3 Psychological Traits Portuguese Are Known For

Portugal’s popularity among Europeans and oversea countries has increased in recent years. If we gave new worlds to the world in the 15th century by reaching places like India and Brazil, it seems that the world is now discovering us six centuries later. I’d say that 2016’s European Football Championship and the 2017’s Eurovision edition contributed a great deal to that boom in foreign interest. People from around the world have been visiting us, enjoying the weather and our friendly culture, while also falling in love with our food and wines.

Weather, food, and wine apart, here are three psychological traits that most Portuguese seem to share and which seem to make people want to come back.

The Portuguese Play It Cool

Instead of showing off our qualities and bragging about our deeds, we tend to reach people’s hearts and minds by keeping a low profile and serving others. The Portuguese tend to be friendly and most of them will be happy to practice their English to help you. We can be quite passionate about our causes but we usually try to stay diplomatic and more reserved in our approach. Although we can make you feel comfortable chatting, we usually don’t give too much away about what we truly think and feel.

The Portuguese Are Emotionally Intense

Although they pretend to play it cool, the Portuguese tend to be emotionally intense. Strong emotions run deep in our veins and that is often channeled through artistic expressions such as music and poetry. We created Fado and we have some famous poets such as Fernando Pessoa and Florbela Espanca who amazingly wrote about feeling everything in every single way possible. Salvador Sobral, the winner of 2017’s Eurovision festival edition, showed this particularly well throughout his performance.

The Portuguese Are Not Utterly Competitive

Perhaps because we explored the world and met different countries early in our history as a country, we are very much open to others and we don’t seem to engage in behaviors that lead to separateness among nations. We accept diversity and we promote friendliness between nations. We always do our best to speak in a language you can understand and we are typical “givers”. This attitude is likely what prevents us from being aggressive and ugly competitors.

Concluding Thoughts

Although I’m surely biased for being Portuguese, I was not always a fan of my country and people. My positivity toward my nation grew a great deal while I lived abroad. Throughout that experience, I learned to cherish the little details of my country such as having plenty of sunlight and sandy beaches. Foods that I didn’t appreciate started to ignite my attention and curiosity. Today I can say I don’t think I would choose a different country to live in at least half of the time.

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