Research Feed

Oberwemmer et al. (2026) tested whether spousal bereavement produces posttraumatic growth (PTG) as Big Five trait change in 256 Dutch adults tracked across seven years with matched controls. No growth-consistent changes emerged. Instead, bereaved individuals showed a temporary neuroticism spike surrounding the loss (more pronounced in men) followed by partial recovery, plus persistently lower conscientiousness post-loss. The authors suggest perceived PTG may reflect misattributing neuroticism's decline from its peak as genuine growth.

Among nearly 9,000 Brazilian teachers, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness were elevated while Negative Emotionality was low, replicating the occupational personality profile found in Western samples. Teaching-specific social-emotional and instructional characteristics mapped onto this Big Five structure but formed a distinct sixth factor, with personality accounting for only about 27% of their variance, leaving substantial teaching-relevant individual differences unexplained by broad traits alone.

A 2026 South African study (n=118) found work engagement positively linked to all Big Five traits except neuroticism, which correlated negatively. Extraversion and conscientiousness were the strongest predictors. Basic psychological need satisfaction (especially "joyful connection") explained additional engagement variance beyond personality traits alone. Research purpose: This study investigated the associations among work engagement, personality traits, and basic psychological needs from an organisational neuroscience perspective. Motivation for the study: Few studies have explore...

When people feel more satisfied at work, they gradually become more conscientious and emotionally stable, and those personality shifts in turn make them even more satisfied, creating a self-reinforcing cycle. Two large studies confirmed this goes both ways, with effects building and then fading over time rather than operating steadily. This suggests workplaces aren't just where personality shows up, they're where it develops. Organizations that invest in employee satisfaction may be inadvertently cultivating more reliable, emotionally resilient workers, while employees should recognize that their job choices can fundamentally reshape who they are over time.

Applying the Circumplex of Personality Metatraits to six Polish elections (N=2,936), Maliszewski et al. found that voter turnout was consistently driven by stability, social integration, and rule-following personality profiles, while abstention clustered around distrust, hostility, and antisocial tendencies. Support for the liberal Civic Coalition correlated with openness, autonomy, and prosocial orientation. Strikingly, the conservative PiS party drew its core support not from orderly traditionalists but from profiles marked by chronic grievance, hostility, and antagonism toward established norms: patterns replicated consistently across election cycles.

Using cluster analysis with 426 Polish participants, Kotus identified three Big Five personality profiles predicting pet attachment. Cluster 1 (high extraversion, openness, emotional stability) showed lower attachment. Clusters 2 (high neuroticism, low extraversion/openness) and 3 (low openness, high conscientiousness, need for predictability) both showed stronger attachment, with animals serving compensatory social functions: particularly as human-relationship substitutes for Cluster 2 and stress-regulating companions for Cluster 3.

This multimodal AI system predicts Big Five personality traits from text, speech, and facial expressions using the myPersonality dataset (86,220 participants). GPT-3 achieved 89.1% accuracy, with Openness (91%) and Extraversion (90%) most reliably classified. Agreeableness proved hardest to detect via speech, while lexical features dominated trait prediction overall, outperforming audio and visual cues.

Highly agreeable people in families often become the "easy one," accommodating others' preferences while suppressing their own. Research on midlife women found suppressed anger, unlike outward anger, doesn't decline with age. Over decades, unvoiced preferences accumulate into resentment. By their late fifties, many such individuals begin asserting themselves, confusing families who mistake this long-delayed self-recognition for a sudden personality change.

A 2026 multilevel meta-analysis (k=34 studies) found agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness positively associated with healthy eating and fruit/vegetable consumption; neuroticism was negatively associated. Agreeableness and conscientiousness also predicted lower sodium intake. Effect sizes were small but reliable, with openness-diet associations stronger in samples over age 30.

This study developed an efficient AI system for predicting Big Five personality traits from long-form life narrative interviews (the kind of detailed life stories people tell about key events and relationships). Rather than relying on questionnaires, which can be biased, the model reads how people naturally describe their lives. It accurately detected trait-relevant language: Openness in creativity and adventure, Neuroticism in health struggles and regret, Agreeableness in warmth and mentorship, suggesting personality leaves consistent, readable fingerprints in the stories we tell about ourselves.

Using a cross-sectional sample of 3+ million participants across 68 countries, this study examined how age moderates gender differences in Big Five personality traits. Women scored higher than men on Neuroticism, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness; men scored higher on Openness. The gender gap widened with age for all traits except Neuroticism, which narrowed. Cultural factors (particularly individualism, education, and later marriage ages) explained cross-national variation in these age-moderated gender differences.

Using NHATS data from 2,672 older adults, this longitudinal cohort study examined Big Five traits and social isolation risk over nine years. Higher extraversion and agreeableness predicted lower odds of baseline isolation, with extraversion remaining protective at three-year follow-up even after full adjustment. No trait significantly predicted isolation at six or nine years, suggesting personality's influence diminishes over longer time horizons.

A theoretical analysis argues the human Big Five personality model is inappropriate for describing great ape personality, as structural overlap between human and ape trait dimensions is below 50% for chimpanzees and as low as 25% for other great apes. The author proposes studying simpler, cross-species facets (like sociability, curiosity, and fearfulness) instead.

Among 127 creative adolescents and adults, hierarchical regression found that openness to experience and conscientiousness were the strongest Big Five predictors of creative self-beliefs, with openness showing the largest effect (β = 0.46). Extraversion also predicted creative self-beliefs once age was controlled. Self-compassion correlated positively with creative self-beliefs but lost predictive significance once personality traits (particularly neuroticism) were included, indicating substantial shared variance.

This BBC article explores how genes and environment interact to shape personality. Twin studies suggest 40–50% of Big Five personality differences are genetic, but genome-wide association studies find only 9–18% heritability—a gap researchers are working to explain. Environmental influences are equally complex: major life events have little lasting impact, while personality appears to be "poly-environmental," shaped by many small cumulative experiences interacting with genetic predispositions.

This study proposes a Character Model of Scientists (CMS) comprising four dimensions: personality traits, cognitive preferences, values, and habitual behaviors, each containing four elements drawn from a literature review of 24 studies. Big Five connections are explicit: scientists score higher in openness, with conscientiousness and agreeableness (cooperation) also represented. The model links to established Big Five theory, noting personality dimensions are harder to develop through training than values or behaviors.

Using a 2022 survey of 1,306 U.S. federal bureaucrats, this study examines how Big Five personality traits shape perceptions of agency politicization. Neuroticism is the standout finding: more neurotic employees are significantly more sensitive to formal politicization, perceiving greater appointee influence. Conscientiousness shows weaker, mixed effects; Openness, Extraversion, and Agreeableness show no consistent moderating role.

A study of 72 software engineering students found that roughly one-quarter of "problematic" learners are actually high-neuroticism "delayed starters" (anxious, deadline-driven students who spike activity 67% within 72 hours of due dates). By contrast, high-conscientiousness students showed steady performance, high-agreeableness students engaged 76% more in forums, and high-openness students accessed 3.2× more optional materials. The author recommends milestone-based assessments and learning analytics to better support personality-driven learning differences.

Among 121 Gen Z participants in Surabaya, emotional regulation negatively predicted impulsive buying (higher regulation, lower impulsivity), while social presence positively predicted it (more social influence, more impulsive purchases). Together, both variables significantly explained impulsive buying behavior. Findings suggest that strengthening emotional regulation and moderating social media exposure may reduce impulsive purchasing tendencies in this digitally native generation.

In 36-minute interactions among 240 strangers in three-person groups, higher extraversion significantly predicted greater perceived physical attractiveness, independently of speaking time. More talkative individuals were also rated as more attractive. Contrary to prior zero-acquaintance research, Duchenne smiling was non-significant. Findings suggest extraversion (and verbal behavior more broadly) shape attractiveness perceptions beyond physical appearance in live social contexts.