DISQUS

Kevin B. O'Reilly · 1 year ago

This is one of those forehead-slapping research results. Individual personality matters in individual happiness? No, duh!

I appreciate the population-wide average impact of social systems on individual happiness, but there's obvious variety within populations, even families, that is accounted for by personality.

On another note, I find it hard to believe, Will, that you are low in conscientiousness especially in relative terms. Perhaps the fact that you regard yourself as *unsconscientious* shows how conscientious you really are!

Will Wilkinson · 1 year ago

Kevin, That's what the test says! I was raised in a hyper-conscientious culture, and I am unusual in a number of useful ways, which helps a lot. Otherwise, I might be screwed. A high school girlfriend once told me I'd end up the smartest guy working the Quik-Trip. This has always haunted me, because it's never been hard for me to imagine how that could happen. But yes, I am extremely conscientious for a person so low on native conscientiousness. Current and future employers please take note.

April · 1 year ago

Great post Will.
I'm too cheap to pay the $29 for the article - but I'd find it more interesting if they break down the category of introversion-extraversion into its three consitituent parts: ease of interpersonal communication/social interaction; whether the person recharges by being alone vs with others; and, degree of comfort with self-revelation. One could easily imagine that these characteristics might be differentially related to happiness.

Another interesting thing to contemplate is whether certain personality characteristics might or might not predispose people to take up habits (e.g. meditation) which have proven effective in increasing individual happiness. It's possible meditation may even work through shifting a personality characteristic. I think it has made me more conscientious, for example.

Winton Bates · 1 year ago

A point that might be worth adding is that heritable differences in self-reported happiness only account for (from memory) about half of the total variation in self-reported happiness. So it is possible to acknowledge the importance of personality without suggesting that other factors, such as income, are not important.

Will Wilkinson · 1 year ago

April, Great points. In fact, I'm really attracted to meditation because it's the only thing that really seems to make a deep difference. Better than Ritalin, anyway.

Winston, Yeah, I should have mentioned that.

bjk · 1 year ago

Extraverts are notorious liars.

Michele Connolly · 1 year ago

The happiness-personality link is a hot issue for me, not least because I score high on both introversion and neuroticism but have LEARNED how to be happy - very happy, in fact.

But for me, the big lesson of the personality-happiness research is that about half of happiness variance is not accounted for by either genes/personality or demographics/circumstances. That leave a lot of potential for raising our own happiness via 'intentional' factors. Great news for Neurotic introverts like moi.

[I have several posts on the topic at http://www.happinessstrategies.com/blog/categor...

James · 1 year ago

All these twins lived in the same or similar countries presumably. I could see where the mix of personalities around a person might have a large effect on which personality "build" is best for happiness. An introvert in a nation of extroverts probably won't do as well as if he were surrounded by fellow introverts. Does this study get into that? Would Kevin still slap his forehead if it did?

Payout Percentages · 1 year ago

It would really help the ones who just want to take their communication toe the higher level as it is become very important to have such interpersonal and communication skills which easily attract the other person.
thanks for this post having such wonderful and useful information about personality development.