Being cool isn’t just a vibe — it’s a cocktail of six personality traits.

A study that spanned six continents and 12 countries, including India, has found that people everywhere consistently view cool as being outgoing, pleasure-seeking, powerful, adventurous, curious and independent.

The findings suggest that as the word “cool” spread from mid-20th-century American slang to the rest of the world, its meaning converged on a similar set of traits, three marketing researchers who conducted the study have said.

The study, published on Monday in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, is the first to test a range of personality traits and to show that people across diverse cultures share a remarkably consistent view of what makes someone cool.

“We started this research to understand how coolness differed across cultures, and we discovered it doesn’t differ much,” said Caleb Warren, associate professor of marketing at the University of Arizona and a co-author of the study.

“Whether they were in South Africa or China or Germany or Chile, our respondents pointed to the same six traits — extraversion, hedonism, power, adventurousness, openness and autonomy,” he told The Telegraph.

That consistency, the researchers said, was the study’s biggest surprise.

“Given how different countries are, we expected some variation in what makes someone cool,” said Todd Pezzuti, associate professor and the study’s lead author at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile.

“But what people consider cool in India, for example, is remarkably similar to what’s considered cool in China, Chile, the US, or elsewhere,” Pezzuti told this newspaper via email.

Previous studies had indicated that coolness at times overlaps with positive traits like friendliness and attractiveness — leading some to wonder whether “cool” was simply another way of describing someone as desirable, or whether it carried its own distinct meaning.

The new study, which relied on responses from 5,943 participants in Australia, Chile, China, Germany, India, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Turkey and the US, was designed to evaluate how 15 personality traits relate to perceptions of coolness.

The respondents were asked to think of someone who they thought was cool, not cool, good, or not good and rate their perceptions of the person’s personality traits.

While the results from India broadly matched the findings elsewhere, Warren noted one key difference: the distinction between being cool and being good was less pronounced in India.

“For instance, in most countries, respondents viewed good people as more calm and more conscientious than cool people. But in India, participants rated cool and good people as equally calm and conscientious,” Warren said. “Another way to interpret the India data is that Indians see less difference between being a cool person and a person who is good.”

Scholars have long noted that Black jazz musicians in the 1940s and ’50s used the word “cool” to describe others who embodied a distinctive aesthetic — marked by composure, control and emotional detachment.

“While the modern meaning of cool has evolved, the original usage shares an important thread: both reflect individuals who are ahead of the curve, innovating in style, art and culture,” Pezzuti said. “We propose a theory in which cool individuals play a distinct social role — they innovate and drive cultural change in ways viewed positively by their peers.”

All respondents were familiar with the slang use of the word “cool” and had access to the Internet. More research is needed to determine whether these findings also apply to people living in rural areas without Internet access, the researchers have said.