Tall – short, introverted – extroverted, smart – simple, people differ from each other in myriad ways. Beyond understanding how people differ from one another, we wanted to know why.
We spent over 14 years gathering data from over fifty countries about millions of individuals’ psychological characteristics. The resulting database is orders of magnitude larger than any previous endeavor, and each of our 3,500+ meta-analyses served as a pixel in a broader panorama that revealed fundamental patterns of human diversity. The resulting theory unifies these patterns and has profoundly shifted our worldview.
If you’d like to learn more about our discoveries, check out our book: Of Anchors & Sails: Personality-ability trait constellations, article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or the condensed summary of findings, theory, and implications: Our Constellations (20 minute read).
Understanding Psychological Differences Between People
Personality and Cognitive Ability