What makes a person cool? Global study has some answers

From Lagos to Cape Town, Santiago to Seoul, people want to be cool. “Cool” is a word we hear everywhere — in music, in fashion, on social media. We use it to describe certain types of people.

- TODD PEZZUTI

But what exactly makes someone cool? Is it just about being popular or trendy? Or is there something deeper going on?

In a recent study I conducted with other marketing professors, we set out to answer a simple but surprisingly unexplored question. What are the personality traits and values that make someone seem cool — and do they differ across cultures?

We asked nearly 6,000 people from 12 countries to think of someone they personally knew who was “cool,” “not cool,” “good,” or “not good.” Then we asked them to describe that person’s traits and values using validated psychological measures. We used this data to examine how coolness differs from general likeability or morality.

The countries ranged from Australia to Turkey, the US to Germany, India to China, Nigeria to South Africa.

Our data showed that coolness is uniquely associated with the same six traits around the world: cool people tend to be extroverted, hedonistic, adventurous, open, powerful, and autonomous.

These findings help settle a long debate about what it means to be cool today.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF COOL

Early writing on coolness described it as emotional restraint: being calm, composed, and unbothered. This view, rooted in the metaphor of temperature and emotion, saw coolness as a sign of self-control and mastery.

Some of these scholars trace this form of cool to slavery and segregation, where emotional restraint was a survival strategy among enslaved Africans and their descendants, symbolizing autonomy and dignity in the face of oppression. Others propose “cool” restraint existed long before slavery.