There Are Some Important Differences In What Lay People And Psychologists Think The Main Personality Traits Mean

By Christian Jarrett Most personality research is today conducted in the context of the Big Five model that describes personality according to people’s scores along five trait dimensions: Openness-to-Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. While these trait terms have very specific (though not necessarily completely settled) meanings in personality science, they also have their own meaning in everyday talk, which raises the question of whether, when a lay person says someone is extraverted, or conscientious, or whatever, they mean the same thing that psychologists mean when they measure and investigate those traits. To find out, Judith Hall at Northeastern University and her colleagues compared lay volunteers’ conceptions of the Big Five traits with the way they are represented in four of the formal Big Five personality questionnaires that are used widely by researchers. Writing in the Journal of Research in Personality, Hall and her team said that their findings “not only provide a rich descriptive overview on laypeople’s understanding of the labels of some of the key constructs in personality science but also provided a relevant background for the application and development of assessment tools.” In one study, Hall’s team provided nearly 250 online American participants (average age 35) with the following instruction: “If you would label someone you meet or know as [one of the Big Five traits wa...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Personality Source Type: blogs