Two comparisons: everyone and people like you

Who are "people like you"?

"People like you" are people of your own age and gender, as far as you tell us. Age and gender are both optional. What you fill in decides the group:

• Age and gender: you are compared with men or women in an age band around your age, for example women aged 20 to 30 or men aged 50 and over.
• Only your age, or gender "other": you are compared with people in your age band, men and women together.
• Only your gender: you are compared with men or with women of all ages.
• Nothing: you only see the comparison with the full reference group, so one number per trait.

The name of your group is shown with your result, so you always know who you are being compared with.

Why two numbers instead of one?

Because each number answers a different question, and both questions are worth asking.

The full reference group is one shared yardstick for everyone. That lets you put different people's scores side by side: yours and your partner's, yours and a colleague's of a different age, or yours now and yours in ten years. Everything else in your result starts from this group too: the words for high and low, the text for each trait and your Depth Pattern.

People like you show where you stand among people at the same stage of life and of the same gender. It is a natural comparison: we often measure ourselves against people our own age.

Neither one is the "real" number. Both are true in their own way. That is why we always show them together, rather than picking one and hiding the other.

Why can the two numbers differ?

The two numbers differ when your own group scores differently on a trait, on average, from everyone taken together. If your group scores lower on average, you stand higher within it. If your group scores higher on average, you stand lower.

These group differences are well researched, especially those linked to age. On average, people become more conscientious and more emotionally stable between their twenties and their forties ^[1]. A large meta-analysis of long-running studies also found that Emotional stability rises steadily across the whole of life ^[2]. And in a large comparison of people aged 10 to 65, age groups differed on average, in adults mostly in the direction of greater maturity ^[3]. You can read more in does personality change with age.

Men and women differ on average too. In research across 26 cultures, for example, women scored somewhat higher on Agreeableness than men on average ^[4]. Those differences are small compared with the differences between people within each group ^[4]. So they say little about any one man or woman, but they do shift the middle of a group a little.

Here is a made-up example. A 56-year-old man comes out at 55 on Conscientiousness compared with the full reference group. People his age score higher on this trait, on average, than everyone taken together, because most people become more conscientious between their twenties and their forties. Among men aged 50 and over he therefore stands at 38. His answers have not changed; the yardstick has.

What does a difference between the two numbers tell you?

DepthFive calls a difference of 10 points or more "clearly different"; below that, you land "in about the same place". When the difference is clear, that trait gets a fixed sentence, for example: "Compared with people like you, you stand clearly higher. On average they score lower on Conscientiousness than the full reference group."

Be careful about what such a difference does and does not mean. It tells you something about your group, not about you: your group sits somewhere else on average, and that moves your position. It does not mean you become a different person when you compare yourself with people your age.

Look at the middle too. If both numbers are between 40 and 60, you are close to the middle in both groups, even if one number sits just above 50 and the other just below. That falls within ordinary measurement error and says little. If one number is 35 and the other 65, the difference does matter: among everyone you are on one side, among people like you on the other.

Which comparison should you use when?

That depends on your question. Do you want to know how you relate to the people around you, of all ages and both genders, or to put your profile next to someone else's? Then use the full reference group. Do you want to know whether you sit on the high or the low side for your age and gender? Then look at people like you.

Reading them together works best. Two numbers that are close tell you your group is roughly average on that trait. Two numbers that are far apart tell you something about how your group differs from everyone, and where you stand in between.

Two comparisons in the free result

Both comparisons are already part of the free result of the 20-question test, alongside your Depth Pattern. You do not need an email address or an account; you only fill in age and gender if you want to see the second comparison. You can start with the free test. Background on the model itself is in what is the Big Five.