If you had to define your personalitywhat would you say ? If we asked the question to physicist Luis Nunes Amaral of Northwestern University in Illinois, author of a study on the subject, he would certainly fall into one of the four categories he has just distinguished. With his team, the scientist sifted through the data from a personality questionnaire conducted among more than 1.5 million people. It was based on five major character traits used for online personality tests: openness to experience, conscientiousness, neurosis, pleasantness, and extroversion. Respondents’ responses were sorted according to different algorithms, which made it possible to identify large groups corresponding to four types of personalities : the “egocentrics”, the “reserved”, the “role models” and the “means”.
The site Quartz details these profiles:
-The people “egocentric” are outgoing but less pleasant and have little professional conscience
-The “model” group would have good results in terms ofextroversion, openness, pleasantness and professional conscience, as well as in matters of neurosis. In other words, they would be “stable individuals”, summarizes the Science magazine website.
-The “reserved” people are neither extroverted nor neurotic but pleasant, and particularly conscientious.
-The “average” group scores slightly above average on personality tests for neurosis, extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Researchers qualify this group as “average” because everyone will fall into this category in their lifetime.
Different personalities according to age
Large trends are emerging according to age, according to the work reported in Nature Human Behavior. Younger people tend to fit into egocentric personalities while older people tend to belong to the “model” group. Women seem to make this transition from the egocentric group to the model faster than men, Science points out. And women over 60 would represent the largest proportion of role models among those surveyed. “Models improve the functioning of society,” observes Luis Amaral on Science.
As for those who would be in the “egocentric” box, the researcher brushes aside all fatality: “It is not a life sentence, and most people who start out as egocentric come out of it fairly quickly”.
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