MyTraitMap.
ONE OF THE FIVE TRAITS

Agreeableness

Agreeableness describes how much you orient toward other people’s needs — compassion, cooperation, trust and the assumption of good faith. It is the trait most often mistaken for a measure of how good a person you are.

What Agreeableness actually measures

Two related tendencies: compassion — feeling what others feel and caring what happens to them — and politeness — deferring, avoiding conflict, giving people the benefit of the doubt. The ten items here lean toward compassion, so a blunt person with deep concern for others tends to score high.

Agreeableness is about orientation toward others, not moral worth. A very agreeable person can go along with something they know is wrong; a very disagreeable person can be the one who says so out loud. Neither end has a monopoly on integrity.

High and low, described fairly

Higher scores

Warm, empathetic, cooperative, trusting, quick to see another person’s side. Higher Agreeableness makes teams work and relationships last, and it is the trait most visibly appreciated by the people around you.

The cost side is well documented and worth naming: difficulty saying no, conflict avoided until it compounds, credit given away, and — consistently across labour-market studies — lower negotiated pay. Being easy to work with is not free.

Lower scores

Direct, sceptical, willing to challenge, comfortable putting a hard question on the table. Lower Agreeableness is a real asset in negotiation, auditing, critique, and any role where the job is to notice what is wrong and say it.

The cost side: friction that was not necessary, trust extended too slowly, and a reputation that arrives in the room ahead of you.

The six facets underneath

  • Trust — assuming others mean well.
  • Morality — straightforwardness, and reluctance to manipulate.
  • Altruism — willingness to help at a cost to yourself.
  • Cooperation — preference for accommodation over conflict.
  • Modesty — reluctance to claim credit.
  • Sympathy — being moved by others’ circumstances.

What the research does and does not support

  • Agreeableness rises across adulthood alongside Conscientiousness — the pattern usually described as psychological maturation.
  • It is consistently associated with more stable relationships and less interpersonal conflict.
  • It is consistently associated with lower earnings, an effect that appears across many labour-market studies.
  • It does not measure honesty, warmth of intention, or how much anyone should like you.

What a agreeableness score is not

  • It is not a percentile. Your number is a rescaled average of your own ten answers, not a rank against a population. See reading your scores.
  • It is not a type. There is no a direct group and a compassionate group; the middle of the range is where most people land.
  • It is not a diagnosis, an aptitude measure, or a judgement. Neither end of this spectrum is the better end.
  • It is not fixed. Traits shift slowly across adulthood, and a score taken in a bad week can read a few points off.

The ten questions that produce this score

MyTraitMap measures agreeableness with the ten public-domain IPIP Big-Five Factor Marker items below. Reverse-keyed items are scored in the opposite direction, so agreeing with one of those lowers the score.

  1. 01Feel little concern for others.reverse-keyed
  2. 02Am interested in people.
  3. 03Insult people.reverse-keyed
  4. 04Sympathize with others' feelings.
  5. 05Am not interested in other people's problems.reverse-keyed
  6. 06Have a soft heart.
  7. 07Am not really interested in others.reverse-keyed
  8. 08Take time out for others.
  9. 09Feel others' emotions.
  10. 10Make people feel at ease.

Every item is listed here deliberately. A test you can read in full before you take it is a test you can judge for yourself. The scoring arithmetic is on the methodology page.

Find your own five scores

Fifty questions, five to eight minutes, no account. Your answers are scored in your browser and never uploaded.

Take the Big Five test

Keep reading

ExtraversionWhat Extraversion measures in the Big Five, why it is a spectrum rather than two types, what high and low scores look like, and the ten IPIP items MyTraitMap uses to score it.ConscientiousnessWhat Conscientiousness measures in the Big Five, what high and low scores look like, its six facets, why it predicts job performance, and the ten IPIP items behind the score.Reading your Big Five scoresHow to interpret Big Five test results: what a 0–100 scale score is, why it is not a percentile, how wide the margin of error is, and what to read instead of one number.