Road map on personality

Psychologists have observed 47 people in the audience today displaying psychological symptoms. I will discuss these symptoms today, without pointing at any in particular. Personality psychology is part of a broader field of research that spans the full spectrum of personality traits.

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." But it is your self-diagnosed boringness and your inherent "wittiness" 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, to persevering, as well as having some passion. Extroversion and agreeableness are both conducive to working well with people.

Extroverts, for example, I find intriguing. With my classes, I sometimes give them a basic fact that might be revealing with respect to their personality:I tell them that it is virtually impossible for adults to lick the outside of their own elbow.

Did you know that? Already, some of you have tried to lick the outside of your own elbow. But extroverts amongst you are probably those who have not only tried, but they have successfully licked the elbow of the person sitting next to them. Those are the extroverts. Let me deal in a bit more detail with extroversion, because it's consequential and it's intriguing, and it helps us understand what I call our three natures.

First, our biogenic nature -- our neurophysiology. Second, our sociogenic or second nature, which has to do with the cultural and social aspects of our lives. And third, what makes you individually you -- idiosyncratic -- what I call your "idiogenic" nature.

Let me explain. One of the things that characterizes extroverts is they need stimulation. And that stimulation can be achieved by finding things that are exciting:loud noises, parties and social events here at TED --you see the extroverts forming a magnetic core. They all gather together. And I've seen you. The introverts are more likely to spend time in the quiet spaces up on the second floor, where they are able to reduce stimulation -- and may be misconstrued as being antisocial, but you're not necessarily antisocial.

It may be that you simply realize that you do better when you have a chance to lower that level of stimulation. Sometimes it's an internal stimulant, from your body. Caffeine, for example, works much better with extroverts than it does introverts. When extroverts come into the office at nine o'clock in the morning and say, "I really need a cup of coffee,"

they're not kidding they really do. Introverts do not do as well, particularly if the tasks they're engaged in and they've had some coffee if those tasks are speeded, and if they're quantitative, introverts may give the appearance of not being particularly quantitative.

But it's a misconstrual. So here are the consequences that are really quite intriguing: we're not always what seem to be, and that takes me to my next point. I should say, before getting to this, something about sexual intercourse, although I may not have time. And so, if you would like me to yes, you would? OK. There are studies done on the frequency with which individuals engage in the conjugal act, as broken down by male, female; introvert, extrovert. So I ask you: How many times per minute oh, I'm sorry, that was a rat study. How many times per month do introverted men engage in the act? 3x Extroverted men? More or less? Yes, more. 5.5x almost twice as much. Introverted women: 3.1x Extroverted women?

Frankly, speaking as an introverted male, which I will explain later

they are heroic.7.5x They not only handle all the male extroverts,

they pick up a few introverts as well. We communicate differently, extroverts and introverts. Extroverts, when they interact, want to have lots of social encounter punctuated by closeness. They'd like to stand close for comfortable communication. They like to have a lot of eye contact, or mutual gaze. We found in some research that they use more diminutive terms when they meet somebody. So when an extrovert meets a Charles, it rapidly becomes "Charlie," and then "Chuck," and then "Chuckles Baby." Whereas for introverts, it remains "Charles," until he's given a pass to be more intimate by the person he's talking to. We speak differently.

Extroverts prefer black-and-white, concrete, simple language. Introverts prefer -- and I must again tell you that I am as extreme an introvert as you could possibly imagine we speak differently. We prefer contextually complex, contingent, weasel-word sentences. More or less.