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Global 5-SLOAN Multidimensional Typing System

The bulk of academic research and my own research points to only five purely independent personality elements. "Only five" in the sense that every other personality trait will have some correlation to one or more of these five key traits (If anyone discovers any traits that don't, expect to see a Big 6 or higher, but I have not been able to find any). "Independent" in the sense that what you score on one independent element says nothing about what you will score on another independent element. Most personality traits are dependent meaning what you score on one element will predict, to some degree, how you will score on certain other traits. This is why personality systems with dependent traits are not very efficient. The Global 5 personality system is based on the five proven independent elements. The Global 5 adaptation of the Big 5 consists of Extroversion, Emotional Stability, Orderliness, Accommodation, and Intellect. These elements make up the primary colors of personality; the interaction of elements in each person yields their overall personality profile.

Each element has two oppositional type extremes:

Extroversion - Social and Reserved type
--Social types feel at ease interacting with to others
--Reserved types are uncomfortable and/or disinterested with social interaction

Emotional Stability - Limbic and Calm type
--Limbic types are prone to moodiness
--Calm types maintain level emotions

Orderliness - Organized and Unstructured type
--Organized types are focused
--Unstructured types are scattered

Accommodation - Accommodating and Egocentric type
--Accommodating types live for others
--Egocentric types live for themselves

Intellect - Non-curious and Inquisitive type
--Non-curious types are less intellectually driven
--Inquisitive types are insatiable in their quest to know more

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The SLOAN notation system is the scoring format for future Global 5 tests.
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SLOAN Notation Key
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Social or Reserved
Limbic or Calm
Organized or Unstructured
Accommodating or Egocentric
Non-curious or Inquisitive

SLOAN Notation Example
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RCUEI = Reserved, Calm, Unstructured, Egocentric, Inquisitive

SLOAN+ Key
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Uppercase Letter = Strong tendency
Lowercase Letter = Mild tendency
x = In between, on average
|?|= Your primary type

SLOAN+ Notation Example
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S|C|xan = strongly Social (S), primarily Calm(|C|}, neither Organized nor Unstructured (x), mildly Accommodating (a), mildly Non-curious (n)

There are 32 SLOAN types; descriptions are here. Those 32 types do not fit everyone; they are merely 32 zones which cover much of the personality landscape. However, if you or someone else does not fit one of those types (because you score in between on one or more of the Global 5 elements), you will be able to infer a description from the types you fall between. There are an endless number of SLOAN+ types and if plotted to the personality space, they would leave no gray area.

There is currently only one beta test, which gives results in SLOAN notation, more will follow. To take that, click here. The SLOAN notation results will be at the very bottom of the results page.

Advantages of the Global 5
-- Personality elements are empirically proven in multiple cultures by multiple researchers
-- Personality elements are clearly defined and unidimensional
-- Personality elements are independent of each other
-- SLOAN notation allows quick simple typing; SLOAN+ allows more complex typing

Every other current personality system (not based on the Big 5) suffers from unproven, unclear, non-independent, and/or non-unidimensional elements. The various Jung systems (MBTI, Socionics, Kiersey, etc.) come closest in usefulness to the Global 5 (correlations can be found here), but only contain four elements. They say close to nothing about the Emotional Stability element. At least two of the four elements (Thinking/Feeling, Intuitive/Sensing) are not sufficiently unidimensional. For example, T/F covers aspects of Accommodation, Intellect, and Emotional Stability and N/S covers aspects of Intellect and Orderliness. This means a T could be an objective thinker, a selfish jerk, a stoic, or some combo of the three; there is no way to discern from the results. The Jung systems also pretend/infer that everyone fits into 16 types (most personality systems share this 'everyone fits one of our boxes' delusion). With five personality elements the least amount of boxes you can fit all people into with only general accuracy is 256.

The weakness of the Big 5 theory is that there is some debate among researchers at what makes up the core of each element. To employ a geographic metaphor, there is agreement about what region each of the five elements are located in, but different researchers might disagree on what precise city in that region is the core or keystone of some elements. Extroversion and Emotional Stability descriptions are fairly consistent. Orderliness, Accommodation, and Intellect are less consistently described. Nonetheless, as different as two researchers labels or descriptions of something like Accommodation might be (some label it Agreeableness), their descriptions are still more similar than dissimilar. The differences, in their most extreme, are in the order of orange vs. red, not blue vs. yellow.