Big Five Personality
The dominant trait-psychology model Brian Little summarizes as OCEAN — five normally distributed dimensions describing universal human differences:
| Letter | Trait | Pole |
|---|---|---|
| O | Openness | vs closed to experience |
| C | Conscientiousness | vs lackadaisical |
| E | Extroversion | vs introversion |
| A | Agreeableness | vs disagreeable |
| N | Neuroticism | vs emotional stability |
Life Outcomes
- Openness + conscientiousness predict life success through different routes — open people via audacity (occasionally oddness); conscientious via deadlines, perseverance, passion
- Extroversion + agreeableness predict working well with people
Traits matter for well-being and how life goes — but Little argues they are not the whole person. See personal-projects and free-traits.
Connections
- introversion-extroversion — the E dimension unpacked
- free-traits — acting against trait tendencies for core projects
- three-natures-of-personality — traits sit alongside biogenic, sociogenic, idiogenic layers