Six traits can determine your ‘it’ factor, according to researchers who measured coolness around the globe.
Is there a secret sauce that helps explain why people as different as David Bowie, Samuel L. Jackson and Charli XCX all seem so self-assured and, well, cool?
A new study suggests that there are six specific traits that these people tend to have in common: Cool people are largely perceived to be extroverted, hedonistic, powerful, adventurous, open and autonomous.
The study, which was published on Monday in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, surveyed nearly 6,000 participants from 12 countries around the world. Their beliefs about what’s “cool” were similar regardless of where the study participants lived, and despite differences in age, income level, education or gender.
“What blew my mind was the fact that it was pretty much the same result everywhere,” said Caleb Warren, one of the authors of the study and a professor at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona who has researched consumer psychology for two decades.
In the study, each participant had to recognize the word “cool” in English, without translation, suggesting that they were already familiar with — or maybe even idolized — notions of coolness from wealthy Western countries like the United States.
In that sense, the study offers a window into the spread of cultural beliefs from one group of people to another, said Joseph Henrich, an anthropologist and a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard who was not involved in the study.