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Who are you, really? The puzzle of personality | Brian Little | TED
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What an intriguing group of individuals you are ...
to a psychologist.
(Laughter)
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.
(Laughter)
And I thought you might like to know who you are.
(Laughter)
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."
(Laughter)
But it is your self-diagnosed boringness and your inherent "twitiness"
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,
and 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,
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