Personality Theories

Personalities are distinctive. Each individual behaves according to certain distinctive patterns throughout a variety of situations. Humans are finely tuned to observe these behavior patterns of acquaintances and to notice behavior differences among people.  

You might use words such as talkative, cheerful, cold, disorganized, compulsive, intellectual, shrewd, shortsighted, flirtatious, or ruthless to describe various people you know. Also, you have probably observed that these various behaviors stay with the person consistently over time and throughout a variety of circumstances. These persistent behavior patterns, called personality traits, are stable over time, consistent in a variety of situations, and differ from one individual to the next.

Beginning with a list of more than 18,000 descriptive terms extracted from unabridged dictionaries, researchers first selected then extensively studied a list of adjectives describing stable personality traits. Subjects were asked to rate each term according to how well it described the behavior of particular people they knew well. Common factors were extracted from this data and the result is the “The Big Five Personality Factors” which is very similar to the “Five Factor Model of Personality”.  

The American-English form of the structure identifies these five personality factors: 

Factor	Trait Characteristics	Inverse Trait Characteristics
I. Extraversion/ Surgency	Talkative, extroverted, aggressive, verbal, sociable, bold, assertive, social, unrestrained, confident	Shy, quiet,introverted, silent, untalkative, bashful, reserved, withdrawn, timid, unaggressive
II. Agreeableness	Sympathetic, kind, warm, understanding, soft-hearted, helpful, considerate, cooperative, trustful, affectionate	Cold, unsympathetic, unkind, rude, harsh, inconsiderate, insensitive, insincere, hard, uncharitable
III. Conscientiousness	Organized, neat, orderly, systematic, efficient, responsible, precise, thorough, practical, dependable	Disorganized, disorderly, careless, unsystematic, inefficient, sloppy, haphazard, inconsistent, impractical, negligent
IV. Emotional Stability	Unenvious, relaxed,unexcitable, patient, undemanding, imperturbable, unselfconscious, uncritical, masculine, optimistic	Moody, temperamental,jealous, touchy, envious, irritable, fretful, emotional, self-pitying, nervous
V. Intellect	Creative, intellectual, imaginative, philosophical, artistic, complex, inventive, intelligent, innovative, deep	Uncreative, unimaginative, unintellectual, unintelligent, simple, unreflective, shallow, imperceptive, unsophisticated, uninquisitive.

These five factors can be further understood by looking at the following two tables of single pole markers for each trait. The table of trait markers lists the top 10 adjectives that correlate most positively with each factor. The table of inverse trait markers lists the top 10 adjectives that correlate most negatively with each factor.

Trait Markers:

Surgency	Agreeableness	Conscientiousness	Emotional stability	Intellect
Extraverted Talkative Assertive Verbal Energetic Bold Active Daring Vigorous Unrestrained	Kind Cooperative Sympathetic Warm Trustful Conscientious Pleasant Agreeable Helpful Generous	Organized Systematic Thorough Practical Neat Efficient Careful Steady Conscientious Prompt	Unenvious Unemotional Relaxed Imperturbable Unexcitable Undemanding	Intellectual Creative Complex Imaginative Bright Philosophical Artistic Deep Innovative Introspective