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Personality tests

Big Five personality test

Fifty statements from the public-domain IPIP item pool. Rate how well each one describes you as you generally are now, not as you wish to be, then see your profile on the five traits.

50 statements0 / 50
  1. 1Am the life of the party.
  2. 2Feel little concern for others.
  3. 3Am always prepared.
  4. 4Get stressed out easily.
  5. 5Have a rich vocabulary.
  6. 6Don't talk a lot.
  7. 7Am interested in people.
  8. 8Leave my belongings around.
  9. 9Am relaxed most of the time.
  10. 10Have difficulty understanding abstract ideas.
  11. 11Feel comfortable around people.
  12. 12Insult people.
  13. 13Pay attention to details.
  14. 14Worry about things.
  15. 15Have a vivid imagination.
  16. 16Keep in the background.
  17. 17Sympathize with others' feelings.
  18. 18Make a mess of things.
  19. 19Seldom feel blue.
  20. 20Am not interested in abstract ideas.
  21. 21Start conversations.
  22. 22Am not interested in other people's problems.
  23. 23Get chores done right away.
  24. 24Am easily disturbed.
  25. 25Have excellent ideas.
  26. 26Have little to say.
  27. 27Have a soft heart.
  28. 28Often forget to put things back in their proper place.
  29. 29Get upset easily.
  30. 30Do not have a good imagination.
  31. 31Talk to a lot of different people at parties.
  32. 32Am not really interested in others.
  33. 33Like order.
  34. 34Change my mood a lot.
  35. 35Am quick to understand things.
  36. 36Don't like to draw attention to myself.
  37. 37Take time out for others.
  38. 38Shirk my duties.
  39. 39Have frequent mood swings.
  40. 40Use difficult words.
  41. 41Don't mind being the center of attention.
  42. 42Feel others' emotions.
  43. 43Follow a schedule.
  44. 44Get irritated easily.
  45. 45Spend time reflecting on things.
  46. 46Am quiet around strangers.
  47. 47Make people feel at ease.
  48. 48Am exacting in my work.
  49. 49Often feel blue.
  50. 50Am full of ideas.

What the five traits mean

  1. Extraversion: energy from people and activity, talkativeness, comfort in company.
  2. Agreeableness: warmth, cooperation and concern for others.
  3. Conscientiousness: planning, order, reliability and follow-through.
  4. Emotional stability: calm under pressure; its opposite is neuroticism.
  5. Intellect and imagination: interest in ideas, abstraction and imagination, close to what other models call openness.

The Big Five at work

Of the five, conscientiousness has the steadiest link with job performance. A 2022 re-analysis of selection research put a general conscientiousness scale at .19 and conscientiousness items framed around work at .25, while the other four traits measured in general terms sat between .05 and .10. People also describe themselves more favourably when a job is at stake, so a self-report scale is one input next to evidence of the work itself. More in our guides to psychometric tests and pre-employment tests.

Questions

What is the Big Five

The Big Five is the most widely used model of personality in research: five broad traits, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability (the reverse of neuroticism) and openness, which this item set calls intellect or imagination. Each person sits somewhere on each trait; none is a type.

Where do these 50 statements come from

From the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP), which publishes them in the public domain as markers of the Big Five factors reported by Lewis Goldberg in 1992. The page uses the IPIP's own item wording and scoring key.

How is the test scored

Each answer gets 1 to 5 points. For statements that point the other way on a trait, the points are reversed (a 5 counts as 1). The ten statements of each trait are summed, so every trait scores from 10 to 50.

Should employers use a personality test to hire

With care. In a 2022 re-analysis of selection research, a general conscientiousness scale predicted job performance at .19, and the other four traits measured in general terms at .05 to .10. Applicants also describe themselves more favourably when a job is at stake. A personality scale works best as one input next to job-related evidence, never as a cut-off on its own.

Sources

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