Stewart, Ross DavidMõttus, RenéSeeboth, AnneSoto, Christopher JohnJohnson, Wendy2025-06-112025-06-112021-07-08Stewart, R. D., Mõttus, R., Seeboth, A., Soto, C. J., & Johnson, W. (2022). The finer details? The predictability of life outcomes from Big Five domains, facets, and nuances. Journal of Personality, 90(2), 167-182. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.126600022-3506https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12660http://hdl.handle.net/10034/629462This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: [Stewart, R. D., Mõttus, R., Seeboth, A., Soto, C. J., & Johnson, W. (2022). The finer details? The predictability of life outcomes from Big Five domains, facets, and nuances. Journal of personality, 90(2), 167-182. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12660], which has been published in final form at [Link to final article using the DOI]. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.Associations between personality traits and life outcomes are usually studied using the Big Five domains and, occasionally, their facets. But recent research suggests these associations may be driven by the items (reflecting personality nuances) chosen to measure these traits. Using a large dataset (N = 6126), we examined associations with 53 self-reported outcomes using domains, facets and items (markers for nuances), training and validating models in different sample partitions. Facets better predicted outcomes than domains (on average, 18.0% versus 16.6% of variance explained), but items provided the most accurate predictions (on average 20.9%). Removing domain and facet variance from items had no effect on their predictive validity, suggesting that outcome-related information was often in items' unique variances (i.e., nuance-specific). Item-based prediction also showed the highest discriminant validity. These observations, replicating previous findings, suggest that personality traits' valid associations with outcomes are often driven by narrow personality nuances.enNuancesFacetsTraitsOutcomePersonalityItemsHumansPersonalityPersonality DisordersPersonality InventoryPhenotypeSelf ReportArticle1467-6494Journal of Personality2025-06-1090