Five Personality Characteristics

The big five personality traits are used to describe a person’s personality. A person usually has a certain degree of all five of personality traits. The five personality dimensions are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Traits of each dimension are as follows. Openness to experience includes traits such as having wide range of interests, creativeness, being insightful and imaginative. Conscientiousness includes traits such as being organized and thorough. Extraversion is a broad dimension, which comprise of traits such as being talkative and assertive. Agreeableness encompasses traits such as sympathetic, kind and affectionate. Neuroticism includes traits like tense, moody and anxious.

Conscious people are strong-willed, determined and purposeful. People with higher level of conscientiousness tend to be hardworking, persistent, dependable and careful. (Hogan, Michael, Motowidlo, 2014) However, negative side of excessive conscientiousness may lead to annoying fastidiousness, compulsive neatness and workaholic behavior (Rothmann and Coetzer, 2003). This trait can be considered the primary trait to success. Various researchers such as Frink and Ferris, 1999 found that there is an eloquent correlation between conscientiousness and job performance. The reason being almost all jobs requires conscientiousness at a certain level. Planning, organizing and acting upon it is the major task for any job. However, lower conscientiousness does not signify bad performance, but advances to the reason of irrational behavior towards their work. Furthermore, conscientiousness can also be a liability for certain jobs such as artistic, investigative and social jobs that require innovation and creativeness rather than realistic and

There are numerous ways of measuring big five personality traits. Firstly, NEO PI-R, this is a 240- item inventory, which was developed by Paul Costa and Jeff McCrae. It not only measures the big five personality traits but also six subordinate dimensions of the big five. This measuring tool is used for commercial purpose. (Srivastava, 2014) Secondly, NEO-FFI is another commercial measuring tool that consists of 60-items from the NEO PI-I that calculates only the big five personality traits. Thirdly, International Personality Item Pool (IPIP), which was developed by Lew Goldberg. The IPIP works as an analog to NEO PI-R and NEO FFI. (Srivastava, 2014) This measuring tool is public domain that means users do not have to pay or take permission. Another example of a public domain measuring tool is the Big Five Aspect Scales. This tool not only measures the big five personality traits but also two aspects of each dimension. (Srivastava, 2014) Weather these tools accurately measure personality is debatable. These tools help in recognizing people’s general personality to a certain extent. Results may differ from people and situations as people in different situations show different personality