Cool itself resembles a moving target, until individuals are requested to define it.
A uniform image of coolness can be observed in the research of psychology across different cultures that are differentiated by language, norms, and social rules. In experiments conducted between 2018 and 2022, close to 6,000 adults in 13 countries were requested to consider a particular and non-famous individual who was cool, not cool, good, or not good, and subsequently evaluate the characteristics of that individual as well as their values.
The appearance is important: it stands between the social attraction and the moral approval. Some of the coolest people are not always good even when it happens with real people.
1. Extraversion
There is always a perception that cool people are more socially outgoing. Extraversion in the study was able to provide a clean demarcation between cool and uncool and also, demarcation between cool and good since good people were not perceived to be highly extraverted. Cultural lesson is not to be loud but rather to be seen to be involved, starting discussions, tone, and grabbing attention without demanding it.
2. Hedonism
There is a tendency towards pleasure and enjoyment, a reliable part of coolness, more life to live than life to do what is right. This aspect is one of the reasons why being cool may be thrilling and dangerous simultaneously. Here hedonism is part of the cooler, as opposed to the good, making the point that coolness is often used to indicate a lack of rigid control over oneself as opposed to a perceived ability to be in control.
3. Power (presence and influence)
Cool people are perceived as possessing a social power of a certain kind: confidence, influence, and the power to influence what other people focus on. According to the research, power is an element of the cool profile, rather than a moral virtue. Such a difference explains why a few individuals may be powerful and fashionsetting without being consistently labeled as affectionate, reliable, or even chummy.
4. Adventurousness
Adventure crosses borders to come out as cool since it promises to go social and experiential with risk-taking, exploring alternative scenes, going off-script, speaking up first, or gambling on a non-conventional way of doing things.
In the research behind this, this character trait is in the same cluster with novelty-seeking and status: adventurous individuals may appear to be moving toward something, and not merely keeping what the current one has.
5. Openness to experience
Openness is also similar to the signature of curiosity of coolness. It involves the openness to new ideas, tastes and aesthetics and it facilitates coolness flowing well across cultures influenced by global media. As the authors point out, the global popularity of fun and clothes has contributed to the concentration of a comparable body of ideals and qualities, such that, in spite of a local standard being different, cool has become more familiar.
6. Autonomy
The cool stereotype is built on autonomy: doing things their own way, and not easily influenced by the group, and not afraid to go against the crowd. Here is where the coolness most glaringly part ways with good, which in the identical work is more related with tradition, security, conscientiousness and agreeableness. Autonomy is also related to the historical trajectory that the researchers and cultural scholars commonly follow: the phenomenon of coolness as a result of the subcultures that employed style and restraint as the means of resistance and self-identification.
A single sentence by the research team suits the reason the label continues to draw them: cool people are needed in society as they break the rules, spark change, and cultural progress. That social role is the reason why being cool is so different to being merely likeable.
What is usually overlooked is the fact that the qualities of goodness, which are warmth, calmness, conscientiousness and tradition, can create trust even though they fail to sound cool. In real life, such a disparity is where individuals tend to make judgments on who appears to be a magnetic person versus who appears to be a safe person to trust.
