An international team of researchers may have just cracked the code for something that would make someone “cool”.
And wherever you live, a study published this week in the Journal of Experimental Psychology shows that personality traits that make someone “cool” appear to be consistent across the country.
Researchers found that people considered “cool” are perceived as more extroverted, hedonistic, powerful, adventurous, open and autonomous compared to those considered “good” or “preferred.”
“The most surprising thing was seeing the same attributes appear in all countries,” said Todd Petzutti, an associate professor of marketing at Adolfo Ibañez University in Chile, who was the co-led researcher for the study.
“Whether it’s China or South Korea or Chile or the US, people like people who are pushing boundaries and causing change,” he said. “So you’d say that coolness really really represents something more basic than the label of coolness.”
Researchers – Adolfoy Banes University, University of Arizona and University of Georgia conducted experiments from 2018 to 2022, with approximately 6,000 people in 12 countries in Australia, Chile, China, Germany, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Spain, Spain, South Africa, South Africa, Turkey and the United States.
Participants were asked to think of people in their own lives that they felt “cool”, “cool”, “good”, or “not good.” They were then asked to use two scales to assess the person’s personality. A survey of portrait values aimed at measuring the Big Five Personality Scale, widely used scientific models that help explain personality traits, and portrait values aimed at measuring the fundamental value of an individual.
Participants in this study consistently relate to being calm, conscientious, universal, comfortable, warm, safe, traditional and good person. Ability was considered both “cool” and “good”, but not so clearly. However, the formula for being “cool” had six character traits, which were more extroverted, pleasing, adventurous, adventurous, open and autonomous, regardless of a person’s age, gender, or level of education.
Pezzuti doesn’t think these “cool” traits are something that can be taught.
“We were born with those attributes,” he said. “Five of these attributes are personality traits, and personality traits tend to be fairly stable.”
The study showed that cool people and good people aren’t the same, but there may be some overlapping traits, said Caleb Warren, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Arizona.
“In order to be considered cool, someone usually needs to be somewhat likeable or stunning. “But cool people often have other traits that they don’t necessarily think are ‘good’ in a moral sense, such as hedonistic and powerful. ”
A limitation of the study was that only those who understood the meaning of “cool” were included in the study. Pezzuti said it would be interesting – but difficult to determine whether the findings are similar among more traditional cultures or between remote groups of people who may not be very familiar with the term.
“We don’t know what we’ll find in ultra-traditional cultures like hunting and collecting tribes and nutritional farming groups,” Pettsuti said.
“One of the things we propose is that in these cultures, innovation and cultural innovation are not so important in those cultures, so “cool” people don’t have a key role in their role,” he said. “So you’re going to say that cool people probably exist in those cultures, but their role isn’t that big and probably isn’t as praised as other cultures.”
When asked to think about public figures and celebrities who embody “cool” based on his research, Pettuti immediately said Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.
“He’s a controversial person, but the person that comes to mind is Elon Musk,” Pettuti said, adding that he checks all boxes of six attributes identified in the study.
Musk is “unmistressly powerful” and autonomous, and appears to be extroverted due to his presence on social media platforms and media, he said.
“I’ve heard he’s TI-disease and probably more TI-disease than he can see, but he looks very extroverted to outsiders. He’s funny. He’s on the podcast and is always in front of the camera,” explained Pettuti.
Some of Musk’s actions also appear hedonistic, he said. “He smoked marijuana on the world’s most popular podcast, “The Joe Rogan’s Experience.” ”
And Pettty added that Mask’s idea of colonizing Mars shows that he is open and adventurous.
Jona Burger, an associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, said the new paper is one of the few empirical studies examining exactly what makes people “cool.”
“I’ve been wondering for a long time about what makes people cool (in theory), but there’s not much actual empirical research on this topic, so it’s great to see the work of exploring this space.”
“Coolness may seem like something you were born with, but there are certainly steps people can take to try and move them in that direction,” he said. “It certainly seems worth studying given how many people want to be cool and how much money is spent with that goal in mind.”
John Freeman, an associate professor of psychology at Columbia University, said future research in this field could assess coolness in parallel with goodness and badness rather than isolated from it.
“In real life, coolness can be positive quality, but it can have negative implications in certain social contexts as well. It may be worthwhile to look at the difference between good and bad coolness in future work. This research approach provides a great foundation that was not involved in new research either.
“From a scientific perspective, cool seems far more like a product of reasoning and social construction than genetics, but the low level of temperament informed by genetics can nourish continuous personality structure,” he said.
“The “cool” is deeply ingrained in our social vocabulary as it acts as a stenography of complex reasoning. It encapsulates status, affiliation and identity signals in an instant, deeply stereotypical way.
