Facet (psychology)

Five factor model

NEO PI-R

Costa and McCrae originally developed facet scales for neuroticism, extraversion, and openness to experience to reflect the fact that each broader trait is composed of different aspects of personality. They admit their decisions were somewhat arbitrary and acknowledge that each trait may actually have more or less than six facets. However, they justify their choices with the need for a balance between comprehension and comprehensiveness and research supporting their six facet breakdown of each Big Five personality trait. The following table displays the labels used by Costa and McCrae for each personality domain and its constituent facets.

• Neuroticism: Anxiety, hostility, depression, self-consciousness, impulsiveness, vulnerability
• Extroversion: Warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement-seeking, positive emotions
• Openness to experience: fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas, values
• Agreeableness: Trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, tender-mindedness
• Conscientiousness: Competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline, deliberation

Saucier and Ostendorf

In contrast with Costa and McCrae's admittedly arbitrary decisions, studies guided by the Lexical hypothesis root facets in the personality language of laypeople. This approach is meant to test, and possibly enhance, the content validity of the measures used. Using the five factor model, Gerard Saucier and Fritz Ostendorf explored each domain's facet structure through lexical studies. Using English and German participants and materials, they found a total of 18 facets, or "subcomponents", of the Big Five. These are:

• Neuroticism: Irritability, insecurity, emotionality
• Extroversion: Sociability, unrestraint, assertiveness, activity-adventurousness
• Openness to Experience: Intellect, imagination-creativity, perceptiveness
• Agreeableness: Warmth-affection, gentleness, generosity, modesty-humility
• Conscientiousness: Orderliness, decisiveness-consistency, reliability, industriousness

Abridged Big-Five Dimensional Circumplex

The standard five factor model conceives of personality as a collection of unidimensional, polar scales. In contrast, circumplex models explore personality as it is constructed in the two-dimensional space created by the intersections of these polar scales. Timothy Leary was the first to apply the circumplex to the study of personality. Following Leary's pioneering work in the 1950s, Jerry Wiggins' Interpersonal Circle was one of the most influential early circumplex models of personality. Despite similarities between the Interpersonal Circle and two of the Big Five, it was only later that the work of Lewis Goldberg with Dean Peabody, and Willem Hofstee and Boele de Raad integrated the circumplex and Five Factor models. The result was The Abridged Big-Five Dimensional Circumplex (AB5C). In place of specific facet labels, Goldberg and his colleagues use Roman numerals, and plus and minus signs corresponding to the two intersecting factors. For example, the facet corresponding to the intersection of extraversion and disagreeableness is represented by "I+II−".

The following tables list adjectives associated with the intersections of high scores (+) and low scores (−) on the Five Factors. Corresponding NEO PI-R labels are provided in parentheses, with adjectives approximating pure Big Five traits (e.g., extraversion, neuroticism) in bold. Empty cells represent impossible combinations (e.g., I+I−) or "blank spaces" (e.g., II+III−) – that is, combinations that are either unimportant or do not naturally appear in language.