OCEAN

OCEAN is the acronym of the five personality factors of the Big Five model (#3): Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism.

The most validated model. The most validated psychometric model of personality in academic psychology. Cross-culturally confirmed in 50+ countries.

The Five Factors

• O — Openness to Experience: curiosity, imagination, aesthetics
• C — Conscientiousness: organization, responsibility, self-control
• E — Extraversion: social energy, positive emotions, activity
• A — Agreeableness: trust, altruism, cooperation
• N — Neuroticism: anxiety, emotional instability, vulnerability

History

The lexical hypothesis. Factor analysis of personality adjectives (the lexical hypothesis of Gordon Allport, 1936). The idea: language contains all the important distinctions of personality.

The modern model. Lewis Goldberg (1990), Costa & McCrae (NEO PI-R, 1992).

Big Five Is Not a Typology

Continuous scales. The Big Five is not a typology (unlike MBTI #4 and Socionics #8), but a model of continuous scales: each person receives a numerical score on each factor and on 30 facets (T029).

Cross-cultural reproducibility. Confirmed in 50+ countries — a rare achievement in personality science.