ABSTRACT
Personality psychologists have long sought to generate a taxonomy of personality traits that would provide an integrative framework for personality research. This search for the basic building blocks of personality has led many researchers down a contentious and often confusing path, plagued by methodological maelstroms such as determining the number of factors needed to account for personality ratings and complex theoretical issues such as defining what makes a personality dimension basic. Over the past decade the debates and confusion have waned as considerable progress has been made toward the development of a generally accepted trait taxonomy. The repeated identification of the "Big Five" factors in personality ratings has led to the beginning of a consensus that most personality traits fall within five broad content domains: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience (for recent reviews, see Digman, 1990; Goldberg, 1993a; John, 1990). According to the five-factor model (FFM) of personality, these broad factors are basic dimensions of personality that represent "the major variables that have been studied by psychologists as well as those traits that are used by laypersons to characterize themselves and their acquaintances" (Costa & McCrae, 1992a, p. 4). The available research suggests that the FFM provides a generalizable and comprehensive representation of personality trait structure in adulthood (McCrae & John, 1992). 1
