
were obtained from self-ratings etc. They worked out a correlational matrix from
different samples and found clusters which they called the Big five. This five factor
structure has been replicated by many in lists derived from Cattell’s 35 variables. These
factors were initially labelled as (i) Extraversion or Surgency (ii) Agreeableness (iii)
Conscientiousness (iv) Emotional stability versus neuroticism and (v) Culture. These
factors came to be known as the Big Five. These five-dimension s represent personality
at the broadest level of abstraction, and each dimension summarises a large number of
distinct, more specific personality characteristics. Following Fiske’s research, there
were attempts by other researchers including Norman (1967), Smith (1967), Goldberg
(1981), and McCrae & Costa (1987).

The “big five” are broad categories of personality traits. While there is a significant
body of literature supporting this five-factor model of personality, researchers do not
always agree on the exact labels for each dimension. However, these five categories are
usually described as follows:
Extraversion: This is also called as Surgency. The broad dimension of Extraversion
encompasses specific traits as talkative, energetic, and assertive. More specifically
these include characteristics such as excitability, sociability, talkativeness,
assertiveness, and high amounts of emotional expressiveness.
Agreeableness: This factor includes traits like sympathetic, kind, and affectionate. It
also includes attributes such as trust, altruism, kindness, affection, and other prosocial
behaviours.
Conscientiousness: This includes traits like organised, thorough, and planful
tendencies. Common features of this dimension include high levels of thoughtfulness,
with good impulse control and goal-directed behaviours. Those high in
conscientiousness tend to be organised and mindful of details.
Neuroticism: This is sometimes reversed and called Emotional Stability. This
dimension includes traits like tense, moody, and anxious. Individuals high in this trait
tend to experience emotional instability, anxiety, moodiness, irritability, and sadness.
Openness to Experience: This is also called as Intellect or Intellect/Imagination. This
dimension includes traits like having wide interests, and being imaginative and
insightful. Those high in this trait also tend to have a broad range of interests. These
dimensions represent broad areas of personality. Research has demonstrated that these
groupings of characteristics tend to occur together in many people. For example,
individuals who are sociable tend to be talkative. However, these traits do not always
occur together. Personality is complex and varied and each person may display
behaviours across several of these dimensions. Each of the Big Five factors is quite
broad and consists of a range of more specific traits. The Big Five structure was derived
from statistical analyses of which traits tend to co-occur in people’s descriptions of
themselves or other people. The underlying correlations are probabilistic, and
exceptions are possible. For example, talkativeness and assertiveness are both traits
associated with Extraversion, but they do not go together by logical necessity. One
could imagine somebody who is assertive but not talkative (the “strong, silent type”).
However, many studies indicate that people who are talkative are usually also assertive
(and vice versa), which is why they go together under the broader Extraversion factor.
For this reason, one should be clear about the research goals when choosing the
measures. If it expected that one has to to make finer distinctions (such as between
talkativeness and assertiveness), a broad-level Big Five instrument will not be enough.
One may have to use one of the longer inventories that make facet-level distinctions
(like the NEO PI-R or the IPIP scales. or one could supplement a shorter inventory (like
the Big Five Inventory) with additional scales that measure the specific dimensions that
you are interested in. It is also worth noting that there are many aspects of personality
that are not subsumed within the Big Five. The term personality trait has a special
meaning in personality psychology that is narrower than the everyday usage of the term.
Motivations, emotions, attitudes, abilities, self-concepts, social roles, autobiographical
memories, and life stories are just a few of the other “units” that personality
psychologists study. Some of these other units may have theoretical or empirical
relationships with the Big Five traits, but they are conceptually distinct. For this reason,
even a very comprehensive profile of somebody’s personality traits can only be
considered a partial description of their personality.

THE BIG FIVE THEORY

Let us see the difference between the terms Big Five, Five-Factor Model, and Five-
Factor Theory. The Big Five are, collectively, a taxonomy of personality trait. It is a
coordinate system that maps which traits go together in people’s descriptions or ratings
of one another. The Big Five are an empirically based phenomenon, not a theory of
personality. The Big Five factors were discovered through a statistical procedure called
factor analysis, which was used to analyse how ratings of various personality traits are
correlated in humans. The original derivations relied heavily on American and Western
European samples, and researchers are still examining the extent to which the Big Five
structure generalises across cultures.

Five Factor Model

The Five-Factor Model is a term used often instead of the “Big Five.” In scientific
usage, the word “model” can refer either to a descriptive framework of what has been
observed, or to a theoretical explanation of causes and consequences. The Five-Factor
Model (i.e., Big Five) is a model in the descriptive sense only. The term “Big Five” was
coined by Lew Goldberg and was originally associated with studies of personality traits
used in natural language. The term “Five-Factor Model” has been more commonly
associated with studies of traits using personality questionnaires. The two research
traditions yielded largely consonant models and in current practice the terms are often
used interchangeably. A subtle but sometimes important area of disagreement between
the lexical and questionnaire approaches is over the definition and interpretation of the
fifth factor, called Intellect/Imagination by many lexical researchers and Openness to
Experience by many questionnaire researchers

Theoretical Perspectives on the Big Five Description and Explanation

Over the years many perspectives on the concept of the Big Five dimensions have been
presented. As is known the Big Five were first discovered in lexical research to provide
taxonomy of trait items and thus the factors were initially interpreted as dimensions of
trait or attribution. Further research showed that the dimensions have external
/predictive validity and all five of them show equal heritability. Since the Big Five
dimensions refer to real individual differences, one must find out as to how these
differences are conceptualised. Several theories conceptualise the Big Five as relational
constructs. In Interpersonal theory the theoretical emphasis is on the individual in
relationships. According to Sullivan (1953) the Big Five describe the enduring patterns
of recurrent interpersonal situations that characterise human life. However, Wiggins
and Trapnell (1996) are of the view that interpersonal motives are important and thus
they interpret all the Big Five dimensions in terms of their interpersonal implications.
Socioanalytic theory by Hogan (1996) focuses on the social functions of self and other
perceptions and he points out that traits are socially constructed to serve interpersonal
functions. As trait terms are about reputation that is the individual considers how others
view them, the possibility of the person distorting the self-reports and questionnaires is
high. Thus self-deceptive bias enters and one does not get the true picture of the
individual’s personality. The evolutionary theory on the Big Five states that humans
have evolved “difference detecting mechanisms” to perceive individual differences that
are important for survival and reproduction (D.M. Buss & Shackelford, 1997). Buss
views personality as one where the Big Five traits represent the most salient and
important dimensions of the individual’s survival needs. This theory emphasises both
person perception and individual differences and point out that the Big Five summarises
the centrally important individual differences. McCrae and Costa (1996) view Big Five
as causal personality dispositions. Their five factor theory (FFT) explains the Big Five
taxonomy. According to FFT, the Big GFive imensions have a substantial genetic base
and hence derive from biological structures and processes. According to this theory,
personality traits are basic tendencies that refer to the underlying potentials of the
individual. On the other hand attitudes, roles, relationships and goals are characteristic
adaptations that reflect the interaction between the basic tendencies and environmental
demands. While basic tendencies remain stable across life, the adaptations undergo
considerable changes. Another theory is the comparative approach to personality that
studies individual differences in both human and non-humans. Thus there are a diverse
theories regarding the Big Five dimensions from purely descriptive to biologically
based causal concepts. These perspectives however are not mutually exclusive.
Research in areas like behaviour genetics, molecular genetics, personality stability and
change, and accuracy and bias in interpersonal perception will help in building and
refining a comprehensive theory of Big Five.

Advantages of the Big Five Structure

The Big Five structure has the advantage of everyone being able to understand
definitions and meanings used in describing this concept. Several of the dimensions of
the Big Five especially Extraversion and Neuroticism have been explained both from
physiological and mechanistic perspectives. In one sense, the Big Five differentiate
domains of individual differences that have similar surface manifestations. The Big
Five structure is a major step ahead in that it captures the commonalities amongs most
of the existing systems of personality description, and provides an integrative
descriptive model. Five-Factor Theory includes a number of propositions about the
nature, origins, and developmental course of personality traits, and about the relation
of traits to many of the other personality variables mentioned earlier. Five-Factor
Theory presents a biological account of personality traits, in which learning and
experience play little if any part in influencing the Big Five. Five-Factor Theory is not
the only theoretical account of the Big Five. Other personality psychologists have
proposed that environmental influences, such as social roles, combine and interact with
biological influences in shaping personality traits. For example, Brent Roberts has
recently advanced an interactionist approach under the name Social Investment Theory.
Finally, it is important to note that the Big Five are used in many areas of psychological
research in ways that do not depend on the specific propositions of any one theory. For
example, in interpersonal perception research the Big Five are a useful model for
organising people’s perceptions of one another’s personalities. I have argued that the
Big Five are best understood as a model of reality-based person perception. In other
words, it is a model of what people want to know about one another (Srivastava, 2010).
Regardless of whether you endorse any particular theory of personality traits, it is still
quite possible that you will benefit from measuring and thinking about the Big Five in
your research.

Important Characteristics of the Five Factors

The following are some of the important characteristics of the five factors:
1) First, the factors are dimensions, not types, so people vary continuously on them,
with most people falling in between the extremes.
2) Second, the factors are stable over a 45-year period beginning in young adulthood
(Soldz & Vaillant, 1999).
3) Third, the factors and their specific facets are heritable (i.e., genetic), at least in part
(Jang, McCrae, Angleitner, Riemann, & Livesley, 1998; Loehlin, McCrae, Costa, &
John, 1998).
4) Fourth, the factors probably had adaptive value in a prehistoric environment (Buss,
1996).
5) Fifth, the factors are considered universal, having been recovered in languages as
diverse as German and Chinese (McCrae & Costa, 1997).
6) Sixth, knowing one’s placement on the factors is useful for insight and improvement
through therapy (Costa & McCrae, 1992).

Best way to Describe Personality

What are the best ways to describe an individual’s personality? One might list all of the
things that individuals do all day every day of their lives, but that would take too long
and be far too detailed to be of much use. Alternatively, one might use more abstract
attributes as a way of summarizing the major ways that individuals differ from each
other. Every language has hundreds of words that refer to the ways that individuals
differ. The English language includes at least 20,000 words of that sort (for example,
talkative, agreeable, hard-working, nervous, intelligent). Perhaps those terms that make
it into a language and then stay there for centuries are those that people have found to
be most useful for describing themselves and others. This “lexical hypothesis” is the
basis of much modern research on the structure of human personality traits. The terms
that are descriptive of personality can be used by individuals to describe themselves
and others. For example, one could ask a question, “How talkative is Ram? “ The
answer could be in a continuum, viz., Not at all (1) A little bit (2) Somewhat (3)
Moderately (4) and Extremely(5). In general, one can measure the extent of similarity
between pairs of personality terms with a statistic called the “correlation coefficient.”
Based on the intercorrelations among all pairs of personality terms, one can then group
the terms into categories or clusters using a statistical procedure called “factor
analysis.” The result of research using those statistical techniques is a tentative answer
to the important scientific question: “How many different relatively independent kinds
of terms are there in that specific language?” In many languages, it has turned out that
the magical number is something like five or six. In English and other northern
European languages like German and Dutch, there has seemed to be five major
dimensions or “factors” to represent the majority of personality-descriptive terms in
that language. This “Big-Five” factor structure has become a scientifically useful
taxonomy to understand individual differences in personality traits.

The Big Five factors

1) The first is Extraversion versus Introversion, which includes traits such as Active,
Assertive, Energetic, Gregarious, and Talkative versus their opposites.

2) A second factor is called Agreeableness, which includes traits such as Amiable,

Helpful, Kind, Sympathetic, and Trusting versus their opposites.

3) A third factor has been labeled Conscientiousness, which includes such traits as
Dependable, Hard-working, Responsible, Systematic, and Well-organised versus
their opposites.

4) A fourth factor contrasts traits related to Emotional Stability, such as Calm,

Relaxed, and Stable, with opposite traits such as Afraid, Nervous, Moody, and
Temperamental.

5) And, finally, there is a constellation of traits related to Intellect and Imagination,

such as Artistic, Creative, Gifted, Intellectual, and Scholarly versus their opposites.

Most personality-related words in many modern languages can be classified by their

locations in the five-dimensional space provided by the Big-Five factors. Terms are
scattered throughout this five-dimensional space, with most terms being blends of two
or three of the Big-Five factors. As a consequence, this five- factor model provides a
rich framework for classifying personality traits, and measures of those five broad
dimensions have proven to be extremely useful for describing individual persons.
Indeed, measures of the Big-Five factors have proven to predict educational and
occupational attainment, marital success, good health habits and medical outcomes, and
even longevity versus mortality. Many researchers believe that these dimensions are
indeed the basic ones. This is indicated, by the fact that these dimensions are ones to
which most people in many cultures refer in describing themselves (Funder &
Colvin,1991). If the big five dimensions of personality are really so basic, then it is
reasonable to expect that they will be related to important forms of behaviour. Many
studies indicate that this is the case. Where people stand on the big five dimensions is
closely linked to important outcomes, such is their success in performing many
jobs(e.g., Hogan, Hogan & Roberts,1996).Many psychologists now view the the big
five basic dimensions as truly basic, there is not total consensus on this point. For
example, Eysenck (1994), believes that there only three basic dimensions-extraversion,
neuroticism and psychoticism. Other psychologists (e.g.,Block,1995) believe that the
methods on which the big five dimensions are based (largely the technique of factor
analysis) are inadequate. Lastly many psychologists view the big five as providing
important insights into the key dimensions of personality.