Written by Danielle Fuller
December 2022
75/A

The well-studied Big Five model of personality is defined by its core traits of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (OCEAN; Goldberg, 1990). With ample empirical research supporting its validity and reliability (Ashton et al., 2004; Costa & McCrae, 1992), it is the personality framework most frequently used by researchers to assess relationships between personality traits and mental health (Power & Pluess, 2015) – particularly the study of subjective well-being (SWB; Anglim et al., 2020). SWB, which “reflects the extent to which people think and feel that their life is going well,” (Lucas & Diener, 2009) is an area of mental health research that exploded following the dawn of positive psychology at the turn of the century (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).  When using the Big Five to predict and assess SWB, countless studies spanning both time and geography have concluded that the most consistent and reliable OCEAN traits for predicting SWB are those of neuroticism and extraversion, or how one naturally deals with “the problem of threat” and “the problem of reward”, respectively (Hovhannisyan & Vervaeke, 2022). Both traits have been evolutionarily advantageous to humans for millennia: neuroticism’s facets of anxiety and vulnerability are responsible for our fight/flight/freeze instincts (Cunningham et al., 2011), and extraversion is critical for navigating our social world (Asendorpf & Wilpers, 1998). From a biological standpoint it is logical that neuroticism and extraversion are repeatedly found to serve as paramount predictors of SWB (Anglim et al., 2020; DeNeve & Cooper, 1998; Lucas & Diener, 2009; Steel et al., 2008).

Nuanced operationalization of both the Big Five and SWB provide further insight to the two concepts. The model of SWB is comprised of three factors – positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction (Diener, 1984) – with each itemized into underlying facets (e.g., the Extended Satisfaction with Life Survey facets include general life, social life, sex life, relationship, self, physical appearance, family life, school life, and job satisfaction [Alfonso et al., 1996]). Similarly, each OCEAN trait is subdivided into six facets (e.g., neuroticism is comprised of independent assessments for anxiety, angry-hostility, depression, self-consciousness, impulsiveness, and vulnerability [Costa & McCrae, 1992]). This elaboration establishes intricate hierarchies for SWB (Figure 1) and the Big Five (Figure 2) that capture the deeper concepts underpinning each. Analysis within and between these lower-level facets reveals intricate nuances of subjective well-being regularly overlooked in personality research (Albuquerque et al., 2012). 

Through critical analysis of the use of OCEAN traits to predict subjective well-being, this essay asserts that the Big Five is valuable for predicting subjective well-being in a broad sense, yet inappropriate for claims of comprehensive prediction or for individual application. This essay will weigh the levels of applicability by first assessing the broad Big Five-SWB relationship through its global replicability, repeatability of results across measures, and construct synchronicity, then secondly assessing shortfalls of the Big Five-SWB relationship through the examples of model inclusivity, facet impact, and environmental mediators.

Costa and McCrae deemed the Big Five a universal personality system, claiming it captures traits “universal to human nature” (Costa & McCrae, 1997), and this appears to hold true in its association with subjective well-being. Despite the Big Five and the definition of SWB both originating in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic (WEIRD) parts of the world (Costa & McCrae 1999; Diener 1984), researchers in Australia (Grant et al., 2009), Colombia (Meléndez et al., 2019), China (Zhai et al., 2013), and Iran (Joshanloo & Afshari, 2011) have reached the same conclusion: neuroticism and extraversion are the strongest predictors of SWB. This consistency signals that links between personality and SWB transcend geographical barriers, rooting in human nature over local culture. Naturally there will always be limitations to globalized assumptions, and the countries listed do not capture the full breadth of global cultures, customs, and norms. For example, increased neuroticism could play a heightened role in survival for isolated human populations, such as the Sentinelese tribe of North Sentinel Island – making it a positive, rather than negative, predictor of SWB. With that acknowledged, cases like this are rare on the world stage. Despite WEIRD bias inherent to the Big Five and SWB constructs, international research still manages to replicate the same high-level correlations, suggesting that, within the developed world, the relationship between OCEAN traits and SWB truly can be considered universal.

Additionally, there appears to be significant measurement consistency in correlations between OCEAN and SWB. Countless replications and meta-analyses have come to the same conclusion that there are strong ties between OCEAN and SWB (Anglim et al., 2020); however, as measurement variance amongst studies can account for up to 32% of result variance (Doty & Glick, 1998), comparison validity is threatened when differing methods are used to gather personality and SWB data. Multiple meta-analyses have addressed this concern, concluding that variability in measurement tools and techniques does not change the research outcome (Anglim et al., 2020; Lucas & Fujita, 2000; Steel et al., 2008). The consistent OCEAN-SWB correlation found regardless of measure or collection method used, specifically for the traits of neuroticism and extraversion, further establishes a reliable association between the two concepts. This allows researchers to confidently utilize the Big Five personality model to further study and understand SWB and its factors and facets.

Yet another selling point for using OCEAN to analyze SWB is the significant overlap in concepts of positivity and negativity between constructs. SWB is inherently linked to positivity and negativity, given two of its three factors are positive affect and negative affect. Similarly for the Big Five, neuroticism is referred to as “disposition to experience negative effects” (Widiger & Oltmanns, 2017) and extraversion is said to have a “positive emotional core” (Watson & Clark, 1997). It could be argued that strong similarities between neuroticism and negative affect, or between extraversion and positive affect, simply indicate they are separate ways of representing the same concept. However, if this were the case, studies would demonstrate a perfect correlation of 1.0 between related pairings. On the contrary, Anglim’s meta-analysis instead derived correlations of r = .56 between neuroticism and negative affect, and r = .44 between extraversion and positive affect (Anglim et al., 2020). Even the extraversion facet of positive emotions by itself only had a correlation of r = .31 with positive affect, indicating they are not identically defined and are not interchangeable. Instead, the similarity captures a genuine and reliable relationship between the Big Five model and SWB (Steel et al., 2008), making it an ideal framework pairing to understand and predict the relationship between personality and the factors of positive affect and negative affect at a macroscopic level.

Despite the empirical support behind the OCEAN-SWB relationship, there are notable limitations to consider. One limitation regards how a few key aspects central to SWB seem not to be captured by the factor analysis used to derive OCEAN (Soto, 2015). An example of this is gratitude, which has been shown numerous times to correlate with SWB independent of the Big Five (Datu, 2014; Kashdan et al., 2018; Wood et al., 2009). This implies that OCEAN alone cannot capture the full essence of what makes up SWB. Another example, self-esteem, was not only found to independently predict life satisfaction, but also to partially mediate the influence of neuroticism and extraversion on the SWB factor of life satisfaction (Joshanloo & Afshari, 2011). It could be argued that a concept like gratitude, already known to have unique and significant correlations with each OCEAN trait (McCollough et al., 2002), must be inherently accounted for in any SWB analysis utilizing the Big Five model.  However, intentionally controlling personality traits within the analysis still results in a separate and significant effect of gratitude upon SWB (Wood et al., 2009). Use of a model that overlooks the impact of traits like gratitude and self-esteem on SWB, as the Big Five seems to, results in an incomplete understanding of the personality-SWB relationship. While this does not take away the power of the high-level predictive relationship, analysis with OCEAN alone misses important nuance and should be supplemented with additional analyses when making detailed relational predictions.

Another concern with use of these models is the tendency to oversimplify to the highest-level definitions – namely the five personality traits and the singular SWB – despite facet-level predictions being around 20% more accurate (Anglim et al., 2020).  Focus on the macroscopic level comes at the expense of richer microscopic analyses needed to better understand the nuance of SWB beyond the emotional traits of neuroticism and extraversion. For example, applying OCEAN to the SWB facet of relationship satisfaction reveals that personality trait similarity between partners does not increase relationship satisfaction (Brauer, 2022; Weidmann, 2016; Weidmann, 2017), that women have higher relationship satisfaction when both they and their partner have modest openness scores (Weidmann, 2017), and that agreeableness and conscientiousness are found to predict relationship satisfaction more often than not (Weidmann, 2016). These findings, particularly the significant predictive power of openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness within the nuanced context, are masked once generalized to the factor level of life satisfaction and general SWB. Yet in the application of predicting and understanding how personality impacts SWB within the confines of a romantic relationship, these findings are critical considerations. Similar findings that “meaningful individual differences are unrelated to the common factors” (Albuquerque et al., 2012) have been found for the Big Five as well: one study found that out of 30 OCEAN facets, only four predict all three SWB factors – two of which are facets of conscientiousness (Albuquerque et al., 2012).  Applying the high-level consensus of the OCEAN-SWB relationship – that neuroticism and extraversion are the best predictors – at the facet level disregards critical associations useful in unique applications. When considering SWB within a narrow context, nuanced association is critical for accuracy.

Lastly, generalized OCEAN-SWB associations do not account for situational environment factors found to mediate the relationship (Steel et al., 2008). For example, someone with high extraversion is intuitively more likely to experience the predicted high level of SWB if living in a bustling city than they would being a lighthouse keeper isolated from society; in both scenarios, the personality trait (high extraversion) remains constant, but SWB will vary based on situational environment. Similarly, people with a “stable” personality profile – high conscientiousness, high agreeableness, high neuroticism – are likely to experience lower SWB when in highly-dynamic environments, whereas those with a “plastic” profile – high openness, high extraversion – will struggle when stuck within a static environment (Hovhannisyan & Vervaeke, 2022). In cases like these, empirical OCEAN predictions of SWB are less accurate given the mediating effect environment has on the individual under test. Particularly in clinical or one-on-one settings, a focus on nuance and individual difference is needed to assess and address SWB, as understanding situational effects requires more nuance than what generalized OCEAN associations provide.

This essay took a critical look at how the Big Five personality model is used for understanding and predicting SWB and claimed that its resulting associations are valuable for high-level analysis but inadequate for addressing the rich underpinnings of subjective well-being. The mountain of empirical evidence supporting the Big Five as valid and reliable is compelling, and its applications, particularly with SWB, are equally supported at a high level. With that said, generalities are more useful for researchers and policymakers than they are for understanding individual difference. Accordingly, use of OCEAN as a predictor of SWB should be encouraged for broad applications but needs to be used cautiously, limited to facet analysis, and/or applied in tandem with additional personality frameworks when narrow applications are of particular interest.

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