Big Five Personality Traits Essay

Research Question
What is the relationship between gender and the Big Five Personality Traits?
Claim
In our world today there still exists questions regarding the differences between men and women. One of the many ways to evaluate this is through personality, with a focus on the Big Five Personality Model. This has been going on through the years, including famous studies such as Feingold in 1994, Hall in 1984, and Maccoby and Jacklin in 1974 (as cited in Samuel, South, and Griffin, 2015). With these in mind, upon using the Big Five Personality Model, women tend to test higher in extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism than men.
Supportive Evidence
Lehmann, R., Denissen, J. J., Mathias, A., & Penke, L. (2013, February). Age and gender
B., South, S. C., & Griffin, S. A. (2015). Factorial invariance of the five-factor model rating form across gender. Assessment, 22(1), 65-75. Retrieved from PsycINFO.
Upon surveying 699 first and second year college students with the Five Factor Model Rating Form, a shortened version with 30 items for participants to respond to, gender differences were found. Men tested lower than women on neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness but slightly higher on openness. This challenges the idea that conscientiousness is about the same between genders. Sometimes there is a slightly higher score for women, but in their study they found the difference to be one of the biggest with a difference of .44.
Having nearly 700 participants would usually be a decent experiment size, but seeing that it has only half the amount of people than the other two studies mentioned, the sample size can be limiting. It is also worth mentioning that since it was done at a university, involving only university students, who are young adults, the test results that were collected may also be limited. The experimenters themselves noticed this limit when they stated, “Our student sample, not surprisingly, was more restricted in terms of age and educational attainment than the general population, which might limit the generalizability of our findings” in their report”(Samuel, South, and Griffin, 2015). The results may be similar to adults, but the study would need to be replicated
Their 19,022 participants ranged from the age of 16 to 60. Even more impressively, in England the 2013 Marsh, Nagengast, and Morin study featured an age range from 15 to 99 with 14,021 participants. Both found slight differences as you age, such as an increase in conscientiousness, however the distinct gender differences remained consistent no matter the age; conscientiousness has no gender difference, men have a tendency to score higher in openness, and women tend to score higher in the remaining three categories (Lehmann, Denissen, Mathias, & Penke, 2013; Marsh, Nagengast, & Morin, 2013). The difference in nationality also adds to the argument, as these were done in Germany and England. This would suggest that the gender personality differences are similar across the world, although they do not take into account many countries, so this is something that may need to be looked into further.