Psychology 101
Agreeableness: Meaning, High vs Low Scores
The CQ Team · 5 min read · Oct 16, 2026
Agreeableness is the Big Five trait that describes how warm, cooperative and trusting you tend to be with other people. Its three facets are compassion, respectfulness and trust.
Agreeableness is the Big Five trait that describes how warm, cooperative and trusting you tend to be with other people. Its three facets are compassion, respectfulness and trust. Low scorers tend to be more sceptical, blunt and competitive.
Each facet is a range. Neither end is the good one, and most people sit somewhere in between.
| Facet | High scorers | Low scorers |
|---|---|---|
| Compassion | Feels for others and wants to help. | Focuses on the task more than on feelings. |
| Respectfulness | Polite, avoids conflict and respects others’ wishes. | Blunt, and will argue and push back. |
| Trust | Assumes the best about people. | Sceptical of other people’s motives. |
Facet names from the BFI-2 (Soto & John, 2017); descriptions are our summaries.
Agreeable people tend to share and cooperate more in experiments (Kline et al., 2019), and their partners tend to be a little happier with the relationship. In long-term studies, higher agreeableness went with a lower chance of divorce. It is largely unrelated to anxiety or depression.
| Life satisfaction | .19 |
| Lower divorce risk | .18 |
Correlations, sign removed. Life satisfaction from Steel et al. (2008); divorce from Roberts et al. (2007).6.
In a review of 92 long-term samples, agreeableness changed mainly in old age. Women score higher on average, by a small to moderate margin, and the overlap is still large. (Roberts et al., 2006)
People who come out as F (feeling) on Myers-Briggs-style tests tend to score higher on agreeableness, and T (thinking) people lower. (Furnham et al., 2003, replicating McCrae & Costa, 1989)
Not in itself. It goes with being direct and competitive. It is largely unrelated to anxiety and depression, though low scores go with more rule-breaking at work.
On average a little: studies find a small to moderate difference, and most men and women overlap.
Close. It covers compassion, politeness and trust in others.
Low agreeableness, sometimes called antagonism: sceptical, blunt and competitive.
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