The Big Five

Definition

The Big Five are five characteristics that are believed to be responsible for people’s differences in personality:

Openness to experience
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism

This model is also known as OCEAN or CANOE after the initials of the five traits, as well as the five-factor model of personality.
While they can change over time it is generally not argued that they change depending on a person’s context.

Importance in Game Design

Professional games can provide an exemplary environment for more people’s unfiltered personalities to come forward. Designers should be mindful of how great a cognitive load they put on to players, with the aim of bringing out insights into the Big Five characteristics.

If you want to appeal to the widest potential player base possible with a game, in a professional game where there are a variety of roles available, these criteria can be used to think about the requirements of each formal or informal role.

Relevance to Evivve’s Ecosystem

All Evivve sessions are followed up with analyses of how players performed, and what that indicates for them as individuals, as well as for the team as a whole. One of the reports provided for putting the players’ performance into the context of the Big Five model.
Evivve is specifically designed to make each of these five characteristics clear to the facilitator, and potentially the player themselves.

Best Practices

Challenges and Considerations

History

Best Practices

The Big Five characteristics are usually measured using self-reporting in response to surveys or other question formats. A professional game, such as Evivve, provides a concentrated environment where the emergence of each characteristic for each player can be examined unhindered by that player’s conscious filtering. Explore the Personal Dynamic Report.

Challenges and Considerations

The Big Five is considered, among some practitioners, as being superseded by the HEXACO model.
The Big Five is a guide on how to interpret a specific person’s personality. It shouldn’t be regarded as a singular definition of who they are and what they’re capable of - adapt the definitions to what you see from a player, rather than forcing your interpretation of their actions to match their Big Five profile.
The “Big” in the title of “The Big Five” is an indication of how wide these categories are, rather than of how dominant they are.
There is academic discussion over the validity of the Big Five. Defining the different positions is beyond the scope of this glossary.

History

The emergence of the Big Five was originally a result of analyzing language used to describe people’s personalities. A result that has subsequently borne similar results regardless of the language or culture being studied.
While higher numbers of characteristics were originally posited the reduction down to five was first put forward by British psychologist Peter Saville in 1978.