The Big Five personality test was originally developed back in the 1970’s by two independent personality research teams - headed by Paul Costa and Robert McCrae (at the National Institutes of Health), and Warren Norman (at the University of Michigan)/Lewis Goldberg (at the University of Oregon).

The two teams had slightly different approaches to the study of personlity traits but ended up at the same results: most personality traits can be reduced to five dimensions.

The five dimensions of personality were etablised based upon  asking thousands of people hundreds of questions and analyzing the answers with a statistical method known as factor analysis. The five dimensions emerged from their analyses of the personality data.

In acedemic circles - Big Five is probably the most widely accepted and used model of personality testing.

Where can i try free personality tests?
The LeaderLab teamis developing a Big Five Inspired Job-profile test. They have developed 16 types like in the MBTI but it works morew intuitive and is build on the basis of the Work of Adizes four basis job-profiles. It’s a 12 minutes test with a relative high validity and very intuitive profiles, high quality personal feedback and 360 feedback possibility from friends and collegues. Visit them at: www.leaderlab.com

Where can I learn more about the Big Five?

For a fuller account of the background and history to the Big Five (Big 5) personality test check out: http://www.centacs.com/quickstart.htm

http://www.personalitylab.org/: This site has a number of Big Five-based studies from Dr. Oliver John’s group at UC Berkeley.

http://www.personalityresearch.org/: This provides an accessible overview of the academic field of personality.

http://www.rap.ucr.edu/: Home page of lab of very well respected researcher - will give you an idea what it is personality researchers do!

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/perscontents.html: An online textbook that will give the reader a basic background on personality psychology.

http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/gosling/: One of this site’s researcher’s homepage, which contains more information and results from studies using data from this site