The Big Five Personality Traits

The closest thing to consensus among academics who study personality psychology is the Big Five Personality Traits. They were originally discovered by an analysis of which personality-based adjectives tend to cluster together.

The model correlates with Raymond Cattell's 5 global factors (based on the 16PF) and to a lesser extent with Hans Eysenck's PEN model (in which there is only a "big three") There is also a rough correlation with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® and several other popular typing systems.

Note: [Brackets] indicate a reverse trait label.