Lewis Goldberg

Lewis Robert Goldberg (January 28, 1932 – March 29, 2026) was an American personality psychologist and academic who was a professor emeritus at the University of Oregon. He was closely associated with the lexical hypothesis that any culturally important personality characteristic will be represented in the language of that culture. This hypothesis led to a five factor structure of personality trait adjectives (which he dubbed the Big 5). When applied to personality items this structure is also known as the five-factor model (FFM) of personality. He is the creator of the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP), He is a senior scientist at the Oregon Research Institute, where he has carried out research since 1961. Goldberg also did a study on act-frequency signatures of the “Big Five” and how much in our incidental or everyday behavior that we show signature behavior pertaining to the “Big Five.” These five aspects showed up numerous times during the reported study and this shows that we exhibit behavioral signatures of the “Big Five,” those being extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and intellect. This is important as Goldberg's research may help enrich our understanding of our everyday mundane actions and how our personality affects it.

Goldberg and his colleagues later released the International Personality Item Pool,

Personality consistency over the lifespan With his colleague Sarah Hampson, Goldberg initiated a 40-year follow up to a study started by John Digman at the University of Hawaii. This study is examining the health outcomes in middle adulthood associated with personality rating in middle school.

Personality and prediction Goldberg's early work compared clinical versus actuarial prediction. Even when predicting clinically difficult criteria, he showed that actuarial models were superior to clinical judgment.

Other major publications Besides his articles discussing the dimensions of personality, Goldberg has also contributed to the studies showing the importance of personality for predicting important life outcomes with his colleagues Brent Roberts, Nathan Kuncel, Rebecca Shiner and Avshalom Caspi.

His methodological papers includes the development of the "bass-ackwards" procedure for assessing hierarchical structures. as well as his careful comparison of multiple ways to form personality scales for prediction.

Boards and committees Goldberg served on the Personality and Cognition Research Review Committee and the Cognition, Emotion, and Personality Research Review Committee of the National Institute of Mental Health and on the Graduate Record Examination Board Research Committee.