I've had the opportunity, / over the last couple of days of listening in on some of your conversations / and watching you interact with each other, / and I think it's fair to say / already / that there are 47 people / in this audience / at this moment / displaying psychological symptoms I would like to discuss today. // And I thought you might like to know who you are. // But instead of pointing at you, / which would be gratuitous / and intrusive, / I thought I would tell you a few facts and stories / in which you may catch a glimpse of yourself. // I'm in the field of research known / as / personality / psychology, / which is part of a / larger / personality / science / which spans /the full spectrum / from neurons / to narratives. // And what we try to do / in our own way / is to make sense of how / each of us, / each of you, / is in certain respects / like all other people, / like some other people / and like no other person. // Now, already, / you may be saying / of yourself, / I'm not intriguing. / I am the 46th most boring person / in the Western Hemisphere. // Or you may say of yourself, / I am intriguing, / even if I am regarded by most people as a great / thundering / twit. // But it is your / self-diagnosed boringness / and your inherent twittiness / that makes me, as a psychologist, / really fascinated / by you. // So let me explain why this is so. // One of the most influential approaches in personality / science / is known as trait psychology, / and it aligns you along five dimensions, / which are normally distributed, / that describe / universally / held / aspects of difference between people. // They spell out the acronym OCEAN. // So O stands for / open to experience versus those who are more closed. // C stands for conscientiousness, / in contrast to those with a more lackadaisical approach to life. // E, / extroversion, // in contrast to more introverted people. // A, / agreeable individuals / in contrast to those decidedly not agreeable. // And N, / neurotic individuals / in contrast to those / who are more stable. // All of these dimensions have implications for our well-being, / for how our life / goes. // And so we know that, / for example, / openness and conscientiousness are very good predictors / of life success, / but the open people achieve that success / through being / audacious and / occasionally / odd. // The conscientious people / achieve it / through sticking to deadlines, / to persevering, / as well as having some passion. // Extroversion and agreeableness / are both conducive / to working / well with people. // Extroverts, / for example, / I find intriguing. With my classes, / I sometimes / give them a basic fact that might be revealing / with respect to their personality. // I tell them that it is / virtually impossible / for adults to lick the outside / of their own elbow. // Did you know that? // Already, some of you have tried to lick the outside of your own elbow, / but extroverts amongst you / are probably those who have not only tried, / but they have successfully licked / the elbow of the person sitting next to them. //