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Types / Personality facets

Inside the five traits

See the differences, beneath the broad score.

Thirty facets show the narrower parts beneath five broad personality traits. Browse the library to see what each scale describes, then take the assessment for a reading across all 30.

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A person in a blue sweater leans over a wooden table in a sunlit room, looking through a round magnifying glass at a sheet of color swatches in five columns of light blue, yellow, peach, purple, and teal shades.

What a facet adds

A facet is one of six narrower parts inside a broad trait. Each one comes from four public-domain statements published in 2014, giving 30 facets across five traits. Two people with the same broad score can land in opposite places underneath. These scales describe positions on their own, with no comparison to other people, and they don’t diagnose, predict, or measure ability.

One broad scale

Conscientiousness

Leaves things around Keeps things tidy

Six parts of Conscientiousness

  • Task confidence Feels less sure Feels capable
  • Tidiness Leaves things around Keeps things tidy
  • Keeping promises Treats rules flexibly Stands by promises
  • Hard work Does what’s needed Goes the extra mile
  • Follow-through Struggles to start Carries plans through
  • Careful decisions Acts on impulse Thinks things through
The drawing shows Conscientiousness once as one broad scale and once as the six facets inside it. Someone can land in different places across those six parts. Nothing is marked because a browsing reader has no result yet.

  • Thirty narrower scales

    Five traits have six facets each, making 30 scales in all. Each facet uses four statements from a public-domain set published in 2014. The names on these cards are ours, written in plain English for this site.

  • When parts pull apart

    A person can come out high on a trait and low on one of its six parts. Someone might finish every task and still leave the desk in a state. The broad score and the narrower details can point in different directions.

  • Know what it measures

    The typical range comes from 320,128 U.S. adults who answered the original statements online during the roughly 12 years before 2014. It compares a score with their published average and spread, instead of presenting a percentile. The reading offers no diagnosis, prediction, or statement about ability.

Browse all 30 facets

The cards are grouped beneath the five broad traits. Each trait name links to its own page, where the six related facets are explained together.

Extraversion

See the trait page

Where your energy tends to come from, and how readily you direct it toward people, activity, and the outside world.

Agreeableness

See the trait page

How readily you make room for other people, and how you balance cooperation with your own needs, standards, and point of view.

Conscientiousness

See the trait page

How strongly you turn intentions into plans, systems, and finished work.

Emotional stability

See the trait page

How strongly and how long difficult feelings tend to move through you.

Openness

See the trait page

How readily your attention moves toward ideas, imagination, possibilities, and experiences that are not yet familiar.

Find all 30 parts

Answer 120 short statements to see where the result lands across all 30 facets.

Take Personality Facets

Questions

How is this different from the five traits?

This uses the same five traits, cut into finer parts. The Personality Type assessment gives the five broad scores and the four-letter type, while this one gives the 30 facets underneath. 14 of its 120 statements also appear, worded the same way, in the Personality Type assessment, and each assessment keeps its own answers. This assessment has no comparison group, while the Personality Type assessment does.

What if a facet disagrees with its trait?

That happens often, and it’s the reason to look at facets at all. A broad score is an average of six parts, so one part can point the other way. Nothing is wrong when the details don’t line up neatly.

Who is the reader compared with?

A score is compared with 320,128 U.S. adults who answered the original statements online during the roughly 12 years before 2014. Their published average and spread provide a typical range for each facet, instead of a percentile or rank. The site’s other assessments also name the group used for comparison.

Where do the 30 facet names come from?

The statements and their grouping into 30 facets are published and public domain. The names on the cards are ours, written for this site so they read as plain English instead of research labels.