Vistopia
To Your Unique Self: 40 Lessons in Personality Psychology
Wang Fang
Hello, I’m Wang Fang. Greetings to you at this very moment.
We have repeatedly said that the Big Five is currently recognized in psychology as the best model for describing personality. But why? Where does its scientific validity lie? Why can today’s academic community endorse it as a relatively strong model? To answer, we need to examine how the Big Five arose, involving a hypothesis called the lexical hypothesis of personality traits and a statistical method called factor analysis.

The Lexical Hypothesis

Let us first examine the methodological foundation of the Big Five:the lexical hypothesis. This is a bottom-up hypothesis. It did not emerge from a particular theory but from an analysis of vocabulary.
Words, language, and writing have extraordinary significance for human beings. In Wittgenstein’s formulation, we all live beneath a great net woven from words. We do not control words; words control us, from thought to behavior. Language and writing form a symbolic system that influences thought and worldview. You cannot imagine an object you cannot describe in language. If Chinese has no suitable word for something, that thing may not exist in your world; the language you use therefore defines the boundary of the world you can know. Learning a foreign language can expand that boundary. Poverty is not the only thing that limits imagination; language does too.
The language we use also seems connected with personality. People often say that different people speak differently; the reverse may also be true: speaking differently may make us different people. Many people, for example, feel thatwhen they switch from one language to another, their personality seems to change as well.Speaking the soft Wu dialect may make someone sound gentle, while switching to a northeastern Chinese dialect can instantly make the whole person seem streetwise. Cultural psychologists have also found thatlanguage activates its corresponding culture. People fluent in both English and Japanese, for example, behave more individualistically when asked to think and express themselves in English, and more collectivistically when using Japanese (e.g., Oyserman & Lee, 2018).
Episode editor: 夏夏
2021.11.23
Audio in Chinese

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Featured comments

80 comments
  • 张连起
    2021-11-23 09:21:14

    看留言也可以分析人！ 1⃣️看标点符号。喜欢用感叹号和问号的人多是外向型的；标点符号使用标准规范的多是尽责型；一大段的连篇累牍没有断句絮絮叨叨的多是神经质的。 2⃣️看文字叙述风格。说话像古龙小说一样，讲究跳跃感和韵律感的，多是开放型；一句话解决问题，高度概括中心思想的多是尽责型；话锋绵软和颜悦色的多是宜人型；动不动就泪目感动的多是神经质。 3⃣️看留言内容。就事论事的多是男性；总爱抒发情感甚至经常引用自己的故事的多为女性。嘻嘻哈哈插科打诨的多是小年轻；感慨人生艰难通篇人生哲理的多是中年人。 OK，那么以上分析正确吗？我觉得一半一半吧。里面还有很重要的一个因素，就是幸存者偏差问题。假设这个心理课，留言者语言表达丰富，思维跳跃，内容抒发自己的情感，还有很多短小可爱的小金句，那么是不是可以分析这门课程是以外向型、高敏感的年轻女性为主要听众呢？并不能，真实原因很有可能只是这类用户喜欢留言罢了，更多懒得留言自己默默学习的人，可能笔记都记录了厚厚一沓了，就是因为不冒头，大家基本感觉不到他们的存在。 我想其实网络调查多少都有点这个意思吧！😆

    131****2328 ：赞同，就是类似幸存者偏差，大家只会注意到自己想要认为的事情。（这句话中性，没有褒贬）

    静一静 ：所以层主是尽责性神经质人群吗

  • 含
    含笑半步癫
    2022-04-10 13:51:33

    那看理想是唯一把我卖了还告诉我的，想想都有些感动

    树上金鱼 ：哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈笑飞

  • 大熊安琳
    2021-11-23 16:02:44

    节目好舒服，理性又温和，❤️

  • .
    .A.ng.el.
    2021-11-23 13:13:31

    老师声音真的太舒适了

    135****8490 Reply 林江 ：即便有含糊也依然可以让人感觉舒适

    林江 ：声音不好听，经常发音含糊

  • always
    2021-12-03 13:11:03

    听王芳老师讲课真的太享受了 感觉像是和朋友交谈一样轻松舒服 娓娓道来 心理学知识也很有干货 期待老师出更多课程🌟

  • 7
    2021-11-24 09:43:24

    关于剑桥分析选举事件有个纪录片 感兴趣的可以找找来看

    moon ：同求名字！

    年非 ：求纪录片名字

  • 夏天的丸子
    2022-03-17 09:36:45

    说实话一开始做完老师发的测试，然后回去偶然点到了Facebook的那个事件，神经质维度爆表的我马上就开始担忧自己的数据被收集了哈哈哈……所以到底有没有被看理想采集呢😁

  • 颜子衿
    2021-12-02 15:37:56

    竟然和詹青云的最后一集番外联动起来了

  • 陶陶
    2021-11-23 22:21:21

    很喜欢老师的表达，感觉在老师这里，什么尖锐的问题都是可以创造一片从容探讨的空间的

  • 丽
    丽莉lilian
    2021-12-19 09:36:03

    听老师平静温和的讲述，就像坐在对面与你共渡下午茶时光的老朋友，很放松很入心，我最被声音与内容吸引进来的，超值！

  • 188****2530
    2022-08-20 10:24:52

    【5】生活在这个智能信息化时代，我们的一举一动几乎都是被记录的，隐私权似乎很难去实现了。Facebook 泄露门事件也让我深深地认识到信息时代对人的裹挟。我们不知道什么时候会被别人以“我”操控了我，那么我还是不是我呢？

  • 1
    139****9196
    2026-02-27 02:32:13

    语言标记个体差异

  • 1
    133****8478
    2025-09-04 10:34:37

    有科学依据的人格分析太让人感动了🥲

  • 放
    放过自己
    2025-07-24 19:42:04

    所以我进来app的24小时免费听 排在第一个就是心理学相关的课程 肯定也是读取了我的人格特质进行的推送

  • 放
    放过自己
    2025-07-24 19:39:50

    特朗普都这样背地里搞大动作了居然还没有塌 还能东山再起…