Final answer:
Personality is widely considered to be best captured by five core factors known as the Big Five: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, remembered with the mnemonic OCEAN.
Step-by-step explanation:
Many factor analysis researchers today concur that personality is best captured by five factors. These five dimensions, also known as the Big Five personality factors, are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. They are thought to define the spectrum of human personality and are used extensively in psychological personality assessments.
A mnemonic that helps to remember these factors is OCEAN. Trait theorists assert that the Big Five factors represent a continuum where individual personalities settle between two extremes, with most people exhibiting characteristics at varied points along these continuums. Conscientiousness and agreeableness, for example, are found to generally increase with age, while neuroticism and extroversion tend to decrease slightly over time.