https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=3NBysuAK30g
Imagine that you’re looking for a stable partner, right? So you might think, well, 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, what, subject yourself to. And it’s very, very difficult for people who broadly differ, widely 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, 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 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 the 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 a large difference by psychological standards. 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 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 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 extroversion, right? Because extroversion 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 labour. Especially the reciprocal exchange of labour. And you can imagine that 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 were completely unproductive in the history of the evolution of our species were wiped out by people who were unhappy with their lack of productivity. And so I think, generally speaking, human beings have this sense of ethical obligation with regards to one another to share labour. 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 disadvantage is 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? It 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 what would you call it, inequitable distribution of housework. Because even if you’re imagine that your proclivity is to be triggered by disorder 25 seconds before your partners, well, you’re going to end up 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 we don’t know what the optimal 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, that those where you’re different is going to constitute a chronic source of conflict. Conflict.