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.
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.
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.
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.
How many times per month do introverted men engage in the act? 3.0. Extroverted men? More or less? Yes, more. 5.5 -- almost twice as much. Introverted women: 3.1. Extroverted women? Frankly, speaking as an introverted male, which I will explain later -- they are heroic. 7.5. 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 --
We had seconded to this project a fellow called Michael. And Michael almost brought the project to a crashing halt. So the person who seconded him asked Tom and me, "What do you make of Michael?" Well, I'll tell you what Tom said in a minute. He spoke in classic "extrovert-ese." And here is how extroverted ears heard what I said, which is actually pretty accurate. I said, "Well Michael does have a tendency at times of behaving in a way that some of us might see as perhaps more assertive than is normally called for."
Now is this something that we should be heedful of? Of course. It's important that we know this. Is that all we are? Are we just a bunch of traits? No, we're not. Remember, you're like some other people and like no other person. How about that idiosyncratic you? As Elizabeth or as George, you may share your extroversion or your neuroticism. But are there some distinctively Elizabethan features of your behavior, or Georgian of yours, that make us understand you better than just a bunch of traits? That make us love you? Not just because you're a certain type of person.
I'm uncomfortable putting people in pigeonholes. I don't even think pigeons belong in pigeonholes. So what is it that makes us different? It's the doings that we have in our life -- the personal projects. You have a personal project right now, but nobody may know it here. It relates to your kid -- you've been back three times to the hospital, and they still don't know what's wrong. Or it could be your mom. And you'd been acting out of character. These are free traits. You're very agreeable, but you act disagreeably in order to break down those barriers of administrative torpor in the hospital, to get something for your mom or your child.
What are these free traits? They're where we enact a script in order to advance a core project in our lives. And they are what matters. Don't ask people what type you are; ask them, "What are your core projects in your life?" And we enact those free traits. I'm an introvert, but I have a core project, which is to profess. I'm a professor. And I adore my students, and I adore my field. And I can't wait to tell them about what's new, what's exciting, what I can't wait to tell them about. And so I act in an extroverted way, because at eight in the morning, the students need a little bit of humor, a little bit of engagement to keep them going in arduous days of study.
But we need to be very careful when we act protractedly out of character. Sometimes we may find that we don't take care of ourselves. I find, for example, after a period of pseudo-extroverted behavior, I need to repair somewhere on my own. As Susan Cain said in her "Quiet" book, in a chapter that featured the strange Canadian professor who was teaching at the time at Harvard, I sometimes go to the men's room to escape the slings and arrows of outrageous extroverts.
I remember one particular day when I was retired to a cubicle, trying to avoid overstimulation. And a real extrovert came in beside me -- not right in my cubicle, but in the next cubicle over -- and I could hear various evacuatory noises, which we hate -- even our own, that's why we flush during as well as after.
人格心理學(xué)中最有影響力的方法 叫做特質(zhì)理論, 它用5個(gè)正態(tài)分布的維度判定你, 這5個(gè)維度描述了被廣泛認(rèn)同的人與人之間不同的5個(gè)方面。 這5個(gè)方面的首字母縮寫是OCEAN。 “O”代表“開放性”, 與之對(duì)立的是 那些不愿冒險(xiǎn)的人。 “C”代表的是“責(zé)任感”, 與之相反的是 那些懶散隨意的人。 “E”指的是“外向性”, 與之相對(duì)的是內(nèi)向的人。 “A”——“宜人性” 與之相對(duì)的是 不那么和善的人。 最后是“N”—— “神經(jīng)質(zhì)” 與之相對(duì)的是那些 更加穩(wěn)定平和的人。
我不喜歡把人放進(jìn)鴿子籠里, 然后貼上標(biāo)簽。 我甚至覺得鴿子 都不應(yīng)該待在鴿子籠里。 究竟是什么讓我們與眾不同呢? 是我們一生的所作所為—— 我們的個(gè)人事業(yè)。 你們大家都有個(gè)人事業(yè), 但可能誰(shuí)都沒有意識(shí)到。 也許這事業(yè)跟孩子有關(guān)—— 你已經(jīng)去醫(yī)院三趟了, 醫(yī)生們還是查不出你孩子的病因。 或者生病的是你母親。 你會(huì)做一些跟你的 性格不相符的事情。 這些是可變的性格特點(diǎn)。 你本和善可親, 卻表現(xiàn)得咄咄逼人, 只為了對(duì)抗如今醫(yī)院里 無處不在的 懶散風(fēng)氣, 讓自己的母親 或者孩子得到及時(shí)治療。
這些可變的性格特點(diǎn)到底是什么? 那是我們演的一出戲, 為了達(dá)成我們生命中 最重要的目標(biāo)。 而這才是最重要的。 不要問別人是什么性格的人, 而要問他們,“你們生命中 最重要的事是什么?” 然后我們身上的可變 性格特點(diǎn)就會(huì)被激發(fā)。 我是一個(gè)內(nèi)向的人, 但我最重要的事業(yè)是教書。 我是一名教授。 我熱愛我的學(xué)生, 也熱愛我的事業(yè)領(lǐng)域。 我總是迫不及待地想 與他們分享, 那些新奇有趣的事情。 因此我會(huì)表現(xiàn)得 像一個(gè)外向的人, 因?yàn)樵缟?點(diǎn), 學(xué)生需要一點(diǎn)幽默, 需要一點(diǎn)激勵(lì), 才能熬過一天緊張的學(xué)習(xí)。
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