The Big Five Personality Test Free Online Alternative

The Big Five personality test measures the following traits:

• Openness
• Conscientiousness
• Extraversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism

Each of these five broad personality dimensions contains many other sub traits or facets that deliver a more accurate personality description.

The score generally remains stable throughout a person’s lifetime, and they hardly ever change.

Each of the traits represents a continuum that ranges from 0 to 100%, and depending on someone’s personality trait, he/she can fall within the range.

Openness – When we talk about Openness in the Big Five context, we refer to the dimension that involves openness to new experiences, open-minded points of view, accepting new ideas, and insightfulness.

Test-takers can score high, average, and low on the scale, and depending on their personal result, and they can see the level of their open-mindedness and authority-challenging attitudes.

It is related to the interconnection of specific brain regions that allow some people to see patterns and connections where others fail to do so.

Conscientiousness – This trait describes the level of discipline and self-control while pursuing one’s goals. This trait is directly connected to the work of the frontal lobe of the brain, i.e., it regulates the instincts and animal drives in humans.

For instance, the level of its expression in people determines whether someone is more prone to doing an entertaining and fun activity without focusing on consequences, or he/she will choose to do less fun but important tasks.

It mostly reveals the level of responsibility and dedication in an educational or work-related environment.

Extraversion –  This trait describes someone’s preference to interact with the outside world, i.e., whether someone gets energized when interacting with other people or by spending time alone.

Taken from a scientific point of view, it is related to dopamine levels in the brain when pursuing a goal or expecting a reward.

The higher the excitement, the higher the dopamine level. Scientific studies have shown that extroverts tend to have an increased dopamine activity compared to introverts.

Agreeableness – It is the trait that involves an innate desire to help others, prioritize others’ needs over oneself, and cooperate rather than compete.

People who have a high agreeableness level show more empathy and tend to be more helpful. This trait is associated with the activity in the superior temporal gyrus, i.e., a brain region that plays a role in recognizing other people’s feelings and language processing.

Neuroticism – It measures how people react to triggers and stressors and how they deal with negative emotions, sadness, guilt, shame, fear, and anxiety. It is often referred to as an alerting trait related to irregularities, dangers, and discrepancies.

Different research associates Neuroticism with specific interconnection among brain regions that process negative emotions or stimuli or altered serotonin activity in the brain.

It also explains why different people react in different ways when faced with danger, fear, or anxiety.