Why is everyone so wrong about personality?

There’s so much misinformation out there about personality. Today, we’re going to talk about what the science really says, why people might believe these false ideas, and whether some of them might contain a grain of truth. Myth, you’re either an extrovert or an introvert. Many people like to describe themselves this way. You might hear someone say, “I’m an extrovert. I love spending time with people. I love going out and partying. I love doing things with big groups.” Or you might meet someone who

Says, “I’m an introvert. I like to sit on the couch and read, and when I am with people, I much prefer one-on-one conversation rather than group activities. This introvert-extrovert dichotomy is not only one of the most famous personality traits, it’s one of the easiest to observe in ourselves and other people. But the fact is, while extroverts and introverts exist, most people are neither extroverts nor introverts. Most people lie near the middle of the introvert-to-extrovert spectrum. And this is not just true of

Introversion and extroversion. Many personality traits follow a bell curve or normal distribution. With a bell curve, most people fall near the middle, and you have fewer and fewer people as you get out toward the tails. But why might so many people believe this myth? Well, there’s actually a very clear answer. The most popular personality test in the world, which is the Myers-Briggs test and other tests inspired by it, assign you either an I for introvert or E for extrovert. They

Don’t have an in-between value. This means that most people are forced into a dichotomy that doesn’t represent them, because most people are ambiverts. They’re not I or E. This is one example of a much broader phenomena where we humans tend to like to dichotomize things, to put them into either this or that. In reality, many things aren’t like this. It’s often more accurate to view them as spectrums rather than dichotomies. Myth, you’re either left-brained or right-brained. Given the

Previous discussion, you might think that the problem here is dichotomization. You’re either left-brained or right-brained with nothing in between. But that actually isn’t the biggest problem here. The biggest problem here is that this distinction doesn’t even exist between people, or if it does, it doesn’t mean what it’s claimed to mean. When people talk about the left brain, they’re usually referring to traits such as being more analytical, logical, verbal, and sequential. On the other hand, when they talk about the right brain, they’re

Usually talking about traits of being more creative, intuitive, emotional, and holistic. The main myth here is that individuals can be classified as either left-brain dominant or right-brain dominant. In other words, that their actual brain activations differ from each other, and that this predicts their personality traits. Now, that’s not to say that there’s no differences whatsoever between people and how they use the hemispheres of their brains. But insofar as these differences exist, they don’t seem to map onto the claims about

Some people being creative and intuitive and others being analytical and verbal. Why is there this myth about left-brained versus right-brained people? Well, first of all, people really do differ in the extent to which they’re more analytical and logical versus emotional and intuitive. This is a real difference between people that you can measure. It just doesn’t really correspond to activation of the left brain versus right brain in individuals. So, we have to be careful about distinguishing between a claim about the

Brain, which is left brain versus right brain, and a claim about personality, which is this idea that some people are more intuitive and some are more analytical. We can dig into this on our website, personalitymap.io, where we map out over a million real human correlations. If we look at agreement with a statement, “I’m logical, not emotional,” we see this quite a spread distribution of levels of agreement. Some people on the left, some people on the right, and many people in

The middle. Those on the left side of the distribution are more likely to agree with the statement, “In tough situations, I rely more on my feelings than on verifiable facts.” On the other hand, those on the right side of the distribution are more likely to agree with the statement, “I’m scientific, not artistic.” We have to be careful not to confuse claims about this personality spectrum with claims about mechanisms in the brain that might cause it. The

Personality spectrum? That’s a thing. But the claim that it’s because some people’s left brain versus right brain is more activated? That’s not. Why do so many people believe this myth? Well, in part, it’s because there’s some real science underneath this. People just take it way too far. It’s been demonstrated that the left hemisphere is more implicated in language use, and the right hemisphere tends to be more implicated in spatial attention. While these differences in the hemispheres are

Real, that doesn’t map onto individual differences between people using one half or the other half of the brain much more often. The two hemispheres of the brain are tightly integrated. The corpus callosum constantly sends information back and forth between them. And for most complex tasks, both hemispheres of the brain are used. Myth, opposites attract. Is it really true that people want to date someone who has the opposite personality to them? This is a common idea in rom-coms, and people

Often claim that it’s true. But what does the data actually say? Well, before we get into the data, let me tell you a true story. Many years ago, a friend of mine worked at a dating website, and he was tasked with creating a mobile version of their website. When you signed up for the service, it asked you many questions both about what’s true of you and what you wanted in an ideal mate. So, for instance, do you smoke

Cigarettes, and would you want your ideal mate to smoke cigarettes? He had an idea to simplify the mobile experience. What if you simply assumed that whatever you said was true about yourself, you also wanted to be true in your match. What he was fascinated to realize when he tested this assumption is that it was true more than 90% of the time. What people said they wanted in their ideal match was simply what was true of themselves. I’ve actually tested

This idea myself. With a group of friends, we threw a series of events where people met each other after answering long surveys. At the event, there were speed dating components where they would talk to people for a few minutes and indicated whether they wanted to go on a date. I then analyzed the data and looked at for what traits was being more similar predictive of wanting to go on a date together versus for what traits was being more different

Predictive of wanting to go on a date. So, what did I find? There were 29 traits where being more similar was correlated with wanting to go on a date, and only 11 traits where being more different was correlated with wanting to go on a date. In other words, it was much more true that birds of a feather flock together than that opposites attract. But why might people believe this myth? I think it’s in part because there are certain salient differences

That do actually attract. The most obvious difference is that most men want to date women, and most women want to date men, while of course there are lots of exceptions. Another common example is in the bedroom, sexually dominant people like to be with sexually submissive people and vice versa. But these are more the exception than the rule. It’s much more common that similarities attract than that differences do. Myth, having a really high self-esteem is a good thing. Before we dig into the

Details, what is self-esteem? It’s your overall evaluation of your worth, value, and competence. It might seem obvious that having high self-esteem is good. But is it actually? Well, we actually have to differentiate between a healthy form of self-esteem and an unhealthy form. A healthy self-esteem involves knowing that you don’t deserve to be treated badly, that you have something valuable to offer the world, and that you’re actually good at the things you’re truly good at. Unhealthy self-esteem looks like narcissism. It

Involves believing that you’re more special and more deserving than other people, and believing that you’re better at skills than you really are. Healthy self-esteem is quite valuable and may help protect against depression. It may actually be quite important for being a happy person. One time we analyzed a large data set we had about people’s happiness. It asked them many, many different questions about how happy they are. We then analyzed, if you could only ask one of these questions, which one

Best predicts the answers to all of the other happiness questions. Much to our surprise, the most predictive single question was, “In general, I feel positive and confident about myself.” On the other hand, unhealthy self-esteem is not necessarily linked to happiness, and it’s often linked to unstable relationships. People who are narcissistic often seem supremely confident, but in reality, it’s not a stable confidence. They try desperately to make themselves feel superior, which feels really good to them. But then

Often their ego will suddenly collapse when there’s a setback, and they’ll feel absolutely terrible. Narcissism is also linked to mistreating other people, because if you think you’re genuinely superior and deserving of more, you might treat other people badly. So, should we actually encourage high self-esteem in children? Well, we have to be careful. It’s important that children know they’re not deserving of bad treatment, that they have something valuable to offer the world, and when they’re good at things, they should

Believe they’re good at those things. On the other hand, we don’t want to encourage children to be narcissistic, to think they’re superior or more deserving than everyone else, and we don’t want them to be massively overconfident about their own abilities. So, why do these myths about personality exist? Well, in all four cases, we see something that’s similar. There’s a kernel of real science, and then it gets exaggerated, dichotomized, or distorted into something that’s not really true.

There really are introverts and extroverts, but most people are in the middle, they’re ambiverts. The left hemisphere of the brain and right hemisphere of the brain do actually differ in some interesting ways. This is just not a useful way to categorize people. There are some dimensions along which people are attracted to those who are opposite to them, but that’s actually the exception, not the rule. It’s much more common that people are attracted to the attributes that they

Themselves have. And finally, self-esteem is healthy in certain ways, but there’s also an unhealthy version of self-esteem. I’m also really excited to tell you we’ve just launched a new test, which we call our unique traits test. It looks at more than 80 different attributes of your personality and characteristics and tells you which might apply to you. It can help you discover new things about yourself that you’ve never noticed before. The test is free to take. Just click the link in the

Description below. And if you found this interesting, I’d really appreciate it if you’d subscribe. Nearly every week, we put out a new video about psychology where we either look at the scientific evidence or deep dive into our own research.