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The Five Factor Model (FFM) of Personality

Since the pioneering work of Tupes & Christal (1961), numerous studies have repeatedly demonstrated that five personality traits (factors) are sufficient to adequately describe the full range of human personality. The labels that are typically used to describe these traits, and a brief description of them, are presented in the table below. (For simplicity, and ease of reference, these traits are often referred to by the emboldened letter in their trait name rather than using the full scale name; E for Extraversion-Introversion, etc.).

Extraversion:- Orientated towards the outer world of people, events and external activities. Lively, active, needing social contact and external stimulation.	Versus	Introversion:- Orientated towards their own inner world of thoughts and perceptions. Quiet, retiring, not requiring much social contact or external stimulation.
high aNxiety:- Tense, nervous, sensitive. Prone to mood swings and challenged by emotionally gruelling situations.	Versus	low aNxiety:- Calm, stable, phlegmatic. Resilient, and able to cope with emotionally demanding situations.
Openness (to experience):- Influenced more by ideas, feelings and sensations than tangible evidence and hard facts. Open to new possibilities and subjective experiences.	Versus	Pragmatism:- Influenced more by hard facts and tangible evidence than subjective experiences. Not open to new ideas, and insensitive to subtleties and possibilities.
Agreeableness:- Agreeable, tolerant, helpful and obliging. Not stubborn, cynical or opinionated. Happy to compromise.	Versus	Independence:- Self-determined with regard to their own thoughts and actions. Independent minded. Intractable, strong-willed and confrontational.
high self-Control Diligent, persevering, moralistic. Detail-conscious, dutiful and strongly influenced by social norms and expectations.	Versus	low self-Control Lacking self-restraint, spontaneous and flexible. Not attentive to detail. Not strongly influenced by social norms and expectations.

While these traits are, in a statistical sense, capable of accounting for all the variability that can be observed in human personality, they should not be considered to be the ‘sum total’ of human personality. Rather, they describe the broad ways in which people differ from each other. Moreover, each of these broad traits can be decomposed into a number of components, or facets, with these facets providing a more 'fine-grained' description of personality. For example, extraversion can be considered to be a composite of such facets (traits) as: gregariousness; social confidence; surgency (i.e. energetic/lively) etc. While there is now general agreement amongst psychologists about the validity of the Five Factor Model (FFM), how many facets each of these Five Personality Factors can be meaningfully split into remains a question that is still being debated.

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