Opinion A new study breaks down what it takes to be cool. There is something uncool about that

At the heart of the concept of coolness lies a paradox: Even those who desperately want it have a hard time defining what “it” is. Does being cool mean being rebellious, original, funny or authentic? Does having a unique passion make one cool, or does the active pursuit of something as gauchely juvenile as a hobby make one “uncool”? Is being part of the “in” crowd cool, or is it the outsider, content to be on the sidelines, who is actually cool? These questions, which have kept almost every adolescent — and a large number of adults — up at night, are at the heart of a recent study published in The Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

The researchers who have contributed to the study claim to have identified “six core attributes of cool people”: Extroversion, hedonism, power, adventurousness, openness and autonomy of behaviour. It is doubtful, however, that consciously cultivating these qualities will make a person hip; after all, the one universally accepted tenet of coolness is that striving to be so is what makes a person uncool. In fact, it has long been easier to define what is not cool, rather than what is cool: Nonchalance and irony might make the cut for some, but neediness and people pleasing certainly don’t for anyone.

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The peculiar slipperiness of the notion may be frustrating, but that is precisely what makes it so sought-after. Everyone wants it, but only a few can have it. Coolness may define taste and inspire trends, but its trajectory — always from the margins to the mainstream, and never the other way around — ensures that the moment a trend makes its way into the wider culture, its decline begins. The only reasonable solution for those striving to be cool, then, is to accept that they may never be so. That, finally, may be what makes them cool.