Citations

The evidence behind the claims.

Defaults makes a small set of empirical claims about the Big Five and the IPIP-NEO-120 instrument. This page enumerates the peer-reviewed sources for each one. Every reference is linked to a DOI or the publisher of record.

Instrument

The IPIP-NEO-120 and the item pool behind it.

Defaults administers the 120-item public-domain inventory developed by Dr. John A. Johnson, drawn from Lewis Goldberg's International Personality Item Pool.

Johnson, J. A. · 2014

Measuring thirty facets of the Five Factor Model with a 120-item public domain inventory: Development of the IPIP-NEO-120

Journal of Research in Personality, 51, 78–89.

Defaults uses the IPIP-NEO-120, the 120-item public-domain inventory developed and validated in this paper.

DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2014.05.003 →

Goldberg, L. R. · 1999

A broad-bandwidth, public domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models

In I. Mervielde, I. Deary, F. De Fruyt, & F. Ostendorf (Eds.), Personality Psychology in Europe, Vol. 7 (pp. 7–28). Tilburg University Press.

Original description of the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) — the open item bank that the IPIP-NEO-120 draws from.

View source →

Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. · 2017

The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(1), 117–143.

Modern benchmark for hierarchical Big Five measurement; informs how Defaults reports separate domains from facets.

DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000096 →

Outcomes literature

What Big Five traits are linked to in research.

When the marketing copy says traits are linked to patterns at work, in relationships, and under stress, these are the meta-analyses behind that wording. They describe statistical relationships at the population level, not predictions for any individual.

Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. · 1991

The Big Five personality dimensions and job performance: A meta-analysis

Personnel Psychology, 44(1), 1–26.

Foundational meta-analysis linking Big Five traits — Conscientiousness in particular — to job performance criteria across occupations.

DOI: 10.1111/j.1744-6570.1991.tb00688.x →

Roberts, B. W., Kuncel, N. R., Shiner, R., Caspi, A., & Goldberg, L. R. · 2007

The power of personality: The comparative validity of personality traits, socioeconomic status, and cognitive ability for predicting important life outcomes

Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(4), 313–345.

Compares personality traits with SES and IQ as statistical predictors of life outcomes at the population level — a primary reference for Defaults' outcomes language.

DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-6916.2007.00047.x →

Cross-cultural replication

The "56+ countries" claim, sourced.

The five-factor structure has been recovered across dozens of national samples using translated inventories. The Schmitt et al. (2007) study is the direct source for the 56-country figure used on the homepage.

Schmitt, D. P., Allik, J., McCrae, R. R., & Benet-Martínez, V. · 2007

The geographic distribution of Big Five personality traits: Patterns and profiles of human self-description across 56 nations

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 38(2), 173–212.

The source for the "56 countries" replication claim: 17,837 participants, BFI translated into 28 languages, five-factor structure recovered across regions.

DOI: 10.1177/0022022106297299 →

McCrae, R. R., & Terracciano, A. · 2005

Universal features of personality traits from the observer's perspective: Data from 50 cultures

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(3), 547–561.

Companion evidence that the five-factor structure recovers from observer ratings across 50 cultures.

DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.88.3.547 →

Read the methodology View the full citation corpus

Have a correction or a paper you think should be added? Email hello@knowthydefaults.com.