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Research on personality looks at big sources of individual differences.

People have their own beliefs about the traits that are central to who they are.

Those core traits don't always respect the boundaries of the science of personality.

Instead, people focus on positive traits that are most extreme relative to the rest of their traits.

If I asked you to describe your most important traits, what would you say? Do you see yourself as hard-working, high-achieving, or good with people? Chances are, you have some beliefs about what characteristics are at your core.

Perhaps surprisingly, this question has not been a focus of much work in psychology. Instead, researchers have focused on understanding a variety of personality traits. For example, the Big Five traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) reflect the most significant ways that people’s behavior and motivation differ from each other. Do the elements of the Big Five also define what people think is central about themselves?

This question was explored in a 2026 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Elizabeth Long, Norhan Elsaadawy, Erika Carlson, and Mac Fournier.

These........

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