Study reveals 6 traits that make someone 'cool' — and they’re the same around the world

What makes someone "cool"? A new international study suggests the answer may be far more complex than expected. Published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, the study was conducted over four years across a dozen countries, including the United States, China, South Korea, Chile, and Nigeria. Nearly 6,000 participants were asked to describe someone in their lives they considered "cool," "uncool," "good," or "not good," and then rate that person’s personality using established psychological measures. It found that individuals perceived as "cool" tend to share six specific personality traits: extroversion, hedonism, power, adventurousness, openness, and autonomy.

Todd Pezzuti, an associate professor of marketing at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile and a co-lead researcher on the study, said, "The most surprising thing was seeing that the same attributes emerge in every country. Regardless of whether it’s China or Korea or Chile or the US, people like people who are pushing boundaries and sparking change. So I would say that coolness really represents something more fundamental than the actual label of coolness." Participants also associated traits like being calm, conscientious, universalistic, agreeable, warm, secure, traditional, and conforming with being a "good" person more than a "cool" one. "Capable" was linked to both categories, and the six defining traits of coolness showed up consistently across age, gender, and educational background, as per CNN.

"To be seen as cool, someone usually needs to be somewhat likable or admirable, which makes them similar to good people," said Caleb Warren, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Arizona and co-lead researcher. He added, "However, cool people often have other traits that aren’t necessarily considered ‘good’ in a moral sense, like being hedonistic and powerful." Jonah Berger, associate professor at the Wharton School, who was not involved in the study, said, "While people have long wondered (and theorized) about what makes people cool, there hasn’t been a lot of actual empirical research on the topic, so it’s great to see work exploring this space."

"We don’t know what we would find in supertraditional cultures like hunting-and-gathering tribes or sustenance farming groups," Pezzuti said. "One thing we would propose is that in those cultures, 'cool' people don’t have as important of a role because innovation, or cultural innovation, isn’t as important in those cultures. So I would say that cool people are probably present in those cultures, but their role isn’t as big, and they’re probably not as admired as they are in other cultures," he added. Asked for a public example of someone who fits the cool profile, Pezzuti said, "He’s a controversial figure, but someone who comes to my mind is Elon Musk." He added that Musk is "undeniably powerful" and autonomous. "He seems very extroverted. He’s entertaining. He’s on podcasts and always in front of cameras," Pezzuti said.

Jon Freeman, associate professor of psychology at Columbia University, added, "Coolness can be a positive quality but can also have a negative connotation in certain social contexts. It may be valuable for future work to examine the differences between good coolness and bad coolness, and this study’s approach offers a great foundation." He went on to clarify, "'Cool' is deeply ingrained in our social vocabulary because it serves as a shorthand for complex inferences. It encapsulates signals of status, affiliation, and identity in ways that are instantaneous yet deeply stereotyped."