Something we discussed in lecture last week is The Big Five. The Big Five is five traits that make up a personality. The five traits are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
Open people are often curious, such as Curious George.
Conscientious people are careful like Hermione Granger.
Extraverted people are very sociable like Will Smith.
Agreeable people are easy to get along with like Ellen DeGeneres.
Neurotic people are said to be tense and quite moody like Monica Gellar.
These traits are often influenced my many aspects of culture such as individualism-collectivism and personality. People in individualism cultures determine their own behaviors because they work towards individual goals. People in collectivism cultures behaviors are determined by social norm because they work towards the goals of the group.
These traits can also determine what kind of job a person might be good at. For example, a person of high extraversion might be a good salesman or business person. They are social enough to get their point across. Shyer people would not be as good at confronting customers because they are strangers. Another example is agreeable people make good talk show hosts. Oprah is a good example of this. People tend to like her because she has the happiness and health of others in mind. She has good intentions. People like her and get along with her for these reasons.
One flaw in this system is there is no Big Five trait that deals with morality. Morality plays a big role in many peoples life and shapes who they are. Researchers admit the system is not perfect but is a pretty good idea of how personality traits affect us.
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Do you think all talk show hosts are agreeable? For example, do you think Conan is agreeable? What about some of the political talk shows? What do you think would be a good way to measure a "morality" trait? Do you think it is consistent overtime or learned from friends and family?