it purports to measure conscientiousness, and it measures that by how much money you make and how often you work, which have nothing to do with acting according to your conscience in a world where the highest-relevance acts are speech-acts
its ‘agreeableness’ metric is supposed to be about niceness and harmony-making, but people who reveal their disagreements for the sake of resolving them get sorted as argumentative and thus low in agreeability, and there’s no separate metric for niceness in the model, so as a worldview FFM basically says you’re either dogmatically conformist or a jerk
Which is actually a lot of things wrong with it, considering that’s two of its five factors.
I guess that’s what you inevitably get when you compress everything into five major buckets. Some buckets end up containing more than one thing. But the way the bucket were constructed means that those things are highly correlated in population. Like, not everyone is necessarily “either dogmatically conformist or a jerk”, but frankly, there are many people out there who can uncontroversially be placed on this scale.
You can go into more detail and split the big five traits into subtraits. Some people already do that. I couldn’t find an authoritative source, so I asked an LLM, and here is its answer:
Openness to Experience (O) = imagination, creativity, and curiosity.
Imagination – Vivid fantasy life and creativity.
Artistic Interests – Appreciation for beauty and art.
Emotionality – Awareness of one’s emotions.
Adventurousness – Willingness to try new experiences.
Intellect – Interest in abstract ideas and complex thinking.
Liberalism – Willingness to challenge traditions and authority.
Conscientiousness (C) = self-discipline, organization, and responsibility.
Self-Efficacy – Confidence in one’s abilities.
Orderliness – Preference for organization and structure.
Dutifulness – Strong sense of obligation and responsibility.
Achievement-Striving – Motivation to reach goals.
Self-Discipline – Ability to persist with tasks.
Cautiousness – Thinking before acting.
Extraversion (E) = sociability, enthusiasm, and assertiveness.
Friendliness – Warmth and approachability.
Gregariousness – Enjoyment of social gatherings.
Assertiveness – Tendency to take charge.
Activity Level – Preference for high energy and action.
Excitement-Seeking – Desire for thrills.
Cheerfulness – General positive emotions.
Agreeableness (A) = warmth, compassion, and cooperation.
Trust – Belief in the honesty of others.
Morality – Sincerity and lack of manipulation.
Altruism – Willingness to help others.
Cooperation – Avoidance of conflict.
Modesty – Humility and lack of arrogance.
Sympathy – Empathy and concern for others.
Neuroticism (N) = emotional instability and tendency toward negative emotions.
Anxiety – Tendency to worry.
Anger – Proneness to frustration.
Depression – Tendency toward sadness.
Self-Consciousness – Sensitivity to embarrassment.
Are those genuine flaws with the model, or is the terminology just suboptimal? Put another way, if you know someone’s 5 factor conscientiousness and agreeableness scores, how useful is that for predicting their behavior?
FFM is great except for two things:
it purports to measure conscientiousness, and it measures that by how much money you make and how often you work, which have nothing to do with acting according to your conscience in a world where the highest-relevance acts are speech-acts
its ‘agreeableness’ metric is supposed to be about niceness and harmony-making, but people who reveal their disagreements for the sake of resolving them get sorted as argumentative and thus low in agreeability, and there’s no separate metric for niceness in the model, so as a worldview FFM basically says you’re either dogmatically conformist or a jerk
Which is actually a lot of things wrong with it, considering that’s two of its five factors.
I guess that’s what you inevitably get when you compress everything into five major buckets. Some buckets end up containing more than one thing. But the way the bucket were constructed means that those things are highly correlated in population. Like, not everyone is necessarily “either dogmatically conformist or a jerk”, but frankly, there are many people out there who can uncontroversially be placed on this scale.
You can go into more detail and split the big five traits into subtraits. Some people already do that. I couldn’t find an authoritative source, so I asked an LLM, and here is its answer:
Openness to Experience (O) = imagination, creativity, and curiosity.
Imagination – Vivid fantasy life and creativity.
Artistic Interests – Appreciation for beauty and art.
Emotionality – Awareness of one’s emotions.
Adventurousness – Willingness to try new experiences.
Intellect – Interest in abstract ideas and complex thinking.
Liberalism – Willingness to challenge traditions and authority.
Conscientiousness (C) = self-discipline, organization, and responsibility.
Self-Efficacy – Confidence in one’s abilities.
Orderliness – Preference for organization and structure.
Dutifulness – Strong sense of obligation and responsibility.
Achievement-Striving – Motivation to reach goals.
Self-Discipline – Ability to persist with tasks.
Cautiousness – Thinking before acting.
Extraversion (E) = sociability, enthusiasm, and assertiveness.
Friendliness – Warmth and approachability.
Gregariousness – Enjoyment of social gatherings.
Assertiveness – Tendency to take charge.
Activity Level – Preference for high energy and action.
Excitement-Seeking – Desire for thrills.
Cheerfulness – General positive emotions.
Agreeableness (A) = warmth, compassion, and cooperation.
Trust – Belief in the honesty of others.
Morality – Sincerity and lack of manipulation.
Altruism – Willingness to help others.
Cooperation – Avoidance of conflict.
Modesty – Humility and lack of arrogance.
Sympathy – Empathy and concern for others.
Neuroticism (N) = emotional instability and tendency toward negative emotions.
Anxiety – Tendency to worry.
Anger – Proneness to frustration.
Depression – Tendency toward sadness.
Self-Consciousness – Sensitivity to embarrassment.
Immoderation – Difficulty resisting urges.
Vulnerability – Struggles under stress.
Are those genuine flaws with the model, or is the terminology just suboptimal? Put another way, if you know someone’s 5 factor conscientiousness and agreeableness scores, how useful is that for predicting their behavior?