“’cause you got personality!”

—Lloyd Price song from the 50s

People are clearly different from one another. Unmistakably they differ in their looks; they also differ in their personalities.

Psychologists have investigated these differences for over a century. Among some of the most examined aspects of personality are self-es-teem, intelligence, depression, sensation seeking, optimism-pessimism and internal-external control. However, in the last decade or so, research in personality has focused on the Big Five. Although there are several different versions of the Big Five, we refer to the most researched version, that by Costa and McCrae (1997). The Big Five factors, with several indicators, are as follows:

Extroversion: outgoing, energetic, humorous

Agreeableness: warm, accepting, trusting

Conscientiousness: conventional, careful, organized

Neuroticism: stable, well adjusted, calm (indicators of low neuroticism)

Openness: independent, creative, adventurous

One way to remember the Big Five is the acronym OCEAN. There is a debate among personality psychologists whether there is a Big Five or a Big Six or even a Big Seven. Moreover, there is even some evidence that the Big Five factors are different in different cultures (Yang & Bond, 1990). Whether the personality pie is sliced into five or seven pieces, the Big Five provides a convenient framework for summarizing personality differences.

How does the field of psychology measure these differences in peo-ple’s personality, using the Big Five? Historically, the standard approach to the measurement of a person’s personality is for a person to take a personality test. The person is asked a series  …