Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of the Human Potential Lab, where
Speaker 1: I teach you the latest science of important psychological concepts
Speaker 1: that are relevant to your daily life. Today, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be teaching you about the intersection of personality, creativity,
Speaker 1: and well being. These are all three things that are
Speaker 1: very interesting to people, and when you look at the
Speaker 1: integration of them, you can really get close to a
Speaker 1: life well lived. So first off, I want to just
Speaker 1: do a little primer on what is personality. A lot
Speaker 1: of people think of personality as a thing that is
Speaker 1: ingrained that doesn't change much throughout our lives. That you
Speaker 1: are either an extrovert or you're an introvert. You are
Speaker 1: either highly neurotic or you're not neurotic, and that's just
Speaker 1: not the right way to think about personality in general.
Speaker 1: It turns out that personality is actually something that is
Speaker 1: quite fluid and can be context dependent. It's partly determined
Speaker 1: by our genes, and it's also partly determined by the environment.
Speaker 1: But when we talk about personality, we're just talking about
Speaker 1: what psychologists called density distributions. So throughout the course of
Speaker 1: your day, you tend to score more introverted, let's say,
Speaker 1: in most of your actions like a four or five
Speaker 1: on a five point scale. But you may have your
Speaker 1: moments where you're extremely extroverted. Maybe you get really inspired
Speaker 1: to stand on a table and dance. Who knows, you
Speaker 1: know what the context can bring out of a human
Speaker 1: So I think it's important first of all to just
Speaker 1: say that personality is not something set in stone and
Speaker 1: can change. With that said, there is some stability, some
Speaker 1: very meaningful stability to our average patterns of thoughts, feelings,
Speaker 1: and behaviors, because that's what personality is at the end
Speaker 1: of the day. It is our total pattern of thoughts, feelings,
Speaker 1: and behaviors. Now, we can, through a lot of intense effort,
Speaker 1: try to change our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and in
Speaker 1: doing so, change important parts of our personality. But we
Speaker 1: can also accept a lot of our patterns of thoughts, feelings,
Speaker 1: behaviors and embrace our personality. So it's only up to
Speaker 1: you to decide what you want to embrace and self
Speaker 1: accept and what you want to change. And the good
Speaker 1: news is that you can change your personality. So that
Speaker 1: out of the way, I'm going to talk about how
Speaker 1: modern day psychologists conceptualize personality because they view it as
Speaker 1: a hierarchy, and so I want you to take a
Speaker 1: good look at this graph here and note that we
Speaker 1: have various levels at which we can talk about human personality,
Speaker 1: and at the very top level there's actually a big two.
Speaker 1: We call it the Big two of personality. So at
Speaker 1: the highest level of description in the personality hierarchy, we
Speaker 1: can note that humans differ in the extent to which
Speaker 1: they feel stable in their lives. They feel emotionally stable,
Speaker 1: they feel like they can reach their goals and move
Speaker 1: towards their goals even with internal disruptions such as emotional upset,
Speaker 1: as well as external disruptions like a traumatic episode that happens.
Speaker 1: So people do differ in their personality in terms of
Speaker 1: how high they score in stability. But we also need
Speaker 1: to acknowledge there's a second part of personality called plasticity,
Speaker 1: which is the extent to which you're flexible and capable
Speaker 1: of adapting and changing. Both stability and plasticity are absolutely
Speaker 1: essential to the healthy functioning of the whole person, or
Speaker 1: more technically, to the efficient functioning of any cybernetic organism
Speaker 1: which includes humans. All cybernetic organisms are goal directed organisms.
Speaker 1: That's all it means to be cybernetics. Some people might
Speaker 1: think cybernetics and think like terminator or something like robots. Actually,
Speaker 1: the science of cybernetics is actually the study of organic
Speaker 1: goal directed systems, and that includes humans and also includes
Speaker 1: other systems, other biological systems that are goal oriented like us.
Speaker 1: But any goal directed organism must have a certain degree
Speaker 1: of stability as well as plasticity to fully thrive. Okay,
Speaker 1: with that out of the way, let's go one step
Speaker 1: lower in the personality hierarchy to the Big Five, which
Speaker 1: is probably what most of you have heard of. When
Speaker 1: you've heard of personality, you heard of if you took
Speaker 1: like an intro to psychology class, you've heard of the
Speaker 1: Big five personality traits. And that's really what I'm going
Speaker 1: to focus on a lot today, as well as the
Speaker 1: main aspects of each of the Big five. So when
Speaker 1: I say that there are main there are the main
Speaker 1: aspects of each of the Big five. If you look
Speaker 1: at this graph, you can see that the Big five
Speaker 1: includes neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness to experience or
Speaker 1: openness slash intellect. But underneath each of those are two
Speaker 1: main aspects that really make up that Big five. You
Speaker 1: could go even lower to the facet level and have
Speaker 1: all sorts of facets. There could be an unlimited number
Speaker 1: of facets associated with each aspect of the Big Five.
Speaker 1: But just for our understanding in this lecture today, we're
Speaker 1: going to focus on the aspects of each of the
Speaker 1: Big five because I think it will really allow you
Speaker 1: to wrap your head around what really that personality trait
Speaker 1: is and what its major most functional components are that
Speaker 1: are relevant for your daily life. Let's start with extraversion introversion.
Speaker 1: So that's the dimension the extraversion slash interversion dimension of personality.
Speaker 1: Modern day personality psychologists view it as a single continuum.
Speaker 1: So to the extend to what you score higher on
Speaker 1: the extraversion polls, the extend to which you're less of
Speaker 1: an introvert. And then the more you score high to
Speaker 1: the left of the on the poll to the introversion side,
Speaker 1: the less you are an extrovert. And that's how modern
Speaker 1: day personality psychologists tend to think of it. The two
Speaker 1: main aspects of extraversion are enthusiasm and assertiveness. Let's look
Speaker 1: at some of the items and see how they're tested
Speaker 1: to see maybe where you score on these two So
Speaker 1: for the enthusiasm aspect, you have things like laugh a lot,
Speaker 1: show my feelings when I'm happy, often get caught up
Speaker 1: in the excitement. And then for the assertiveness aspect, you
Speaker 1: of things like take charge, am the first to act,
Speaker 1: don't hold back my opinions. So if you score really
Speaker 1: high in enthusiasm and assertiveness, you are essentially high in extroversion'
Speaker 1: it's a continuum. There is no pure extrovert or pure introvert,
Speaker 1: And in fact, most people score somewhere there in the
Speaker 1: middle where they're kind of ambiverts. You know, they they're
Speaker 1: not an extreme introvert or extrovert. And I think we
Speaker 1: all know who are the ones who are the extremes.
Speaker 1: They're kind of obvious even through like five seconds of
Speaker 1: talking to them. You can tell if someone's a really enthusiastic, weader,
Speaker 1: assertive person, you know, who has to jump right in
Speaker 1: and take charge and take over, they're an extrovert. And
Speaker 1: we can also tell if they're an introverts. So they're
Speaker 1: opposite in that where they prefer maybe they have a
Speaker 1: preference for solitude, maybe they have a preference for more quiet,
Speaker 1: maybe they are not as expressive on their face when
Speaker 1: you're talking to them. You know, there's some people who
Speaker 1: are like golden retrievers, right like, and there are some
Speaker 1: who just like to take a step back and process
Speaker 1: things a little bit more deeply. And maybe you don't
Speaker 1: know what there, You don't know how they are reacting
Speaker 1: to what you're saying, but maybe they'll come back later
Speaker 1: with an incredibly thoughtful, compassionate response to what you've told them.
Speaker 1: I find the latest neuroscience of the extraversion introversion dimension
Speaker 1: really interesting because you see a lot of memes online
Speaker 1: that like introverts, they get their batteries drained faster, their
Speaker 1: social batteries they need to recharge. You know, you see
Speaker 1: that meme over and over again, whereveras extroverts don't need
Speaker 1: to recharge their social battery as much. We can actually
Speaker 1: put that within a modern day framework of dopamine. And
Speaker 1: I find the link between dopamine and intro and the
Speaker 1: introversion extraversion dimension really because through dopaminergic terms, it does
Speaker 1: actually take introverts more work to get energized over what
Speaker 1: we call primal rewards, things like social status, power, social attention,
Speaker 1: positive social attention, networking events, risky sex, those sorts of things,
Speaker 1: we call them primal rewards. Introverts, with the way their
Speaker 1: dopaminergic system functions, they tend to have to work a
Speaker 1: little bit harder to get energized for those things, whereas
Speaker 1: extroverts tend to have this more naturally dopaminergic functioning to
Speaker 1: those more primal reward centers of their brain, so it
Speaker 1: naturally energizes them more and can show as enthusiasm for
Speaker 1: those things. However, there are a lot of misconceptions about introverts,
Speaker 1: and there are also a lot of misconceptions about extroverts,
Speaker 1: and I think that's really important to acknowledge. I wrote
Speaker 1: this article in Scientific American summarizing some research, some very
Speaker 1: interesting research showing that both introverts and extroverts get exhausted
Speaker 1: from too much socializing. So even extroverts are human too,
Speaker 1: believe it or not. Even the most extroverted, the extrovert,
Speaker 1: while they're a threshold for getting tired from socializing, maybe
Speaker 1: higher than the introvert, they still too at a certain
Speaker 1: point can get exhausted from too much socializing. So we're
Speaker 1: just talking about thresholds here, and dopamine plays an important
Speaker 1: role in that sense of whether or not you're feeling
Speaker 1: energized and wanting to put in the work towards something.
Speaker 1: That's really a big role of dopamine, and it's in
Speaker 1: the role it plays in the human motivational system. The
Speaker 1: next personality trade I want to talk about is the
Speaker 1: agreeableness slash disagreeableness spectrum. So what are you thinking right now?
Speaker 1: How agreeable are you? How disagreeable are you? Let's look
Speaker 1: at some items. The two main aspects of agreeableness are
Speaker 1: politeness and compassion. So the kind of items. For point,
Speaker 1: it's our respect, authority, hate to seem pushy, avoid imposing
Speaker 1: my will in others. And for compassions things like fuel
Speaker 1: other's emotions, inquire about others' well being, take an interest
Speaker 1: in other people's lives. Now, this is where it's interesting
Speaker 1: to note that each of the aspects of each of
Speaker 1: the Big five can actually pull part in various ways.
Speaker 1: So you can score really high in politeness but not compassion,
Speaker 1: or really high in compassion and not politeness, and some
Speaker 1: of these aspects can have unique correlations on things in
Speaker 1: the world. We will revisit this later when we show
Speaker 1: that maybe politeness is not as beneficial as compassion. Interests me.
Speaker 1: From a neuroscience perspective, those who score very high in
Speaker 1: politeness tend to show airrors of their brain having to
Speaker 1: do with inhibitory control and the resistance of aggression, which
Speaker 1: suggests that people who score high in politeness are not
Speaker 1: necessarily compassionate people. They're actually just really good at inhibiting
Speaker 1: their angry impulses. So that's interesting to note. Compassion seems
Speaker 1: to be associated with a separate neuroscientific foundation within the
Speaker 1: agreeable disagreeableness do mean, I'm really interested in the dark
Speaker 1: triad and its counterpart which my researchers and I came
Speaker 1: up with. So the dark triad is a very well
Speaker 1: studied set of antagonistic or disagreeable personality dimensions. We have narcissism, psychopathy,
Speaker 1: and machiavelianism. So narcissism is a very is a very
Speaker 1: entitled self importance. Psychopathy has to do with with meanness, lying, deceit,
Speaker 1: and Machiavelianism has to do with a very strategic, long
Speaker 1: term manipulation of what you want to get out of others,
Speaker 1: being fine exploiting others for your own gain. These three
Speaker 1: are correlated with each other. They also can come apart
Speaker 1: in interesting ways, but for the most part they are
Speaker 1: a correlated with each other, forming the Dark Triad. Now,
Speaker 1: my colleagues and I were interested in why there was
Speaker 1: so much research on the Dark Triad but nothing on
Speaker 1: the Light Triad. So we created a Light Triad scale,
Speaker 1: which is not the exact opposite of the Dark Triad.
Speaker 1: You can actually score high in the Dark Triad and
Speaker 1: also score somewhat on the Light tride as well, or
Speaker 1: all sorts of different combinations high on the Light Triade
Speaker 1: and have a little Dark Triad. But we do see
Speaker 1: it as a nice counterpart to the Dark Triad. So
Speaker 1: the three main aspects of the Light Triad are continism,
Speaker 1: faith in humanity, and humanism. So contuinism is treating people's
Speaker 1: ends into themselves, not mere means. Faith in humanity is
Speaker 1: believing in the fundamental goodness of humans, and humanism is
Speaker 1: valuing the dignity and worth of each individual. This is
Speaker 1: an image that someone on the Internet came up with.
Speaker 1: It looks like with their name Rayley Lewis. Anyway, big
Speaker 1: shout out to Rayley Lewis for coming up with this.
Speaker 1: We think it's really neat. It shows the different items
Speaker 1: associated with each of the three members of the light triad.
Speaker 1: So let me just give you some examples from each
Speaker 1: of these. So an example of humanism would be like
Speaker 1: I tend to admire others. I tend to appaud the
Speaker 1: successes of other people. For contunism, we have prefer honesty
Speaker 1: over charm. I like to be authentic, even if it
Speaker 1: may damage my reputation. And for faith in humanity, I
Speaker 1: tend to see the best in people, and I'm quick
Speaker 1: to forgive people hurt me. In fact, forgiveness is a
Speaker 1: big one, a big marker. The inability to forgive is
Speaker 1: a big marker of the dark triad, which is very interesting.
Speaker 1: So we see great benefit to studying the Light triad
Speaker 1: in addition to the Dark Triad. And we have to
Speaker 1: understand that we're all a mix of all these things.
Speaker 1: And we also context can bring out the worst in us.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned earlier, context matters too for personality. It's
Speaker 1: not all our innate dispositions, and the context can absolutely
Speaker 1: bring out the worst us, and it could also bring
Speaker 1: out the best in us. Here's an interesting question. Are
Speaker 1: most humans good? Well? And Frank seemed to think so.
Speaker 1: And Frank was writing in her diary all the way
Speaker 1: up to the moment where the Nazis were coming up
Speaker 1: to find her to kill her. She wrote, I still
Speaker 1: believe at the end of the day that most people
Speaker 1: are good at heart. That's a rough paraphrasing what she said,
Speaker 1: but she clearly would score high in the light triad
Speaker 1: and her faith in humanity. And what you do find
Speaker 1: is that even though all of us are some mix
Speaker 1: of light and dark traits, most people are tipped to
Speaker 1: the light side. That's good news, but there's bad news too,
Speaker 1: in the sense that if you see in this graph
Speaker 1: a couple of those little dots, a lot of those
Speaker 1: little circles, which are people all the way to the
Speaker 1: far right down dark tried extremely high almost pure dark triad.
Speaker 1: There are examples of extreme malevolence, and unfortunately, all it
Speaker 1: takes to a couple people to ruin it for the
Speaker 1: rest of us. So personality matters, and the way we
Speaker 1: show up in the world and our being in the
Speaker 1: world really matters. The next trait I want to talk
Speaker 1: about is neuroticism. I like this meme that I saw
Speaker 1: on the Internet, the top seven traits of neuroticism, because
Speaker 1: I think it does nicely encapsulate some of the main
Speaker 1: facets of neuroticism, things like negative emotions extreme worry or anxiety,
Speaker 1: self consciousness, anger and irrability, jealousy and feelings of envy,
Speaker 1: substance abuse and self doubt and low self esteem. But
Speaker 1: the two main aspects of neuroticism are volatility and withdrawal.
Speaker 1: So some items that are good examples of volatility include
Speaker 1: things like, I get angry easily, I change my mood
Speaker 1: a lot, I get easily agitated. So you think about
Speaker 1: the Incredible Hook, and then you think of the other one, withdrawal.
Speaker 1: I'm filled with doubts about things, I worry about things,
Speaker 1: I've become overwhelmed by events. Actually the Incredible Holk. If
Speaker 1: I had to identify the Incredible Hook's personality structure would
Speaker 1: be high volatility plus high antagonism or aggression. So both
Speaker 1: of those in combination. We're all a mix of personality traits,
Speaker 1: and I think that's really important to remember. And there's
Speaker 1: lots of unique configuration and we're going to get to
Speaker 1: one of my favorite unique configurations at the end of
Speaker 1: this lecture, so stay tuned. The next personality trade I
Speaker 1: want to cover is conscientiousness. Which is the trait most
Speaker 1: central to the best selling book Grit by my friend
Speaker 1: and colleague Angela Duckworth. There's actually two main aspects of conscientiousness, though.
Speaker 1: One is industriousness, which really is very strongly tied to
Speaker 1: the concept of grit, things like I carry out my plans,
Speaker 1: I finish what I start, I'm not easily distracted. And
Speaker 1: another aspect is orderliness, things like I like order, I
Speaker 1: keep things tidy, I see that rules are observed. So
Speaker 1: both of those are the main aspects of conscientiousness. But
Speaker 1: as I've already noted, these different aspects can come apart
Speaker 1: in very important ways. It's possible to have an awful
Speaker 1: lot of grit but not be terribly orderly. It's also
Speaker 1: possible to be a very orderly person but not really
Speaker 1: get a lot of your most important goals completed. Ever,
Speaker 1: and we're going to revisit the distinction between industriousness and
Speaker 1: orderliness later when we talk about well being. Okay, and
Speaker 1: now for the final personality trait that we're just going
Speaker 1: to cover at a very high level, openness to experience,
Speaker 1: or as my colleagues and I like to call it,
Speaker 1: cognitive exploration. I think I make it pretty clear to
Speaker 1: anyone who knows me that the openness to experience is
Speaker 1: my favorite personality trait. This is the one where I
Speaker 1: come most alive. So the two main aspects of cognitive
Speaker 1: exploration are intellect and openness. These are important distinctions. So
Speaker 1: the kind of items for intellect are things like I'm
Speaker 1: quick to understand things, I like to solve complex problems,
Speaker 1: I engage with difficult reading mater And things like openness
Speaker 1: are things like I believe in the importance of art,
Speaker 1: I love to reflect on things, and I need a
Speaker 1: creative outlet. Now they are correlated with each other, but
Speaker 1: as my PhD dissertation showed, they can really come part
Speaker 1: in important ways when we're trying to predict creativity, when
Speaker 1: we're trying to predict well being, they're not always correlated.
Speaker 1: And also when we think about intelligence, I think it's
Speaker 1: important to think about intelligence as more than just intellect.
Speaker 1: I think that including some of the kind of things
Speaker 1: in the openness aspect are important when we conceptualize human intelligence.
Speaker 1: More on that in a second, But this is the
Speaker 1: paper that was the primary outgrowth of my PhD dissertation,
Speaker 1: where I tried to open up openness isn't that clever title?
Speaker 1: A four factor model in relations to creative achievement in
Speaker 1: the arts and sciences? Isn't that a nerdy subtitle? So
Speaker 1: in this work I showed that the openness to experience
Speaker 1: aspect is really comprised by two main facets under it,
Speaker 1: affective engagement and esthetic or imagination engagement. So under the
Speaker 1: openness to experience part, you can be really open to
Speaker 1: engaging in the full breadth and depth of your emotions,
Speaker 1: and you can also really be interested in creativity, aesthetics
Speaker 1: and the imagination. And then on the intellect side, we
Speaker 1: can have just pure raw IQ or what I called
Speaker 1: explicit cognitive ability, because I was trying to contrast it
Speaker 1: from more intuitive intelligence or implicit learning as well as
Speaker 1: intellectual engagement. So I want to be very clear, it's
Speaker 1: important to distinguish the extent to which you enjoy intellectual
Speaker 1: pursuits and like engaging intellectual pursuits and your role IQ
Speaker 1: or explicit cognive ability. Your cognitive ability could be very high,
Speaker 1: but you might not be a very intellectually curious person. Also,
Speaker 1: maybe your IQ is not sky, but you still are
Speaker 1: incredibly intellectually curious. And I think we need to really
Speaker 1: leave room open for that to appreciate in our society.
Speaker 1: And I put a lot of these these these this
Speaker 1: research and passion that I have for UH for intelligence,
Speaker 1: human intelligence, and the openness domain. In my book Ungifted
Speaker 1: Intelligence redefined the truth about talent, practice, creativity in the
Speaker 1: many past to greatness. In this book, I put forward
Speaker 1: a theory of self actualizing intelligence, or at the time
Speaker 1: I called it the theory of personal intelligence, but now
Speaker 1: I call it the theory of self actualizing intelligence, where
Speaker 1: I defined as the dynamic interplay of engagement and ability
Speaker 1: in pursuit of personal goals. And so I think that
Speaker 1: personality matters a lot, but and I and I think
Speaker 1: that intelligence matters a lot. But I think the key
Speaker 1: there is what is the dynamic interplay of our abilities
Speaker 1: and personality inclinations and the engagement that we have and
Speaker 1: the ways that are just positions our personality dispositions are
Speaker 1: causing us to want to engage in certain areas of life.
Speaker 1: And how is all of that in the service of
Speaker 1: us reaching our personal goals, our dreams in our life.
Speaker 1: So I think this is a broader view of intelligence
Speaker 1: than just the traditional IQ model of intelligence. So let's
Speaker 1: now talk about the link between personality and creativity. I
Speaker 1: love this connection. By far the most relevant personality demean
Speaker 1: for the understanding of creativity's openness to experience. Surprise, surprise
Speaker 1: that this demean of personality would be most relevant for creativity.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite studies ever was the Epoll Toran
Speaker 1: studies in the fifties where Epaul Tarans looked at a
Speaker 1: group of elementary school kids. Actually there are three elementary schools,
Speaker 1: and he looked to see what'd happen if we followed
Speaker 1: these kids up throughout their lives, who would end up
Speaker 1: being the most creative people. He found that a certain
Speaker 1: list of what he called the beyonder characteristics were really important,
Speaker 1: things like love of work, persistence, feeling a sense of
Speaker 1: purpose and life. Yet even some elementary school students showed
Speaker 1: the seeds of this being deep thinkers, not necessarily fast thinkers,
Speaker 1: but deep thinkers, having tolerance of mistakes, being openness to change,
Speaker 1: having a sense of risk taking, and feeling comfortable is
Speaker 1: a minority of one. I really like this one. I
Speaker 1: wonder where would you score on this? So, if you're
Speaker 1: in a situation where no one agrees with you on anything.
Speaker 1: Everyone in the room has a dissenting view, but you
Speaker 1: would like to stick to your guns, are you okay?
Speaker 1: Being a minority of one, he found that those who
Speaker 1: scored higher in these beyond your characteristics tended to grow
Speaker 1: up being more creative in their lives. But he found
Speaker 1: the biggest predictor of life along creativity was none of
Speaker 1: the things on this list. It was the extent to
Speaker 1: which people fell in love with a future image of themselves.
Speaker 1: I love this quote from Tarns. Life's most energizing and
Speaker 1: exciting moments occur in those split seconds when are struggling
Speaker 1: and searching suddenly transformed into the dazzling aura of the
Speaker 1: profoundly new and image of the future. One of the
Speaker 1: most powerful wealth springs of creative energy, outstanding accomplishment and
Speaker 1: self fulfillment, seems to be falling in love with something,
Speaker 1: your dream, your image of the future. Well of that quote.
Speaker 1: More modern day research by my colleagues and I have
Speaker 1: found that this imagination aspect that comes from openness to
Speaker 1: experience and the intellectual curiosity part they offer valuable information
Speaker 1: in predicting lifelong creativity above and beyond just raw IQ.
Speaker 1: This paper called Openness to experience and intellect differentially predict
Speaker 1: creative achievement in the arts and sciences found that when
Speaker 1: predicting lifelong creative achievement, intellectual engagement does a better job
Speaker 1: of predicting it than IQ, although IQ is also an
Speaker 1: independent predictor. And then in these sciences, when we talk
Speaker 1: with thes is like music, visual arts, creative writing, we
Speaker 1: talked about the various aspects of the arts. We found
Speaker 1: that i Q actually was not correlated with creative achievement
Speaker 1: in the arts. But what was correlated the creative achievement
Speaker 1: of the arts above all everything else was openness to experience,
Speaker 1: which really, as I've noted, involves a deep, rich imagination
Speaker 1: as well as an openness to engaging in the full
Speaker 1: depth and breadth of your emotions. In this other paper,
Speaker 1: my colleagues and I looked at the extent to which
Speaker 1: grit is important for creative achievement. And remember earlier I
Speaker 1: said that the various aspects of the personality domans can
Speaker 1: come apart in very important ways. We found that the
Speaker 1: consistency part of grit was not as good a predictor
Speaker 1: of creativity as the ability to persevere, to really be
Speaker 1: committed to something in the long term and to show
Speaker 1: a deep perseverance toward it. But being consistent in your
Speaker 1: goals is not necessarily is not necessarily the most predictive
Speaker 1: thing of creativity because creativity often involves a lot of
Speaker 1: trial and error. Creativity often involves having to shift goals,
Speaker 1: having to be flexible. Remember talking about the stability personality
Speaker 1: trait at the beginning. If you score very low in
Speaker 1: the stability personality train and you're just stable, that's not
Speaker 1: the optimal functioning of any cybernetic system. So it's very
Speaker 1: important to recognize that we found that curiosity was a
Speaker 1: much better predictor of creativity. In fact, curiosity and persistence
Speaker 1: as a combo or a much better predictor of life
Speaker 1: on creativity than just being consistent. Neurologically speaking, intellect and
Speaker 1: openness to experience are associated with different areas of the brain,
Speaker 1: So intellect or IQ and intellectual engagement tend to activate
Speaker 1: more of what's called the executive control network, areas of
Speaker 1: our brain that are really important for concentration, for working memory,
Speaker 1: being able to hold multiple bits of information in our
Speaker 1: heads at one time, and being able to really focus
Speaker 1: and synthesize the information in consciousness, whereas openness, the openness
Speaker 1: aspect of the openness slash intellect personality to mein tends
Speaker 1: to activate more of what I call the imagination brain network,
Speaker 1: or other scientists call it the default mode brain network.
Speaker 1: But I did not feel as though that was as
Speaker 1: sexy as the imagination network. And the imagination brain network
Speaker 1: tends to involve a number of brain areas that work
Speaker 1: together to help us imagine our personal futures, to take
Speaker 1: the perspective of another person, to remember our most poignant
Speaker 1: and emotional memories. In a lot of ways, I see
Speaker 1: the imagination brain network as the source of human experience.
Speaker 1: Whereas the executive control network is certainly very important for
Speaker 1: processing things coming outside of us, the imagination network is
Speaker 1: very important for our inner stream of consciousness. My colleagues
Speaker 1: and I have been really interested in the relationship between
Speaker 1: various brain activations and personality. In this paper from twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen in the journal Human Brain Mapping, we found for
Speaker 1: the first time that individual differences in intellect, openness to
Speaker 1: experience are associated with the efficiency of the imagination and
Speaker 1: brain network. We think this is super interesting. So the
Speaker 1: extent to which various areas of the defaultle network are
Speaker 1: connected and communicating with each other, are associated with the
Speaker 1: extent to which you self report on a personality scale
Speaker 1: where you score on the intellect openness to experience dimension
Speaker 1: of personality. So these personality traits really can be linked
Speaker 1: to various consistent activations of the brain, further showing that
Speaker 1: personality is not purely contextual. There is a very important
Speaker 1: core part of the way our brains function that is
Speaker 1: correlated with our patterns of thinking, behaving, and feeling in
Speaker 1: the world. In this other paper, we linked creativity to
Speaker 1: brain functioning and found that in the earliest stages of
Speaker 1: creativity or what researchers called divergent thinking, your ability to
Speaker 1: come up with as many different uses for something. We
Speaker 1: found that deactivation of the executive control network is actually
Speaker 1: quite conducive to divergent thinking or creative thinking, whereas kind
Speaker 1: of swimming in the sea of the default mode network
Speaker 1: or the imagination network can be more beneficial. And that
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense. You know, when you're doing
Speaker 1: a creative task, you want your self critical thinking consciousness
Speaker 1: to cannot get in the way of brainstorming or coming
Speaker 1: up with lots of ideas, whereas during the later stages
Speaker 1: when you want to evaluate your ideas or evaluate the
Speaker 1: quality of your ideas a little bit more, then the
Speaker 1: executive control network comes online. More So, this shows this
Speaker 1: graph here, it just shows the time course of divergent
Speaker 1: thinking ability and which brain networks come online and offline
Speaker 1: during that time course. And more recently, the work I've
Speaker 1: done at the Imagination Institute at Penn where we looked
Speaker 1: at some of the most imaginative people from all over
Speaker 1: the world, from all different domains, from least ten domeins
Speaker 1: we looked at. We found that the most imaginative people
Speaker 1: really have this higher level of resting state connectivity in
Speaker 1: that default wile network or that imagination network. So you
Speaker 1: really can see that difference when you look at the
Speaker 1: brains of eminent thinkers and non eminent thinkers. So we
Speaker 1: found that at various levels. I won't get too much
Speaker 1: in the technical details, but there's various levels at which
Speaker 1: you can look at a neuroscientific finding. One involves just
Speaker 1: a resting state where they just at rest, where's their
Speaker 1: brain tend to go by default. You can also look
Speaker 1: in terms of brain activity patterns, and we found very
Speaker 1: similar thing there. We found a very similar thing there
Speaker 1: with activation of the imagination brain network differences when doing
Speaker 1: a creative idea generation task. And then you can also
Speaker 1: look at brain morphometry where you can actually look at
Speaker 1: structural differences between eminent thinkers and non eminent thinkers, and
Speaker 1: there are some significant structural differences associated with extraordinary creativity.
Speaker 1: You know, they saved Einstein's brain right because they tried
Speaker 1: to look to see is there something different with Einstein's
Speaker 1: brain than other people's brains. But that really was not
Speaker 1: a good scientific analysis. The brain deteriorate in lots of ways.
Speaker 1: I think they cut it up in various ways. They
Speaker 1: never were really able to do a really good analysis
Speaker 1: of that. But my colleagues and I have been trying
Speaker 1: to look at that among some of the most creative
Speaker 1: people alive today, and we do see that some areas
Speaker 1: of the default ble network are a little thicker, and
Speaker 1: there are other nuances that if you really are dying
Speaker 1: to nerd out about this, you can download any of
Speaker 1: these papers from my website Scott Barry Kauffman dot com
Speaker 1: under the research section and you can dive in, get
Speaker 1: your popcorn out, and study all you want about the
Speaker 1: morpholometry of creative eminent thinkers. I also want to discuss
Speaker 1: a personality trait and kind of place it within the
Speaker 1: Big five because you hear about it a lot, and
Speaker 1: that's the highly sensitive person What exactly is the highly
Speaker 1: sensitive personality? Leade Aaron has done a lot for the
Speaker 1: field in initiating our understanding, awareness, and appreciation of the
Speaker 1: highly sensitive personality. One of her books is called The
Speaker 1: Highly Sensitive Child Wild helping our children thrive when the
Speaker 1: world overwhelms them. Within a Big five framework, the HSP
Speaker 1: personality really is just a blend of neuroticism and openness
Speaker 1: to experience. So if you look at the kind of
Speaker 1: items on the HSP scale, you can see that they're
Speaker 1: really just items referring to either neuroticism or openness to experience,
Speaker 1: things like I am easily overwhelmed by strong sensory input.
Speaker 1: I seem to be aware of subtleties in my environment.
Speaker 1: Other people's moods affect me. I tend to be very
Speaker 1: sensitive to pain, and a lot of those have to
Speaker 1: do with neuroticism. But then there are things like associated
Speaker 1: with openness to experience, like I have a rich complex
Speaker 1: inner life. I am deeply moved by the arts or music.
Speaker 1: So those things as well indicate that the highly sensitive
Speaker 1: person really is this blend of neuroticism and openness to experience.
Speaker 1: A lot of people claim to be HSPs, including assholes.
Speaker 1: So here's then answerting question. Is Kanye West and hsp Well.
Speaker 1: In one of the interviews, Connie West said, I think
Speaker 1: that I am people. I think I'm misunderstood. I'm really
Speaker 1: just a sensitive introvert. And I want to make clear
Speaker 1: that you can score high in that highly sensitive personality
Speaker 1: and still be disagreeable. You know, in the agreeable disagreeable
Speaker 1: dimension is really a separate dimension in the highly sensitive
Speaker 1: personality dimension. And I covered these nuances in this article
Speaker 1: or for Scientific American in twenty thirteen that went viral.
Speaker 1: I called it twenty three science. You're secretly a narcissist
Speaker 1: masquerading as a sensitive introvert. And I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about the latest science of vulnerable narcissism and the science
Speaker 1: of being a highly sensitive person and show that, look,
Speaker 1: there's actually different ways you can be sensitive in this world.
Speaker 1: When we talk about the highly sensitive personality, we're usually
Speaker 1: talking about Eleine Aaron's definition, which is a blend of
Speaker 1: neuroticism and openness to experience. But I'm going to go
Speaker 1: through each of the personality traits and show you that
Speaker 1: actually each form of personality, each dimension of personality is
Speaker 1: associated with its own unique form of sensitivity. All personality
Speaker 1: traits have inherent sensitivity to something, And I think it's
Speaker 1: a really important point to make. Care So, for instance,
Speaker 1: people high an extra version are sensitive to competitive rewards,
Speaker 1: or these primal rewards I was talking about earlier, like
Speaker 1: social status or social attention, or risky sex or money power.
Speaker 1: It just so happens throughout the course of evolutionary history
Speaker 1: that the most primal rewards tend to be social in nature,
Speaker 1: because that tends to get us these other things. But
Speaker 1: people high an extra version tend to be very sensitive
Speaker 1: to the reward value of competitive rewards. People high in
Speaker 1: agreeableness are sensitive to other people's needs, goals, concerns, and feelings.
Speaker 1: People high in conscientiousness are sensitive to abstract or distant goals.
Speaker 1: People high in neuroticism are sensitive to threat. People high
Speaker 1: in openness to experience are sensitive to the value of
Speaker 1: information for its own sake. People high in vulnerable narcissism
Speaker 1: are hyper sensitive to criticism and evaluation, and people high
Speaker 1: in grandiose narcissism are hyper sensitive to cues of praise
Speaker 1: and acclaim. So just saying I misunderstood, I'm not really
Speaker 1: a jerk, I'm just highly sensitive. Well, actually, you can
Speaker 1: be a jerk and be highly sensitive. You know, there's
Speaker 1: not mutually exclusive categories, And it depends what are you
Speaker 1: sensitive to. You know, what is the sensitivity are you?
Speaker 1: Are you sensitivity? Are you highly sensitive to the pain
Speaker 1: and suffering of others? Or are you highly sensitive to
Speaker 1: criticism and to people not worshiping you all the time?
Speaker 1: These are different forms of sensitivity, and I often don't
Speaker 1: see these distinctions made in the psychological literature or in
Speaker 1: general pop discussions of sensitivity. In the gifted community, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of talk about Dobrowski's over excitabilities, such as
Speaker 1: having a psychomotor over excitability, having a sensual over excited ability,
Speaker 1: being intellectually over excitable, having an imaginational overexcitability, or being
Speaker 1: emotionally over excitable. I really like this paper by Barbara
Speaker 1: Kerr and her colleagues which show that we can map
Speaker 1: these over excitabilities onto a modern day personality framework. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to show you right here how they can
Speaker 1: be mapped on. So, openness to fantasy is a facet
Speaker 1: of the intellect slash openness to experience demean and we
Speaker 1: can map that onto the imaginational overexcitability component of Dobrowski's framework.
Speaker 1: Things like having a rich fantasy life and proneness to
Speaker 1: vivid daydreaming. Openness to aesthetics can be mapped onto sensual overexcitability,
Speaker 1: enjoyment and absorption and beating the arts. Openness to feelings
Speaker 1: can be mapped onto emotional overexcitability. Openness to a full
Speaker 1: range of feelings, both variety and intensity. Openness to ideas
Speaker 1: can be mapped onto intellectual overexcitability, having a ravenous curiosity,
Speaker 1: passion for learning, and need to understand ideas and the
Speaker 1: reasoning behind arguments. This is very much tied to the
Speaker 1: nerdy dopamine pathway as I call it. That's where you
Speaker 1: get this nerdy dopamine excitement, this dopamine coursing through your
Speaker 1: system at the possibility of learning something new and complex,
Speaker 1: and then openness to actions can be mapped onto a
Speaker 1: psychomode or overexcitability. A love of novelty and getting out
Speaker 1: of one's comfort zone. And I think that we can
Speaker 1: link each of these to giftedness and creative giftedness. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of creative people throughout the course of
Speaker 1: human history have scored quite high in these over excitabilities,
Speaker 1: or we can just say high in these facets of
Speaker 1: openness to experience. I'm not a big fan of the
Speaker 1: phrase overexcitability. It sounds like you're too much, like you're
Speaker 1: over but I think that there's no too much if
Speaker 1: you're going to fundamentally change the world and with your creativity.
Speaker 1: So now, lastly, for this lecture, I want to cover
Speaker 1: the link between personality and well being, and I think
Speaker 1: it's very important when we do this to recognize that
Speaker 1: well being is composed of various facets in and of itself.
Speaker 1: What do we mean when we say well being? You know,
Speaker 1: so it's important to recognize there's this. For this year
Speaker 1: of this graph Air, we can talk about cole Riff's model.
Speaker 1: We can have and Coro rift distinction between personal growth,
Speaker 1: self esteem, autonomy, environmental mastery, positive relationships, and filling a
Speaker 1: life purpose. I think is a pretty decent model of
Speaker 1: the different facets of well being. My colleagues and I,
Speaker 1: in this study was led by Jesse Sun, looked at
Speaker 1: the unique associations between Big five personality aspects and multiple
Speaker 1: dimensions of well being. And what my colleagues and I
Speaker 1: found are a couple of key findings which I think
Speaker 1: you'll find really interesting when your interest when you're thinking
Speaker 1: about the link between well being and personality. So we
Speaker 1: found that the biggest unique predictors of well being overall
Speaker 1: are enthusiasm, well withdrawal, industriousness, compassion, and intellect. But we
Speaker 1: can even have a much more wh wants to look
Speaker 1: and show that enthusiasm and will withdrawal were the strongest
Speaker 1: unique predictors of high life satisfaction and positive emotions. So
Speaker 1: it depends on what form of well being are we
Speaker 1: talking about. Assertiveness strongly predicted greater autonomy in life, that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Industriousness was uniquely associated with environmental mastery, purpose
Speaker 1: in life, meaning, and accomplishment, whereas orderliness was not correlated
Speaker 1: with these dimensions and even predicted lower levels of personal growth.
Speaker 1: Remember earlier I said I was going to get back
Speaker 1: to the orderliness thing. Well, it turns out that orderliness
Speaker 1: is not necessarily that good for well being. It's okay
Speaker 1: to not feel the need to control everything and for
Speaker 1: everything have everything be put in place. With that said,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about OCD because I recently had an
Speaker 1: episode with Michael Alsey showing there some great creative things
Speaker 1: that can be correlated with OCD. I'm just talking about
Speaker 1: the personality aspect of orderliness. And then passion was uniquely
Speaker 1: associated with greater levels of personal growth, meaning and purpose
Speaker 1: in life. And earlier I said, you know, these things
Speaker 1: had come apart, and I think that it's important to
Speaker 1: distinguish between compassion and politeness because we found that politeness
Speaker 1: was the only aspect of personality to have no significant
Speaker 1: independent association with any other well being dimensions. So maybe
Speaker 1: politeness is overrated. Now you don't want to be completely impolite,
Speaker 1: but maybe a certain level and then compassion takes over
Speaker 1: is more important. And then finally, as a key finding,
Speaker 1: we found that both intellect and openness were independently associated
Speaker 1: with personal growth and autonomy. We feel like these findings
Speaker 1: qualify earlier research because a lot of earlier research on
Speaker 1: happiness really have made the case that only extraversion and
Speaker 1: neuroticism are relevant to happiness. We found there's a lot
Speaker 1: more nuance there. When you expand your aspects of personality
Speaker 1: that you study, and you also expand the facets of
Speaker 1: well being that you study. We say, quote well being
Speaker 1: is indeed higher for the extroverted and non Eurotic, but
Speaker 1: only to the extent that they possess the enthusiastic, non
Speaker 1: withdrawal aspects of these traits. Further, when well being is
Speaker 1: conceptualized in terms of multiple end states, there's more than
Speaker 1: one personality profile that predicts greater well being. So now
Speaker 1: I want to return to the introvert. So what are
Speaker 1: we saying here? Are we saying that introverts can't be happy? No,
Speaker 1: there's this article I wrote with the title can Introverts
Speaker 1: be happy in a world that can't stop talking? And
Speaker 1: I reviewed research suggesting that happy introverts can exist. I
Speaker 1: really like this paper quiet Flourishing. The authenticity and well
Speaker 1: being of trait introverts living in the West depends on
Speaker 1: extroversion deficient beliefs. Basically, what the research found is the
Speaker 1: extent to which you were a happy introvert is the
Speaker 1: extent to which you self reported as an introvert, and
Speaker 1: you also were okay with it, you accepted yourself as
Speaker 1: Rodney Blahan and his colleagues note quote, Introverts who can
Speaker 1: learn to be more comfortable with their place on the introversion,
Speaker 1: extrovert and continuum, for example, better thrive in our schools, universities,
Speaker 1: and workplaces, despite the fact that in the West these
Speaker 1: institutions are often geared toward extroverted behavior. We speculate that
Speaker 1: introverts might learn to become more comfortable with their own
Speaker 1: introversion in these environments by focusing on you demonic concepts
Speaker 1: such as maintaining a positive attitude towards oneself and cultivating
Speaker 1: good character and practicing more self acceptance and developing their
Speaker 1: signature strengths. Look, the more you judge yourself, the worse
Speaker 1: you're gonna feel. This doesn't just operate within the introversion demain.
Speaker 1: It operates with basically any any of the personality domains,
Speaker 1: and it also operates within the depression and anxiety does
Speaker 1: to mean this study here, this paper here, The title
Speaker 1: perfectly explains it. The more you judge, the worse you feel.
Speaker 1: A judgmental attitude toward once inner experience predicts depression and anxiety.
Speaker 1: So I want to just end this lecture and say, well,
Speaker 1: there's so many different ways that personality can combine to
Speaker 1: create the unique configuration that is you. It's possible to
Speaker 1: be a neuroted extrovert, and it's also possible to score
Speaker 1: high in introversion as well as openness to experience a
Speaker 1: unique configuration I call the wild introvert. Are you a
Speaker 1: wild introvert? Are you an introvert where you don't get
Speaker 1: so dopaminergically energized by networking events, social attention, social status, power, money,
Speaker 1: risky sex, but your nerdy dopamine pathway is highly active,
Speaker 1: so you get very turned on by learning new information
Speaker 1: and going on adventures in your head. Maybe you're a
Speaker 1: wild introvert. Whatever you are, I highly suggest that you
Speaker 1: consider do you want to accept it? Do you want
Speaker 1: to change? And there are some aspects that maybe it's
Speaker 1: time to just accept who you are and embrace it
Speaker 1: and channel it into your creativity. I guarantee you that
Speaker 1: if you accept certain aspects of your personality and channel
Speaker 1: it into your creativity, it'll be much more likely to
Speaker 1: be happy, to be fulfilled, and to live and live
Speaker 1: a life of full meaning. I want to thank you
Speaker 1: all for listening to this lecture today. I hope it
Speaker 1: was educational, but I also hope it inspires you to
Speaker 1: embrace who you are, change what you want to change,
Speaker 1: and live a life full of creativity and well being.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and stay tuned for the next episode of
Speaker 1: The Human Potential Lab.