From the five-factor finding of Ernest C. Tupes and Raymond E. Christal (1961), named by Lewis R. Goldberg (1981), and turned into instruments by Oliver P. John, Eileen M. Donahue, and Robert L. Kentle (The Big Five Inventory, 1991), Paul T. Costa Jr. and Robert R. McCrae (1992), and Christopher J. Soto with John (2017).
Profiles a person on five continuous traits, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, giving a tested vocabulary for how people differ at work.
When to reach for it
When a team decision turns on how people differ, such as role fit, team makeup, or a recurring clash, and a typology would oversimplify it.
How it runs
- Take a validated instrument such as the BFI-2.
- Read each score as a percentile against the norm group.
- Check the facets beneath each broad trait score.
- Treat results as tendencies that shift with the situation.
- Use trait fit as one input beside skills and values.
Where it sits in SOLVE eX
Go to the source
- Recurrent Personality Factors Based on Trait Ratings, USAF ASD Technical Report 61-97, 1961
- An alternative description of personality: The Big-Five factor structure, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1990
- The Big Five Inventory: Versions 4a and 54, Institute of Personality and Social Research, University of California, Berkeley, 1991
- Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) Professional Manual, 1992
- The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2017
- Language and Individual Differences: The Search for Universals in Personality Lexicons, Review of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 2, ed. L. Wheeler, 1981