The Big Five are major personality traits that have been discovered through extensive research: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Recently study examined the relationship between the Big Five and blogging.
The Big Five factors and their constituent traits can be summarized as follows:
- Openness – appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, curiosity, and variety of experience.
- Conscientiousness – a tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; planned rather than spontaneous behavior.
- Extraversion – energy, positive emotions, surgency, and the tendency to seek stimulation and the company of others.
- Agreeableness – a tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others.
- Neuroticism – a tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability; sometimes called emotional instability.
The results of two studies indicate that people who are high in openness to new experience and high in neuroticism are likely to be bloggers. Additionally, the neuroticism relationship was moderated by gender indicating that women who are high in neuroticism are more likely to be bloggers as compared to those low in neuroticism whereas there was no difference for men. These results indicate that personality factors impact the likelihood of being a blogger and have implications for understanding who blogs.
It makes sense that people who are curious and appreciate various ideas are likely to blog, but the finding about women is less obvious. Blog content analysis would be interesting to see as well, but that would take a long time. It is still too early to make any definitive conclusions until we see more studies assessing the association between personality and blogging.
Who blogs? Personality predictors of blogging. Rosanna E. Guadagno, Bradley M. Okdiea and Cassie A. Enoa. Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 24, Issue 5, September 2008, Pages 1993-2004.
Kitsune's Thoughts 
This was an amusing article to read 😀 Openness and neuroticism… seems like an interesting combination.
Also, once again I love the picture for the post, great use of a Yotsuba picture for sure!
Haha! I have all of those emotions except the last one…I think! 😛 But we all get emo from time to time! This article made me laugh! XD
Lostty, amusing is a good word probably. Some people might overinterpret this finding and take offense due to neuroticism association. Perhaps, I should have elaborated on the definitions.
I am glad you liked the picture 🙂 I wanted to illustrate openness to experience in some way, and I think that image fitted the concept to some extent 🙂
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Amayalee,
“I have all of those emotions except the last one…I think!”
Were you referring to anger, anxiety, depression, vulnerability?
It is good that you had fun 🙂
Yeps…all of those! I have them from time to time, but everyone does. It’s not a common thing! XD (As far as I know)
Yup, everyone has them from time to time, so it is perfectly normal 🙂
love the picture…….yotsuba is sooo funny
🙂
“Blog content analysis would be interesting to see as well, but that would take a long time. It is still too early to make any definitive conclusions until we see more studies assessing the association between personality and blogging.”
Care to take on the challenge? (^_^)
I agree that a formal study is needed to settle the question in any definitive manner. Based on my own random surveys (mainly within the anime blogosphere), bloggers run the gamut from trait 1 through trait 5 and all combinations in between. I suppose that’s what makes blogging – and blog reading – such an enjoyable experience: as in the real world, one gets the chance to meet all sorts of people.
And I just realised that the first letters of the Big Five, taken together, spell OCEAN. 😉
Peasantbutcher,
Yes, Yotsuba is great! I hope they will make an anime based on it 🙂
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Diego,
“Care to take on the challenge? (^_^)”
I have neither their data to look at blog contents (if they collected it at all) nor do I have a desire to conduct a study outside of my area of specialty.
Another question to ask is what exactly they are trying to understand with such studies and how their methods fit these goals.
Indeed, meeting all sorts of people is a great experience 🙂
Ah, that is a very good find about the OCEAN – it helps to remember the traits 🙂