There are five dimensions of personality, based on the theory in the article of McCrae & Costa (1987), which are the following: (1) neuroticism; (2) extraversion; (3) openness; (4) agreeableness; and (5) conscientiousness (Ghiabi & Besharat, 2011, p.416). There are a great many variety of personality theories, but it is this theory of McCrae that tried to define and generalize personality into five distinct dimensions. Each of these dimensions are aspects of the emotional intelligence that allow people to correlate with others and develop social interaction. This identified the importance of knowing a person’s personality dimension, for them to identify their level of emotional intelligence, which is very important when it comes to job performance. With this, the author tried to identify the scores in personality dimension, which led the author to answer the Personality Test – The Big 5 Project. This paper constitutes three parts, including theory description, theory limitation, and the relation of the theory to the five personality dimensions of the author. The goal is to use the personality theory that Fiske (1949) initiated in order to explain the writer’s personality.
Part 1: Theory Description
Based on the article of McCrae & Costa (1987), there are basically five dimensions of personality. The first is neuroticism that is regarded as a “tendency for experiencing anxiety, tension, self-consciousness, hostility, impulsiveness, timidity, illogical thinking, depression and low self-esteem” (Ghiabi & Besharat, 2011, p.416). The second is extraversion that is the “tendency to be positive, firm, active, kind and sociable” (Ghiabi & Besharat, 2011, p.416). The third is openness that leads a person to become flexible, open-minded, curious, and creative. The fourth is agreeableness, which identifies the tendency to be more forgiving, kind, generous, reliable, submissive, sympathetic, faithful and willing to sacrifice. The fifth is conscientiousness, which refers to efficiency, continence, reliability, rationality, progressiveness, reflection, and the capacity to organize. Under these five personality dimensions of McCrae & Costa (1987), one can identify their strength and weaknesses in terms of emotional intelligence, which reflects a person’s capacity for social interaction.
Ghiabi & Besharat (2011) mentioned how in the studies of Mayer, DiPaolo & Salovey (1990), it shows that “individuals with limited emotional awareness were less able to have sympathy and empathy with others” (p.416). With this, a higher rate of emotional intelligence would enable a person to be more sympathetic and empathetic with others. They would have an active emotional wellbeing, as they are able to recognize and express emotions in their everyday life. This is said to be a good factor of mental health, as Ghiabi & Besharat (2011) mentioned in their article; and a good mental health is generally important when it comes to job performance. The five personality dimensions of McCrae & Costa (1987) enable a person to have a high rate of emotional intelligence, which shows that the five personality dimensions are directly associated with emotional intelligence. Each of the five dimensions affect one another, which can disable or enable a person to experience positive or negative emotions: positive under extraversion, and negative under neuroticism.
Part 2: My Personality
I took the Personality Test – Big 5 Project at [http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/]. The results show that under neuroticism, I gained a score of 37 percent. Under extraversion, I got a score of 7 percent. Under openness, I got a score of 10 percent. Under agreeableness, a gained a score of 96 percent. Lastly, under conscientiousness, I gained 89 percent.
My high scores landed on being highly agreeable and conscientious, which explains my tendency to attend more to the desires of other people, especially people who are older and have more experience than I. I usually rely more on the words and opinions of other people than on my own. I gather my choices according to the response of other people, and I base my decisions on whether it benefits others, or if it would hurt other people or be dangerous to their welfare, their health, or their future. As reflected in the personality test, I tend to be more selfless and altruistic, which has led me to be rather careless with my priorities in life, or my dreams, aspirations, and other things that I want most in life.
Part 3: Theory Limitations
The five personality dimensions reflected in the article of McCrae & Costa (1987) has a number of limitations with regards to its capacity to effectively identify a person’s personality traits. First is its limitation in terms of the number of dimensions of the personality traits, which is limited to only five specific dimensions of traits. Other personality traits are not included, which limits the personality into just five dimensions. Second is that, the five dimension personality theory applies only a few aspects of personality under trait theories, and does not include the aspects of biological theories, behavioral theories, the psychodynamic theories, and the humanist theories. It has nothing to do with how personality relates with the environment, or how it relates to a person’s health, structure, or wellbeing. Third, the five dimension personality trait ignores the nature/nurture theory but only relates to the personality traits in the current time. It does not even relate to adult developmental theory, as it pictures the person to have varying sets of personality traits, regardless of what the nature/nurture was, is, or will be. Finally, the five dimensions personality theory of McCrae & Costa (1989) only sets the dimension on the current state of dimension, and does not relate to the reasons why it led to those varying traits. It only assesses the personality trait based on the five dimensions, without reflecting the reasons or the effects of the traits, or how it relates to the environment, to health and wellbeing.
Part 4: Conclusion
The five dimension personality theory is useful in determining job performance, since it identifies the rate of emotional intelligence, and the capacity to perform tasks—whether the person has the capacity to complete complex tasks or if they would rather be lazy about it. With the results in the Personality Test – Big 5 Project, it identifies that the writer is agreeable, good-natured and supportive, which is beneficial in job performance when it comes to being patient in completing complex, arduous jobs. It states that the writer is also conscientious, well-organized, self-disciplined and reliable, which are all helpful when it comes to job performance. It means that the writer has the capacity to complete difficult tasks or those that take a lot of time, effort, and patience to come up with an acceptable result. The writer may be too much agreeable to come up with self-made decision. Still, it cannot be denied that she is among those whom people can rely upon, no matter what task they may have to accomplish, since they have the capacity to be very careful and well-organized.
References:
Ghiabi, B., & Besharat, M.A. (2011). An investigation of the relationship between Personality dimensions and emotional intelligence. Social and Behavioral Sciences, 30(1), 416-420. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.10.082
Mayer, J.D., DiPaolo, M., & Salovey, P. (1990). Perceiving affective content in ambiguous visual stimuli: a component of emotional intelligence. Journal of Personality Assessment, 54(1), 772-781.
McCrae, R.R., & Costa, Jr., P.T. (1987). Validation of the five-factor model in personality across instruments and observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(1), 81-90.
