Big Five Personality Testing Report

Introduction

Recently, a plethora of personality assessments has grown in popularity, most of which are still widely available or readily available online. Analyzing personality traits repeatedly in journals, diaries, or experiential sampling studies is becoming more popular in the psychologist’s toolset (Horstmann & Ziegler, 2020). Moreover, personality evaluations have risen in acceptability and appeal in corporate settings (Moyle & Hackston, 2018). Personality tests give insight into workers’ thinking, habits, and inclinations, and they may be incredibly beneficial in enhancing learning and growth as well as boosting professional relationships. However, there are several concerns regarding the reliability and validity of tests that need to be discussed.

Discussion

As a matter of fact, most personality theories contend that personality can be represented using a variety of entities, each of which has a distinct stable component, personality characteristics, as well as changeable features, and personality states. Researchers typically use experience sampling methods to test these ideas and untangle the impacts of features and moods. In many of these circumstances, participants first complete a one-time examination of individual personality traits and various aspects, which is frequently based on self-report (Horstmann & Ziegler, 2020). Global self-reports of one’s typical patterns of thoughts, attitudes, and conduct are most commonly used to measure personality characteristics. Yet, Finnigan and Vazire’s (2018) findings demonstrate that typical self-reports may not carry information regarding between-person variations in personality characteristics beyond what global self-reports collect. Instead, average public self-reports may entail more self-bias.

One of the drawbacks of using self-report tools is that participants’ behavior might be intentional during testing. According to Durmaz et al. (2020), individuals are susceptible to the impacts of social desirability distortions. People tend to portray themselves favorably, especially when asked to make judgments about adversely rated attitudes and behaviors. The other significant problem related to personality testing is that Personality characteristics fluctuate as a result of life events and age-related changes (Hudson et al., 2019). As a result, self-reported personality assessments are not always reliable since they rely on the person’s recollection and self-assessment of their individual conduct.

Finally, it can be noted that tests often may not be applicable in cross-cultural contexts. As Hruschka et al. (2018) indicate, most instruments that social and psychological scientists use to collect data from participants have been developed for a select fraction of humanity. Generally, these are persons with particular abilities, experiences, motives, and cultural pressures (briefly defined as WEIRD, or Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, And Democratic). The culturally specific characteristics are rarely included in the interpretation of data in high-impact personality journals, and cross-cultural and ethnic minority papers are few on the subject (Arshad & Chung, 2022). Although the field of personality psychology has grown in scope, country, race, and culture remain underrepresented.

Consequently, this report aims to answer the question of how accurate personality tests are by reflecting on my experiences as a participant, referring to theories and current research. As such, the testing chosen for the analysis and evaluation is The Big Five personality test, based on the homonymous model, also called the Five Factor system. In the Big Five model, individuals have variable degrees of essential personality traits that control their ideas and behavior. The Big Five evaluation assesses people on five important personality variables: “agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience” (Erdem, 2020, p. 181). The Big Five model is based on a notion known as the lexical hypothesis, which proposes that we may develop a classification of personal characteristics by evaluating the words people use to describe one another (Abood, 2019). Researchers discovered that trait-related descriptors appeared to consolidate into five groups, aligning with the Big Five qualities.

I have taken the aforementioned test through an online platform. Namely, Truity (2022) claims that the test has been thoroughly investigated and based on the psychological study on personality cores as well as the company’s quantitative studies. The testing is conducted in three steps by choosing options in an online form. The first two steps consist of 20 statements each, which one should rate by the degree of correspondence to one’s self-assessment. The third step requires one to rank 20 words in terms of how well they represent them (Truity, 2022). The test automatically calculates the results and scores the personality by the five dimensions cited earlier.

The first significant experience I had while taking the test described above was the consideration of social desirability. More specifically, I have continuously thought about a situation requiring me to take the test in a workplace setting, for example, for an employment interview in a new company. The assessment contained such statements as “I avoid taking on a lot of responsibility,” “I always make good use of my time, ” and “I find it difficult to get to work,” as well as descriptive words “self-disciplined” and “organized” (Truity, 2022). These formulations explicitly point to the expected behaviors in the working process and might be considered desirable for a hiring person. As a result, I felt that when dealing with this self-report personality test, job seekers would produce replies they believe the company desires. In other words, candidates can falsify their responses.

Personality tests are utilized in diverse settings, including executive coaching, team development, and hiring and advancement considerations. Yet, most scientific literature on the application of personality evaluations at work is oriented toward personnel selection, disregarding other criteria (Moyle & Hackston, 2018). The Big Five test, pertinent to the discussion, is used for self-rating job applicants as well (Kwok & Muñiz, 2021). Anglim et al. (2018) examined how much personality predictability is lost when a prospective employee environment is concerned. The results demonstrate that when personality tests were administered for employment selection purposes, the results revealed that candidates replied in a more socially desirable manner. Similarly, Cao & Drasgow (2019) confirm that personality traits with a particular significance to the target job were discovered to have higher inflation when testing is done in a forced-choice manner. These findings indicate that people tend to fill the assessment forms in a way that seems desirable to their employers.

My experience could be explained in the light of the discussed findings. Namely, since I have been concerned with employment lately, I feel pressured to find socially desirable and target-job-related descriptors. It can be argued that the issue of low predictability due to falsified results is expected for workplace settings due to its forceful nature and impact on a person’s life, which is present not only in the Big Five testing. Thus, although the social desirability behavior lowers the reliability of the test in the mentioned situation, it might not be so in other conditions.

Furthermore, I found that some of my assessments of the statements regarding their relevance for me could have been different if I had taken the test several months ago. For example, the descriptors “systematic” and “Inquisitive” did not apply to me earlier, yet it is otherwise now, which I feel is related to my desire to change my personality. Similarly, the statements “I am often troubled by negative thoughts,” “I am the life of the party,” and “I start arguments just for the fun of it” are not pertinent, although they were a year ago (Truity, 2022). In contrast, “I take care of other people before taking care of myself” became relevant (Truity, 2022). Hence, some mine behaviors change over time, which affects the testing.

It could be investigated whether the literature states that people tend to grow more amiable, attentive, and emotionally stable as they age. According to Brandt et al. (2020), personality is a significant predictor of critical life events across the lifespan, and trait measures are comparable across all age categories that take the Big Five test. The traits remain consistent in more short-term reassessments, as indicated in the Dunlop et al. (2021) study, evaluating stability for HEXACO testing for “honesty-humility, agreeableness, and conscientiousness” (p. 1). However, Horstmann & Ziegler (2020) state that personality states (the measurement of comprehensible behaviors, attitudes, and feelings at a given time) are connected explicitly to personality traits. The same occurrence of behavior can have several causes at various moments, which contradicts the conventional understanding of personality traits.

Nevertheless, other factors might affect the perception and the reality of change in personality traits. For example, Hudson et al. (2019) point out multiple individuals seek to alter their personalities. Furthermore, these modification objectives predict trait development. Change objectives predicted trait growth while maintaining fixed perceptions, and trait growth and views predicted well-being. Moreover, Hudson, Briley, et al. (2019) additionally state that it does not appear that simply wishing to change is sufficient to elicit trait development. Effectively altering one’s personality characteristics may necessitate actively and successfully applying activities to change oneself. Finally, Lydon‐Staley et al. (2019) found that curiosity is more substantial on days when there is more enjoyment and decreases on days when there is increased depressed mood. Thus, changes in curiosity and its consequences for daily engagement are related.

There are several implications of the findings described above. First, my perception of change in my behaviors and associated traits might not be caused by the lack of consideration for age-related changes in the Big Five testing, which seems to have demonstrated consistent results through the years. Instead, my voluntary attempts to change my personality and achievement of some results could have caused the discrepancy. Moreover, inquisitiveness and the ensuing openness dimension are similar to the curiosity mentioned earlier, which suggests that a change in my mood from depressive to less stressful might have caused growth in the corresponding trait as well. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that, although personality traits in the test are not affected by age, they are impacted by voluntary changes and mood fluctuations, which somewhat lowers the reliability.

The last concern I had regarding the test was the openness trait and its dependence on the economic status of a participant. Namely, some statements of the questioning involved inquisitive activities that require financial stability or at least living in an urbanized area. Moreover, I had felt that I would not rate the inquisitiveness descriptor high earlier in my life when I had financial difficulties. According to Arshad & Chung (2022), people’s cultural, racial, and ethnic background can influence their access to resources and socioeconomic position, which can limit their access to educational, vocational, and medical services resources. Openness and curiosity similarly depend on a person’s general well-being and access to educational resources (Lydon‐Staley et al., 2019). In turn, multiple studies confirm that the Big Five tests do not measure personality traits appropriately for low-income populations and countries (Laajaj et al., 2019; Syrén et al., 2019; Sainz et al., 2019). Hence, the validity of the test fails in the aspect of cultural consideration.

The correlation between cultural background, socioeconomic position, and their influence on well-being are demonstrative for the question of interpretation of openness trait. Namely, it illustrates that financial insecurity limits curiosity, which explains why my earlier and current perceptions of this trait differ due to my change in socioeconomic status. Moreover, these findings reveal that the Big Five testing is still inappropriate for describing global population personalities.

Conclusion

To conclude, the Big Five test is unreliable and inaccurate enough for several purposes, including testing in the workplace and population outside the WEIRD. Although it demonstrates consistency throughout the lifetime, the traits set could be impacted by a person’s desire to change themselves. In general, inaccurate implicit assumptions about methods of experiencing, thinking, and behaving may lead researchers to misinterpret unconventional replies as lack or inadequacy. The test could be improved by further research, cultural knowledge, and forced-choice testing implementation.

References

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