Paul Costa Jr. is an American psychologist associated with the

Five Factor Model The Big Five personality traits is a suggested taxonomy, or grouping, for personality traits, developed from the 1980s onward in psychological trait theory. Starting in the 1990s, the theory identified five factors by labels, for the US English ...

. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1970. Author of over 300 academic articles, several books, he is perhaps best known for the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, or

NEO PI-R The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) is a personality inventory that assesses an individual on five dimensions of personality, the so-called Big Five personality traits. These traits are openness to experience, conscientiousness, ext ...

, a

psychological Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...

personality inventory; a 240-item measure of the Five Factor Model:

Extraversion The traits of extraversion (also spelled extroversion Retrieved 2018-02-21.) and introversion are a central dimension in some human personality theories. The terms ''introversion'' and ''extraversion'' were introduced into psychology by Carl J ...

Agreeableness Agreeableness is a personality trait manifesting itself in individual behavioral characteristics that are perceived as kind, sympathetic, cooperative, warm, and considerate. In contemporary personality psychology, agreeableness is one of the five ...

Conscientiousness Conscientiousness is the personality trait of being careful, or diligent. Conscientiousness implies a desire to do a task well, and to take obligations to others seriously. Conscientious people tend to be efficient and organized as opposed to ...

Neuroticism In the study of psychology, neuroticism has been considered a fundamental personality trait. For example, in the Big Five approach to personality trait theory, individuals with high scores for neuroticism are more likely than average to be moody ...

, and

Openness to Experience Openness to experience is one of the domains which are used to describe human personality in the Five Factor Model. Openness involves six facets, or dimensions: active imagination (fantasy), aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, ...

. Additionally, the test measures six subordinate dimensions (known as 'facets') of each of the "FFM" personality factors, developed together with Robert McCrae. Work on this model has made Costa one of the most cited living psychologists,Thomson Reuters Research Analytics, (2012)
highlycited.com-psychology_psychiatry
with an

H index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as winn ...

of over 135.Google Scholar, (2017)
link
Alongside this inventory, he and McCrae have argued that personality is stable, especially after age 30, that it is universal (present in the same structure across ethnicities, cultures and times), that the core structure consists of five major domains, and that these in turn reflect a facet-based structure. He has argued that personality is an important influence on behavior (as opposed to

situational Situational ethics or situation ethics takes into account ''only'' the particular context of an act when evaluating it ethically, rather than judging it only according to absolute moral standards. With the intent to have a fair basis for judgment ...

models where individual behavior reflects no lasting individual differences), including longevity and health.

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Costa, Paul, Jr Living people University of Chicago alumni American psychologists Year of birth missing (living people) Personality psychologists