What Kind of Personality Do You Have?

​Learn about theories of personality and discover which personality traits you have.

What is personality? Well, the answer depends on who you ask. Personality may be part of our unconscious. It may consist of personal narratives that we build across our lives (Cervone, Shadel, & Jencius, 2001). Or it may be the observable manifestation of our genetics. But overall, personality traits can be thought of as habitual individual differences in behavior, thought, and emotion

Theory of Personality

​It wasn’t until recently that we even knew we had personalities. Still, for a long time, we’ve used adjectives to describe people. For example, we might say someone is responsible, innovative, angry, or friendly. Each of these adjectives can also be thought of as personality traits.
 
​Interestingly, when researchers analyzed these common adjectives, they found that they clumped into five categories (Goldberg, 1993). These categories are now known as the Big Five personality traits. And each of these big five aspects of personality includes hundreds if not thousands of personality traits (Goldberg, 1993). 

The Big Five Are:

Personality Trait	This includes ...
Extroversion ​(versus introversion)	Activity, assertiveness, attention-seeking, gregariousness, sociability, vigor, etc.
Agreeableness ​(versus hostility)	Cooperation, empathy, friendliness, sensitivity, nurturance, tolerance, warmth, understanding, etc.
Conscientiousness ​(versus undependability)	Achievement, autonomy, order, control, self-sufficiency, constraint, etc.
Openness to experience ​(versus close-mindedness)	Creativity, novelty-seeking, thoughtfulness, imagination, etc.

Although there are only five primary personality traits, we can fall anywhere on the continuum of these traits. In other words, we are not 100% extrovert or 100% introvert. Rather, we might be mostly extroverted, mostly introverted, or somewhere in the middle.
To see where you fall on these Big Five traits, here is a short personality quiz with some of the questions used in research on the Big Five personality traits (Saucier, 1997; ipip.ori.org).

Self-Assess Your Big Five Personality Traits

Scale: 1 = Strongly Disagree | 10 = Strongly Agree

Extraversion​

Statement	Your Rating
I am open about my feelings.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I take charge.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I talk to a lot of different people at parties	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I make friends easily.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I'm never at a loss for words	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10

Agreeableness

Statement	Your Rating
I feel others' emotions.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I have a soft heart.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I sympathize with others' feelings.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I am concerned about others.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I make people feel at ease.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10

Conscientiousness

Statement	Your Rating
I do things by the book.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I try to follow the rules.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I believe laws should be strictly enforced.	​1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I pay attention to details	​1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I like order.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10

Emotional Stability

Statement	Your Rating
I seldom feel blue.	​1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I am relaxed most of the time.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I feel comfortable with myself.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I am not easily bothered by things.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I take things as they come.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10

Openness to Experience

Statement	Your Rating
I enjoy the beauty of nature.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I believe in the importance of art.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I love to reflect on things.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I see beauty in things that others might not notice.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
I need a creative outlet.	1 - 2- 3 - 4 -5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10

*Add up your score for each of the five personality factors. The higher your score, the stronger each of these personality traits is for you.

Other Theories of Personality

Although the Big Five theory of personality is the most popular, you may also be interested in the social-cognitive theory of personality. This theory states that much of our behavior—what we might consider to be personality—arises as a direct result of social stimuli. While the Big Five theory of personality assumes that personality consists of our essential, unchangeable, innate qualities, the social-cognitive theory of personality argues that personality itself is dynamic and changes because of our circumstances (Cervone, Shadel, & Jencius, 2001).
​
Regardless of where personality comes from, it can be helpful for our understanding of ourselves to know where we fall and what traits we have.

References

• Cervone, D., Shadel, W. G., & Jencius, S. (2001). Social-cognitive theory of personality assessment. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(1), 33-51.
• DeNeve, K. M., & Cooper, H. (1998). The happy personality: a meta-analysis of 137 personality traits and subjective well-being. Psychological bulletin, 124(2), 197.
• Goldberg, L. R. (1993). The structure of phenotypic personality traits. American psychologist, 48(1), 26.
• Saucier, G. (1997). Effects of variable selection on the factor structure of person descriptors. Journal of personality and social psychology, 73(6), 1296.