Cooperation
A facet of agreeableness. Four items in the IPIP-NEO-120.
The fourth facet of agreeableness is avoiding conflict and getting along: not relishing a fight, not shouting or insulting, and not seeking to get even. All four items are reversed, so the facet is really the absence of a taste for confrontation. The authors call it cooperation; compliance is the older name.
What it does not mean
A low score is not violence or cruelty. It describes a person who does not mind a row, says what they think of people, and does not forget a slight; many such people are fair, and some are the ones who say what needs saying.
A high score is not weakness. Avoiding conflict is often a skill, and cooperative people can hold a line without raising their voice.
Four items make a short scale. A facet score moves more between attempts than the 24-item domain score, and it describes a tendency in ordinary life as the person reports it, not a diagnosis of anything.
High and low in daily life
High. People high on this facet say they do not love a good fight, do not yell at or insult people, and do not get back at others. In daily life that shows as giving way to keep the peace, finding a middle path, letting a slight go, and discomfort when others argue. The cost is conflicts that needed having and did not happen.
Low. People low on this facet say they love a good fight, yell at people and get back at others. In daily life that shows as enjoying an argument, bluntness that others find bracing or bruising, holding grudges, and no fear of a difficult conversation. Low scorers often make good advocates.
Parent domain
- Agreeableness: the broad trait this facet belongs to, with five sibling facets.
What the research says it predicts
Agreeable people handle conflict differently: in studies of adolescents and adults they chose constructive tactics, such as negotiation and giving way, over destructive ones, and reported less conflict overall. (Jensen-Campbell and Graziano, 2001)
Anger relates to low agreeableness as well as to high neuroticism; a person low on this facet and high on the anger facet is the most likely to express it. (Pease and Lewis, 2015)
Cooperation belongs to the politeness aspect of agreeableness, with straightforwardness and modesty. (DeYoung, Quilty and Peterson, 2007)
Where people fall
The spread of scores
Curve height shows how common each score is; the darker middle holds half of all people. If you have taken a test on this device, your marker is drawn on.
IPIP-NEO-120, cooperation, 4 items
410,376 people
Sources and licence
Jensen-Campbell, L. A., & Graziano, W. G. (2001). Agreeableness as a moderator of interpersonal conflict. Journal of Personality, 69(2), 323-362. doi:10.1111/1467-6494.00148
Pease, C. R., & Lewis, G. J. (2015). Personality links to anger: Evidence for trait interaction and differentiation across expression style. Personality and Individual Differences, 74, 159-164. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2014.10.018
DeYoung, C. G., Quilty, L. C., & Peterson, J. B. (2007). Between facets and domains: 10 aspects of the Big Five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(5), 880-896. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.93.5.880
Instrument: IPIP-NEO-120. Johnson, J. A. (2014). Measuring thirty facets of the Five Factor Model with a 120-item public domain inventory: Development of the IPIP-NEO-120. Journal of Research in Personality, 51, 78-89. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2014.05.003 Key: https://ipip.ori.org/30FacetNEO-PI-RItems.htm.
Norms: Johnson, J. A. IPIP-NEO-120 public dataset (IPIP120.dat), OSF component wxvth of osf.io/tbmh5, https://osf.io/wxvth/.
Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm
Instrument: IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers. Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4(1), 26-42. doi:10.1037/1040-3590.4.1.26 Key: https://ipip.ori.org/newBigFive5broadKey.htm.
Norms: Open-Source Psychometrics Project, IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers responses (IPIP-FFM-data-8Nov2018.zip), 1,015,342 responses collected 2016 to 2018, https://openpsychometrics.org/_rawdata/.
Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm