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September 5, 2025 23 mins

Last month the FInancial Times published an article by John Burn Murdoch in the form of an analysis of personality data, specifically looking at what are styled the Big Five personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.


Typically these five factors are regarded as a statistically reliable way to measure personality. Unlike approaches like Myers Briggs these factors prove consistent over time and psychologists took a view that much of the variance of human personality can be understood using these factors. Interestingly these factors also prove predictive for other outcomes. Conscientiousness for example predicts academic success and job performance, neuroticism can predict mental health issues.


To discuss it I'm joined by Nick McClelland, Nick is the CEO of Byrne Dean


The original article by John Burn Murdoch (archive version)

Newsletter discussion on the data

Discussion between John Burn Murdoch and Derek Thompson

Christopher Ferguson questions the effect size

Jay Van Bavel talks about the effect size of the data

Alex Haslam points out the questions that lead to the conscientiousness scores


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