Understanding OCEAN: The Only Personality Model Backed By Science | S4 EP118

Ever wonder why some quizzes feel fun but never help you change? We go straight to the Big Five—Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism—and show how a scientific model can actually guide daily choices. No mystery types, no horoscope vibes. Just clear spectrums, real examples, and habits that transform insight into action.

We start by decoding each trait in plain language and with sample items you might see on a test. Openness becomes a question of how you invite novelty; Conscientiousness becomes the engine that ships your plans; Extraversion becomes a battery you can manage; Agreeableness becomes the balance between empathy and truth; Neuroticism becomes the skill of regulating reactivity. Instead of boxing people in, we talk about building skills that let you flex—so a high-strung day doesn’t own you and a messy week doesn’t derail your goals.

You’ll hear how to design small experiments for each dial: micro-adventures to stretch Openness without chaos, three-bullet planning to boost Conscientiousness, energy tracking to set smart social boundaries, “friendly frictions” to protect both candor and care, and fast regulation tools to lower stress spikes. We also touch the research roots—why OCEAN is widely validated across cultures and why replication matters—so you can trust the framework while keeping your agency.

Take a Big Five assessment, map your highs and lows, and then try one micro-habit per trait for two weeks. Share your results with us and compare notes with a friend or partner. If this helped you see yourself more clearly, follow the show, leave a rating, and send this to someone who loves a good self-improvement tool. Your next breakthrough might be one tiny habit away.

1/6/26

Got a burning question about kink, BDSM, relationships, and/or navigating the wild world of alternative lifestyles? 

Send in your questions. No topic is too taboo, no curiosity too small! We’re all making mistakes, growing, and exploring together!Submit your questions anonymously at aroundthekinkykampfire@yahoo.com or slide into our DMs at Twitter-KinkyKampfire, YT-AroundtheKinkyKampfire, IG-KampfireKinksters. Let’s keep the fire going! 

1/6/26

Transcript

Why OCEAN Beats Other Tests

Defining The Big Five Traits

Traits vs Habits And Change

Openness Explained With Examples

Conscientiousness And Routine

Extraversion, Introversion, Ambiversion

Agreeableness, Trust, And Leadership

Neuroticism And Emotional Regulation

Scientific Roots And Validation

Practical Takeaways & How To Improve

Closing, Links, And How To Reach Us

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Around the Kinky Campfire. This is your host, Julius Marquise. I have another great episode for you. Once again, on this Thursday, Thor's Thor's Day here. Okay? And before we get into it, as you know, it is time for the ASMR five seconds. Once again, we have another unsponsored drink. It is earlier in the week, so not so much adult beverages, but something I love very much to get the energy going. It is the sparkling ice caffeine, blue raspberry flavor. Oh, so delicious. Not sponsored though, but here we go. Yeah, 3-2 on all that. It's so cold! Ooh, man. Yeah. I think we only got to like two seconds there, but still delicious nonetheless. Uh no countdown, just straight into it. Okay. Very important topic we have for you today. And of course, I'm gonna get to it as much as I can, but I'm not gonna get through everything per the usual, but here we go. Alright. So today's episode is the ocean personality traits. Okay, this is a very important uh personality test personality traits because it's the only one backed by science, okay? If you guys didn't know that, all your little hogwarts who you are, Lord of the Rings, uh the Hogwarts, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, uh Simpsons character, Avatar character, whoever, is not backed by science. But this one actually is even Myers Briggs, that one too. So all the uh legit um personality tests that you take, even astrology, is not backed by science. Okay, so I wanted to bring one here one here for you today that is legit, and it is the ocean personality traits test, or you can be a test, and you can figure out what your personality traits are. I'm gonna go over these very briefly with the limited time that I have for you, okay? Alright, so first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna talk about what Ocean means. It is an acronym, okay? The Ocean Personality Test stands for O openness, C, Conscientiousness. I got that one big word. I can spell big works too. Okay, and uh extra ver extra extra version? Extra extra version. Extra extra version. That's funny. You put them together, it just looks like extra version. Which kind of version is it? Extra. Okay, A is agreeableness, um, and then N is neuroticism. Neuroticism. Interesting. Okay, so this is a big distinction between your personality trait and a habit. I want to make that very clear. Just because you have a trait that is uh that way does not mean you cannot work on your habits. Something you've heard me talk about many times on this podcast, that you can work on habits, they do not need to control you. Okay, all right, uh, let's see. So, first of all, openness is measures your it measures your creativity, your curiosity, and willingness to experience new things. So let's work on that neurotap neuroplasticity, people. How willing you are, how willing you are, how willing you are, how willing you are to try something different. I went full Yoda there, and I'm totally fine with that. How willing are you to try something different? All right, learn something new, get out that comfort zone. Now you see why. Julius decided to pick this as a topic, all right? Because the whole test backing up what I said before. Okay, conscientiousness measured self-discipline, self-discipline, or organization, and diligence. For some reason, I have a weird problem with saying organization. Got through conscientiousness and had trouble with organization. Okay, so your self-discipline, organization, and diligence. How how good? How willing? How how how able you are to keep a routine and stick to it? How about that? Make a plan, stick to that as well. Okay, extrav extraversion. Extroversion? Extravision. Interesting. Measures energy, sociability, and assertioness. So extrovert, introvert, that type of thing puts you on that kind of spectrum. I will say these these are all spectrums. So it's not like on and off. These are all spectrums. So once you take the test, you'll see how much of you uh you are on each side of the whole uh entire thing. So it's not a um absolutely agree or absolutely disagree. Strongly agree, more slightly disagree type of deal. So it's that kind of spectrum there. It's not an on and off thing. So the extra vision is catching me off guard. That's hilarious. Okay, agreeableness uh measures cooperation, kindness, and empathy. Okay, how agreeable you are, and neuroticism measures emotional stability, anxiety, and sussibility to stress. So, how neurotic you are, great, it's awesome. Oh man, that's hilarious. Okay, but once again, I want to stress you can work on these habits. So if you lean high or lean low in the extraversion, extraversion, extraversion, olive oil, extraversion, then you know what? You can work on your social skills. That's 100% a thing. Something you can do. Um, and then uh so basically back to the whole talents versus skills uh debate. Some people have genetically um markers, genetically disposed to one side of the spectrum or the other on each one of these. And good thing for you, you can learn habits to um change that about yourself. And I just want to emphasize that's a that's a thing. We can work on these habits. You let me know and uh message me on the Instagrams and email me and on the emails and uh ask me if you have any questions. We'll go through it together, okay, about the skills and about this test. Uh Ocean Personality Test or Big Five Personality Test is a widely recognized scientifically validated tool that measures five core dimensions of human personality. All right, the ones I talked about, and it is scientifically valid. Developed over decades by researchers, it assesses individual traits on a spectrum to provide a detailed stable profile profile of personality. Mm-hmm. Detailed. This is this is a great test. Uh I love it so much, and it's very helpful. Okay. Key details about the test. The accuracy, first of all, is considered the most accepted and scientifically robust model of personality in academic psychology. It's very interesting. Robust, they put in there. Scoring typically uses a five-point Likert scale from agree to disagree. Oh, I think somebody said that already. For 50 items to measure how much an individual displays each trait, um, completion time, usage, yada yada yada, super nerdy stuff. We don't really care. Take your time, take the test, do what you need to do to get an accurate score, but you can change. This is one of those, this is definitely one of those tests, like the BDASM test, that changes over time. So not always accurate um from a past test. So make sure you go ahead and take it on a regular basis if you want a more accurate result um to be able to display to friends, family, partners, whoever. Just uh so you know, okay, the ocean model is highly regarded because it's not based on a single proprietary test, but on general framework. General framework. All right, so not an absolute, and has been and you can validate it worldwide. Okay, so what does the scientific part of it mean? If people don't know about this, so you have the scientific method. One part of that for something to be more accurate or eventually become a law and not just a theory or philosophy, is that people can replicate it and get a same or similar result. Okay, so a lot of the other tests don't have that backing, that's why they're not scientifically backed, robust, validated worldwide, validated specifically in the word for validation or valid is truth, has to be factual. So, in order to be able to do that, you have to be able to replicate it multiple times and get a same or similar result. That's how you become scientifically backed. Alright, big five model, as is also named, originated from lexical hypotheses, um which suggests the most important personality traits are coded or encoded in language. Uh Raymond Cattell built upon earlier lexical work by reducing thousands of descriptors to 16 personality factors, later clustered into five global traits, which some consider the original big five. Um, a bunch of nerdy people went in and did a lot of different things, which I'm not going to read all of it here for you because there is a lot of nerdy people that did the did things in the history of this uh whole entire test, and um very interesting to see. Okay, um, let's see. Four. So it's called five it's accepted as the five-factor model, FFM. Hilarious. Uh, these four sets of researchers use somewhat different methods in finding the five traits, making the sets of five factors, have varying names and meanings. However, all have been found to be strongly correlated with corresponding factors. And in 1884, British scientist Sir Francis Galton became the first person known to consider deriving a comprehensive taxonomy of human personality traits by sampling language. British American William McDougal, yada yada yada, bunch of nerdy people. Okay, so just gonna touch on the history of it all. There's a lot to go here if you want to do some research on that. Of course, I'll put the link in the description. Either before the episode comes out or after at some point, which sometimes happens. Uh, there's a Swiss psychologist. Yes, the Swiss did something in 1936. Here we go. American psychologists Gordon Alport of Harvard and Henry Audbert of Dartmouth implemented the duxical hypothesis using the English language. They organized for three anonymous people to categorize adjectives from Webster's dictionary. Um, goodness, the result was a list of 4,500 adjectives they believed were descriptive of observable and relatively permanent traits. I can read people, I'm telling you right now, this is just proof that I can read. Okay, let's skip to more recent times. Uh 57, uh 4th edition, six factors were found to be present in Finnish people uh in 1969. Trustworthiness, self-confidence, rationality, uniqueness, tolerance, and sociability. Oh, just different words. Um, tolerance may be a little bit different. Okay, let's see here. 1981. How much did I put in my notes? I thought I had a final point here. Okay, here we go. 2007. Uh, Colin DeYoung uh and two other people concluded that the ten aspects of the big five may have distinct biological substrates. These these this was derived through factor analysis of two data samples with the international personality item poll, followed by cross-regulation with scores derived from ten genetic factors, yada yada yada. And then we have one last one. Um, for my non-nerdy people, it's a lot of nerdy speak. Uh, plus, by 2009, personality and social psychologists generally agreed that both personal and situational variables are needed to account for human behavior. Thank you. Thank you. Um back in 2009, these people were generally agreeing. The personal and situational. So your personal experience versus your environment. It's great, awesome. Okay. So, with the time I have left, let us break down a little bit of all the different parts of this. We're sticking to the big five. I don't know where the sixth one came from. That's very interesting. Okay. Um, openness to experience uh is general appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, and curiosity, and everything else. So everything that is considered an experience. People are open to experience, are intellectually curious, open to emotion, sensitivity to music, and willing to try new things. Um more creative and more aware of their feelings, hold unconventional beliefs, CBT, cognitive beh no dialectical be behavior therapy, dbt, dbt. Um, also being able to hold two contracting beliefs at the same time and both of them be true. Yeah. Okay. Uh high openness people are said to pursue self-actualization specifically by seeking out intense, euphoric experiences. Oh, they like drugs. Okay. Um those with low openness want to be fulfilled by preserving and are characterized as pragmatic and data-driven, sometimes even perceived to be dogmatic and closed-minded. Uh disagreement remains about how to interpret and contextualize the openness factor, as there is a lack of biological support for this particular trait. Oh. Um, and it's not related to brain regions. Okay. So open people are open more to experiences versus the JATA-driven person. Yeah, uh, I'm definitely like in the middle of this one. Uh, it's very interesting to see that some parts are open. It really depends on the area. So that's um something I wanted to say. That's you know, that's how it is. Um, so here are some sample items. I have a rich vocabulary, vivid imagination, excellent ideas, quote unquote excellent. Interesting. Um, use difficult words, full of ideas, not interested in abstract ideas. I do not have a good imagination. So those those are the kind of things. So I have a rich vocabulary versus I do not have a good imagination. Abstract ideas. So that's interesting to see that some people do not have the people that are less on the open or on the other side of the openness, let's say that, on the other side of the openness um spectrum or factors, do not have a rich imagination. Hmm. Interesting. Do not have a propensity for abstract ideas. I will say for me that I was very much on the not open side until I got more into the improv and the comedy bits of everything, and then I was like, oh, you know what? I do have an imagination. It's in there somewhere, just buried down deep. Oh, so cold. Okay. Conscientiousness. Again, I hit it. Tendency to be self-disciplined, act dutifully, and stray strive for achievement against measures or outside expectations. So are you a self-driven individual? You are high on the conscientiousness. Um related to people's level of impulse control, regulation, and direction, high conscientious is often perceived as being stubborn and focused. Low conscientious is associated with flexibility and spontaneity, spontaneity, but can also appear as sloppiness and lack of reliability. So that is very interesting to see that it seems like the opposite being good, being high conscious is bad because you're sloppy and disorganized. Yet you can focus, which is interesting. So I know a few people, people with the the Tism, as they say, I have those kind of things. I would argue too that if you are higher neurodivergent type person, then uh that could come off very obvious to some people how you are, kind of sorta. Yeah, sure. Uh so that's interesting to see that there is a um um dissonance there. Uh interesting. So once again, kind of in the middle for this uh uh for me. And uh yeah, there are you know, you can still be a functioning person, successful, quote unquote, that type of deal, even though you are h high on one end or the other. Interesting. Okay, sample items. I'm always prepared, I pay attention to details, I get chores done right away. I like order, conversely, and make a mess of things, often forget to put things back in their proper place, and I shirk my duties. Yeah, lack of focus, fascinating, conscientiousness. Goodness. Okay, extra vision, extra vision. I don't have little vision, I have extra vision. Uh okay, so extra vision, as we know, introverts, extroverts, once again, characterized by breadth of activities, surgency from external activities and energy creation from external means. Trade is marked by pronounced engagement with the external world. Oh, good lord. I know where a lot of us are. Camsters out there, I'm pretty sure you know where you are too. Extroverts uh interacting with people. They tend to be enthusiastic and action-oriented. As you know, this is a very funny thing because I talked about this a lot in one particular episode. Uh yeah, extroverts and introverts. Yay, and amberverts. Woo! Yay! They don't really have those uh for everything else, where it's like um right in the middle, there's another name for it, which is very fascinating in the uh ocean personality traits. So, yeah. Only one that has the ambi in there. Introverts! Oh, yeah, what are those? Have lower social engagement and energy levels than extroverts. They tend to seem quiet, low key, deliberate, and less involved in the social world. Their lack of social involvement should not be interpreted as shyness or depression, but as greater independence of their social world than extroverts. Introverts need less stimulation and more alone, more time alone than extroverts. Does not mean that they are anti-social. If you did not watch that previous episode, it is a energy conservation. Okay, do you get energy from interacting with the social world or do you need your alone time? But you can be an ambervert, which is in the middle and interact in the social world and not lose all of your energy. It might be a steady loss, but you might be able to retain some of it. People are a combination of extrovert and introversion where personality psychologists, hands, ease, neck, suggested a model which differences in their brains produce these traits. So, once again, we are back on that whole entire thing. Is it a genetic thing to be an extra or introvert? Or is it the actions you do and the habits you have? Fascinating. You should test on your own and do your own research, people. Trial and error. Okay, sample items. I'm the life of the party, I feel comfortable around people. Commercially, I do not talk a lot, I have little to say, don't like a drawing attention to myself. I am quiet among strangers. Yeah, that's the big thing for me, is the the stranger bit. Stranger danger. I'm good with um my amp ampivision, extra vision, extroversion, amper ampiversion, introversion, introvert, vert. Interesting. Fort vert. So I'm an amber ambiversion. Comes out when I have like a small group of people that I know, and anytime you put a new person in there, and then that's like, oh god, new person. Okay, got two more to go with a little bit of time left. Agreeableness, agreeable, yeah, agreeableness, generally concern for social harmony. Agreeable people value getting along with others. They generally consider kind considered, kind, generous, trusting, and trustworthy. Okay, so whether you can trust people or people trust you, uh also have an optimistic view of human nature. Oh boy, don't see that a lot. Very that's not true. In general, it seems like people are very nihilistic and um less optimistic about the society nowadays. Disagreeable individuals place self-interest among getting along with others, they generally unconcern with others' well-being. Sometimes their skepticism about others' motives causes them to be suspicious, unfriendly, and uncooperative. Yeah. Got a little bit of that too, but in general, I tried to help all the people. Well, that's why I have a podcast. Okay, because agreeableness is a social social trait. Ooh, okay. Research has shown that one's agreeableness positively correlates with the quality of relationships with one's team members. Agreeableness also positively predicts transformational leadership skills. Um, very interesting. Very agreeable. Leaders were more likely to be considered transformational rather rather than transactional. Although the relationship was not strong, it was the strongest of the big five traits. However, the same study could not predict leadership effectiveness as evaluated by the leader's direct supervisor. Interesting. Okay. Let's see here. Okay. Um conversely, agreeabless has been found to be negatively related to transactional leadership in the military. Oh man, okay. Interesting. For instance, in their article, claim that conscientiousness and agreeableness are important to success across many different jobs. Okay. Transactional. Fascinating. Gotta do a little bit more research on that, which is better for a leader. Hmm. Okay, sample items. I am interested in people. I have a soft heart. I take time for others. Conversely, I make uh I'm not really interested in others. I insult people, I'm not interested in other people's problems. Oh goodness. Yeah, there is very specific. That I feel like that is very close to the extravision. Extroversion. Olive oil. Okay. And then lastly, we have neuroticism. Tendency to have strong negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, and depression, is sometimes called emotional instability, or is reversed and referred to as emotional stability. Okay, so your instability, not regulated or dysregulated, versus your regulatedness. Classic temperament trait that has been studied in temperament researchers' research for decades, even before it was adapted. The FMM is similar but not identical to being neurotic in the Freudian sense. Oh, goodness. Okay. Prefer to call neuroticism by the term emotional instability to differentiate from the term neurotic in a career test. Oh, okay. Interesting. Okay. Neurotic people are emotionally volatile, emotionally reactive, and vulnerable to stress. They are more likely to spontaneously experience negative emotions, and their negative emotional reactions tend to stay for longer periods of time, which means they are more often in a bad mood. Oh my goodness that's not good. Highly neurotic people may display more skin conductive skin conductance reactivity than less neurotic people. These problems in emotional regulation can make a highly neurotic person think less clearly, make worse decisions, and cope less effectively with stress. Being disappointed with one's life achievements can make one more neurotic, increase one's chances of falling into clinical depression. Aye. Yeah, so at that point you need a little bit of help. Highly neurotic people. Can you control your can you regulate your emotions? At the other end of the scale, less neurotic individuals are less easily upset and are less emotionally reactive. They tend to be calm, emotionally stable, and free from persistent negative feelings. Freedom from negative feelings does not mean that low scores experience a lot of positive feelings. They are related to extroversion instead. Okay. So you're not free from negative, you just react less. Alright, and some sample items. I get stressed out easily. I worry about things. I am easily disturbed versus I get irrit irritated. I often feel blue. I am relaxed most of the time. I seldom feel blue. Feel blue. Hmm. Interesting. Okay, so where do you lie on that in them scales there, camsters? Take the test and find out. And I would say, even if you are highly neurotic or highly uh not open or closed-minded, uh, you can work on those skills yourself. I've talked about skills before, and this test will show you where you lie, but you should definitely take the time for yourself to figure out how you can make it in this world that we live in. Yeah. There are things like meditation will help probably with your regulation. That probably is something you should try out as a thing. Okay. Well, I could dive deep, as y'all know, and uh, if you've been listening to a lot of these podcast episodes, that I talk about all these different kinds of things um related to all the uh different big five things in the uh ocean personality traits, and also the skills to help you work on it. Uh you know, me and I like to say I'm a socially awkward person, recovering, but I'm still working on all those different things, so we're jumping back and forth on the extravision and the introversion. Extra vision, extraversion and the introversion, amber version. Oh man, the spelling just caught me off guard. Extra version olive oil. Okay, that's it for now, camsters. Please um rate this if you're listening on the apples and the Spotifies and you're on YouTube, like and comment and subscribe, and catch us next time. Hit me up on the Instagrams, message me, and emails, and if you have any questions or let me know where you took the test. How did you score and what do you think about it? All right, but that's all for now from around the kinky campfire, new episodes on Thursdays, video episodes on Fridays. This is HH Julius Marquise. I didn't think I even gave the the official thing, but or just Julius if you're feeling less fancy. Yeah, put that at the front. But, anyways, I did it now. That's all. Hello.