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Why are some people cool and others, well, not? The six traits that make you stand out from the crowd

Why are some people cool and others, well, not? The six traits that make you stand out from the crowd

Is there a secret sauce that helps explain why people as different as David Bowie, Samuel L Jackson and Charli XCX all seem so self-assured and, well, cool?
A new study suggests that there are six specific traits that these people tend to have in common: Cool people are largely perceived to be extroverted, hedonistic, powerful, adventurous, open and autonomous.
The study, which was published on Monday in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, surveyed nearly 6,000 participants from 12 countries around the world. Their beliefs about what's 'cool' were similar regardless of where the study participants lived, and despite differences in age, income level, education or gender.
'What blew my mind was the fact that it was pretty much the same result everywhere,' says Caleb Warren, one of the authors of the study and a professor at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona who has researched consumer psychology for two decades.
In the study, each participant had to recognise the word 'cool' in English, without translation, suggesting that they were already familiar with — or maybe even idolised — notions of coolness from wealthy Western countries like the United States.
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The study offers a window into the spread of cultural beliefs from one group of people to another, says Joseph Henrich, an anthropologist and a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University who was not involved in the study.
'Globally, American success has led to the diffusion of music styles and an immense amount of cultural content, including, apparently, the concept of cool,' Henrich says.
Coolness is not a widely studied subject. Past research has found that coolness is usually considered something positive: people who are cool are also friendly, competent, trendy and attractive. But Warren and his colleagues wanted to know what makes a person distinctly 'cool' rather than just 'good'.
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