The everyday habits that reveal our personalities
日常生活习惯如何揭示我们的人格特质？
One reason that personality is such an important psychological concept is because of what it tells us about the kind of lives we’re likely to lead. For example, if you are very conscientious then you’re more likely to enjoy good physical health and more harmonious relationships; extroverts are happier; highly neurotic people experience more mental health problems; open-minded people command higher earnings; and, just as you’d expect, more ‘agreeable’ people are also usually popular and have lots of friends.
性格之所以是一个重要的心理学概念，是因为性格决定我们的生活。例如，（五大性格特质）尽责性的人，身体往往会更健康，人际关系更和谐；外向性的人幸福感更强；情绪不稳定性的人精神健康出问题的概率更大；开放性的人收入更高；亲和性的人更受欢迎，朋友也更多。
But our personalities don’t only show themselves in our long-term success and well-being. They also correlate with the kind of things we get up to on a mundane, daily basis. A new study published in Personality and Individual Differences has charted these behavioural ‘signatures’ of the Big Five personality traits – listed above – in more detail than ever before. And the results are surprising.
但是，性格不仅仅关系到我们的长期事业成败或者身体健康，它们还和我们每天的琐碎生活习惯密切相关。《性格及个体差异》（Personality and Individual Differences）杂志发表的一篇研究论文深入地描述了上述五大性格特征的行为标志。研究发现很是出人意料。
你性格开朗？意味着你更喜欢看歌剧
While it goes without saying, for instance, that extroverts (which psychologists spell 'extraverts') are more likely to go to parties and that conscientious people are less likely to be tardy, you might not have anticipated that extroverts also spend more time luxuriating in hot tubs or that conscientiousness goes hand in hand with reading fewer books.
人人都知道，外向性的人参加聚会的频率更高，尽责性的人迟到的概率更低。但你或许没想到过，外向性的人泡热水浴的时间更长，而尽责性的人阅读量更少。
The researchers, Benjamin Chapman at the University of Rochester and Lewis Goldberg at the Oregon Research Institute, profiled nearly 800 people in Oregon, USA, most of whom were white, and their average age was 51. The personality test asked participants to rate how accurately 100 different trait adjectives described their personalities, including words such as bashful, kind, neat, relaxed, moody, bright and artistic. The researchers then compared these personality test scores with the same participants’ answers, recorded four years later, to how often they had performed 400 different activities over the last year, from reading a book to singing in the shower.
论文研究者是罗切斯特大学（University of Rochester）的本杰明·查普曼（Benjamin Chapman）和俄勒冈研究所（Oregon Research Institute）的刘易斯·哥德堡（Lewis Goldberg）。他们在美国俄勒冈州调查了将近800人，其中大多数都是白人，平均年龄51岁。性格测试中，要求被调查者描述最能体现其性格特征的100个词汇，其中包括羞怯、善良、整洁、放松、情绪多变、开朗和艺术感。上述被调查者在4年之后接受了一次新的调查，调查内容是在过去的一年中他们是否做了从读书到在浴室唱歌的400种不同活动。研究者随后将两次调查的结果进行对比。
As well as wallowing more in hot tubs, extroverts apparently spent more time planning parties, drinking in bars, discussing ways to make money, talking on the phone while driving, decorating, and trying to get a tan (though not all at once). Greater conscientiousness, in contrast, was distinguished by the avoidance of various activities, including such innocuous pastimes as reading (which Chapman and Goldberg speculated may be seen by the highly conscientious as a leisure-time luxury), swearing and chewing on a pencil.
除了喜欢泡热水澡外，外向者还喜欢筹划聚会、在酒吧饮酒、讨论如何赚钱、驾车时打电话、装修房子、在海滩晒黑（尽管以上行为往往不会出现在同一人身上）。尽责性的人则比较不会从事下列活动，包括阅读（查普曼和哥德堡认为阅读可能被尽责性的人视为是消闲活动）、骂脏话、咬铅笔杆等。
People scoring high on agreeability, meanwhile, said they spent more time doing ironing, playing with children and washing the dishes – presumably because their strong motivation to keep other people happy means they’d rather do the chores than have domestic acrimony. More surprisingly, they were also more likely to sing in the shower or the car.
亲和性高的人，花更多时间熨烫衣服、陪小孩玩耍和洗碗，可能是因为想要让别人感到开心，他们更愿意去做家务事，从而避免与家人争吵。更让人感到意外的是，他们更可能在浴室或者汽车里唱歌。
Neurotic folk, meanwhile, engaged more often in activities that are associated with helping reduce mental distress, such as taking more tranquilisers and anti-depressants. But they also admitted to more anti-social behaviours, such as losing their temper more often, or making fun of others – perhaps because they struggle to keep their own emotions in check. Finally, open-mindedness went together with some obvious behaviours like reading poetry, going to the opera, smoking marijuana and producing art, but also some less obvious, like swearing around others, eating spicy food at breakfast, or lounging around the house with no clothes on. (To be precise, the highest scorers said they were about twice as likely to have sat around in the nude for more than 15 times in the past year, compared to the lowest scorers.) They were also less likely to follow a sports team.
情绪不稳定性的人则更经常做一些能够减缓精神压力的事情，比如服用镇静剂和抗抑郁药。但他们同时也承认，他们的反社会行为也比较多，比如更容易发脾气，或者取笑他人，这么做或许是因为他们无法控制住自己的情绪。最后，开放性的人更喜欢读诗、听歌剧、吸大麻和创作艺术作品，此外还有让人意想不到的骂人、早餐时吃辛辣食品、或者在房子里裸体。（在过去一年，裸体坐在家里超过15次的得分最高者的比例是得分最低者的两倍。）另外他们还不喜欢参加球队。
This study is impressive for the huge range of activities that it investigated, though it remains to be seen if the same personality-behaviour links would be found in other cultures around the world, and of course there remain many thousands of other daily behaviours to be looked at. The new findings add to earlier research on behaviour-personality links, most of which has tended to focus on more specific activities or only on certain traits. For example, previous studies had shown that the highly conscientious are more likely to wear a watch, comb their hair and polish their shoes; that extroverts have more tattoos, that introverts use more concrete language; agreeable folk get fewer speeding tickets and eat more sweet foods; and that open-mindedness correlates with a penchant for fruit and vegetables, art-house movies, and a preference for dry, rather than sweet, white wine.
这项研究引人瞩目的原因在于所调查的活动涵盖非常广泛。但是在其他地区的文化背景下，这种性格-行为关联是否依然存在尚且存疑，除此之外，还有数千种日常活动并未涉及。针对行为-性格关联的已有研究侧重于更为具体的活动或有限的性格特质，新研究则大大拓宽了广度。例如，已有研究证实，尽责性的人更可能戴手表、梳头发和擦皮鞋；外向者更可能纹身，内向者喜欢使用更加具体的语言；亲和性的人较少超速，喜欢甜食；开放性的人喜欢水果和蔬菜，艺术电影、更喜欢喝比较不甜的白葡萄酒，而非甜葡萄酒。
Other research has looked at behaviours, some more obvious than others, that correlate with the so-called Dark Triad personality traits of Narcissism, Machiavellianism and Psychopathy. For example, high scorers on psychopathy aren’t just more prone to violence, bullying and aggression, they also maintain unusually long eye contact, and along with Machiavellians, are more likely to participate in and enjoy online trolling.
其他研究发现，某些行为与"黑暗三合一"性格（自恋、权术癖好和心理变态）存在更为密切的关联。例如，在心理变态上得分高者并不倾向于使用暴力、欺凌和攻击。他们的眼神接触时间很长，和权术癖好者一样，他们更喜欢参与网络人身攻击和泄愤。
Another recent study found that the more highly that people scored across the Dark Triad, the more likely they were to say that they that were a “night owl” as opposed to a “morning lark” – that is, they rise later in the day and stay up later in the evening. Just as you would expect, narcissists take and post more selfies, and heterosexual women scoring higher in Machiavellianism are more likely to fake orgasm to deliberately deceive or manipulate their partners (as opposed to having their pleasure in mind).
另一项近期研究还发现，在"黑暗三合一"性格上得分越高，就越喜欢熬夜，晚睡晚起。正如你所预料到的，自恋者更喜欢自拍，而在权术癖好上得分高的异性恋妇女更喜欢假装获得高潮，从而欺骗或操控她们的性伴侣（而不是只求获得愉悦感）。
There’s a serious side to this field of research – learning more about the harmful and unhealthy everyday behaviours linked to the different personality traits could contribute to better, more targeted health campaigns and interventions. Also, research into personality often involves people answering questionnaires about themselves, hopefully in an honest way. By discovering some quirky and less expected behavioural correlates of the Big Five traits, there’s the possibility of one day devising a questionnaire that asks people about the activities they engage in, without them realising they are actually revealing their personality.
这一研究领域有严肃的一面——深化了解那些与不同性格特征有关的，有害且不健康的日常行为有助于制定更有效、更具针对性的健康扶持计划和介入行动。另外，在开展对性格的研究时，常常需要被调查者证实回答关于他们自己的调查问卷。通过发现与五大性格特征关联的，某些离奇且出人意料的行为习惯，我们有朝一日可能能够设计出这样一套调查问卷：只需提问被调查者每天都进行哪些活动就能判断出他们的性格，而被调查者则根本不知道这是一项性格调查。
Of course, there’s also a fun, thought-provoking element to the new findings – for example, if you’re a prolific curser, you can now defend your habit as being a sign of your open-mindedness. And maybe now you’ll also be a little more forgiving of your house-mate’s habit of singing in the shower. After all, it could just be another sign of his or her agreeable personality.
新研究还带来了某些生动有趣而令人脑洞大开的发现。例如，如果你过去常常诅咒他人，现在就没必要改掉这个坏习惯了，它是性情开朗的标志。现在你的室友在浴室里唱歌你也能原谅他了，这正表明他/她性情随和人缘好。
来源：好英语网
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