The Five Factor Model of Personality: A Research Brief
Background on the Five Factor Model of Personality
The Five Factor Model of personality has stood the test of time and is often referred to as The Big Five: Extraversion, Emotional Steadiness, Conscientiousness, Openness/Intellect, and Agreeableness. These five broad domains of personality were discovered empirically by different groups of researchers pursuing two independent lines of study.
The Lexical Hypothesis
The first group was studying the Lexical Hypothesis, which posits that all of the meaningful ways that people can differ from one another in their personalities have become embedded in our languages over thousands of years. In other words, if it is a meaningful personality trait, humans have come up with a word to describe it. When all such words are gathered and subjected to a statistical procedure known as factor analysis, which uncovers hidden relationships between variables by grouping them based on similarities, the thousands of words that describe personality reduce to five distinct factors. One of those researchers dubbed them “The Big Five.”
The Five Factor Model
The second group pursued a different approach, taking all of the questions from existing personality measures and, similar to the first group, subjecting them to factor analysis. The result was the same: all of the questions fit discretely into those same five factors. These researchers referred to their discovery as “The Five Factor Model.”
Convergence and Universality
Although The Big Five has roots going back to research done in 1949, it was not until the 1980s that personality researchers reached consensus that these five robust factors account for all of the meaningful ways that people can differ in their personality. Subsequently, these factors have been uncovered across cultures and in many different languages. Even more impressively, four of the factors have been discovered in research on several species of animals, whereas the fifth, Conscientiousness, also shows up in research on chimpanzees. This latter finding suggests that Conscientiousness evolved relatively recently and that the ability to follow rules and pursue goals in the distant future are particularly important for humans.
Together, the above research indicates that the universal nature of the five factors is because they help humans and animals to survive and reproduce, and hence, were favored by evolution. Not surprisingly, the Big Five/Five Factor Model remains the dominant personality paradigm to this day.
The Metatraits: Stability and Plasticity
Originally, The Big Five were thought to be orthogonal, meaning uncorrelated with each other, and to sit atop the personality hierarchy as the broadest level through which similar traits could be grouped. However, subsequent research using instruments specifically designed to measure The Big Five has revealed that this is not the case.
Discovery of Stability and Plasticity
First discovered by Digman in 1997, the five factors are not independent but instead consistently correlated with each other. Specifically, scores on Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Emotional Steadiness tend to go up and down together, whereas the same is true for scores on Extraversion and Openness/Intellect. The commonalities from the former three form a higher-order trait originally labeled Factor Alpha, now commonly referred to as Stability. The latter group forms a higher-order trait originally labeled Factor Beta, now commonly referred to as Plasticity.
Are Stability and Plasticity Real?
While the existence of these two metatraits has been known for almost 30 years, there has been a lingering question as to whether they reflect real parts of people’s personality or are simply methodological artifacts caused by evaluative biases that can influence self and other reports of personality. A study published in 2025, however, should put that debate to rest. Through a rigorous methodology, it ruled out alternative explanations and offered compelling evidence that Stability and Plasticity are, in fact, very real. Considering this research and their position in the personality hierarchy above The Big Five, perhaps a more appropriate descriptor than metatraits would be The Super Two.
What Is the Purpose of Stability and Plasticity?
As humans, we all have goals we want to accomplish, and we need to develop strategies to pursue them. We also need to be able to interpret the world around us to assess what goals to pursue, which strategies may be effective, and how well we are progressing toward attaining them.
The Role of Stability
Since the goals we strive to reach are often complex and non-immediate, Stability serves as a protective factor that prevents pursuit of them from being disrupted by impulses. It thus ensures consistency in our motivation to pursue goals and to follow rules when doing so, the latter of which helps humans function in complex societies. This is the purpose of Conscientiousness.
Stability also ensures consistency in our emotions. This supports accurate interpretation of the world and helps us avoid becoming distracted or abandoning goals due to setbacks or misperceived threats. This is the purpose of Emotional Steadiness.
Finally, Stability ensures consistency in our relationships. This allows us to coordinate our goals, interpretations, and strategies with others, and facilitates the giving and receiving of help. This is the purpose of Agreeableness.
The Role of Plasticity
At the same time, the world around us is always changing. Goals often need to be modified, along with the strategies used to pursue them. Learning to interpret the world differently can assist with both.
Plasticity supports our ability to adapt to change and to pursue new goals when opportunities present themselves. Extraversion helps us proactively explore the world behaviorally, aiding in the acquisition of new skills and causing us to approach novel situations that could offer rewards. Openness/Intellect helps us proactively explore the world cognitively by engaging deeply with information, which can lead to a richer understanding of ourselves, others, and the environment, and can help with the identification of new goals and effective strategies to pursue them.
Cross-Cultural Evidence
Both Stability and Plasticity helped our ancestors survive and thrive over thousands of years and, as such, have become deeply ingrained in us as a species. They are so essential to what makes us human that they show up even more consistently than The Big Five across cultures. A lexical study across nine diverse languages, including popular ones such as Chinese and Greek as well as others that were much less so, such as Maasai and Senoufo, found that a two-factor solution was the most replicable. The labels researchers chose to describe them, Social Self-Regulation and Dynamism, mirror Stability and Plasticity.
Stability and Plasticity at Work
While the origins of The Super Two and Big Five were shaped by evolution thousands of years ago, the genes and neurobiological systems that gave rise to them are still present in us today and have been little changed since that time. While many of our goals may differ from those of our ancestors, Stability and Plasticity still play a critical role in helping us meet them and shape our behavior at work and in life more broadly.
Stability and Job Performance
One hundred years of research has shown that Conscientiousness is the strongest and most consistent predictor of overall job performance (Wilmot & Ones, 2019). Those who score high on it are consistently motivated to work hard, get things done, and follow the rules, and tend to perform their jobs better than those scoring lower.
But when high Agreeableness and high Emotional Steadiness are added to the mix, the picture improves further. An individual high in Stability not only works hard, but also consistently has positive interactions with others and handles stress well. Research supports that when these three domains are considered together, they predict job performance significantly better than Conscientiousness alone (Hirsh et al., 2011).
Stability and Organizational Citizenship Behavior
A separate study found a similar result: Stability was a stronger predictor of Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCB) directed toward the organization, such as going above and beyond on tasks, and toward individuals, such as volunteering to help someone even when it is not part of a formal job description, than any of its three component domains on their own (Hirsh et al., 2011).
Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Emotional Steadiness, but not Extraversion or Openness/Intellect, are also negatively related to turnover (Zimmerman, 2008) and Counterproductive Work Behavior, including bullying, cyberloafing, and absenteeism (Berry et al., 2007).
Together, these findings show that by selecting for those who are high in Stability, organizations will increase their chances of hiring individuals who will perform their core job well and be good corporate citizens. They will also be better positioned to decrease turnover and other harmful or toxic behavior, further enhancing their ability to create a positive and motivating work environment that fosters teamwork.
Plasticity and Innovation
In addition to OCB directed toward the organization (OCB-O) and toward individuals (OCB-I), a third type is directed toward change (OCB-CH) and involves proactively suggesting improvements. A meta-analysis found that Plasticity predicted OCB-CH better than any of the individual Big Five domains, and that there was no relationship between Stability and OCB-CH (Hirsh et al., 2011).
Similarly, of the Big Five, Openness/Intellect was the best predictor of creativity and the second-best predictor of voice behavior, which is similar to OCB-CH, whereas Extraversion was the best predictor of voice behavior and the second-best predictor of creativity (Lebel & Patil, 2018). Plasticity is also a strong predictor of cultural intelligence, defined as an individual’s ability to function effectively in a multicultural setting (Ang et al., 2020).
Together, these findings suggest that if organizations are interested in having employees who drive innovation and change and can adapt easily to working with individuals from diverse backgrounds, they should be very interested in hiring those high in Plasticity.
The Future of Stability and Plasticity at Work
Likely influenced by the lingering question as to whether the metatraits were real or artifacts, there has been a scarcity of research whose primary focus has been on examining how well The Super Two predict outcomes at work. Given the level of disruption brought about by the pandemic and now by AI, it would certainly seem that Plasticity will have increased importance at work in general. Those who are high on it should be able to display the agility needed to adapt more effectively to our rapidly changing world. Future research will also likely find that Plasticity plays a key role in performance in specific work settings, such as startups and other VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) environments.
More broadly, Plasticity is probably a large part of what is being tapped into with the meta-competency known as Learning Agility, which would make it a likely case of the jangle fallacy that may be revealed in future studies. Regardless, it is safe to say that if adaptability is an important competency for specific roles in an organization or part of the company’s values more broadly, they would be well served by measuring Plasticity.
A Cautionary Note: Balance Matters
Being high on Plasticity is not always advantageous, particularly when paired with low Stability. A recent study on counterproductive work behavior discovered that the most problematic combination of traits tended to be low Stability paired with high Plasticity (Stanek & Ones, 2025). Future research will also likely show that the reverse, high Stability paired with low Plasticity, can also be problematic, leading to excessive rigidity that could be particularly maladaptive in certain work settings such as VUCA environments.
While we are likely just scratching the surface in terms of research on The Super Two at work, what we can say with certainty is that they will continue to be key parts of everyone’s personality. Knowing where employees stand on those factors, as well as the narrower domains and facets beneath them, will be an important key that helps organizations understand fit for certain roles, future potential, and how development can be customized for maximum impact.
¹ Information on the purpose of the metatraits and five factors was taken from Cybernetic Big Five Theory (DeYoung, 2014).
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References
Ang, S., et al. (2020). Cultural intelligence and Plasticity. International Journal of Applied Psychology.
Berry, C. M., Ones, D. S., & Sackett, P. R. (2007). Interpersonal deviance, organizational deviance, and their common correlates. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(2), 410–424.
DeYoung, C. G. (2014). Cybernetic Big Five Theory. Journal of Research in Personality, 56, 33–58.
Digman, J. M. (1997). Higher-order factors of the Big Five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(6), 1246–1256.
Hirsh, J. B., DeYoung, C. G., & Peterson, J. B. (2011). Metatraits of the Big Five differentially predict engagement and restraint of behavior. Journal of Personality, 77(4), 1085–1101.
Lebel, R. D., & Patil, S. V. (2018). Proactivity despite discouraging supervisors: The powerful role of proactive motivation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 103(6), 658–670.
Stanek, K. C., & Ones, D. S. (2025). Counterproductive work behavior and personality metatraits. Journal of Applied Psychology.