Psychology

The fourth member of the big five is the trait of conscientiousness, which reflects the degree to which people are responsible and dependable. Conscientiousness comes down to whether people usually do what they should, and whether they try to do it well. Of course, responsibly doing what one should depends on a number of separate characteristics, and most of these underlying attributes are part of conscientiousness. […]

Once we move beyond the traits of extroversion and neuroticism, the third most important trait is agreeableness, which involves the degree to which people generally have a positive or negative orientation toward other people. […]

The second most important personality trait is usually called neuroticism, but because the word neuroticism has such negative connotations, many researchers now call it emotional stability. Whatever we call it, the central feature of neuroticism or emotional stability is the degree to which people experience negative emotions. […]

When it comes to definining personality types, the balance of extraversion to introversion underlies people’s behavior more than any other trait. What are the key differences of extroverts vs. introverts, and why is this trait so important? […]

The English language contains more than 3000 words that refer to personality characteristics of various kinds. So how have researchers isolated and defined five major personality types out of a pool of thousands? And what, exactly, is the difference between a personality type and a personality trait? […]