Big Five Personality Test
Describe yourself as you generally are now, not as you wish to be. Rate how accurately each statement describes you.
Your answers are not stored. This test is for self-reflection and is not a diagnosis.
What the Big Five personality test measures
The Big Five (also called the five-factor model or OCEAN) is the most widely used personality model in psychology research. It describes personality on five broad traits, each a spectrum rather than a type:
- Openness: Curiosity, imagination and interest in ideas, art and new experiences.
- Conscientiousness: Organization, reliability and self-discipline.
- Extraversion: Sociability, energy and seeking out stimulation and company.
- Agreeableness: Warmth, compassion and cooperativeness toward others.
- Neuroticism: How strongly and often you feel negative emotions such as worry, irritation and sadness.
Big Five vs. Myers-Briggs
Myers-Briggs (MBTI) sorts people into 16 types, while the Big Five gives you a score on each trait. Researchers favour the Big Five because traits are continuous, the scores are more stable on retest and they predict outcomes such as job performance and wellbeing better.
How the test is scored
The test uses the 50-item IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers developed by Lewis Goldberg (1992), published in the public-domain International Personality Item Pool. Each trait is the average of its ten items on a 1–5 scale, shown as 0–100. Below 40 is low, above 60 is high.
Frequently asked questions
What are the Big Five personality traits?
Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, often remembered as OCEAN.
Is this the same as the IPIP-50 test?
Yes: it uses the 50 public-domain IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers and the standard scoring. Your scores are raw scale scores, not percentiles against a norm group.
How accurate is the Big Five test?
The IPIP scales have good reliability in research, but any self-report reflects how you see yourself today. Retaking it a few months apart usually gives similar results.
Which Big Five trait is best?
None. Each end of each trait has strengths and costs: low agreeableness can help in negotiation, high neuroticism goes with sensitivity to risk, and so on.