Personality Tests > How Many Personality Traits Are There?

To answer this question, we need to take a brief history lesson and to describe the work of Gordon Allport, Raymond Cattell, Hans Eysenck, Paul Costa & Robert McCrae. This is worthwhile because many of the tests and much of the terminology developed in the last century by these psychologists is still in widespread use today and forms the basis of current personality theory.

Gordon Allport  (1897–1967)
Gordon Allport identified thousands of personality traits and grouped these into three categories:

Cardinal Traits - a cardinal trait dominates the personality across time and situations. A cardinal trait is the most important component of your personality e.g. Ambition, Self-sacrifice, etc. Very few people develop a cardinal trait and if they do, it tends to be late in life.

Central Traits - five to ten traits that are stable across time and situations. These are the building blocks of personality. For example: friendliness, meanness, happiness, etc. Most personality theories focus on describing or explaining central traits.

Secondary Traits - these characteristics are only evident in some situations and are of less importance to personality theorists. They are aspects of the personality that aren’t quite so obvious or so consistent.

Raymond Cattell (1905-1998)
Cattell took the thousands of traits described by Allport and condensed them down to 16 primary traits using the statistical method of factor analysis. The 16 PF (Personality Factors) test which resulted from this work is still in use today.

Hans Eysenck (1916-1997)
Eysenck proposed that only two factors were necessary to explain individual differences in personality. He argued that Cattell's model contained too many factors which were similar to each other, and that a simple two factor model could encompass the 16 traits proposed by Cattell. This model had the following dimensions:

Eysenck argued that these traits were associated with innate biological differences. For example, extraverts need more stimulation than introverts do because they have lower resting levels of nervous system arousal than introverts. Eysenck developed a third factor, psychoticism, which dealt with a predisposition to be psychotic (not grounded in reality) or sociopathic (psychologically unattached).

The result was the so-called PEN personality model.

P scale: Psychoticism -------------------------------------- High Impulse Control
Aggressive, cold, egocentric, [Nonagressive, warm, concerned for others
impersonal, impulsive, antisocial, personally involved, considerate, social,
unemphathetic, creative, tough-minded empathetic, uncreative, persuadable]

E scale: Extraversion -------------------------------------- Introversion
Sociable, lively, active, assertive, [Hermetic, taciturn, passive, unassertive,
sensation-seeking, carefree, stoical, reserved, dependent,
dominant, surgent, venturesome even-tempered, risk-averse]

N scale: Neuroticism --------------------------------------- Emotional Stability
Anxious, depressed, guilt-feelings, unconcerned, happy, without regret,
low self-esteem, tense, irrational, high self-esteem, relaxed, rational,
shy, moody, emotional confident, content, controlled.

Paul Costa (1942-) & Robert McCrae (1949-)
In the final decades of the twentieth century an increasing number of psychologists came to the conclusion that the three factor model was too simple and that 16 factors were too many. In 1990 Paul Costa and Robert McCrae presented their ‘Five Factor Theory’ and introduced the associated NEO Personality Inventory.

This Costa & McCrae model has received significant support from other research and is now widely accepted among psychologists. There is some minor disagreement regarding the exact definition and naming of these 5 factors but this is largely an academic debate. These 5 aspects of personality are referred to as the 5-factors or sometimes just ‘the Big 5’. Until now we have not really made any attempt to clearly define any of the personality traits. However, now that we have the 5 factor model we can proceed to look at these in detail.