![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/FashionableMan.jpg\" "\\"cool?\\"")
Do rebelliousness, emotional control, toughness and thrill-seeking still make up the essence of coolness?<\/p>\n
Can performers James Dean and Miles Davis still be considered the models of cool?<\/p>\n
Research led by a University of Rochester Medical Center psychologist and published by the Journal of Individual Differences<\/em> has found the characteristics associated with coolness today are markedly different than those that generated the concept of cool<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I set out to find what people mean by coolness, I wanted to find corroboration of what I thought coolness was,\u201d said Ilan Dar-Nimrod, Ph.D., lead author of Coolness: An Empirical Investigation<\/em>. \u201cI was not prepared to find that coolness has lost so much of its historical origins and meaning\u2014the very heavy countercultural, somewhat individualistic pose I associated with cool<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cJames Dean is no longer the epitome of cool,\u201d Dar-Nimrod said. \u201cThe much darker version of what coolness is still there, but it is not the main focus. The main thing is: Do I like this person? Is this person nice to people, attractive, confident and successful? That\u2019s cool today, at least among young mainstream individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n In research that has developed over several years, Dar-Nimrod, currently a post-doctoral fellow in the Medical Center\u2019s Department of Psychiatry, and his colleagues recruited almost 1,000 people in the Vancouver, British Columbia, area, who completed an extensive questionnaire on the attributes, behaviors and individuals they associated with the word cool.<\/p>\n In the journal article, the research is described as the first systematic, quantitative examination of what characteristics recur in popular understandings of the cool personality.<\/p>\n The researchers conducted three separate studies. In Study 1, participants generated characteristics that they perceived to be cool. In Study 2, two samples of participants rated dozens of these characteristics on two dimensions: coolness and social desirability. In Study 3, participants rated friends both on their coolness and on a variety of personality descriptors that were identified as relevant in the other studies.<\/p>\n A significant number of participants used adjectives that focused on positive, socially desirable traits, such as friendly, competent, trendy and attractive<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cI got my first sunglasses when I was about 13,\u201d said Dar-Nimrod. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t a cooler kid on the block for the next few days. I was looking cool because I was distant from people. My emotions were not something they could read. I put a filter between me and everyone else. That, in my mind, made me cool. Today, that doesn\u2019t seem to be supported. If anything, sociability is considered to be cool, being nice is considered to be cool. And in an oxymoron, being passionate is considered to be cool\u2014at least, it is part of the dominant perception of what coolness is. How can you combine the idea of cool\u2014emotionally controlled and distant\u2014with passionate?\u201d<\/p>\n At some levels, participants in the study still appreciated the traditional elements of cool, such as rebelliousness and detachment, but not as strongly as friendliness and warmth.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a kind of a schizophrenic coolness concept in our mind,\u201d Dar-Nimrod said. \u201cAlmost any one of us will be cool in some people\u2019s eyes, which suggests the idiosyncratic way coolness is evaluated. But some will be judged as cool in many people\u2019s eyes, which suggests there is a core valuation to coolness, and today that does not seem to be the historical nature of cool. We suggest there is some transition from the countercultural cool to a generic version of it\u2019s good<\/strong> and I like it. But this transition is by no way completed.\u201d<\/p>\n Dar-Nimrod\u2019s main research interests are the effects of genetics and social environment on decision-making and health behaviors. The coolness research began when Dar-Nimrod was a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia. He and a fellow student, Ian G. Hansen, a co-author of the Journal of Individual Differences <\/em>and currently an assistant professor at York College of City University of New York, argued over whether Steve Buscemi, an actor in the movie Fargo<\/em> and the cable television series Boardwalk Empire<\/em>, is cool.<\/p>\n \u201cIan thought Buscemi was cool and I could not accept him as cool because he was so unattractive and seemed such a weasel,\u201d Dar-Nimrod said. \u201cThat got us thinking about just what coolness is.\u201d<\/p>\n The coolness findings could point to possible health impacts.<\/p>\n \u201cCoolness may have some relevance to health behaviors,\u201d Dar-Nimrod said. \u201cSmoking or drug use, for example, could be connected with a view of coolness that includes rebelliousness or a countercultural stance. This can inform future health research on behaviors. Is coolness related to people\u2019s choice of unhealthy behaviors, such body modifications, unprotected sex or even eating behaviors?\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to Dar-Nimrod and Hansen, authors of \u201cCoolness: An Empirical Investigation\u201d include: Travis Proulx, Ph.D., of the Tilburg University in The Netherlands, Darrin R. Lehman, Ph.D., of the University of British Columbia, and Paul R. Duberstein, Ph.D., and Benjamin P. Chapman, Ph.D., of the University of Rochester Medical Center.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the University of Rochester Medical Center press release: Do rebelliousness, emotional control, toughness and thrill-seeking still make up the essence of coolness? 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