Ate a peppery breakfast? How about changed the oil in your car? Those behaviours—as well as 24 other, seemingly unrelated habits—might actually prove you’re pretty bright, a new study published in Personality and Individual Differences suggests.
In the study, researchers sought to identify “signature” behaviours that were shared by people with the various “Big Five” personality traits: intellect (intellectual, complex, deep, and introspective), emotional stability (unemotional and relaxed), conscientiousness (careful, practical, neat, and efficient), agreeableness (kind, warm, helpful, and generous), and extraversion (talkative, verbal, energetic, unrestrained). They recruited over 1,000 people, quizzed them about how often they performed 400 mundane, everyday behaviours, and then tested them to see where they fit in on the Big Five scale.
They discovered that some random behaviours easily ID’ed some of the Big Five personalities. Some—say, that intellectual people spend time looking at art, or read books—weren’t so surprising. Others—like they are more likely to walk around naked—were head-scratchers. Here are the behaviours they found to be most strongly associated with the intellect personality type:
Intellect Behaviours:
1. Spent an hour at a time daydreaming
2. Meditated
3. Swore around other people
4. Bought a book
5. Lounged around home naked
6. Didn’t follow a sports team
7. Read poetry
8. Tried something completely new
9. Bought organic food
10. Produced a work of art
11. Ate something spicy for breakfast
12. Discussed ways to make
13. Smoked marijuana
14. Attended an art exhibit
15. Attended an opera
16. Did car work on your own vehicle
17. Composted food scraps.
When the researchers looked at the other personality types, they also found some interesting behaviours there, too. For instance, those in the emotional stability group didn’t have nightmares, and conscientious people didn’t chew on pencils. But agreeable people did sing in the car or the shower, and those in the extraversion category told dirty jokes and tried to get a tan.
Now, it doesn’t mean for sure that you definitely engage in these behaviours if your personality fits in one of those five. And the study does have some limitations, mainly that the behaviours were self-reported. But the researchers believe that this may help provide more practical evidence of what these “Big Five” personality traits really mean, which can help psychological study in the future.
Originally published on menshealth.com
Written by: Hasan Variawa
Fuente: www.mh.co.za
