The Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter

The Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter

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The Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter
The Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter
12 Things Everyone Should Know About the Big Five Personality Traits

12 Things Everyone Should Know About the Big Five Personality Traits

What research reveals about the five pillars of personality

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Steve Stewart-Williams
Aug 23, 2025
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12 Things Everyone Should Know About the Big Five Personality Traits
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This is the latest post in my “12 Things Everyone Should Know” series. You can access the full collection here.

Why are some people unstoppable workhorses while others can’t organize their way out of a paper bag? Why do some people glide through life on a cloud of optimism while others are dogged by anxiety? And why do some people parachute off cliffs while others would rather curl up at home with a cozy book?

Psychologists have spent many decades sifting through the noise of human personality, and what they’ve found is surprisingly simple: five big traits that capture much of what makes you you. They’re called the Big Five, and they’re the closest thing psychology has to a periodic table of personality.

  • Extraversion: Cheerfulness, sociability; assertiveness

  • Neuroticism: Proneness to anxiety, sadness, and other negative emotions; emotional volatility

  • Conscientiousness: Orderliness; reliability; industriousness

  • Agreeableness: Friendliness; politeness; compassion

  • Openness: Intellectual curiosity; creativity; openness to experience

In this post, I’ll run through 12 things everyone should know about the Big Five personality traits, covering everything from hidden sex differences to how your personality shows up on your face to how you can change your Big Five trait levels. Hope you enjoy it!


1. The Big Five Predict Success in Every Domain of Life

A massive new synthesis of meta-analyses, pooling data from more than two million participants, concluded that the Big Five predict success (and failure) in every area of life that matters to people: career, education, love, well-being - you name it.

Interestingly, different Big Five traits predict success in different domains. Conscientiousness, for instance, is a rocket booster for achievement at work and school. Emotional stability (the flipside of neuroticism) pays dividends for relationships and life satisfaction. And low agreeableness can be an advantage in leadership.

Exemplar Variables of Metaclusters and Constituent Clusters Note. ES = emotional stability; AG = agreeableness; CO = conscientiousness; EX = extraversion; OP = openness; OCB = organizational citizenship behavior. Source: Wilmot et al. (2025).

2. The Big Five Are Genetically Linked to Psychological Disorders

Many of the same genes that shape the Big Five traits also shape people’s risk of developing certain psychological disorders. For example, neuroticism is genetically linked to depression, openness is genetically linked to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and extraversion is genetically linked to ADHD.

These findings fit with the idea that at least some so-called disorders represent the extremes of the distributions of ordinary personality traits, rather than discrete syndromes.

(a) Heat map illustrating genetic correlations between phenotypes. The values in the color squares correspond to genetic correlations. Asterisks denote genetic correlations significantly different from 0: *P < 0.05; **P < 0.00091 (Bonferroni correction threshold). (b) Loading plot of personality traits and psychiatric disorders on the first two principal components derived from the genetic correlation matrix in a. A small angle between arrows indicates a high correlation between variables, and arrows pointing in opposite directions indicate a negative correlation in the space of the two principal components. Source: Lo et al. (2017).

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