Research Feed

Journalist Laurie Clarke, who scored with a high percentile for neuroticism on the Big Five personality test, spent six weeks deliberately trying to shift her personality traits through targeted behavioral exercises such as meditating, journaling, attending social events, and practicing kindness. Drawing on real psychological research, she found measurable results: her neuroticism dropped to the 50th percentile, extraversion and agreeableness both improved noticeably. She concludes that intentional personality change is possible, though modest, and requires consistent effort.

This meta-analysis of over 65,000 participants confirms that Big Five traits significantly shape our nocturnal experiences. Neuroticism is the primary predictor of nightmare frequency and emotional distress, while Openness correlates with high dream recall, vividness, and lucid dreaming. Extraversion mainly influences the social sharing of dreams. These findings support 'continuity models,' suggesting that our waking affective vulnerabilities and cognitive styles directly extend into our dream lives.

Researchers used AI to extract Big Five personality traits from LinkedIn profile photos of 96,000 MBA graduates, finding that these "Photo Big 5" scores meaningfully predict school rankings, starting salaries, career advancement, and job turnover, independently of academic performance. While the findings offer new insights into how personality shapes careers, the authors caution that using facial images for hiring raises serious ethical concerns around discrimination and individual autonomy.

This study highlights that core personality traits are powerful predictors of baseline fitness and the specific exercise intensities individuals enjoy. Notably, participants scoring high in Neuroticism experienced the most significant stress-reduction benefits from aerobic training, suggesting a targeted emotional utility for exercise. Across the spectrum, Openness, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion further dictate these behavioral patterns, providing a scientific basis for how stable traits influence physical health. By understanding these links, interventions can be better tailored to leverage an individual's personality for improved well-being and long-term fitness adherence.

Hilbig and Moshagen identify four problems with Big Five Agreeableness (B5A): it fails to adequately predict prosocial and ethical behavior despite emphasizing both in its definitions; the HEXACO model's Honesty-Humility dimension covers these gaps more effectively; the dark factor of personality (D), a single broad trait, also outperforms B5A on these outcomes; and different B5A scales measure inconsistent constructs, meaning researchers using different tools are effectively measuring different things while calling it the same trait.

The article argues that understanding your personality through the Big Five model (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) can help reduce stress. When core personality needs go unmet, people exhibit stress behaviors. By identifying where you fall on each trait's spectrum, you can better recognize your personal needs and adjust your habits and environment accordingly; ultimately becoming a calmer, more effective version of yourself.

Using German panel data and a job search and bargaining model, this study finds that Big Five personality traits shape wages and employment through multiple channels. Higher conscientiousness and emotional stability raise earnings and shorten unemployment for both sexes, while agreeableness reduces wages and bargaining power. Women's tendency toward higher agreeableness and lower emotional stability accounts for roughly as much of the gender wage gap as differences in work experience do.

This large-scale meta-analysis of over 150,000 participants explores how the Big Five traits influence dietary habits. Researchers found that lower Neuroticism and higher levels of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Agreeableness consistently predict a healthier diet. These traits affect everything from fruit intake to emotional eating patterns. Interestingly, the positive link between Agreeableness and healthy eating becomes even stronger as people get older.

Using Last.fm listening data from 541 users, this study examined how Big Five traits relate to naturally occurring music preferences, analyzing genre tags, emotion tags, and their co-occurrence. Extraversion correlated with high-energy genres like hip-hop, rap, and techno, as well as nostalgic hip-hop and jazz. Openness linked to jazz subgenres. Neuroticism predicted preference for mellow, atmospheric genres like shoegaze and dream-pop, co-occurring with low-arousal emotions like sadness and tenderness, while negatively correlating with high-arousal trance and world music.

This systematic review of 58,812 participants demonstrates that Big Five personality traits significantly influence sleep. High Neuroticism consistently correlates with poor sleep quality and disturbances, while Conscientiousness is a strong predictor of 'morningness' and better sleep hygiene. These findings suggest that personality-driven behaviors shape our nocturnal routines, highlighting the potential for personalized clinical interventions that account for individual psychological profiles to improve long-term sleep health.

Researchers compared the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) with the Big Five personality model to predict 37 real-life outcomes. The Big Five proved roughly twice as accurate as the MBTI-style test (placing MBTI halfway between science and astrology). Two main flaws explain this: MBTI omits neuroticism (a key predictor of life outcomes), and it forces people into binary categories rather than capturing the spectrum of traits. Despite this, MBTI remains popular largely because it frames traits more positively and feels less offensive to respondents.

This meta-analysis of 148 studies confirms a consistent negative correlation (r = -0.238) between neuroticism and relationship quality. Interestingly, factors like race, sexual orientation, and the use of longitudinal versus cross-sectional data did not change this fundamental link. However, the researchers identified that age, relationship length, and geographical region do moderate the strength of this association. To help practitioners, the study proposes a model showing how neuroticism damages relationships through specific emotional patterns and behaviors.

This study mapped the personality profiles of 263 occupations using data from over 88,000 individuals. It found that while broad Big Five traits vary across jobs, specific personality 'nuances' offer even deeper insights into occupational differences. Interestingly, high-performance roles tend to be more personality-homogeneous, suggesting these jobs are more selective. The research provides a comprehensive look at how our unique traits align with our professional paths.

This study investigated using AI chatbots and machine learning to infer Big Five personality traits from text-based interviews. Researchers found that while these machine-inferred scores were reliable and followed expected factor structures, they struggled with discriminant validity, meaning the scores for different traits often overlapped too much. Furthermore, while the AI could predict some outcomes and showed promise for general use, its ability to predict real-world criteria like GPA was relatively low. These findings suggest that while AI personality assessment is feasible, it currently functions best as a supplement to traditional self-reporting rather than a total replacement.

Using data from over 30,000 participants, this study links the Big Five personality traits to dietary habits, exercise, and obesity. Conscientiousness emerged as a key predictor of health, correlating with recommended food intake, higher physical activity, and lower obesity risk. Conversely, Neuroticism was associated with poor dietary choices and increased obesity. Interestingly, Openness and Extraversion showed mixed results, linking to both healthy and unhealthy eating habits. These findings suggest that while personality is stable, understanding these behavioral patterns can help tailor effective, individualized health interventions.

This five-decade longitudinal study reveals that vaccine resistance and hesitancy are rooted in deep-seated psychological histories rather than simple misunderstandings. Key predictors include adverse childhood experiences, long-standing mental health struggles, and specific personality traits like nonconformism, fatalism, and high negative emotionality. Furthermore, many resistant individuals faced cognitive challenges in processing complex health data. These findings suggest that vaccine attitudes are established well before adulthood, highlighting the need for early childhood education and tailored messaging that accounts for these lifelong cognitive and emotional frameworks.

This meta-analysis examined how Big Five personality traits relate to problematic cannabis use. Findings showed that higher neuroticism and openness, along with lower conscientiousness and agreeableness, were associated with greater risk of problematic use. Notably, openness distinguished cannabis problems from other addictions. Overall, results support the relevance of personality traits in understanding substance-related risks and suggest potential directions for targeted prevention and treatment strategies.

This review highlights a significant resurgence in personality psychology, organizing the field around four core responsibilities: defining the units of analysis, documenting development across the lifespan, explaining the psychological processes behind behavior, and providing a framework to understand individual motivations. Over the last 20 years, the field has evolved to bridge the gap between stable traits and dynamic patterns. By addressing these four agendas, the research provides a comprehensive meta-structure that explains not just what personality is, but how it functions and changes, setting the stage for future exploration into the complexities of human nature.

This research introduces a multimodel NLP framework designed to automate and enhance the psychological scale development process. By adapting the GPT-2 model, researchers generated a massive 'AI-based item pool' (AI-IP) of one million personality items, which were then filtered using a BERT model trained to predict item correlations based on text alone. This framework effectively narrows the pool to the most relevant items while using zero-shot models to ensure balanced content coverage. Testing revealed that these AI-assisted scales achieved reliability, validity, and fit equivalent to traditionally developed scales. Ultimately, this approach streamlines the creative process of item generation and increases the likelihood of creating a valid scale on the first attempt, significantly reducing the need for costly revalidation.