Research foundations

OCEAN: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism.

The dominant empirical model of personality. Decades of factor-analytic work converge on five broad trait dimensions that replicate across cultures, languages, and self vs. observer ratings.

How we use it: The trait pattern attached to each archetype (e.g. high Extraversion + high Conscientiousness for Lion). Most scaled (Likert) items map directly onto Big Five facets.

Big Five plus Honesty-Humility, derived from cross-language lexical studies.

Adds a sixth factor (Honesty-Humility) that captures fairness, sincerity and lack of greed/manipulativeness. Strong cross-cultural support; useful predictor of antisocial vs. prosocial workplace behaviour.

How we use it: Items that distinguish the Hyena (opportunistic, willing to bend rules) from the Rhino (low-politics, plain-spoken) lean on the Honesty-Humility distinction.

Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness - workplace behavioural styles.

Originating with Marston (1928) and operationalised in many commercial instruments. Popular in corporate L&D for behavioural framing; less psychometrically validated than the Big Five and not recommended for high-stakes selection decisions.

How we use it: Influences the work-style framing (decisive vs. supportive vs. analytical) for archetypes such as Lion (D), Hyena (I), Meerkat (S/C), Giraffe/Rhino (C).

Nine archetypal team contributions: Plant, Resource Investigator, Coordinator, Shaper, Monitor-Evaluator, Teamworker, Implementer, Completer-Finisher, Specialist.

A behavioural framework for understanding how individuals contribute to teams. Strong applied track record; mixed psychometric validation but useful for surfacing role coverage and gaps.

How we use it: Underpins the team analysis layer - the "pairs well with / clashes with" matrix between archetypes and the "functional coverage gaps" output (leadership / stewardship / launch / depth / social / coordination / execution / strategy).

34-theme strength taxonomy organised into Executing, Influencing, Relationship-building, Strategic Thinking domains.

A talents-based framework focused on what people do well naturally. Widely used in coaching and leadership development.

How we use it: Informs the strengths / growth-edges framing on the result page - we describe what the archetype is naturally good at and where the same pattern can become a liability.

ADHD framed as a disorder of executive functioning, not just inattention.

Russell Barkley's extended-phenotype account of ADHD: working memory, response inhibition, self-regulation of affect, internalised speech, and reconstitution. Pairs with broader research on hyperfocus and time-blindness.

How we use it: The cognitive-style items detect self-reported preferences that *correlate* with ADHD-like cognition (novelty-seeking, time-blindness, bursty focus, hyperfocus). These are descriptive, **not diagnostic**.

Empathising-Systemising theory, monotropism, and detail-focus accounts of autistic cognition.

Two strands inform the assessment: Baron-Cohen's Empathising-Systemising (E-S) theory, which characterises autism as systemising bias relative to the population mean; and the monotropism account (Murray, Lesser & Lawson), which frames attention as flowing through a small number of intense interests.

How we use it: Items about pattern detection, sensory load, monotropic focus, and routine-need surface cognitive-style preferences that *correlate* with autistic cognition. Again, descriptive only - not diagnostic.

How personality diversity, conflict, and role coverage predict team performance.

A converging body of work (Mathieu et al., LePine et al.) shows that conscientiousness has the strongest positive effect on team performance, that agreeableness and emotional stability moderate task and relationship conflict, and that complementarity of roles matters more than mean trait scores.

How we use it: Underpins the cohesion / tension / diversity / coverage scoring on each team page. Pair-by-pair reads use complementarity (Belbin-style), not just trait-mean similarity.

A growing consensus that ADHD, autism, anxiety, and personality disorders sit on continuous dimensions, not categorical bins.

Twin studies and large-N general-population samples consistently find that traits associated with ADHD, autism, and anxiety are normally distributed in the population. Diagnostic categories are useful clinical conventions, but the underlying biology and behaviour are dimensional.

How we use it: Underpins the cognitive-style spectrum on the result page. Rather than "you are or are not ADHD," we report a dimensional read of self-reported preferences associated with that cognitive style.

A workplace-aptitude method that scores responses to realistic scenarios against expert-consensus "best practice" weights.

SJTs present low-fidelity simulations of work problems and ask the respondent to choose how they would respond. Consensus or empirically derived scoring keys map options to a "most effective" -> "least effective" continuum. Multiple meta-analyses show SJT scores predict job performance with validity comparable to structured interviews and outperform unstructured interviews, at lower cost and with smaller adverse-impact ratios than pure cognitive ability tests.

How we use it: Backs the "Applied judgement" score on the result page. The 10 scenario items each carry per-option judgement weights (0-3) drawn from leadership / coaching / management consensus rather than empirical key-derivation - useful as a discussion tool, not a selection instrument.

General mental ability (g) is the single strongest individual-level predictor of job performance across roles.

Schmidt & Hunter (1998) and follow-up meta-analyses establish that general cognitive ability (g) predicts job performance more strongly than any other single individual-difference measure, across role complexity. Combining g with structured interviews or work-sample tests produces the highest validity. Savanna does not measure g - this entry is included to mark the boundary clearly.

How we use it: Caveat in the "Applied judgement" panel. We do not claim Savanna measures cognitive aptitude. For high-stakes selection decisions, supplement with a purpose-built cognitive ability test.

Long-running research on stable individual differences in anxiety, rumination, and rejection sensitivity.

Trait anxiety is a stable disposition to experience negative affect across situations, distinct from state anxiety (the in-the-moment feeling). It correlates with rumination, threat-monitoring, and rejection sensitivity, and predicts both performance under pressure and burnout risk.

How we use it: Backs the anxiety-style spectrum item set: rejection sensitivity, masking, social-energy depletion, change aversion. Helps users interpret the anxiety-style score with grounding rather than mystique.