What has the Big Personality Test already discovered?

BBC Lab UK’s Big Personality Test aims to answer the question - do our personalities shape our lives or do our lives shape our personalities? More than a quarter of a million people have taken the test since it launched in November 2009, making this the largest ever scientific study of personality in Britain.

At the core of the Big Personality Test are the ‘Big Five’ personality traits – a widely recognised means of describing the different aspects of human personality. These traits are: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

While many of these terms may seem familiar, the way they are used to describe personality traits can differ significantly from their regular usage:

• Openness indicates how willing we are to explore new ideas and ways of doing things.
• Conscientiousness indicates how well we plan and exhibit self-control.
• Extroversion indicates our desire for stimulation.
• Agreeableness indicates how easily we get along with others.
• Neuroticism indicates how we deal with negative emotions such as stress and anxiety.

Everyone exhibits these five traits to a greater or lesser degree, which allows psychologists to build up a sort of ‘personality fingerprint’ that can be used as a point of comparison between individuals. (To discover your own personality fingerprint, take the Big Personality Test.)

Those scoring higher on Openness seem to be happier in creative jobs

This ability to compare personalities in a standard way is fundamental to the scientific study of personality. And a preliminary look at the data from the first six months of the Big Personality Test has revealed some fascinating connections between gender, age, occupation and personality.

Personality and gender

For the first time, we are able to see that men tend to score higher for the trait of Openness than women. Intriguingly, this suggests that men tend to have a higher sensitivity for art and beauty than women, whereas women tend to be more practical

Other findings confirmed previous research. Women scored higher on average than men in Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism. In other words, women tend to be more caring, dependable and emotional, while men tend to be more competitive, distracted and even-tempered.

Of course these results do not mean that all women and all men behave in exactly these ways, they simply describe the average patterns across the very large Big Personality Test sample.

Personality and occupation

Another first the study reveals is that those scoring high in Extroversion tend to be very satisfied in jobs involving lots of social contact, like sales, finance, law, and teaching. This may be because those scoring high in Extroversion have a greater need for stimulation, which includes social stimulation.

As with gender, the Big Personality Test also confirmed previous findings about personality and occupation.

Those high in Openness were found to be happiest in jobs that involve creativity and abstract thinking, for example advertising, journalism, art, science, research, and engineering. Those high in Agreeableness were shown to be most content in jobs that involve helping and educating other people, for example healthcare and education.

The study also confirmed that those who score high in Extroversion and Conscientiousness tend to like their job, irrespective of what it is. One explanation for this is that most jobs provide structure, which appeals to people high in Conscientiousness, and places for people to socialise, which appeals to people high in Extroversion.

Older people score lower on Neuroticism than younger people

Personality and health

The study shows that people high in Agreeableness tend to report a better level of health than average.

This may be because Agreeableness is associated with having close social relationships and emotional support. People with stable social support networks have more support to turn to when things get difficult, thereby potentially lessening the negative perceptions associated with poor health.

It is well-established that people high in Conscientiousness, high in Extroversion and low in Neuroticism tend to report the fewest symptoms of ill-health, as well as being more likely to engage in health-promoting behaviours. The Big Personality Test confirmed these findings by replicating them in a very large sample.

Personality and age

The Big Personality Test supports previous findings that the proportion of people scoring higher in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness and lower in Openness and Neuroticism increases with age.

It is possible that these that slight changes in personality develop in response to the various relationships and obligations people form during their lifetimes.

In early adulthood for example, the majority of people begin to develop long-lasting relationships with partners, start a family, and begin taking on additional responsibilities at work. With greater professional and familial demands on their time, people may be required to plan ahead to a greater extent, and this would explain a higher score on Conscientiousness.

What’s next?

These findings are based on a preliminary analysis of the data we have received so far. The Big Personality Test will continue to collect data until November 2010, after which the full scientific analysis will be carried out.

The results will be published here on the Lab UK site and in an appropriate scientific journal. (Read our article: An introduction to peer review.)

The Big Personality Test was designed BBC Lab UK and Child of Our Time in collaboration with Professor Michael Lamb and Dr Jason Rentfrow of Cambridge University. Dr Jason Rentfrow is a lecturer with research interests in psychological characteristics and person-environment interactions. Professor Michael Lamb is the Head of Social and Developmental Psychology at Cambridge and is interested in the study of social and emotional development.