 2. History, Measurement, and Conceptual Elaboration of the Big‑Five Trait Taxonomy  47
which, as we described earlier, originated in 
Cattell’s early lexical work. Their analyses 
again yielded the ubiquitous Extraversion 
and Neuroticism dimensions, but also con -
vinced McCrae and Costa (e.g., 1985b) of 
the importance of Openness, which origi -
nated from several of Cattell’s primary fac -
tors (e.g., imaginative, experimenting).
In 1983, Costa and McCrae realized that 
their NEO system closely resembled three of 
the Big Five factors, but did not encompass 
traits in the Agreeableness and Conscien -
tiousness domains. They therefore extended 
their model with preliminary scales measur -
ing Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. In 
several studies, McCrae and Costa (1985a, 
1985c, 1987) demonstrated that their 
five questionnaire scales converged with 
adjective-  based measures of the Big Five, 
although their conception of Openness was 
considerably broader than the Intellect or 
Imagination factor emerging from the lexi -
cal analyses (Saucier & Goldberg, 1996). A 
series of influential papers in the late 1980s 
and early 1990s showed that these five fac -
tors could also be recovered in various other 
personality questionnaires, as well as in self- 
ratings on the California Adult Q -Set (see 
Costa & McCrae, 1992; McCrae & Costa, 
2003).
The Revised NEO Personality  Inventory
The initial NEO Personality Inventory 
(Costa & McCrae, 1985) included scales 
to measure six conceptually derived facets 
each for Neuroticism, Extraversion, and 
Openness but did not include facet scales 
for the newly added Agreeableness and Con -
scientiousness. In 1992, Costa and McCrae 
published the 240-item NEO Personality 
Inventory—  Revised (NEO-PI-R; Costa & 
McCrae, 1992), which permits differenti -
ated measurement of each Big Five dimen -
sion in terms of six more specific facets per 
factor (Costa & McCrae, 1995). Table 2.3 
lists some of their facets defining each of 
the factors. In contrast to most of the lexi -
cal studies, which relied on college student 
samples, the NEO-PI-R was developed in 
samples of middle-  aged and older adults, 
using both factor-  analytic and multimethod 
validational procedures of test construction. 
The scales have shown substantial internal 
consistency, temporal stability, and con -vergent and discriminant validity against 
spouse and peer ratings (Costa & McCrae, 
1992; McCrae & Costa, 2003).
For many research applications, the NEO-
PI-R is rather lengthy. To provide a shorter 
measure, Costa and McCrae (1992) devel -
oped the 60-item NEO-FFI, an abbreviated 
version based on an item factor analysis of 
the 1985 version of the NEO-PI (Costa & 
McCrae, 1985). The 12-item scales of the 
Five-  Factor Inventory (FFI) consist of items 
that loaded highly on one of the five factors. 
The item content of the scales was adjust -
ed somewhat to include reasonable content 
coverage of the facets; however, these scales 
represent the core elements of each Big Five 
factor as defined on the NEO-PI and there -
fore do not represent equally each of the six 
facets defining each factor. For example, 
the Agreeableness scale includes five items 
from the Altruism facet, three from Com -
pliance, two from Trust, one from Tender- 
Mindedness, one from Straightforwardness, 
and none from Modesty. The reliabilities 
(Costa & McCrae, 1992) are adequate, with 
a mean of .78, and the NEO-FFI scales are 
substantially correlated with the NEO PI-R 
scales.
Defining the  Big Five across  Studies: 
A Prototype  Approach
So far, we have reviewed both Goldberg’s 
(1990) lexically based research and Costa 
and McCrae’s (1992) questionnaire-  based 
research on the Big Five. Despite this ex -
tensive research, the Big Five structure was 
initially not widely welcomed in the field 
and, in fact, was explicitly rejected by some 
senior researchers in the field (e.g., Block, 
1995; Eysenck, 1992, 1997; McAdams, 
1992; Pervin, 1994). One problem, it seems, 
was the perception that there is no single  Big 
Five, in the same way that there was just one 
16PF, namely, Cattell’s, because he owned it. 
In contrast, the Big Five emerged in multiple 
labs and studies and is therefore not owned 
by any one person in the field, which makes it 
possible to ask questions such as “ Which  Big 
Five?” or “ Whose  Big Five?” (John, 1989). 
For example, the first factor has been labeled 
as surgency, confident self-  expression, asser -
tiveness, social extraversion, and power (see 
John, 1990, Table 3.1), and the second fac -