In February 2025, I wrote an article about personality archetypes.

Alpha. Beta. Sigma. Gamma. Delta. Omega. Zeta.

I described the Alpha as a natural leader, the Sigma as an independent outsider, the Gamma as intellectual and idealistic, and so on.

I did add an important qualification at the end.

People are complex, and nobody fits neatly into a single box.

At the time, I thought the boxes were the problem.

More than a year later, I became curious about the boxes themselves.

Where did these seven personality types actually come from?

I expected to find a theory behind them.

Instead, I discovered that there wasn’t one.

There is no Alpha-to-Zeta personality system

The seven labels look convincing when they’re placed next to each other.

Alpha.

Beta.

Gamma.

Delta.

Sigma.

Omega.

Zeta.

The Greek letters make them sound like parts of an established classification system, as though researchers identified different kinds of personalities and gave each one a name.

But I couldn’t find a recognized psychological theory that divides people this way.

The labels came from different places and were gradually assembled into something that looks much more systematic than it actually is.

Alpha and beta have long been used when talking about social dominance and animal hierarchies.

Sigma came much later through internet culture.

The remaining letters have been used by different writers to expand the hierarchy, often with different definitions.

There isn’t even consistent agreement about what a Gamma, Delta, Omega or Zeta is supposed to be.

The alphabet creates the appearance of a system.

But there isn’t really a system underneath it.

What happened to the alpha wolf?

The Alpha label has an especially interesting history because one of its most familiar images comes from wolves.

An alpha wolf leads the pack.

He fought his way to the top.

Other wolves submit to him.

And because humans are social animals too, it isn’t difficult to see how that image eventually found its way into descriptions of human behavior.

Except the wolf story turned out to be misleading.

Wolf researcher L. David Mech helped popularize the term “alpha wolf” with his 1970 book The Wolf.

After studying wolves in the wild, however, Mech later argued against using the term in the way it had become commonly understood.

Many early observations of dominance hierarchies came from unrelated wolves placed together in captivity.

Wild wolf packs usually aren’t organized that way.

They’re predominantly families.

The adult male and female aren’t necessarily at the top because they defeated rival wolves.

They’re the parents.

Calling the male an alpha can therefore make something fairly ordinary sound like a battle for dominance.

That doesn’t mean dominance, status or competition don’t exist.

They clearly do.

But it makes the simple jump from wolf packs to human Alphas and Betas much less convincing.

Then came the Sigma

The Sigma male sounds as though he should have been discovered somewhere in the same research.

He wasn’t.

The term appeared much later in online writing.

The idea was clever.

If the Alpha sits at the top of the hierarchy, the Sigma doesn’t need the hierarchy at all.

He is independent.

Self-reliant.

Capable.

A lone wolf.

He supposedly has many of the strengths associated with an Alpha without needing status or leadership.

That also solves an interesting problem.

What if someone sees himself as strong and independent but doesn’t actually want to dominate a group?

Now there is a type for him too.

The Sigma eventually spread far beyond its original internet niche and became part of meme culture through ideas such as the “Sigma grindset.”

Sometimes it’s used seriously.

Sometimes it’s a joke.

But it wasn’t discovered by psychologists studying human personality.

Someone invented it.

What if I don’t fit any of them?

This is where the other Greek letters become useful.

Don’t identify with Alpha?

Maybe you’re Beta.

Not Beta?

Perhaps Gamma.

Or Delta.

Or Omega.

Or Zeta.

Some versions even use Zeta to describe someone who rejects the hierarchy altogether.

I find that particularly interesting.

Reject the classification system and the classification system can simply create another category for people who reject it.

There’s always another box.

But perhaps the problem isn’t that we’re using the wrong boxes.

Maybe personality doesn’t naturally work like boxes in the first place.

Psychology does measure personality

None of this means personality is imaginary.

People clearly differ from one another, and psychologists have spent decades studying those differences.

One of the best-established approaches is the Big Five personality model.

It describes personality across five broad dimensions: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

The word dimensions matters.

I don’t have to be either an extrovert or an introvert.

I can fall somewhere along a continuum of extraversion.

The same applies to the other traits.

That produces a very different way of looking at personality.

Instead of asking:

Which type am I?

I can ask:

To what degree do I tend to show this characteristic?

The answer becomes less satisfying in one way.

I don’t get a name.

But perhaps I get something closer to how people actually are.

And we don’t stay exactly the same

Personality isn’t completely fixed either.

Research has found that personality traits can change across adulthood.

That makes rigid categories even more difficult.

I can behave confidently in one situation and cautiously in another.

I might naturally lead when I’m doing something I understand well and happily follow when someone else knows more.

I can become more confident with experience.

More patient with age.

More comfortable being alone.

Or more interested in being around people.

So what type am I?

Perhaps the question is asking personality to be simpler than it really is.

But I understand why we like types

This is where the investigation became more interesting to me.

Compare these two descriptions:

You tend to be independent, relatively introverted, open to new experiences and not particularly interested in social status.

Or:

You’re a Sigma.

The second one is much easier.

It’s memorable.

It also tells a story.

I’m not simply someone who enjoys independence.

I’m a lone wolf.

I’m not uninterested in leading people.

I don’t need the hierarchy.

A collection of characteristics becomes an identity.

And identities are powerful because they help us explain ourselves.

That’s probably why personality types keep appearing in different forms.

They make complicated people easier to understand.

Including ourselves.

The label can start explaining the behavior

There is nothing necessarily wrong with noticing that I share characteristics with a description.

A label can be useful shorthand.

Perhaps reading about introversion helps me recognize why I enjoy spending time alone.

Perhaps a personality test makes me notice tendencies I hadn’t thought about before.

Even calling myself a Sigma might point toward something real about how I prefer to live.

The problem begins when the description becomes the explanation.

Why do I prefer doing things independently?

Because I’m a Sigma.

How do I know I’m a Sigma?

Because I prefer doing things independently.

I’ve explained myself by repeating the same observation in another form.

The label hasn’t told me why I behave that way.

It has only given the behavior a name.

People were never the boxes

When I returned to my old article, I expected to learn more about the seven archetypes I had described.

Instead, the categories themselves disappeared.

There wasn’t an established Alpha-to-Zeta personality system waiting for me to understand it better.

There were ideas about dominance, terminology borrowed from animal behavior, internet culture, memes and labels gradually assembled into something resembling a personality hierarchy.

Yet I don’t think that makes the labels completely useless.

Sometimes a category helps me notice a pattern.

It gives me a place to begin looking.

But that’s probably where it should remain.

A beginning.

My old article ended by saying that people are complex and nobody fits neatly into a single box.

I still agree with that.

I would just change one thing now.

Instead of trying to find the box that fits me best, I’d rather use the box to notice something about myself—and then keep looking.

Sources

My original article, Archetypes: More Than Just Alpha and Sigma
https://karltschoppnavarat.com/2025/02/26/archetypes-more-than-just-alpha-and-sigma/

L. David Mech, wolf information and the use of “alpha” terminology
https://davemech.org/wolf-news-and-information/

L. David Mech, Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs
https://www.wolf.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/267alphastatus_english.pdf

American Psychological Association, Big Five Personality Model
https://dictionary.apa.org/big-five-personality-model

Roberts, Walton & Viechtbauer, Patterns of Mean-Level Change in Personality Traits Across the Life Course
https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.1.1

Gerlach et al., A Robust Data-Driven Approach Identifies Four Personality Types Across Four Large Data Sets
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0419-z