 2. History, Measurement, and Conceptual Elaboration of the Big‑Five Trait Taxonomy  51
ally, the adjectival definitions of the Big Five 
in Table 2.4 seem to capture the prototypical 
traits found in other studies and the facets 
shown in Table 2.3.
The Prototypical Definition of  Factor  V: 
Culture,  Intellect, or  Openness?
The findings in Table 2.4 also address ques -
tions about the definition of the fifth fac -
tor. None of the items referring to aspects 
of “high” culture (e.g., civilized, polished, 
dignified, foresighted, logical) loaded sub -
stantially on Factor V (see John, 1990), 
and many loaded more highly on Factor III 
(Conscientiousness), thus discrediting an 
interpretation of Factor V as culture. Ap -
parently, the initial interpretation of Tupes 
and Christal’s (1961/1992) fifth factor as 
Culture was a historical accident (Peabody 
& Goldberg, 1989). The items that did load 
substantially on the fifth factor (see Table 
2.4) include both the “open” characteris -
tics (e.g., artistic, curious, original, wide 
interests) highlighted by McCrae and Costa 
(1985a, 1985b) and the “intellectual” char -
acteristics (intelligent, insightful, sophisti -
cated) emphasized by Digman and Inouye 
(1986), Peabody and Goldberg (1989), and 
Goldberg (1990).
These findings are also consistent with 
Goldberg’s (1990) result that Factor V is de -
fined as Originality, Wisdom, Objectivity, 
Knowledge, Reflection, and Art, thus in -
volving facets of Openness related to ideas, 
fantasy, and aesthetics (Costa & McCrae, 
1992), or, as labeled in Table 2.3, intellectual 
curiosity, creative imagination, and aesthetic 
sensitivity, respectively. Similarly, Gold -
berg’s (1990) analyses of the 133 synonym 
clusters showed Intellectuality (intellectual, 
contemplative, meditative, philosophical, 
and introspective) and Creativity (creative, 
imaginative, inventive, ingenious, innova -
tive) with the highest positive loadings, and 
Conventionality (traditional, conventional, 
unprogressive) loaded negatively in all four 
samples. These and other lexical findings 
(see John & Srivastava, 1999) are incon -
sistent with both the Culture and a narrow 
Intellect interpretation and instead favor the 
broader Openness interpretation proposed 
by McCrae (1996); the inclusion of uncon -
ventionality and nonconformity (which de -scribe both creative and artistic individuals) 
also makes an important link to the defini -
tion of this lexical factor in Dutch and Ital -
ian (de Raad, di Blas, et al., 1998). Moving 
away from a narrow Intellect interpreta -
tion, Saucier (1994a) has suggested the label 
“Imagination,” which is somewhat closer 
to Openness and emphasizes the emerging 
consensus that fantasy, ideas, and aesthet -
ics, rather than intelligence, are most central 
to this factor. In this chapter, we therefore 
adopt the term Openness, elsewhere we have 
suggested the similar, but less technical, term 
open-  mindedness  (Soto & John, 2017a).
The Big Five Inventory: Measuring the Core 
Features of the Big Five with Short Phrases
To address the need for a short instrument 
measuring the prototypical components of 
the Big Five that are common across inves -
tigators, John, Donahue, and Kentle (1991) 
constructed the Big Five Inventory (BFI; see 
also Benet-  Martinez & John, 1998; John 
& Srivastava, 1999; Rammstedt & John, 
2005, 2007, 2017). The 44-item BFI was de -
veloped to represent the Big Five prototype 
definitions described earlier (see Table 2.4), 
which represent a canonical representation 
of the factors intended to capture their core 
elements across the particulars of previous 
studies, samples, or instruments. The final 
items were selected on the basis of factor 
analyses in large samples of both junior col -
lege and public university students. Thus, 
Hampson and Goldberg (2006, p. 766) were 
mistaken when they suggested that “John 
developed each of the five BFI scales to fall 
roughly between the lexical Big Five factors 
(Goldberg, 1992) and the five domain scores 
from the NEO PI-R,” nor was this outcome 
intended or entailed by the procedures used, 
as we will see below. The goal was to create 
a brief inventory that would allow efficient 
and flexible assessment of the five dimen -
sions when there is no need for more differ -
entiated measurement of individual facets. 
There is much to be said in favor of brevity: 
“Short scales not only save testing time, but 
also avoid subject boredom and fatigue. . . . 
There are subjects . . . from whom you won’t 
get any response if the test looks too long” 
(Burisch, 1984, p. 219).