The Big Five Personality Factors and Personal Values

TLDR

The authors relate Big Five personality traits to basic values in a sample of 246 students. The study finds that Agreeableness aligns with benevolence and tradition, Openness with self‑direction and universalism, Extroversion with achievement and stimulation, and Conscientiousness with achievement and conformity, with facet‑level nuances and distinct patterns of correlation with religiosity and positive affect, and that values influence behavior more through cognitive control than traits.

Abstract

The authors relate Big Five personality traits to basic values in a sample of 246 students. As hypothesized, Agreeableness correlates most positively with benevolence and tradition values, Openness with self-direction and universalism values, Extroversion with achievement and stimulation values, and Conscientiousness with achievement and conformity values. Correlations of values with facets of the five factors reveal nuances of the facets and clarify ambiguities in the meanings of the factors. Values and personality traits exhibit different patterns of correlation with religiosity and positive affect. Findings support the idea that the influence of values on behavior depends more on cognitive control than does the influence of traits.