176 - Brian Little: Personality Psychology and the Big Five Traits

Brian Little is Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at Cambridge University, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at Carleton, and a Senior Fellow at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is well known for his work on personality psychology and his development of personal project analysis. In this episode, Brian and Robinson discuss the Big Five personality traits, how psychologists measure them, what their predictive power is, and how personal projects give us a new dimension for understanding ourselves. Brian’s latest book is Who Are You, Really? The Surprising Puzzle of Personality (Simon & Schuster, 2017).

Who Are You, Really?: https://a.co/d/cp4QRuE

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode…

00:57 Introduction

02:53 An Interest in Personality

10:30 The Origin of The Big Five Personality Traits

20:51 What Are The Big Five Traits?

44:37 How Do Psychologists Measure Personality?

58:06 Is Personality Inherited?

01:07:13 What Is the Ideogenic Self?

01:16:09 What Are Personal Projects in Psychology?

01:31:14 Can We Change Our Personalities?

01:42:21 Managing Our Personal Projects

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.