The Big Five model, or OCEAN model, is one of the best known ways to structure personality and allows you to carry out a multitude of studies. What exactly is the model of the five great personalities?
This model is based on the fact that personality can be divided into 5 independent characteristics. These characteristics are: extroversion, neuroticism, empathy, openness and scruples. Knowing the values that an individual has in each one of them allows us to know their personality.
- To better understand the model it is important to consider two aspects.
- The first is to know what they refer to and how each of the features is described.
- And the second.
- To know the criticisms that are made.
In this sense, the disposition of the individual in relation to personal interactions is evaluated, that is, the level of activity and encouragement that the person has when referring to others, and is closely related to the degree of pleasure or enjoyment acquired by social relations.
High scores tell us that we face sociable, communicative, people-oriented, optimistic, caring or loving people, while low scores would indicate reserved, sober, non-euphoric, quiet or retracted people.
With neuroticism, what we’re trying to evaluate is emotional adjustment versus emotional instability. This feature identifies individuals with a tendency to psychological distress, unrealistic ideas, excessive rumia or anxiety, and inadequate coping responses.
A high score in neuroticism would be an indicator of people concerned, nervous, emotional, insecure or hypochondriac. In contrast, people with low scores would be characterized by a relaxed, safe, resilient, satisfied or high self-esteem attitude.
This characteristic is useful to know the quality of interpersonal advice, empathy is presented in a continuum, from compassion to antagonism in thoughts, feelings and behaviors, that is, it is the extent to which the individual is able or not to put himself in the place of the other and act according to his emotions and concerns.
If an individual gets a high score in empathy, he will be compassionate, affable, confident, considerate, not unpleasant, naive or frank. On the other hand, a low score shows us a cynical, rude, suspicious, competitive, vengeful, relentless, irritable or manipulative attitude.
This feature evaluates the extent to which a person actively searches for new experiences and enjoys small routine activities, basically measuring tolerance and exploring unknown situations.
A high score on this feature shows us curious people, with broad, creative, original, imaginative or non-traditional interests; On the other hand, if the score is low, we will face the conventional, pragmatic, realistic or selfless.
It is responsible for evaluating the level of organization, perseverance and motivation for objective-based behavior, differentiates people between those who are dedicated to make the result of their work excellent and perfect and those who do not care about the results of their performance.
When there is a high score, we will face organized, formal, hardworking, punctual, orderly, ambitious or persevering individuals, those with low scores will be characterized as goalless, informal, lazy, carefree, rebellious and with little desire. .
While the model of the five great personalities is widely used in psychology, care must be taken, personality is a difficult construct to measure and involves a number of methodological difficulties, so the model of the big five may have some flaws.
The first is that, to measure different personality traits, self-information is often used, a type of test in which the subject explicitly gives the answers, which makes it easier to lie and respond according to social convenience.
Another possible error is the existence of biases when the subject judges himself. From social psychology studies we know that there are many prejudices that make us evaluate ourselves more positively than others. In the big five model, measured by self-report, the responses tend to have little objectivity.
Perhaps the biggest flaw of this model is that it is based on the study of personality as a trait, is a very internalist approach and ignores the possible interaction of the individual with the environment, which generates a rigid pattern, by which the personality remains stable. in all situations. However, studies suggest that personality is somewhat unstable and is created by a strong interaction between the individual and his context.
However, despite its errors, this model can be of some use in stable contexts and given its limitations, it can even have other uses, such as measuring a person’s self-concept, after all, it is a very interesting model, with statistical data that guarantee its reliability, provided it is used with some care.