Methodology in Language Learning: The ‘Big Five’ model

The Big Five construct two dimensions, but replaces psychoticism with three additional dimensions of  conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience. A wide variety of empirical studies have tested these models and found that they provide a good representation of the central features of personality.

 

To start with, although the leading role of the Big Five model in research publications is undeniable, we should note that there is more to personality psychology than the Big Five trait paradigm. Psychoanalytic theories are still active areas and insightful contributions are also made by research in the behaviorist, social-cognitive, and humanistic vein. Therefore, one challenge for the field is to integrate the rather disparate approaches. A second important issue, which is related to second language studies more directly, concerns the impact of situational factors on the variation of personality and behavior. Because this issue is also relevant to some other ID variables (most notably motivation), let us look at it more closely.

 

Personality psychology has, by intention, concentrated on stable and distinctive personality properties since its beginnings, it has become increasingly clear that by assuming absolute cross-situational consistency of most traits we can understand only part of the picture because there is evidence  for cross-situational variability.

 

Establishing the structure of personality is only the first step in any scientific study of individual differences, and the logical subsequent step is to investigate the development of personality. It is evident that the potential determinants of an adult’s personality include both environmental factors related to the nature of the home in which the person was raised as a child, and biological factors related to hereditary factors associated with the genetic make-up. Here again, however, we find an unfortunate separation of research directions between scholars studying these aspects, highlighting the need for future integration. In conclusion, although the study of human personality has generated a great amount of knowledge, personality psychology has still a long way to go before a comprehensive account of the interrelationship of all the relevant facets and factors can be achieved.

 

Because the model originated in adjectives, an effective way of describing the main dimensions is listing some key adjectives they are associated with at the high and the low end.

·    Openness to experience: High scorers are imaginative, curious, flexible, creative, moved by art, novelty seeking, original, and untraditional; low scorers are conservative, conventional, down-to-earth, unartistic, and practical.

·    Conscientiousness: High scorers are systematic, meticulous, efficient, organized, reliable, responsible, hard-working, persevering, and self-disciplined; low scorers are unreliable, aimless, careless, disorganized, late, lazy, negligent, and weak-willed.

·    Extraversion–introversion: High scorers are sociable, gregarious, active, assertive, passionate, and talkative; low scorers are passive, quiet, reserved, withdrawn, sober, aloof, and restrained.

·    Agreeableness: High scorers are friendly, good-natured, likeable, kind, forgiving, trusting, cooperative, modest, and generous; low scorers are cold, cynical, rude, unpleasant, critical, antagonistic, suspicious, vengeful, irritable, and uncooperative.

·    Neuroticism–Emotional stability: High scorers are worrying, anxious, insecure, depressed, self-conscious, moody, emotional, and unstable; low scorers are calm, relaxed, unemotional, hardy, comfortable, content, even tempered, and self-satisfied.

 

The crucial question about the validity of the Big Five construct is whether the five dimensions subsume all there is to say about personality. The crucial question about the validity of the Big Five is whether the five dimensions subsume all there is to say about personality.

© 

University of Oxford - post gradual studies 2009 'English Language Teaching'

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