Big five factors and facets and the prediction of behavior

The authors compared the Big 5 factors of personality with the facets or tr aits of personality that constitute those factors on their ability to predi ct 40 behavior criteria. Both the broad factors and the narrow facets predi cted substantial numbers of criteria, but the latter did noticeably better in that regard, even when the number of facet predictors was limited to the number of factor predictors. Moreover, the criterion variance accounted fo r by the personality facets often included large portions not predicted by the personality factors. The narrow facets, therefore, were able to substan tially increase the maximum prediction achieved by the broad factors. The r esults of this study are interpreted as supporting a more detailed approach to personality assessment, one that goes beyond the measurement of the Big 5 factors alone.