npr:

What kind of person are you?

That’s the question that a personality test called the Big Five seeks to answer. You respond to a series of statements about yourself – everything from “I have a kind word for everyone” to “I get chores done right away” – by agreeing, disagreeing or being neutral. Your final score gauges you on a quintet of characteristics: openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, extroversion and neuroticism (or emotional stability, depending on which version of the test you take).

Why these five traits?

Starting in the 1940s, psychologists began asking people how they’d describe themselves or another person’s personality. “They arrived at pretty much the same set of five dimensions,” says Christopher Soto, a psychologist at Colby College who studies personality traits.

The term “Big Five” was coined by a psychologist named Lew Goldberg in 1981, according to Soto, and came into common usage among psychologists by the 1990s. (You can try the test for yourself here.)

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