Exploring Personality Through Estonia's Biobank

If you've heard anything about the study of human personality, you've probably heard about the “big five.” This is a framework that attempts to characterize human personality in terms of five broad factors or dimensions—neuroticism, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. The big five framework has been enormously influential, generating heaps and heaps of data, and study after study on the stability of personality, on the factors that shape our personalities, on how our personalities predict success and satisfaction. But is the big five really the best we can do? What does it miss? What does it mask? Where should the science of human personality go next?

My guest today is Dr. René Mõttus. René is Professor of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, and a leading researcher in the scientific study of human personality. He’s also one of the hosts of the Personality Psychology Podcast.

Here, René and I talk about the history and colossal success of the “big five.” We consider whether personality is ultimately rooted in our biology—and, if so, how. We dwell on each of the five factors and dig into the facets and nuances within them. These are, actually, technical terms in the field for the more granular aspects of personality that sit within each of these broad dimensions. We talk about personality change across the lifespan, and what factors seem to be driving it. We talk about personality and occupation, personality and birth order, personality and gender. Along the way, René and I touch on the Myers-Briggs; an alternative to the Big 5 known as the HEXACO model; the power of explicit questionnaires over experiments; the concept of "personality age"; the social investment theory; honesty, humility, humor, jealousy; life satisfaction; gene-environment correlations; and why evolutionary stories about personality seem to fail.

Alright friends, I think you'll like this one. On to my conversation with Dr. René Mõttus. Enjoy!

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Notes and links

5:30 – For a popular discussion of the Myers-Briggs and other personality tests, see here. For a book-length treatment of the history of the Myers-Briggs test, see here.

11:30 – For Dr. Mõttus’s preprint on “personality age,” see here.

17:00 – For our episode on animal personality with Dr. Kate Laskowski, see here.

18:00 – For Dr. Daniel Nettle’s book on personality, see here.

22:00 – See Dr. Mõttus’s blog post on the genetic basis of personality.

25:00 – For our episode with Dr. Eric Turkheimer about IQ, see here. For Dr. Turkheimer’s “phenotypic null hypothesis” about personality, see here.

28:00 – For a theoretical paper by Dr. Mõttus and colleagues about “carving personality at its joints” and “big few models”—among many other issues—see here.

31:00 – See here for a classic overview of the “big five.”

38:00 – For an overview of the predictive power of the “big five,” see here.

40:00 – On the topic of “nuances,” see Dr. Mõttus’s recent co-authored paper here.

43:00 – For the study by Dr. Mõttus and colleagues of the personality profiles of different occupations, see here. For an online tool that allows you to explore the data, see here. For an online tool that matches your personality with the personality profiles of different occupations, see here.

47:00 – A classic paper on the HEXACO model of personality.

51:00 – An example of a recent effort to map out the “facets” of personality.

1:11:00 – For a study on the possibility of gene-environment correlations in the area of music, see here. For the study by Dr. Mõttus and colleagues on children “becoming less alike” through adolescence, see here.

1:18:00 – For a classic statement of the “five factor theory,” see here.

1:20:00 – The Wikipedia page for the idea of the “gloomy prospect” is here. This is also the name of Dr. Turkheimer’s newsletter.

1:22:00 – The latest installment in the longstanding debate about birth order and personality.

1:27:00 – A paper comparing the “five factor” and “social investment” accounts of personality development.

1:33:00 – For a recent paper by Dr. Mõttus and colleagues on personality and gender, see here.

1:38:00 – A research article on the Estonian Biobank.

Recommendations

‘Life Events and Personality Change: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,’ by Bühler et al.

‘Personality stability and change: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies,’ by Bleidorn et al.

‘Choosing prediction over explanation in psychology: Lessons from machine learning,’ by Yarkoni & Westfall

Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.

Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!

We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. 

For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).