Trait psychology is an accessible way of looking at personality science. See, we use traits in everyday life to describe ourselves, describe others, and our behaviors. But which traits bring us all together as humans? And which one separates us as individuals? So in the past couple videos, I've described how personality psychologists have narrowed down the infinite list of traits to the most important traits that are present in all people.
These traits are usually presented on a spectrum. For example, extraversion is frequently a trait present in important people. Important personality studies.
All people display some levels of extroversion, but some people are definitely more extreme extroverts than others. As personality psychology has evolved, the number of important traits has changed. The so-called happy medium has included five traits that are present in some degree among all people. In this video, I'm going to be talking about these five traits and the sixth one that has made its way into popular personality psychology.
So, the original big five traits are also known as the ocean model or the canoe model. Ocean stands for openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. So, let's take a look at each one of these individually. The first one is openness to experience.
Now, most of these traits are actually pretty self-explanatory. The way to experience trait describes people who are curious about the world around them and they feel comfortable trying out new things. These people tend to enjoy creative activities and are more inclined to exploring different areas of life or alternative ideas.
People who score low on this scale usually don't break out of their comfort zone very often. Different activities, routines, or ideas may make them feel uncomfortable. The number two is conscientiousness, and I know it's a big word, but people who are more conscientious tend to pay more attention to detail, and they put more effort into organizing their everyday activities.
On the extreme end, you might call some people OCD. These people are more likely to plan out every detail of a vacation. itinerary or reread their work a handful of times before they turn it in. Now on the other hand, people who score low in terms of conscientiousness are usually more likely to let things happen without planning or organizing. In fact, on the extreme end of not being conscientious, some psychologists call this impulsiveness.
Now this is a good time to reiterate that a high score on all of these traits does not make you a better or a worse person. Depending on your values and the culture that you're raised in, you may view conscientiousness as a positive or a negative trait. In fact, like I said earlier, too much conscientiousness can cause you to become a conscientiousness is associated with OCD disorders. Now it's important to remember that personality tests will not tell you if you're a good person, they just tell you which traits you have and how they influence your decisions.
Number three is extroversion. So extroverts are more likely to respond positively to the stimuli in the outside world. They feel more comfortable around lots of people and whenever lots of things are happening around them.
They feel refreshed and energized after they get done talking to a group of people. Introverts, on the other hand, prefer to eliminate outside stimuli and focus inward. They actually feel ...brained after they talked to a whole bunch of people. You can also find introversion and extroversion on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Personality Quiz, which is something I'll talk about in a later video. Number four is agreeableness.
People who are more agreeable are more willing to take action in order to make peace with others. Agreeable people are also more likely to be patient with others. These type of people might sacrifice what they actually want just for the sake of others, or maybe to let go of angry feelings quicker. Researchers have put competitiveness on the other side of the scale here. So you're either agreeable or you're competitive.
This trait still has some debate in the personality psychology world because honestly not very many people want to be called disagreeable. This is why they have renamed it competitive. And lastly is number five, neuroticism. Now this is the final big five trait and it's also known as emotionality by other personality theorists. People who score high on neuroticism are more likely to experience heightened feelings of anxiety, paranoia, depression, or aggression.
Now these feelings may have a long- It has a large impact on the way that a person behaves or the way that they perceive the world around them. Now just like the N in the pin model that I talked about earlier, people high in neuroticism usually have higher highs and they also have lower lows. Now I also want to let you know that there is a new development. It's called the honesty-humility trait.
Honesty psychology is always evolving. And researchers have recently added a sixth trait to the Big Five model. It's called honesty and humility. The addition of this trait has actually called for some tweaks to the acronym. Researchers have added an H to the Big Five.
They started to represent extraversion with an X, and then they changed neuroticism to emotionality. And then they can change the acronym to form these six traits, and they call it the Hexico Model of Personality. Basically the same thing as a Big Five.
The honesty-humility trait was starting to be added when the Big Five started to expand beyond American studies. Researchers They began to assess whether or not the Big Five were present in languages other than just English, and as the research continued, they realized that all of the Big Five traits were present, and honesty and humility kept appearing as an additional trait. Now, some personality psychologists believe that the honesty-humility factor is the polar opposite of the traits found in the Dark Triad.
The Dark Triad is another personality quiz that I'll be talking about next, so if you haven't already, hit that subscribe button and the bell icon. A person who is more honest and humble is less likely to be narcissistic, psychopathic, and a Machiavellian leader, which are coincidentally the three traits that I'll be talking about in the next video. Not only does the addition of the honesty and humility reveal a person's tendency to tell the truth and play by the rules, it could also reveal who has a tendency to be manipulative or a seriously negative influence.
So where can you find the Big Five and the Hexaco Tests? Ashton and Lee the psychologist behind Hexaco have a test on Hexaco.org where you can see where you rank for each of the Hexaco terms And they even have a part of the website where you can actually assess a friend's Hexaco inventory by answering questions about them Now psychologists are still collecting data related to Hexaco inventory So your results will be recorded and probably used in further studies So you can go ahead and try the Hexaco test with that link in the description But I've also developed a three-in-one personality quiz that you can take on my website It's also in the link in the description It combines the big five the dark triad ad and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Personality Quizzes into one quiz that you can take in under 10 minutes. So I highly recommend you to check both of those out. Give these tests a try and see what the big 5 results and the hexa code results say about you.
And if you want to you can even share the results with your friend and usually you can get them to take it too. If you're surprised by your results or maybe your peers assessments of your personality then it might be time for some self reflection and maybe some activities to increase your self awareness. Thank you guys so much for watching this video I really hope you learned something and if you did leave a comment below. Thanks for watching.