Background:
One free measures of the Big 5 is the IPIP. I have noticed that IPIP items seem to have a positive bias towards items loading on the extraversion (EX), emotional stability (ES), conscientiousness (C), agreeableness (A), and openness/intellectance (O) pole of the scale.
For example, for agreeableness, you have items "I am interested in people" (positive) and "I insult people" (negative), or for conscientiousness you have items "I pay attention to details" (positive) or "I make a mess of things" (negative).
However, at the level of a construct there are positive aspects to all the other poles of the Big 5. Being disagreeable could mean that you are comfortable confronting people when you believe they have done something wrong or that you are comfortable pointing out social injustice. Being lower on conscientiousness may mean that you don't feel the need to do everything perfectly in life or that you believe that sometimes it's better to be a little messy so that you can focus on more important things.
Questions
Thus, I'm interested in the positive bias in measures of the Big 5 towards conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, emotional stability, and openness.
- Is there any research that quantifies the degree to which different measures of the Big 5 display this positive bias?
- Are there any Big 5 measures that specifically try to avoid this positive bias?
- To what extent is this positive bias inherent to the concepts of the Big 5?
