Measuring with Simplicity: The Big Five Personality Test
The Big five personality traits, or also know as the Five-Factor theory, is an attempt to describe a person with just five dimensions of personality: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. These five are broad categories of personality traits describing individuals, and it’s widely used in psychology as a measure of interpersonal perception. It’s a simple questionnaire that consists of 44 short phrases describing personality. Does this simple and relatively short personality test actually measure what it’s supposed to though? I have personally taken this test and would like to share my experience.
After a brief research, I found multiple websites providing the test. My first question after looking through few of them was: why are the questions all phrased the same among the different websites? I couldn’t help but think how this might influence the consistency, validity, and reliability of the test. However my objective was to complete the test so I set my wonder aside, and went on to take the test. Here is an overview of my result:
After reading the results, I was able to infer some traits about myself. Was it accurate? Yes and no. I agree that I’m pretty ambiverted when it comes to social situations, agreeable with people, and also being calm/relaxed in tense situations. However, I’d like to consider myself not closed-minded because I love new experiences; I’m a person who would like to give anything a try before making a judgment, and I also support people with a different mind set. Lastly, I think I’m more towards being organized than I am disorganized. So at a personal level, I felt that the big-five personality test was way too simplistic to make any good judgment or measure my personality.
A bit baffled by my result and questioning the validity of this trait inventory, I briefly looked into this test. The Internet told me two things: one is that the test, is only a broad measurement of personality and one will have to use other method of measurement to make finer distinctions; this would require tests like IPIP scale. Another is that the term ‘personality traits’ is narrowly defined in this test, and it doesn’t consider aspects like motivation, self-concepts and emotions, just to name a few.
This was the end of my experience with the big five. This test is a broad measurement of personality and doesn’t necessarily describe a person at a micro level, but provides us with a general sense of what the person may be like. The answers don’t define who you are, but it may help you understand yourself more. For that reason, I suggest everyone to take it. But it’s important to remember that in the end, you are who you make yourself to be (yes to self-fulfilling prophecy) and you shouldn’t be discouraged much if your test results don’t turn out quite as expected. Is it too simple? Perhaps, but with context it can be helpful.
