• About 20,000 words in the English language (around 5%) can be used to describe the way people differ from each other.

• These words have been used as the starting point for scientific studies of personality because it is likely that they capture most of the important differences among people.

• Many of these words can be grouped into just five categories, known as the Big Five, that sum up the most important features of a person.

• Childhood personality can have far-reaching effects. For example, children who are more conscientiousness (hard-working, careful, reliable) grow up to be somewhat longer-lived adults than children who are less conscientious.

ORI scientists Lewis R. Goldberg and John M. Digman (deceased) conducted much of the early work to establish the Big Five as the dominant approach to personality today.

Currently, ORI scientists are studying a dozen languages found in diverse regions of the world (including New Guinea, Laos, Kenya, Mali, a tropical Pacific island, and the Arctic). Their aim is to find out which words to describe personality are considered important by humans, worldwide.

An ongoing project for ORI scientists is to develop more accurate measures of personality traits. These measures are used by other scientists nationally and internationally

To develop these measures, ORI scientists work with a sample of volunteers from the Eugene-Springfield community.   This sample also provides information that is used to understand how adults' personalities influence a host of important life outcomes.

ORI scientists are studying the influence of childhood personality on adult health outcomes in a sample of   individuals, now in mid-life, who were described as children in the early 1960s by their elementary school teachers in Hawaii.  


More information on ORI's work in Understanding Personality and our currently funded research in this area

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For more technical information on the development of personality measures at ORI, consult the IPIP website

Find out more about the study in Hawaii

The Big Five are:
Extraversion, Agreeableness,
Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Intellect/Openness.

The Big Five are dimensions, that is, people possess these aspects of personality to varying degrees.   They are more or less extraverted, agreeable, etc.