We've got a hypothesis that we're still working out
That's supported to some degree by the relevant literature
So imagine that you're looking for a stable partner, you might think
What do you want in a stable partner and at least in principle?
One of the things you don't want is too much mismatch between you and that person on the five fundamental dimensions
So for example if you're really extroverted and you have a really introverted partner
You're going to engage in continual conflict about how much social activity the two of you should
subject yourself to and it's very very difficult for people who
Broadly differ on those dimensions to come to consensus because it's not just a matter of opinion, right?
It's really a matter of different
And if you're looking [at] extremes of really different types of people and [the] thing about introverts is they just don't enjoy
Large scale social interaction that much, one-on-one they're often fine
But in a group they don't like that and it tires them out whereas a real extrovert
It's like you isolate them and and they just wither on the vine because a huge part of what actually motivates them in a positive
Way is tangled up with social interaction, and so if you're an agreeable person, and you have a particularly
Disagreeable partner you're also going to run into problems because the agreeable person will say whatever you want whenever and
A disagreeable person will say "well
I'd like to know what the hell you want for a change" [and] be much more harsh and much more demanding in the
situation and the agreeable person is going to find the disagreeable person harsh and unpleasant and the
Disagreeable person is going to find the agreeable person
Wishy-Washy and unable to stand up for themselves and again that's actually one of the primary sources of tension between men and women
because women tend to be higher in agreeableness than men it's about half a standard [deviation] which is quite quite quite a
quite a large difference by
psyChological standards and so
What that means, I probably haven't got the statistic quite right,
But [I] think I've got it about right what that means fundamentally just so you have some sense of how large
An effect that is, is that if you
Have a group of men and women and you pick out random pairs the woman is going to be more agreeable than the man
[60%] of the time so that's not an overwhelming
Proportion, but it's reliable and it's quite
It's quite large by psychological standards, so there's the problem with agreeableness, with conscientiousness
well if you're conscientious, you're industrious and
orderly and
Orderly people seem to be sensitive to disgust which is something we'll talk about in detail later. We've had a hard time
specifying exactly
What makes industrious people industrious because it's hard to come up with an animal model for that sort of thing
And there's no theoretical model, but our latest
Idea is that, it's not my idea. It's actually the idea of my graduate student Christine brophy, is that
industrious people find it
Unpleasant and unsettling to to not be doing something so it isn't so much that
Industriousness makes them happy or fills them with positive emotion that would be more extraversion right because extraversion is the positive emotion dimension
It's [that] industrious people can't stand sitting around doing nothing, and you know, this is speculation
but you know human beings are obviously always engaged in the exchange of labor especially the
reciprocal exchange of [labor] and you can imagine that
In a in a community where everyone knows everyone
the people who work hard are going to be pretty irritated on a fairly chronic basis with the people who are completely unproductive and
My suspicions are that plenty of people who are completely unproductive in the history of the evolution of our species
were [wiped] out by [people] who were unhappy with their lack of productivity
generally speaking human beings have this sense of ethical obligation with regards to one another to share labor and
People who are conscientious really really feel that so they feel bad if they're not busily working on something
That's productive all the time and so the advantage to being with someone conscientious is well
They're going to work like mad, but the disadvantages is [they're] they're going to work like mad
so
You know if you're looking for a partner that you want to relax with or have fun with or who isn't
Uptight then a conscientious person is probably not a very good choice.
On the other hand if you're a conscientious person, and you're living with someone who's really unconscious
That's good because they might be able to help you relax
But you're not going to be happy with them because they don't work nearly as hard as you do
But even worse on the orderly dimension, you know some of you have had roommates, and maybe you're more orderly than your roommate
What does it mean?
Means you're annoyed by mess before they are and you don't have to be annoyed by mess much before you're less
orderly roommate for you to be the one that's always running around picking things up and
So actually one of the things that's emerged from the psychometric analysis
Is that women are slightly more orderly than men and I suspect that has something to do with the,
What would you call it? inequitable distribution of housework, imagine that
Your proclivity is to be triggered by disorder twenty five seconds before your partner's.
It doesn't take much difference for you to be the one that's always concerned about the mess first, so anyways
And so if you're a really orderly person, and you live with a disorderly person well good luck getting along with them
they're going to regard you [as] like uptight and and
over concerned with details and and
And well and unwilling to relax that's for sure and they're going to regard you as well
Just a bloody mess, and how can anyone possibly live with someone like you and so
So another reason why it's useful to understand your personality is because I think it gives you a better
Crack at finding someone that you can actually live with over the long-run
and I don't think you want to live with someone who's exactly like you because
Then both [of] you have the same strengths and weaknesses
and there's a bit of a problem there right because [maybe] an agreeable person can use a bit of
Disagreeable person around them to balance each other out and vice versa right so we don't understand the optimal balance
for for for long term
thriving in a relationship
But I think we do understand the fact that if you're too different in
your traits and where you're different, it is going to constitute a chronic source of
Conflict