A powerful tool for knowing yourself and others—Big Five Personality Theory

Recently, I participated in a marketing-themed reading activity. Among them was a book about human evolution and consumer behavior, "Primitive Man in the Supermarket," written by American evolutionary psychologist Jeffrey Miller. In the book, he uses the "Big Five Personality Theory" as the core concept to explain that the most fundamental consumption motivation of human beings is to focus on showing off certain characteristics of oneself, and analyzes that consumerism as a display signal of characteristics is actually relatively inefficient. , thus advocating to break away from the stereotype of consumerism and using more clever and efficient methods to display personal characteristics, which is very inspiring. I found that the "Big Five Personality Theory" is a very useful thinking tool that allows us to better understand ourselves and others and improve the quality of interpersonal communication.

The "Big Five Personality Theory" introduced in the book is the author's integration of Lewis Goldberg's "Big Five Model" and Costa and McCurry's "New Five Factor Model" The five-factor personality theory was proposed later and includes five personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, stability, and extraversion. The Big Five personality plus general intelligence (i.e. IQ) are the six main dimensions of human change. They are the key individual differences that distinguish the human spirit and can be used to predict individual human behavior.

In fact, general intelligence ranks first among the six core traits. Higher intelligence predicts a higher average success rate in every aspect of life. Therefore, human beings have a consistent preference for intelligence. It is believed that within the range of normal intelligence, the higher the IQ, the better. But when it comes to the Big Five, people's preferences vary, which is the key difference between the Big Five and IQ.

It is worth noting that general intelligence and Big Five personality traits are distributed in a bell-shaped curve, not just positive and negative extremes. For example, most people have a certain degree of agreeableness. They are not completely kind or completely selfish, but the relative degrees vary.

1. Openness: refers to curiosity, seeking novelty and difference, open-mindedness, and interest in culture, thought and aesthetics.

People with high openness are more likely to pursue complex and novel things, readily accept changes and innovations, welcome new ideas, and abandon clichés; people with low openness are more likely to pursue simplicity and predictability things, are unwilling to change, respect tradition, and are more conservative.

The higher the degree of openness, the better. For example, people with high openness but low IQ levels are easily attracted to various novel and weird therapies, "black technology" and occult sciences that have no scientific basis. Waiting for deception.

2. Conscientiousness: refers to self-control, willpower, dependability, dependability, and the ability to control impulses.

People with high conscientiousness will pursue long-term goals, honor their promises and commitments, reject impulses and bad habits, and are more likely to build strong and reliable social networks; they like to make plans and arrange everything properly. A desire for perfection, a desire for achievement, and a tendency to focus on only one task at a time. People with low conscientiousness are more likely to be content with the chaos of nature, can accept things, people, and achievements as "good enough" rather than necessarily "the best," and can easily alternate between different tasks.

Conscientiousness and general intelligence are the two most valued traits by employers.

3. Agreeableness: refers to gentleness, kindness, sympathy, empathy, trust, obedience, humility, kindness, and peace.

People with higher Agreeableness are more likely to pursue harmony, adapt to the needs of others, and reserve their own opinions to avoid conflict. People who are low in Agreeableness are more likely to seek glory or notoriety, pursue their own needs, and make a grand statement about their opinions.

Agreeableness is not only recognized as a personality trait, but also as a moral trait. However, people low in Agreeableness but very intelligent tend to make the most revolutionary and creative contributions in the arts and sciences because they want to leave their own mark on the world and are not concerned with the conventional truths of others.

4. Stability: especially emotional stability, which means adaptability, composure, maturity, and resistance to stress.

People with higher stability are more resilient, are usually more optimistic, calm, relaxed, and can recover quickly from setbacks. People with low stability are more neurotic, anxious, worried, self-aware, depressed, pessimistic, easily angry, prone to crying, and have difficulty recovering from setbacks.

High stability is positively associated with mental health and happiness.

5. Extraversion: refers to friendly, sociable, talkative, funny, affectionate, confident, active, thrill-seeking and socially confident.

Extroverted people love to communicate and show a high degree of activity, power, dominance and self-confidence. They display many positive emotions, prefer to work with and trust others, like to be leaders, and like to stay physically active. Introverted people are relatively lonely, tend to suppress positive emotions, like to work alone, do not like sports, and are not easy to trust others or pursue leadership roles.

1. Accurately assess yourself and find ways to develop your qualities.

Anyone who has experienced job hunting knows that recruiting units usually require applicants to take a set of psychological test questions, the purpose of which is to evaluate their five major personality traits and see whether they are suitable for the position they are applying for. In addition to conscientiousness and stability, which are essential for all positions, the other three traits have different matching degrees for different positions. For example, sales positions focus on extroversion and agreeableness, design positions focus on openness, and scientific research may be more suitable for people with both openness and introversion. In the same way, when we make our own career planning and look for an ideal job, we can also use the Big Five Personality Theory as a tool to analyze what type of job we are most suitable for, so as to have a greater chance of being able to do it well and give full play to our advantages.

When shaping and displaying your personal style charm, you can also refer to your own Big Five personality traits to position your external style. For example, extroverts can wear warm-toned makeup and clothing, introverts can wear calm and cool colors, and people with high openness can try well-designed clothes and interesting accessories to better demonstrate their characteristics. If you feel that a certain trait of yours is too high and you want to neutralize it, you can also do the opposite. For example, a person with low agreeableness can dress in soft tones to improve their affinity.

When looking for ways to relax and unwind on a daily basis, you can also refer to your Big Five personality traits. For different people, some leisure methods can achieve the effect of relaxation and pleasure, while others will only make them more tired or bored, so it is important to find a method that suits you. People with high openness may prefer to travel, see exhibitions, learn new skills, etc. People with low openness may prefer to gather with family and participate in ritual activities. People with high agreeableness may prefer to go shopping with friends and participate in charity activities, while people with low agreeableness may prefer to participate in sports competitions and online debates. Extraverted people may prefer to organize or attend parties, play ball with friends, drink afternoon tea and gossip, while introverted people may prefer fishing, doing crafts, and staying at home. Of course, these leisure methods can be tried. After all, the Big Five personality is a comprehensive dimension, with different traits cross-combination, so everyone's preferences will not be single and pure. However, we can get some references to broaden our thinking.

2. Find suitable partners and best friends more efficiently.

Generally speaking, people develop favorable impressions of those whose personality traits are very similar to their own. People with high openness prefer to date, marry, make friends, and have sex with other people with high openness, so that they can try some new things together, or chat happily about avant-garde science, culture, and aesthetics. Similarly, people with low openness also have a strong tendency to associate with other people with low openness, so that they can jointly maintain or miss religion, tradition and civilization, and live in a conservative state that makes them most comfortable. Therefore, we can use the Big Five personality theory to break down the general "personality incompatibility" into several clearer dimensions, so that we can know which traits are complementary and which traits are best consistent. For example, extroversion and introversion can complement each other, and the level of openness needs to be as similar as possible.

From this, we can better evaluate whether a person can become a compatible partner or friend and avoid potential conflicts, frictions and mutual misunderstandings to the greatest extent.

If you want to deal with people with very different personality traits, using the Big Five Personality Theory for analysis can help you quickly see through others, avoid making mistakes, deepen understanding, and seek common ground while reserving differences. For example, when facing a difficult boss, client, parents-in-law, or parents-in-law, you can mentally evaluate the other person's characteristics in these five dimensions, and then you can roughly grasp their preferences and have a certain ability to predict their behavior. At the very least, you won't often step on the other party's minefield by mistake and make the relationship stalemate. In addition, some elders have low openness and do not approve of many new things. We can also understand that this is because people’s ability to deal with risks weakens as they grow older, and their openness will naturally be lower than when they were young. In addition, due to the era and cultural background It is natural for a generation gap to arise. With this understanding, we can face it more calmly, communicate patiently in a way that is more acceptable to the other party, and promote the harmony of the relationship.

I hope we can all make good use of the Big Five Personality Theory as a psychological tool, know ourselves and others, and live a happier life.