Why do some people love parties and others prefer to stay at home with a book? Why do some people worry endlessly about all the bad things that might happen, while others breeze through life with supreme confidence? Why is Stuart such a nice guy and Tom far less so?

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart discuss personality and the personality tests that are supposed to measure it. They discuss whether it might be the Big Five or the Big Six, what measuring personality is good for, and whether “Grit” is even a thing. Not only that, but for the many, many people who are desperate to know, they both reveal their own personality test results.

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine. We absolutely love reading its beautifully-written, well-researched essays on science, technology, and human progress, and if you’re a listener to this podcast, we’re pretty sure you will, too. Take a look at the whole collection of articles—all available for free—right here.

Show Notes

* Free site to calculate your Big Five personality profile

* Free site to calculate your Big Six (HEXACO) personality profile

* Tom’s Big Five personality profile:

* Stuart’s Big Five personality profile:

* Is it the Big Five or the Big Six? An example of a paper that supports the latter option

* Razib Khan’s podcast interview with personality psychologist Brent Roberts

* Example of a study on personality and job performance

* Paper by Christopher Soto testing the replicability of personality’s associations with life outcomes

* Paper showing how “Grit” is really just a re-description of “Conscientiousness”

* Severe critique of the Big Five by “a literal banana” (also read the comments!)

* Story of the Hans Eysenck personality-and-health fraud (also see this meta-analysis of personality and health)

* Meta-analysis of how personality factors change over time

* Meta-analysis of interventions that can change personality factors

Credits

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe

Episode 24: Personality

Science Fictions