Big 5 Personality Test

Fifty questions, four answers each, about fifteen minutes. Pick the option closest to how things actually go rather than how you would like them to go; at the end you get a percentage on all five Big Five scales and a written verdict on the one that came through strongest.

A friend gets going about a theory of why some cities grow outward and others grow up. Nothing in it will ever touch your week. What happens? You lose the thread somewhere in the second example. Once they get to the part about height limits, you ask what that does to rents. The bit that stays is the idea that a city can be read like rings on a tree. Your own examples keep arriving — all from towns you have lived in, long after they changed the subject.

Your desk, your phone's home screen, the drawer by the front door. Is there a system? If there was ever a system, it did not survive the last two moves. Nobody else could find a charger in that drawer, and you always can. Into that drawer go the keys and nothing else, and the desk gets the same treatment. A quarter of an hour every Sunday keeps all three exactly where you left them.

Saturday is open and two invitations are sitting there: a hundred people in a warehouse, or four of you around one table. Which gets the yes? One hand is already typing yes to the table for four. It takes a good reason to get you into the warehouse, and the table needs none. Say who else is going and the warehouse moves ahead of the table. You are answering the warehouse before you have finished reading the second invitation.

A new neighbour knocks, introduces themselves, and offers to take in your parcels while you are away. What is your first read? What you notice first is that they already know you travel. You would rather keep the parcels going to the corner shop for now. Not for a moment do you doubt them about the parcels; the key is a different question. The offer lands as exactly what it looks like, and you say so on the doorstep.

Nothing is wrong, nothing is due, the week ahead is clear. Is there still a low hum of something under it? "Quiet week," you tell someone, and you mean it plainly. You get a flicker of it at red lights, until the radio takes over. Twice a week, late on, you are running through what could still go sideways. There is a steady background note under all of it, and a clear week is when you hear it best.

You are stuck on a platform with a forty-minute delay and no signal. Where does your head go? You count the stops on the map and work out how much of the delay is left. On the bench opposite a couple is arguing, and you are two minutes into inventing what about. Redesigning the station — platforms, roof, that awful coffee stand — eats most of the wait. The time goes somewhere you cannot name. By the end of it the cellist two benches down has a second life.

Half the boxes are unpacked. What is left is the boring half: cables, paperwork, the spare-key drawer. How does the afternoon go? Even with the tape gun still in your hand, you are on the sofa by four. Two of the four boxes get done and the paperwork one goes behind the door for the week. You keep the order you set: nothing gets skipped to reach a better bit. The dullest one you save for last, and last is still tonight.

A work event, a room full of people you have never met, nobody to hand you an introduction. Twenty minutes in — what are you doing? The paintings on the far wall get the attention that the room itself does not. A slow lap of the room, a long look at the seating plan, one text sent from the corner. Someone standing alone by the window gets a hello, because that part you can do. You will have met four people and found out what two of them actually do all day.

The group has settled on a plan. It is not the one you would have picked, and it is not wrong either. Do you let it go? Not once does the evening end without your version coming back up. Everything gets agreed to out loud and picked at quietly for two days after. You say your piece once, hear the room, then get behind theirs properly. The tickets are booked from your phone that night, and nobody hears about the other plan.

Third time this month the delivery turns up wrong. What do the people around you see? How annoyed you are stays between you and the packaging. You go quiet for a minute and step into the hall to get the sentence right first. Standing in the doorway with the box, you say exactly what you think of the whole arrangement. Nobody in the flat needs telling: the door, the voice and the box on the floor have covered it.

You have cooked the same dish for years. Someone hands you a completely different method for it, with nothing alike in between. Which one is on the stove tonight? Yours goes on as usual, because it has never once let you down. Some other week you will try theirs, and tonight is not that week. There is a pan of each on the hob, and the taste test settles it. "Let's see what it does," you say, and yours does not get made tonight.

You have two weeks to decide whether to take on a second job. How do the two weeks go? By the time the fortnight is up, you have answered on a Tuesday feeling. The thing that decides it is a conversation on day nine you were not planning to have. You take a week to sit with it and a day on the numbers — then answer. Both versions of the next six months sit written out in front of you.

Six people need to pick where to eat and nobody has said anything for a solid minute. Who breaks it? The others get there eventually, and you eat wherever they land. Whether it is the pizza place or the other one, you will back whoever speaks first. Forty seconds of nothing is your limit, and then you name two places and let them choose. If it has gone quiet, it is already yours — you are on your feet naming the place.

A decision you are about to make is right on the numbers and will land badly on one person. How much does that weigh? The weight of it is nil, and the numbers are the whole story. Register the flinch and send it anyway, word for word as it was written. You find yourself rewriting the message four times to get the landing softer. Their face when they hear it counts for more here than the arithmetic does.

You walk into a room where everyone already knows each other. How aware of yourself are you? The temperature of the room registers with you sooner than anything about how you look in it. You are stiff for five minutes. Then it passes. A running commentary on your own hands and voice takes up most of the first hour. What you remember afterwards is your own face, not one thing anyone said.

Someone you respect lays out a careful case against a view you have held for a decade. What happens to the view? You hear them out and go home to look up who else says it is nonsense. Walking back afterwards, you grant them one point and keep the rest where it was. Nothing changes that night, but the view has a crack in it by the weekend. The main part of it goes, and you tell them as much out loud, as if changing your mind cost nothing.

You said you would do something for someone who will never check and would never know. Does it get done? In the folder where these things go, it is still sitting there in March. Remembering it at all takes a nudge from whoever was standing there when you said it. Late, and done badly at eleven at night. Done, though. You put it in the diary the same evening and it goes out two days early.

A free day, yours to plan. What pace do you set? One thing goes in the diary, and it is in the afternoon so the morning stays empty. You want it loose: an errand, one person to see, the rest left open. The gaps you fill as you go — a detour here, someone else's plans joined halfway there. Even the drive between two of them has something booked at the other end.

You pulled off something you are genuinely proud of. How does it come up in conversation? The full story, start to finish, inside ten minutes of sitting down. Something about how it went gets worked into the conversation before anybody asks. You will say it plainly if it comes up and leave it there. Whoever else was involved gets the credit, and your part surfaces months later from someone else.

Work, family and a dead boiler all land in the same week. How does the coping go? It gets handled as it comes, and none of it follows you to bed. You pick the loudest one, clear it, then look at what is left. The kitchen table disappears under three separate piles and none of them moves for days. Whether the boiler or the unanswered text does it, one small thing takes the whole week down.

A mural is going up on a wall you walk past every day. What happens on the way past? You do see that it is new, and that is the whole of it. The longer the scaffolding stays up, the more often you cross the road to look. Enough of the old brickwork shows through that you stand there long enough to be late. Missing a day of it would bother you more than the extra ten minutes the long way costs.

You have decided to run a half marathon next spring. What does the next month actually look like? Four weeks on, the decision is still a decision and the trainers are still in the box. There are two or three runs in there, whenever an evening allows one. "Tuesdays and Sundays," you tell people, and most Tuesdays and Sundays hold. The plan is on the fridge in weeks and distances, and a session moves only if something breaks.

One place is left on a caving trip that starts at five in the morning, with people you half know. Do you take it? The start time alone is disqualifying, and the caves never get a hearing. You want to know what the caves are actually like — and the answer had better be good. A yes goes back the same evening. Before they have finished describing it, you have asked whether there is a second place for a friend.

How often does something get done for someone else with nothing in it for you? The week is full enough already that other people's errands never get a look in. An hour here and there goes to other people, mostly the ones who would do the same back. If someone asks, they get it, and asking is generally what it takes. Your neighbours have stories about it that you would struggle to remember yourself.

A real setback lands at ten in the morning. How is the rest of the day? Ask about it at six and you get a shrug and the plan for tomorrow. You catch yourself flat through lunch, and by the afternoon it is back to normal. Your voice stays flat on every call after it, right through to the end of the day. It takes until the following morning, and the following morning is not guaranteed either.

A new idea comes up over dinner. What is the first thing you want to know about it? The first question is the cost, then who has tried it, then whether it held. Your phone is out before the plates are cleared, checking whether it works anywhere real. You want the question nobody at the table has thought to ask about where it came from. Dinner gets cold while the idea is taken apart for its own sake, and nobody asks what it is for.

You are three hours into a repair and the floor is covered in parts, tools and packaging. How does that sit? Stepping over the lot to get a drink, you do not register it as a problem. Nothing gets moved until the job is done, though you would rather it was not like this. Where the small screws have got to is bothering you more than the repair is. You stop twice an hour to put the packaging out and line the tools back up.

Four hours into a crowded wedding reception. Where are you, and how does it feel? Finding the quiet stairwell by the cloakroom was the best decision of your evening. The later it gets, the more the songs matter and the less the conversation does. You have moved tables twice and you are not thinking about the taxi yet. On the dance floor with people you met at seven, you are better company now than at the start.

Someone let you down once, clearly and without much of an excuse. What happens to your read on them? The list is short and it is permanent: they are on it. Anything that matters you would now do yourself, and the rest you would still ask them for. Even with that sitting there, you would give them the next one and watch how it goes. One bad week is one bad week, and it does not get to rewrite four years.

An hour before you leave, the plan changes completely. What is the first reaction? Something else goes in the bag and the new plan is fine by you. You will be level again by the time you are on the road, after a short flare of irritation. Whoever sent the message gets three questions back inside a minute, all sharper than intended. A hot face, a rewritten list, an hour of no use to anyone.

Nothing to do, nobody to see, an hour before bed. How does that hour usually go? You catch yourself reaching for the kettle, because an empty hour is an odd thing to hold. Your eyes go to the ceiling for a bit and something half-invented drifts past before sleep does. It takes four minutes for the hour to turn into a conversation with someone you will never meet. Give it ten minutes and you are three rooms deep in a house that does not exist.

Books, projects, half-written messages, browser tabs. How many unfinished things are open right now? The honest number would surprise you, and counting it is not happening tonight. On the go are two of them; the rest are keeping their places warm. You would rather carry three than four, and three is roughly where it stays. How many are open never gets past one, because the next one waits its turn.

A stranger on the platform starts talking to you about the delay. How does it go? There is a polite answer, and then there is your phone. "Same every Monday," you say, and go back to the board. You keep it going until the train comes, because they seem all right and the wait is long. Ten minutes later you know where they work, and they have your recommendation for the cafe by the exit.

You are in the middle of an open disagreement and it is getting warm. What is the instinct? You go up a gear — starting with the exact thing they said in March. Your case gets one more airing before anything else. Once the voices change, you are looking for the sentence that lets everyone out of it. Still being on speaking terms matters enough that you will take the worse outcome for it.

The argument finished an hour ago. Where is it now? An hour was more than it needed, and dinner is the current subject. If nobody brings it up it is finished, and if somebody does it is back for a minute. The people around you can tell from the way you are loading the dishwasher. Your side of it, by two in the morning, has been rewritten four times and is still not right.

Your morning routine has worked without a hitch for two years. Nothing is wrong with it. Do you change it? You will change it when it stops working, and not a morning before. Whoever suggests an improvement gets heard out, and the routine stays as it is. A new coffee, a different order, one week to see. Then a verdict. Something in it gets moved every few months, purely to see what the day does with it.

The seats are going and you have four minutes to decide. How does that feel? The confirmation email arrives before the timer has taken a minute off. As if it could always be undone, you book it now and think about it later. Two tabs get opened and the price gets checked twice, and the timer is nearly out. You want the dates checked and a night to sleep on it, and four minutes buys neither.

A discussion is well underway and you have a view on it. How much of it comes out? Nothing, unless somebody asks you directly. What you think comes out in one sentence near the end, once the room has quietened. You come in twice to put a different angle on the table. Leaning in early, you say where you stand and spend ten minutes defending it.

Being fair here costs you something real: money, time, a place in the queue. Which way does it go? The advantage, whatever the principle says, stays with you and costs you no sleep at all. You weigh it for a while and the cost usually wins. In the end it goes their way, and you are a bit sore about it for a day. Keeping the advantage would cost you more sleep than the money is worth.

Someone stands behind you watching while you do something completely routine. Does it change anything? The watching you barely notice; the job carries on at the same speed. Even with someone there, it is only the first minute that feels odd. Two simple steps go wrong that never go wrong when the room is empty. Everything slows to a crawl: the hands first, then the order you would normally work in.

Think about the views you have held longest, with no argument in front of you. How settled do they feel? If they were going to move, they would have moved by now, and that suits you. Anyone close to you could list them, though one or two have quietly softened. Two or three of them are quietly under review. The rest are where they were. A decade has gone by and hardly one of them has come through it unchanged.

Six weeks into saving for one thing, something better shows up. What happens to the plan? Your thumb moves the money across before the six weeks have crossed your mind. It takes one good reason to move the money, and there is always one good reason. Sleep on it once and the original plan is back in place by morning. You find yourself checking the total out of habit, and the new thing never gets a serious look.

Three quiet days in a cabin, nothing scheduled. How is day two? One night in, the quieter it gets the better you sleep, and the village can keep its shops. You would take another two of these over a weekend of plans, though the phone comes out more. By lunch you have walked the same path twice. Then you drive to the village for no reason. The quiet has become the loudest thing in the cabin, and you are pricing trains home.

Someone praises your work out loud, in front of other people. What do you do with it? "It was mostly me, yes," you say, and the room hears the rest of it too. You take it plainly and add a detail or two, since it is true. Two seconds in, you are already naming the person who did the difficult half. There is a change of subject inside five seconds, and your ears stay warm for ten minutes.

Two months of steady pressure with no break in sight. How are things by week six? Week six looks a lot like week one. By then the sleep has gone thin, though the work still goes out on time. An hour's work does take three now, and you do get to the end of it. You are running on the last of it — short with people you like, dropping the easy things.

An ordinary Tuesday, nothing happening. How much is going on inside? Even asked directly, you could not put a name to more than fine. One song on the walk in can shift the afternoon, and the rest of the day is fairly flat. An ordinary Tuesday has its own weather: three moods before lunch, none of them caused by anything. The nothing-happening you barely notice — inside it is half-finished scenes and arguments you are not having out loud.

A task you have never done before lands on you. How does it feel before you have started? Whoever handed it over has picked the wrong person, and you would say so. The brief, read three times before you touch anything, still does not look like something you can do. Something like it went fine last year, and you go looking for what you did then. You will have it worked out by the end of the week, and you knew that before you read the brief.

Something genuinely good happens to you. Can the people around you tell? It is the people who know you best who spot it, and only them. The news gets told once, quietly, to the person it concerns most. You tell the room, then your mother, then whoever is next through the door. Your phone has not been out of your hand since the message came in, and the street knows by dinner.

You have to tell someone something they will not want to hear. How does it come out? How to get there without saying it takes more thought than the thing itself. You lead with two good things to take the edge off the third. They get the sentence they will not like inside the first two minutes, and you stay put after. No warm-up, no cushion — they get it in one sentence and then all the time they want.

A strong pull arrives: buy it now, send the message now, say the thing now. What usually happens? You notice the pull and carry on with what you were doing. On a good day it waits until morning, and on a bad one it does not. Talking yourself out of it is a real effort, and the effort does not always hold. The weighing up does happen, an hour after the thing has already been sent.

Your results are no accident

The classic 16-type personality test rooted in Jung's typology has been rebuilt from the ground up: a new CoreTypes methodology, and a far higher level of accuracy. These might be the most useful ten minutes you'll ever spend on yourself: you walk away with the key to your decisions, your relationships and your results — and it's yours for good.

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Frequently asked questions

What is the OCEAN personality test, and what does OCEAN stand for?

OCEAN is simply the first letters of the five scales: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism. The last of them is the one people ask about. It refers to how readily feelings come up in someone and how long they take to settle again, which everybody does to some degree and which this test treats as ordinary variation rather than a flaw. OCEAN and Big Five name the same model; the acronym is just easier to hold on to.

How many questions is a Big Five test?

There is no set length. Quick screeners get through all five scales in ten questions or so, while full research versions run past a hundred. This one asks fifty, ten per scale, which is enough for each bar to mean something instead of swinging on one or two answers, and well below the length of the instruments professionals pay for.

Is the Big Five test scientifically accurate?

As personality models go, the Big Five has the strongest evidence behind it: decades of work by groups with no stake in each other's results, and the same five groupings keep coming out of the data. Two honest limits. It reports patterns that hold steady in how people rate themselves, and it does not explain what caused them. And although the structure has been reproduced in many languages and countries, the fit is close rather than identical everywhere.

Can your Big Five personality traits change over time?

Yes, within limits. Traits do get steadier as people move out of their teens and on through adult life, but nothing ever locks completely, and people do shift after long stretches in a new job, a new city or a new relationship. Read your profile as a description of where you are now, not a label you are stuck with.

What is a good or bad score on the Big Five?

There is not one. No scale here has a good end and a bad end; each buys you something and costs you something. If several of your bars sit around the middle, that is the ordinary outcome, because most people sit near the middle of any single scale. A middling bar is a real answer, not a missing one.

Methodology

The test is built on the Big Five, the trait framework that keeps turning up whenever researchers look at how people's self-descriptions hang together. Different teams, different decades, different methods, and the answers keep sorting themselves into the same five broad groupings.

You are scored on five separate scales: Openness (imagination and appetite for the unfamiliar), Conscientiousness (order and finishing what you start), Extraversion (how much company you want), Agreeableness (warmth towards other people) and Neuroticism. That last is the psychological name for how quickly feelings such as worry, irritation or self-consciousness rise in a person, and how long they take to level off again. Everyone has some of it, and where you sit on it is ordinary variation between people. Nothing here is a screening test of any kind. No scale outranks another, and no end of any scale is the good end. Most people land in the middle band of any single scale rather than out at an edge, so a middling bar is the usual outcome rather than a failed one.

What comes back to you describes the shape your own answers made, not why they came out that way. Traits do firm up as people get older, without ever locking; read your profile as where you stand now.

The APA Dictionary of Psychology has short entries on the Big Five personality model and the five-factor personality model — two related names with slightly different claims behind them.

References

Goldberg, L. R. (1990). An alternative "description of personality": The Big-Five factor structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(6), 1216–1229.
Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) Professional Manual. Psychological Assessment Resources.
McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T., Jr. (1997). Personality trait structure as a human universal. American Psychologist, 52(5), 509–516. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.52.5.509

Author: Lex Tarrel, Personality Typologist Reviewed by: Igor Lyadskiy, PhD