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Personality psychologists from a variety of theoretical perspectives have recently concluded that personality traits can be summarized in terms of a 5-factor model. This article describes the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI), a measure of these 5 factors and some of the traits that define them, and its use in clinical practice. Recent studies suggest that NEO-PI scales are reliable and valid in clinical samples as in normal samples. The use of self-report personality measures in clinical samples is discussed, and data from 117 "normal" adult men and women are presented to show links between the NEO-PI scales and psychopathology as measured by Jackson's (1989) Basic Personality Inventory and Morey's (1991) Personality Assessment Inventory. We argue that the NEO-PI may be useful to clinicians in understanding the patient, formulating a diagnosis, establishing rapport, developing insight, anticipating the course of therapy, and selecting the optimal form of treatment for the patient.In the past two decades there has been remarkable progress in one of the oldest branches of personality psychology: the study of traits or individual differences. The conceptual status of traits has been clarified (Costa & McCrae, 1980;Funder, 1991; Tellegen, in press), and trait measures have shown evidence of convergent and discriminant validity across instruments (McCrae, 1989) and observers (Kenrick & Funder, 1988). Longitudinal studies of both self-reports and ratings have shown impressive stability of a wide range of traits across the adult lifespan (Block, 1981;. Perhaps most exciting is the growing agreement among personality psychologists that most individual differences in personality can be understood in terms of five basic dimensions: Neuroticism (N) vs. Emotional Stability; Extraversion (E) or Surgency; Openness to Experience (O) or Intellect; Agreeableness (A) vs. Antagonism; and Conscientiousness (C) or Will to Achieve (Digman, 1990;John, 1990;Norman, 1963; Wiggins & Trapnell, in press). These factors have been recovered in studies of self-reports and ratings, lay adjectives and standardized questionnaires, adults and children, and several different cultures.This five-factor model is a theoretical advance that has important implications for many applied areas, including clinical practice. By assessing traits from each of the five factors, the clinician can obtain a comprehensive portrait of the client's personality, and the clinical researcher can systematically examine relations between personality and treatment variables. Recent articles and symposia have examined the utility of the five-factor model in counseling , abnormal psychology (Widiger & Trull, in press), and clinical psychology (Spielberger, 1989

Secondary analyses of Revised NEO Personality Inventory data from 26 cultures (N = 23,031) suggest that gender differences are small relative to individual variation within genders; differences are replicated across cultures for both college-age and adult samples, and differences are broadly consistent with gender stereotypes: Women reported themselves to be higher in Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Warmth, and Openness to Feelings, whereas men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas. Contrary to predictions from evolutionary theory, the magnitude of gender differences varied across cultures. Contrary to predictions from the social role model, gender differences were most pronounced in European and American cultures in which traditional sex roles are minimized. Possible explanations for this surprising finding are discussed, including the attribution of masculine and feminine behaviors to roles rather than traits in traditional cultures.

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Three studies are reported that examine the relations between personality and happiness or subjective well-being. It is argued that (a) one set of traits influences positive affect or satisfaction, whereas a different set of traits influences negative affect or dissatisfaction; (b) the former set of traits can be reviewed as components of extraversion, and the latter as components of neuroticism; and (c) personality differences antedate and predict differences in happiness over a period of 10 years, thus ruling out the rival hypothesis that temporary moods or states account for the observed relations. A model of individual differences in happiness is presented, and the separate and complementary roles of trait and adaptation-level theories in explaining happiness are discussed.