The Complete Guide to Big Five Agreeableness Personality Trait

Agreeableness is a person's tendency to put others' needs before their own and to work with others instead of competing with them. People with high agreeableness tend to have a lot of understanding and enjoy helping and taking care of others. Most of the time, they trust and forgive.

People with lower agreeableness tend to understand less and care more about themselves than others. People who get low scores are often called aggressive, fierce, and angry. They tend to have more tense relationships and fight with people more often.

It helps to be agreeable if you want to gain and keep fame. People like people who agree with them more than people who don't. Conversely, agreeableness is not helpful when tough or objective choices need to be made. People who are hard to get along with can be great thinkers, judges, or fighters.

Agreeableness and Internet Fights

Agreeableness may not have been in the news often, but it was in January 2018. In a now-famous interview on Channel 4, reporter Cathy Newman and controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan B. Peterson talked about the difference in pay between men and women. The tone of the talk, which was aggressive and never changed, made it global. People who agreed with Newman and Peterson had different ideas about who won the fight.

What does a high agreeableness appear like?

People with higher levels of Agreeableness are more likely to get along well with others, be helpful, and show emotional intelligence and understanding. People who are helpful, interested in working together, and good at calming down conflicts tend to do well in social and business situations.

They usually make friends quickly because they are ready to give people a chance and are slow to judge. Very agreeable people choose jobs that involve building relationships, helping people in need, or counseling.

Agreeable people tend to be sensitive to other people's feelings, caring, and kind. They are naturally kind, and they have to help because they deeply feel the wants and pain of others. Even though they mean well, this trait can sometimes make them too dependent or unable to say no.

Highly agreeable people may struggle to stand up for their needs and wants. People with high agreeableness tend to be liked by their coworkers, but agreeableness has a bad relationship with money and professional rank. Highly agreeable people may care more about helping others than making plans.

How does low agreeableness look?

People with low levels of Agreeableness are less probably to get attached to others, trust others, or care about their needs. They tend to be less affected by their feelings and less aware of what others need, but they may still feel a strong urge to care for close family members.

People with low Agreeableness tend to be suspicious of others and their intentions. Because they don't trust people, people rarely get the most out of them. But they may have trouble working as a team because they think everyone else is just as interested in themselves.

People with low levels of Agreeableness often do well at work because they are very driven. They are often interested in jobs that give them power, like law, politics, the military, security, and law enforcement.

Tasks requiring them to work together can be frustrating because they tend to try to get ahead instead of working together. People with low Agreeableness don't mind holding a disliked opinion. They usually don't care what others think, so that they can act according to their beliefs.

The 3 Aspects of Agreeableness

Agreeableness is broken up into Compassion, Politeness, and Trust on the personality test.

Agreeableness and Caring

Do you find it hard to pass a beggar without giving them a coin or a smile? Are you often moved by news stories about a child who has lost a parent or a parent who is sick? Then you would probably do well on the agreeableness trait called compassion.

This scale is all about understanding how other people feel and wanting to help them. People with less of this component tend to be less emotional and more matter-of-fact.

Politeness and agreeableness

Being polite is about what you feel safe saying and how you say it. People with high Politeness try not to criticize others as much as possible. At a dinner party, if the person beside them said something they didn't agree with, they would be the first to hum and change the subject.

They will do so politely and civilly when they have to criticize or disagree with something. People at the lower end of this scale usually don't have a hard time setting people off and might say they don't agree in harsher ways.

Agreeableness and Trust

The higher your position on this factor, the more likely you are to believe other people's goals without question. For example, when someone at work asks for your help, you assume it's because they respect your skills and want to hear your opinion. If you're lower on this scale, you might think that a coworker who asks for your help wants to get rid of their work or wants your thoughts.

Job performance and agreeableness

Like with Openness, most people are surprised that Agreeableness doesn't have a strong link to job performance. In a world where teamwork and getting along with others are important, shouldn't being kind, trusting, polite, and compassionate be a big plus?

It has been demonstrated that agreeableness is linked to job success in jobs involving a lot of one-on-one contacts and that more pleasant people do more helpful things at work. When many social contacts are needed, agreeableness appears to make a small but steady difference in how well someone does.

People with a high level of agreeableness are likely to work together for the group's good and maintain good relationships with others. Also, workers with high Agreeableness are less likely to do things that aren't helpful at work, like stealing, bullying, or taking unauthorized time off.

Agreeableness in study

It has been found that agreeableness changes the link between conscientiousness and success. A big study looked at groups of employees in seven different work settings. They were especially interested in people who score high on Conscientiousness but low on Agreeableness and how that affects how their performance is seen.

In five out of seven settings, they discovered that people who are very responsible but don't have the social skills that come with being agreeable tend to get much lower scores for how well they do their jobs. In the other two settings, this effect wasn't seen. People with high Conscientiousness but low Agreeableness didn't get lower performance scores.

There wasn't much need to talk to other people in these two situations. In other words, someone with a mindset geared towards getting good results and who is likely to work hard seems much stronger when mixed with someone naturally sensitive to social issues.

The Difficulties with having a high Agreeableness.

In some work situations, having a high level of agreeableness can also be hard. Very nice people don't usually do well in settings with a lot of competition. This is not a big surprise since being competitive takes a certain amount of self-focus and the ability to ignore how other people feel briefly. But what may be more important is that very pleasant people don't seem motivated or rewarded by competition.

Does being highly agreeable make it harder to move up the business ladder?

Very agreeable people can have trouble in places where competition is high, like management consulting firms, investment banks, and the best university schools. Also, they might have trouble moving up the business job ladder. On the one hand, businesses are putting more and more stress on things like teamwork, teaching skills, and including everyone.

On the other hand, it's hard to avoid the fact that top management roles still require a more direct style of communication, the ability to push one's own goal, and sometimes the ability to set feelings aside as well as do whatever has to be done, even if it hurts others. These things are a lot harder for someone who gets along with everyone.

Is this to say that people with high agreeableness are unsuitable for senior leadership positions?

Low-agreeableness leaders have problems, like being seen as unable to listen, tending to hurt people's feelings, and sometimes preferring to fight over work together. Instead, companies should give teaching to both groups to make sure that they have a wide range of habits.

Leaders must deal with situations that call for kindness, teamwork, and tough decisions where logic has to win over feelings. High-profile people in the media, on TV, in politics, or in business, such as Agreeableness isn't necessary for every job. Still, for most jobs, it will go a long way toward encouraging prosocial habits, team activities, and the unspoken moments of care and kindness that make our workplaces grow.

Finding the right fit: Agreeableness

Agreeableness seems like a trait we would want everyone to have a lot of, but as we've seen, the truth is more complicated. We can't know precisely how much Agreeableness would make someone the perfect choice because that's just not possible. But we can figure out what core skills a job needs instead of how many years of experience or what kind of background is needed.

This will help us hire more people from different backgrounds and with an attitude prepared to keep changing as the globe and its needs change. No candidate is perfect, but if we understand personality science, we can do what we can to help our individuals and our groups do well.