How Personality Predicts Success in Different Fields

Summary

The script delves into the dimensions of human personality, highlighting happiness and sociability as correlated traits. It discusses the negative emotion dimension of neuroticism and the agreeableness trait, which is linked to gender differences and conflict avoidance. Conscientiousness is presented as a key to success in school and work, with its association to orderliness and political conservatism. The speaker also touches on the mystery of industriousness, the importance of planning and scheduling for academic success, and the creativity trait of openness, which is tied to intelligence and aesthetic appreciation.

Takeaways

• 😄 People who rate themselves as 'happy' also tend to rate themselves as 'social', indicating a correlation between happiness and sociability.
• 😔 Individuals who score high on 'neuroticism', a dimension of negative emotion, are likely to experience a range of negative emotions, suggesting that negative emotions are interconnected.
• 🤝 'Agreeableness' is a personality dimension where people who score high are self-sacrificing, compassionate, and polite, and are less likely to enjoy conflict.
• 👥 Women tend to score higher than men on agreeableness across cultures, including those striving for gender equality like Scandinavia.
• 💼 'Conscientiousness' is linked to diligence, industriousness, and orderliness, and is a strong predictor of academic and work success, especially for managers and administrators.
• 🧐 Orderliness, a part of conscientiousness, is associated with political conservatism and a sensitivity to disgust, which may influence one's environment preferences.
• 📚 Conscientiousness is the second-best predictor of university grades after intelligence, with a correlation of about 0.4.
• 🤔 The underlying biology or psychology of industriousness remains a mystery, with no clear laboratory measures or animal models identified.
• 📅 Students are advised to create a study schedule and use a planner to manage their time effectively, which can help prevent falling behind and reduce stress.
• 📝 Effective studying involves spaced repetition and active recall, rather than passive re-reading or highlighting, to improve memory retention.
• 🎨 'Openness' is a personality trait associated with creativity and intelligence, and people high in openness tend to be more liberal and appreciate aesthetics, fiction, and art.

Q & A

What is the relationship between the adjectives 'happy' and 'social' according to the transcript?

The transcript suggests that individuals who rate themselves high on the adjective 'happy' also tend to rate themselves high on 'social,' indicating a positive correlation between happiness and sociability.

What are the essential dimensions of human personality mentioned in the script?

The essential dimensions of human personality discussed in the script include happiness (extroversion), neuroticism (negative emotion dimension), agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness.

Why do people who score high on neuroticism also tend to experience other negative emotions?

Negative emotions are said to clump together, meaning that individuals who experience more of one negative emotion, such as anxiety, are likely to experience more of all negative emotions due to their temperamental predisposition.

What is the significance of agreeableness in social interactions?

Agreeable people are characterized by self-sacrifice, compassion, politeness, and a dislike for conflict. They are likely to prioritize others' concerns over their own, making them cooperative and non-competitive in social settings.

Why do women tend to score higher on agreeableness compared to men?

The script suggests that women score more highly on agreeableness across cultures, including those with more egalitarian social circumstances, indicating a consistent gender difference in personality traits.

How does conscientiousness relate to success in school and work?

Conscientious individuals are diligent, industrious, and orderly, which makes them efficient in time management and scheduling. These traits are excellent for academic and professional success, especially in roles that require organization and management.

What is the correlation between orderliness and political conservatism?

Orderliness is associated with a tendency towards political conservatism, possibly due to the preference for structure and organization that often aligns with conservative ideologies.

How does personality influence political beliefs?

The script suggests that the more accurate the measure of someone's political beliefs, the more it is predicted by their personality traits, indicating that personality plays a significant role in shaping political ideologies.

What advice is given for students to succeed in their university career?

The advice given is to come up with a plan of attack for the course, use a scheduler, and maintain a consistent study schedule throughout the semester to avoid falling behind and to manage study time effectively.

What is the relationship between studying habits and memory retention?

The script emphasizes that studying in intervals with sleep in between, and practicing recall by summarizing material without the book, leads to better memory retention compared to cramming for long periods.

How is the trait of openness related to creativity and intelligence?

Openness is a trait associated with creativity and intelligence. People who are open to new experiences tend to be more creative and often have higher IQs, showing a link between these traits.

Outlines

00:00

😄 Personality Dimensions and Social Behavior

The first paragraph discusses the correlation between self-perceived happiness and sociability, suggesting that individuals who rate themselves as happy also tend to be more social. It introduces the concept of essential dimensions of human personality, such as extroversion and neuroticism. Extroversion is linked to happiness, while neuroticism is associated with negative emotions that tend to cluster together. The paragraph also touches on agreeableness, conscientiousness, and how these traits can affect one's social behavior, political beliefs, and even the type of work environment that suits them best. It emphasizes the importance of matching one's temperament with the environment and the evolutionary aspect of personality traits distribution.

05:01

📚 Conscientiousness and Academic Success

The second paragraph delves into the trait of conscientiousness, highlighting its significance in academic and professional settings. It mentions the correlation between orderliness and political conservatism, as well as the link between conscientiousness and academic performance. The speaker suggests that conscientious individuals are more likely to use schedules and plan their time effectively. The paragraph also touches on the mystery surrounding the underlying biology or psychology of industriousness, acknowledging the lack of understanding in this area. It concludes with advice for students to create a study plan and use a scheduler to manage their university career more effectively, emphasizing the benefits of spaced repetition and active recall in learning.

10:03

🎨 Openness to Experience and Creativity

The third paragraph explores the trait of openness, which is associated with creativity and intelligence. It discusses how open individuals tend to be more liberal, appreciate aesthetics, and engage with various forms of art. The paragraph also introduces the creative achievement questionnaire, which measures creativity across 13 different domains. It notes the rarity of high creativity across multiple domains, with most people scoring low on the questionnaire, indicating that exceptional creativity is not common. The speaker also comments on the distribution of wealth and creativity, drawing a parallel to the Pareto principle, where a small percentage of people hold a significant amount of resources or abilities.

Keywords

💡Happiness

Happiness, in the context of the video, is described as a dimension of human personality that correlates with how individuals rate themselves. It is closely associated with the trait of extroversion, suggesting that those who are happy also tend to be more social. The script uses happiness as an example of how self-assessment on a list of adjectives can reveal underlying personality traits.

💡Social

The term 'social' refers to the tendency of individuals to prefer interaction with others. In the video, it is mentioned that people who rate themselves as happy also rate themselves as social, indicating a positive correlation between happiness and sociability. This concept is integral to understanding the personality traits discussed in the video.

💡Neuroticism

Neuroticism is defined in the video as a dimension of personality associated with negative emotions. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are likely to experience a range of negative emotions such as anxiety and sadness. The script explains that negative emotions 'clump together,' meaning that people who experience one tend to experience others as well.

💡Agreeableness

Agreeableness is described as a personality dimension where agreeable people are self-sacrificing, compassionate, and polite. The video highlights that agreeable individuals tend to avoid conflict and prioritize others' concerns. It also notes a gender difference in agreeableness, with women scoring higher than men across cultures.

💡Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness is portrayed as a trait that is highly valued in academic and professional settings. Conscientious individuals are characterized as diligent, industrious, and orderly. The video suggests that conscientiousness is linked to political conservatism and is a significant predictor of academic performance.

💡Orderliness

Orderliness is mentioned as a component of conscientiousness, associated with a preference for cleanliness and organization. The script notes that orderly people may respond to mess with disgust and have a desire to organize and clean. It also suggests a correlation between orderliness and political conservatism.

💡Industriousness

Industriousness is part of the conscientiousness trait, referring to the quality of being hardworking and persistent. The video discusses the challenge of finding a laboratory measure for industriousness and notes its importance in time management and academic success.

💡Openness

Openness is described as a personality trait associated with creativity and intelligence. Open individuals are likely to be more liberal, appreciate novelty, aesthetics, and various forms of art. The video suggests that a small proportion of the population is exceptionally creative across multiple domains.

💡Creativity

Creativity in the video is linked to the trait of openness and is measured through the creative achievement questionnaire, which assesses achievements in various domains such as writing, dancing, and scientific investigation. The script points out that creativity is not evenly distributed, with a few individuals being highly creative in multiple areas.

💡Personality Traits

Personality traits are the central theme of the video, with a focus on how they can be identified and understood through self-assessment and patterns of co-variation. The script discusses several key traits, including happiness, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness, and how they influence an individual's behavior and preferences.

💡Adaptation

Adaptation in the video refers to the successful matching of an individual's personality traits with the demands of their environment. It suggests that a significant part of successful living involves finding a social or environmental niche that aligns with one's temperamental tendencies.

Highlights

Individuals who rate themselves as 'happy' also tend to rate themselves as 'social', indicating a correlation between these two personality traits.

Those who score low on 'happiness' are likely to score low on 'social' as well, suggesting personality traits co-vary.

The essential dimensions of human personality include happiness, which is related to extroversion, and neuroticism, associated with negative emotions.

Negative emotions tend to clump together, meaning those who experience one are likely to experience others.

Agreeableness is a personality dimension where people are self-sacrificing, compassionate, and polite, with women scoring higher than men across cultures.

Conscientiousness is linked to diligence, industriousness, and orderliness, and is a strong predictor of success in school and work.

Orderliness is associated with political conservatism and a sensitivity to disgust.

Conscientiousness is a significant predictor of university grades, second only to intelligence.

The personality trait of extroversion influences social niches and preferences for social environments.

Introverted individuals may seek jobs and environments that allow for solitude and reduced social demands.

Matching one's temperament with environmental demands is crucial for successful adaptation.

Extroversion and neuroticism levels can influence how well one fits into different social and environmental niches.

Conscientious people are more likely to use schedules and plan their time effectively.

Industriousness and orderliness are difficult to measure in a laboratory setting and may be a uniquely human trait.

Students are advised to create a study plan and use a scheduler to manage their university career effectively.

Openness is a personality trait associated with creativity and intelligence, and often linked to liberal political views.

Creativity is not evenly distributed; most people show little to no creativity across domains, while a few are exceptionally creative.

The distribution of creativity follows a Pareto distribution, where a small percentage of people are highly creative in multiple domains.

Successful adaptation involves finding an environment where one's personality and behavioral tendencies align with its demands.

Transcripts

if you gave

a thousand people

a list of adjectives to describe

themselves with and one of the

adjectives was happy and another of the

adjectives was social you'd find that

those who rated themselves high on Happy

would also rate themselves high on

social and those who rated themselves

low on Happy would also rate themselves

low on social

and by looking at those patterns of

co-variation you can determine what the

essential dimensions are of human

personality

one of the dimensions is

roughly happiness that's extroversion

another dimension is

neuroticism

it's a negative emotion Dimension so

if you ask someone if they're anxious

and they score high say on a scale of

one to seven they're also likely to

score high on another item that says

that they're sad

and it turns out that negative emotions

Clump together and so that people who

experience more of one negative emotion

have a propensity to experience more of

all of them

there's another dimension called

agreeableness

and agreeable people are

self-sacrificing compassionate and

polite

if you're dealing with an agreeable

person they don't like conflict

they care for other people

if you're dealing with an agreeable

person

they're likely to put your concerns

ahead of theirs

they're non-competitive and Cooperative

it's a dimension where women are women

score more highly than men on

agreeableness across cultures including

those cultures where

the largest steps have been taken

towards producing an egalitarian social

circumstance like Scandinavia actually

the gender differences in personality

there are larger than they are anywhere

else

um another trait is conscientiousness

conscientiousness is an excellent trait

if you want to do well in

in school and in work especially if

you're a manager and administrator

I can't say we understand a lot about

conscientiousness although it it

reliably emerges from Factor analytic

studies of adjective groups across

different countries conscientious people

are diligent industrious and orderly

their orderliness tilts them towards

political conservatism by the way

because it turns out that your inbuilt

temperament your inbuilt personality

which constitutes a set of filters

through which you view the world also

Alters the manner in which you process

information and influences the way that

you vote and so you might say and I do

believe that this is true or we've been

doing a lot of research on this as of

late

the more accurate a measure you take of

someone's political beliefs the more you

find that personality is what's

predicting them

and I think that's a reasonable thing to

think about because you know

you have to you have to figure out ways

of simplifying the world right because

you just can't do everything

and so people are specialized they have

specialized niches that they occupy you

can think about them as social niches

like a niche is a place where your

particular skills would serve to

maintain you and so if you're

extroverted

you're going to look for a social Niche

because you like to be around people and

if you're introverted you're going to

spend much more time on your own and so

if you're an introverted person for

example you're going to want a job where

you're not selling and where you're not

surrounded by groups of people who are

making social demands on you all the

time because it'll wear you out whereas

if you're extroverted that's just

exactly what you want and so the

extrovert sees the world as a place of

social opportunity

and the introvert sees the world as a

place to retreat from and spend time

alone

and it turns out that

both of those modes of being are valid

the issue at least to some degree is

whether or not you're fortunate enough

to match your temperament with the

demands of the environment and I suppose

also whether you're fortunate enough

fortunate enough so that you're born in

an era where there actually is a niche

for your particular temperament because

it isn't necessarily the case that that

will be the case imagine that all of

these temperamental Dimensions vary

because of evolutionary pressure right

so there's a distribution of

extroversion a normal distribution most

people are somewhere in the middle and

then as you go out towards the extremes

there are fewer and fewer people

and what that means is that on average

across large spans of time

there have been environments that match

every single position on that

distribution with most most of the

environments matching the center because

otherwise we wouldn't have evolved that

way and so sometimes being really

extroverted is going to work well for

you in a minority of environments a

minority of niches and sometimes it's

just going to be a catastrophe I suspect

for example that if you live in a

tyrannical Society

where any sign of of of of of

personally oriented activity is likely

to get you in trouble that being

extroverted and low in neuroticism

wouldn't be a very good idea because

you're going to be mouthy and happy and

saying a lot of things unable to keep

your thoughts to yourself and you're

going to be relatively Fearless now I

don't know that for sure because we

haven't done the studies that precisely

match temperamental proclivity to

environmental demand but you get what I

mean

so

conscientious people anyways

conscientious people are industrious

and orderly we know a little bit about

orderliness it seems to be Associated

strangely enough with disgust

sensitivity which I suppose isn't that

surprising you know if you take an

orderly

person and you put them in a messy

kitchen they respond with disgust and

want nothing more than to straighten it

all out and organize it and clean it and

there's tremendous variability in

orderliness

um

and as I said orderliness predicts

political conservatism it's not the only

thing but it's certainly one of the

things

um

the correlation between

conscientiousness and and grades is

about 0.4 it's about 16 percent of the

variance it's it's the second best

predictor of University grades after

intelligence we'll talk about

intelligence during this course too

intelligence is actually a relatively

straightforward concept

I don't think I'll get into it today but

conscientious people their

industriousness and their orderliness

makes them schedule their time so they

make efficient use of their time they

use schedules and that sort of thing we

haven't been able to figure out anything

about the underlying biology or

psychology of industriousness we've

tried really dozens and dozens of tests

attempting to find a laboratory measure

on which industrious people do better

and we failed completely and there's no

animal models of industriousness either

and so I would say it's a great mystery

that remains at the heart of trade

psychology

um and maybe it's a human specific

category you know I mean you can think

of sled dogs maybe of being industrious

and maybe and maybe Sheepdogs and

animals that work like that but of

course they've been trained by human

beings so but it isn't obvious that

animals are industrious the same way we

are I mean industriousness involves

sacrificing the present for the future

something like that and you it seems

like you have to be able to

conceptualize time in order to sacrifice

the present for the future

one of the things that I would recommend

that you do as students in this course

and maybe in every course speaking of

industriousness is come up with a plan

of attack for the course and use a

scheduler you know if you treat your

University career like a full-time job

you're much more likely to succeed and

if you keep up on the readings and you

keep up on the on the essays and all of

that then you're much like less likely

as well to fall into despair when you

get too far behind using a Google

Calendar or something like that to

organize a schedule for the entire

semester at the beginning of the

semester can be invaluable especially if

you're not very industriousness very

industrious because it can keep you on

track and one of the things we know

about industrious people is that they

are very good at using schedules and at

planning the use of their time

and so I would like to say that you

should all be smarter but I don't know

how you could be smarter we don't know

anything about how to improve

intelligence and I suppose we don't

really know anything about how to

improve industriousness either but I can

tell you that people who are industrious

come up with a strategy for solving the

problem that's ahead of them and then

they do whatever they can to stick to

the strategy and so for example if you

sat down

today or tomorrow

for a couple of hours three hours and

you filled in a Google Calendar whatever

you happen to use with a a strategy for

studying and a list of when all your

assignments are due and all of that and

when you're going to sit down and study

then you won't be in a position where

you have to cram for 10 hours a day

hopelessly right before you know an

important exam it's also a very

ineffective way of studying by the way I

mean first of all people who cram for 10

hours say they're studying for 10 hours

but they rarely are because well

I can't study for 10 hours I don't have

the power of concentration that would

enable me to do that for that prolonged

period of time I can manage about three

hours of intense intellectual activity

before I'm pretty done

and it's also the case that if you study

and then sleep and then study and then

sleep and then study and then sleep you

space it out then you're much more

likely to remember

it's also much more likely that you're

you're much more likely to remember if

you try to recall the material and so

highlighting in that sort of thing isn't

very useful but reading closing the book

summarizing what you've read without

opening the damn book that's useful and

the reason for that is that you're

practicing remembering

and that's what you have to practice if

you're practicing memorization you have

to practice remembering you don't just

go over the thing over and over that'll

help you with recognition memory but

some but it won't help you with recall

memory

anyways the last trade is openness

openness is a creativity trait it's also

associated with intelligence in that

intelligent people and I'm speaking

technically of IQ tend to be higher in

tend to be more creative which is hardly

surprising

creative people are more likely to be

liberal politically by the way they like

novelty they like Aesthetics they like

fiction they like movies they like art

they like poetry there's something about

them that grants them an aesthetic

sensitivity and and that's a that's an

inbuilt trait and

um it's not the case by the way that

everyone's creative in fact far from it

we've used the creative achievement

questionnaire too

to measure people's creativity I'll talk

to you about that later in the class and

the creative achievement questionnaire

takes 13 dimensions of creativity so you

know writing dancing acting scientific

investigation entrepreneurial activity

architectural activity uh cooking

um there's a there's a handful of others

singing Etc you know the sorts of things

that you would assume that people could

be creative about and then it asks

people to rate themselves on a scale

from one to ten on their level of

achievement

with regards to all those creative

domains with zero being I have no

training or Proficiency in this area and

70 percent of people score zero across

the entire creative achievement

questionnaire a tiny proportion of

people are outliers way out and they're

creative in many dimensions

simultaneously and exceptionally

creative it turns out as you'll find out

that that pattern which is called a

Pareto distribution where most people

stack up at zero and a few people are

way out on the creative end

characterizes all sorts of distributions

like the distribution of money for

example which is why one percent of the

people

have the overwhelming majority of the

money it's a different one percent

across time it like it churns and you're

much more likely to be in the one

percent if you're older

logically enough because one of the

things you do

as you age is you trade youth for money

if you're fortunate I don't think the

trade is really worth it but that's the

best you've got

so anyways those particular traits you

can think of those as ways that you

simplify the world right there's lots of

different places that you can act in the

world and there's lots of different ways

you can look at it and survive that's

why you can be a plumber and a lawyer

and an engineer and those all work right

even though they're very different modes

of being and you can have different

personalities and survive as long as

you're capable of

finding the place where your particular

filters and behavioral proclivities

match the demand of the environment and

a huge part I would say of successful

adaptation is precisely that