This is the third article in a series that addresses the numerous questions we’ve received about how the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) compares to other workplace personality assessments. This installment looks at the five-factor model of personality, often called the Big Five. Previous articles covered MBTI and DISC.

You may have heard the acronym OCEAN in connection with five-factor models of personality because the factor names can be arranged as follows:

1. Openness to Experience: The degree to which a person needs intellectual stimulation, change, and variety.
2. Conscientiousness: The degree to which a person controls, regulates, and directs their impulses.
3. Extraversion: The degree to which a person engages with the external world.
4. Agreeableness: The degree to which a person needs pleasant and harmonious relations with others.
5. Neuroticism: The degree to which a person experiences negative feelings.

The five factors emerged from a substantial body of academic research and are widely believed to have a genetic component. Each factor is a broad category that includes many specific traits and rates a person along a continuum. For example, a low score on the Extraversion scale is called Introversion. This is in marked contrast to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), another popular assessment we’ve written about, which treats Introversion and Extraversion as a dichotomy, or opposites. In the five-factor model, the majority of people’s results fall in the middle of the scale, which is not possible in the MBTI.

The five factors did not start out as a hypothesis or theory. Instead, they represent a near-consensus among researchers. When a group of traits trend together, they form a factor. As a result, the five factors are independent. They are not a set of personality types— although the five-factor model correlates in some way with virtually every personality type assessment. There are heaps of statistics behind this, but that is outside the scope of this blog (you’re welcome).

The SDI (based on Elias Porter’s theory of relationship awareness) provides four independent but connected views of a person, two of which are about personality, and two of which are about behavior at work.

Personality

• The first view is called the Motivational Value System (MVS) and shows how three primary motives blend or integrate in a person when things are going well and they feel best about themselves and their relationships. There are seven MVS types, all of which are some blend of three motives—People, Process, and Performance.
• The second view is called the Conflict Sequence and shows how motives shift when people are in conflict with others. There are 13 Conflict Sequence types.

Behavior

• The third view is called the Strengths Portrait, and it shows how a set of twenty-eight strengths are prioritized in working relationships, from most likely to deploy to least likely to deploy.
• The fourth view is called the Overdone Strengths Portrait, and it shows how those twenty-eight strengths can appear to others when expressed with too much frequency, duration, intensity, or in the wrong context.

The SDI is intended to promote self-discovery and generate insights that can be applied to improve relationships. SDI results are intended to be used in training and development efforts, not for hiring or promoting decisions, whereas the five-factor model is more appropriate for making such selections.

The five-factor model was built by researchers so they could use an agreed-upon set of personality traits as independent variables. The five factors are intended to be used in a diagnostic or predictive manner. For example, if you want to hire people who are likely to follow the lending rules in your bank, you would prefer candidates who score high in agreeableness. But if you want to build a team for an innovative project that will break norms and potentially disrupt the finance industry, you might prefer candidates who score low on agreeableness.

There are many five-factor assessments on the market because the five factors are in the public domain, but the assessments themselves are proprietary and there is quite a bit of variation in the way things are measured and described.

One of the benefits of the five-factor model is that it establishes a common frame of reference to make comparisons. And we have recently done some statistical comparisons between the SDI and the five factors. The formal research is still unpublished, but here are two interesting findings as a preview.

SDI and Extraversion (and Introversion)

The SDI’s Green scale, when things are going well, has a negative correlation with Extraversion. In normal language, that means that the higher people score on the Green (autonomous) SDI scale, the more likely it is that they are also introverts. This is conceptually consistent and supported by convergent validity. Introversion and the Green MVS both describe inner-directed behavior, as people with a Green MVS tend to want to be independent of others and feel best about themselves when they are free to pursue their own interests without reliance on others.

SDI and Neuroticism (and Emotional Stability)

Some of the earliest work in psychology on the topic of neuroticism is attributed to Karen Horney, who distinguished neurotic strivings from healthy strivings. When Elias Porter first framed his theory, he focused only on strivings for self-worth, whether they were effective or not; he had no intention to measure neuroticism. And in all the tests we ran, we could not find any correlation between the SDI and the neuroticism factor. This is actually useful, because it validates that the SDI measures something different (divergent validity).

In summary, the SDI and the various five-factor assessments have some conceptual overlap, but they have different backgrounds and applications. While the SDI’s personality types are based on theory that is supported by scientific evidence, the five factors emerged from research without an orienting theory or personality typology. Where the results of five-factor models are intended to be diagnostic, the results of the SDI are intended to be developmental—to help people improve their self-awareness and their relationships. The five factors are meant to explain things, and the SDI is meant to improve things.