Glossary · Facet (personality)
Facet (personality)
A narrower personality dimension underneath one of the five Big Five domains. Friends? matches on facets, not just domains.
A facet is one of the six finer-grained traits that make up a Big Five domain. Extraversion, for example, breaks into Friendliness, Gregariousness, Assertiveness, Activity Level, Excitement-Seeking, and Cheerfulness. Two extraverts can be wildly different — one all about high-energy parties (high Excitement-Seeking, high Gregariousness) and another more about confident leadership in small groups (high Assertiveness, low Gregariousness).
Most "personality matching" products average across all facets and report a single domain score, then match on that. That throws away the most useful signal. Are We Friends? compares your full 30-facet vector against the candidate's, weights each facet by its known predictive validity for friendship outcomes, and ranks the result.
If you've ever taken a Big Five test that just gave you "Openness 65, Conscientiousness 40" with no further breakdown, that test was domain-level. The IPIP-NEO-120 is facet-level, and that's why it matters.
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