Identity, Self, and Personality: I. Identity Status and the Five-Factor Model of Personality

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Abstract
This study tested the relation between Marcia's (1966) four categories of identity development and the five-factor model of personality. Procedurally, this study consisted of relating the Adams, Bennion, and Huh (1989) Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status (EOM-EIS) to Costa and McCrae's (1985) NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI) in a sample of 198 young adults. Based on past empirical findings, a negative relation between foreclosure and openness to experience was predicted and confirmed. Identity achievement was predicted and found to involve low neuroticism and high conscientiousness. Although unexpected from past empirical findings, identity achievers were also very extraverted. Both moratorium and diffusion were predicted and found to involve neuroticism. Additionally, these statuses correlated inversely with conscientiousness, and diffusion correlated negatively with agreeableness. These results support the suggestion that diffusion status involves not so much a lack of identity as a negative or socially undesirable identity, and that moratorium status subjects are experimenting with this negative identity more than with the positive identity of achievement.