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The Five Factor Model Of Personality

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The five-factor model (FFM) is a contemporary construct describing personality. It incorporates five traits – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism also referred to as OCEAN. Within each dimension, there are specific personality attributes, for example, openness includes subcategories of feelings and actions. The FFM was influenced by Cattell’s 16-factor model (1957) and shares traits with many other personality theories such as Eysenck’s PEN model. There has been an ongoing debate discussing how many factors appropriately represent the brain structure of personality, suggestions have varied from 2-7, recently Almagor et al. (1995) advocated that a 7-factor model unfolds when evaluative traits are involved. Costa & Mcrae (1992) claim that the FFM is the best theory of personality, however, the model has received much criticism. Through examining different aspects of the model its credibility can be explored. Universality is the core basis of a credible theory, studies have been found to replicate the five factors of personality repeatedly. However, this evidence has been obtained purely from replications involving urban and literate populations. Gurven et al. (2013) examined the universality of the theory further by obtaining a sample consisting of 632 Tsimane forager horticultural inhabitants of Bolivia. The sample was, therefore, illiterate and from a native society – an area of study not previously conducted for the FFM. The

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