Beyond the Big Five: Developing a Personality Inventory that Measures Extreme Levels of Personality Traits

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the reliability, validity and ultimately the utility of a new personality assessment, the Combined Big Fives (CBF). The CBF is designed to capture extremely high and low levels of five separate traits. The CBF also attempts to measure psychoticism. The literature suggested that data from a personality assessment can help a business to make better employment decisions. However, personality assessments have room to improve in the realm of selection, and they are not the best predictors. To test the CBF, 120 students from a Midwest university completed the instrument along with self-report measures of relationship satisfaction, life satisfaction, trait anxiety, GPA and college attendance. The results rendered evidence for the reliability and criterion-related validity of the CBF. However, the CBF also attempted to measure and establish curvilinear relationships with criteria. Little convincing evidence for curvilinear relationships was established in this study.