Abridged Big-Five Circumplex (AB5C)

Many familiar traits are blends rather than pure examples of one broad factor. Warmth combines Extraversion with Agreeableness; calm efficiency combines Emotional Stability with Conscientiousness; quick wit combines Extraversion with Intellect. The Abridged Big Five Circumplex (AB5C) describes personality with forty-five such blends, each defined by the two factors it draws on most and by the direction, high or low, of each. Its 485 statements give a detailed portrait of how the five broad tendencies combine in a particular person.

Hofstee, de Raad and Goldberg (1992) proposed the model after observing that trait words rarely fall neatly on a single factor. They arranged traits in circles defined by every pair of the five factors, abridged to the blends that are well represented in language. Goldberg (1999) wrote statement versions of the forty-five facets for the public-domain International Personality Item Pool (IPIP).

Each blend is scored separately. A high score on a blend describes a person who shows both of its defining tendencies in the named directions; a low score describes the opposite combination. The report groups the blends by their primary factor, so that the familiar five domains remain visible while the blends show the particular colors each takes on for this person.

The circumplex is used in personality research on trait structure and in detailed personal assessment. On this site, the Big-Five Factor Markers and Big-Five Factor Markers (100) measure the five factors directly, the Big Five Aspect Scales (BFAS) divide each factor in two, and the Interpersonal Circumplex (IPC-32) applies circular structure to interpersonal behavior.

By the early 1990s two geometries competed for describing trait space. Simple structure assigns each trait to exactly one factor — tidy, but false to the many terms that plainly mix factors. Circumplex models arrange traits continuously around factor pairs — faithful to blends, but hard to extend past two dimensions. Hofstee, de Raad, and Goldberg (1992) proposed the Abridged Big Five Circumplex as the integration: keep the Big Five as reference axes (Goldberg, 1990), and characterize every trait by its two strongest factor loadings, primary and secondary, each with sign.

That bookkeeping yields 45 facet cells — five 'pure' factor facets plus forty two-factor blends — and the IPIP assembled a public-domain scale for each cell (Goldberg, 1999). The payoff is interpretive precision at the level where everyday trait words actually live.

These 45 scales are the AB5C model's native public-domain operationalization — original IPIP items keyed to the circumplex cells, not a version of some proprietary inventory. Scale membership and reverse-keying are taken verbatim from Goldberg's IPIP multi-scale map (ScalesFor967items), with construct names as catalogued at ipip.ori.org.

Its length makes it a research and deep-self-study instrument rather than a quick profile.

The Abridged Big Five Circumplex describes traits as blends of two of the five broad factors, so that, for example, warmth sits between Extraversion and Agreeableness (Hofstee et al., 1992). This approach links the five-factor model with circumplex models of interpersonal behavior (Hofstee et al., 1992).

Because each scale blends two factors, neighboring scales are related and scales on opposite sides of a circle are inversely related, which is the pattern of convergence and discrimination the model predicts (Hofstee et al., 1992). The public-domain scales converge with their commercial counterparts (Goldberg et al., 2006).

“Accept people as they are.”

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Your report explains each of your scale scores in plain language.