Self-observation questionnaire
Big Five personality test
Free online Big Five personality test, no sign-up: 30 items, the five factors computed separately, and the scoring method published.
What this questionnaire observes
5 reading axes, each calculated separately.
- Openness to experience6 items
- Conscientiousness6 items
- Extraversion6 items
- Agreeableness6 items
- Emotional reactivity6 items
What it does not say
- This questionnaire describes average behavioural tendencies, not abilities or skills. It predicts neither professional success nor compatibility with another person. No profile is better than another. A personality questionnaire must not serve as the basis for a hiring decision, and it can neither establish nor rule out a condition.
What you get
The result appears as soon as you answer the last question, with no account.
Free, no account
- Your score and its reading range
- One sentence to understand it
- The methodology and the sources
- The light PDF report
With the subscription
- Your reading axis by axis
- A detailed analysis of your answers
- Your evolution between two attempts
- Concrete leads
This result is a chance to understand yourself better. The subscription turns a score into understanding and follow-up.
Sources
The items in this questionnaire are written for Brain Quiz from the published literature in the field. A published scale is reproduced where its licence expressly allows it; here, the questionnaire is the site's own.
The references cited by this questionnaire, each one openable.
- Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4(1), 26-42. doi:10.1037/1040-3590.4.1.26 opens in a new tab
- Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., & Gough, H. G. (2006). The international personality item pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(1), 84-96. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2005.08.007 opens in a new tab
- Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2017). The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(1), 117-143. doi:10.1037/pspp0000096 opens in a new tab
Publisher. Brain Quiz writes, publishes and updates this questionnaire. Who writes this site
Brain Quiz's Big Five questionnaire has 30 items and takes about 8 minutes. It returns a position on each of the model's five factors: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and emotional reactivity. The score and its result band appear free of charge, with no account and no email address; the factor by factor profile comes with the subscription.
The five-factor model was not invented by one person, and it is owned by no brand. It came out of statistical work on the vocabulary people use to describe personality. Lewis Goldberg published a set of markers for the Big-Five factor structure in 1992, then led the International Personality Item Pool, described in a 2006 article on the future of public-domain personality measures. That is why the Big Five is used in research where other inventories, copyrighted and sold, are not.
Each factor reads as a continuum, with no pole better than the other. Openness to experience runs from a footing in the concrete and the familiar to curiosity about the abstract and the unusual. Conscientiousness runs from loose organisation, deciding at the last minute, to planning followed through to the end. Extraversion runs from recharging in quiet to drawing energy from a group: it is not a scale of sociability, and someone low on extraversion can have very rich relationships. Agreeableness runs from blunt directness to constant attention to the effect you have on others. Emotional reactivity runs from a quick return to calm to feelings that rise fast and settle slowly. It is sometimes presented the other way round, under the name emotional stability.
On this topic, most tests online display five percentages and stop there. You leave with five numbers you cannot interpret, often without knowing where the questions came from. Brain Quiz explains the model before the result, describes both poles of each factor, publishes a methodology page open to anyone, and shows the score and its result band with no email capture.
One point needs stating plainly about the headline number. The Brain Quiz engine places every questionnaire on a single 0 to 100 scale, which makes sense for a directional self-observation questionnaire and much less sense for a personality inventory. We are not hiding that limit: in this test the six emotional reactivity items carry a weight of 5, against 1 for the other twenty-four. The headline number therefore reflects mainly that one axis, and it should not be read as a personality grade. The useful profile is the factor-by-factor reading, and none of the five factors is better than another.
The 30 items were written for Brain Quiz from the literature on the five-factor model. No published inventory is reproduced. The International Personality Item Pool items are placed in the public domain by the Oregon Research Institute, which we verified directly on ipip.ori.org: the permissions page states that permission is already granted for any use, commercial or not. We still did not take them, for a specific reason. The site itself notes that the accuracy of its translations has not been verified by the project. Faithful reproduction requires published, validated French and Spanish versions; without them, a translation of our own would not be a reproduction. No NEO-PI-R or BFI-2 item, both under copyright, is used here.
This questionnaire describes average behavioural tendencies, not abilities. It predicts neither professional success nor compatibility with another person, and it must not be used as the basis for a hiring decision: eight minutes of self-reported answers, with no population calibration, support no decision that shapes someone's life. Nor can it establish or rule out a condition.
Many people arrive here after a test that sorts everyone into sixteen types. The difference is the format: a typology puts each person in a box, while the Big Five describes positions on five continuums. The tendencies measured spread out without a natural boundary between two groups, which makes a graded measure a closer fit than a split into categories. Our comparison guide covers this in detail.
Finally, a profile is not fixed. The way you describe yourself depends on the moment, on your mood and on the stretch of life you are in. Taking the questionnaire again a few months later and comparing the five positions tells you more than a single sitting, and that is exactly what the comparison over time offers.
Frequently asked questions
The model describes five broad dimensions of personality: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and emotional reactivity, sometimes presented the other way round as emotional stability. Each one reads as a continuum rather than a box. A profile is the combination of five positions, with no ranking between them.
The MBTI sorts people into sixteen types built from four clear-cut oppositions. The most common criticism targets that split: the tendencies measured by questionnaire spread out continuously, with no natural boundary between two groups. The five-factor model was built on continuous dimensions, which makes it a better fit for a graded measure. Our comparison guide develops the point.
The Brain Quiz engine places every questionnaire on a single 0 to 100 scale. On a personality inventory that number means little on its own: here it mainly reflects emotional reactivity, whose questions carry five times the weight of the others. The profile worth reading is the factor-by-factor one.
No. Each of the five factors describes a tendency, not a quality. Low extraversion is not a social failing, and high conscientiousness is no guarantee of results. The five positions offset each other, sometimes pull against each other, and take on different meanings depending on your life and your work.
No, and we advise against it explicitly. A self-reported personality questionnaire, answered in eight minutes and with no population calibration, provides no serious basis for a hiring decision. It predicts neither professional success nor fit with a team. Used that way, it mostly opens the door to unfair decisions.
They were written for Brain Quiz from the literature on the five-factor model. No published inventory is reproduced. The International Personality Item Pool items are in the public domain, which we verified, but its French and Spanish translations are not validated by the project itself, so we could not claim faithful reproduction in all three languages.
Partly. The tendencies the model describes are relatively stable from one year to the next, but the way you describe yourself depends on the moment, your mood and the period you are in. Taking the questionnaire again a few months apart gives a more reliable reading than a single sitting.
Yes. The overall score and its result band appear immediately, with no account, no email address and no payment, and the light PDF report stays free. The subscription opens your position on each of the five factors, the detailed analysis and the comparison over time. It is never required to see your result.
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