Big Five Personality Test
Personality · Five dimensions · Comparison
How sociable, how organised, how calm am I compared with others?
You usually know quite well how you see yourself. The harder question is where you stand compared with others. This test measures your personality on the five dimensions of the Big Five model and shows you, for each one, where you stand compared with a public data set of around 600,000 responses.
50 statements · 8–10 minutes · free · no sign-up
The five dimensions
- 01
Extraversion
reserved ↔ sociable
How much you seek contact with others and engage in groups. High scores mean drawing energy from company, low scores from quiet. Neither side is better.
- 02
Agreeableness
matter-of-fact ↔ compassionate
How strongly you respond to the needs and feelings of others. High scores go along with helpfulness and cooperation, low scores with directness and a willingness to engage in conflict.
- 03
Conscientiousness
spontaneous ↔ organised
How methodically, tidily and reliably you work. High scores go along with structure and persistence, low scores with spontaneity and flexibility.
- 04
Emotional Stability
sensitive ↔ calm
How strongly you react to stress and strain. In many tests the same dimension is called neuroticism, measured the other way round.
- 05
Openness (Intellect/Imagination)
practical ↔ imaginative
How much ideas, imagination and abstract connections appeal to you. In research this dimension is also called openness to experience.
How it works
The test consists of 50 short statements such as "Start conversations" or "Worry about things" and takes 8 to 10 minutes. Right afterwards you receive:
- 1 your score for each of the five dimensions and how the comparison group is distributed around you
- 2 an overview of your profile
- 3 typical strengths, possible pitfalls and a reflection question for each dimension
- 4 your results as a PDF
Where you stand in comparison
A single score says little. Is 4 out of 5 on conscientiousness a lot or a little? That can only be answered by knowing how other people respond. The comparison therefore shows you where you differ from most people and where you are similar. This way you see which of your traits are particularly pronounced and which are rather average for you.
To do this, the test compares your scores with a publicly available data set in which around 600,000 people answered the same questionnaire, like this: "16% of the comparison group describe themselves as more reserved than you, 3% the same, 81% as more sociable." This matters because the averages differ widely: on agreeableness, a score of 4 out of 5 is only average, while on extraversion it is clearly above average. Without a comparison, you would read both scores the same way.
What the test is based on
The Big Five model goes back to the analysis of trait words in everyday language and has been confirmed in many languages and cultures. The 50 statements come from the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP), a freely available collection of scientific questionnaires, more precisely the "Big-Five Factor Markers" by Lewis R. Goldberg (1992). The comparison values come from a publicly available data set of the Open-Source Psychometrics Project with responses from 2016 to 2018. The German translation and the descriptive texts are my own work and have not been separately validated.
The test is not a diagnostic instrument. The result is based on your self-assessment and can be influenced by your mood on the day and your self-image. The comparison group is not representative. Use the result as a prompt for self-reflection, not to judge other people.
Privacy and more
The Big Five model is the most thoroughly researched model in personality psychology. It does not describe personality in types but on five dimensions, on which every person lies somewhere between two poles. Nobody is simply "introverted" or "extraverted"; most people are somewhere in between, and this test measures exactly that position. It is also known as the five-factor model or the OCEAN model, after the initial letters of the dimensions: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism (measured here the other way round, as emotional stability).
Your answers are evaluated exclusively in your browser and are never sent to a server. They are not stored permanently: so that you can continue where you left off after reloading the page, they stay in your browser until you close the tab. You can remove them earlier with “Delete result”. You do not need an account or an email address.
A second look at your personality is offered by the inner drivers test: it shows which inner drivers shape your behaviour.
Where do you stand?
50 statements · 8–10 minutes · free · no sign-up
Start the Big Five test