Rating a Mate by Decor
March 4, 2002 -- Looking for an open-minded, conscientious mate? Sneaking a peek at their office or bedroom could help narrow the field. But if it's qualities like extroversion or agreeableness you're after, a date may be a better bet.
A new study shows personal spaces such as an office or bedroom can be a rich source of information about a person's personality, but some traits are harder to spot than others.
Researchers asked people to rate strangers' personalities using the "big five" traits of openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability after looking through the person's office or bedroom. They then compared how well the personality-raters agreed with each other in their opinions and how accurate those ratings were compared to self- or peer-assessments of the owner's personality.
The raters looked through 94 offices belonging to employees of five different businesses (bank, real estate firm, business school, architecture firm, and advertising agency) and 83 bedrooms that belonged to college students of recent college graduates living on or near a college campus. No biographical information was provided prior to the inspections, and any references to the occupant, including photos, were covered up. Raters had to rely on cues such as personal items, decorating style, neatness, and level of organization.
Not only did many of the raters agree among themselves, researchers found their assessments to be relatively accurate. But, some traits were easier to evaluate than others.
"Should you decide to date someone by looking at their bedroom?" says study author and psychologist Samuel Gosling, PhD, of the University of Texas. "If openness is important to you, sure. But if extroversion is important, you might want to meet them first. It seems to depend on what information you want."
Researchers found many cues that the raters used and were closely associated with personality traits. For example, distinctive decorating was strongly linked to openness and neatness to conscientiousness.
However, other traits, such as extroversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability, were harder to judge based on a person's office or bedroom. When cues for specific personality traits weren't available, the raters tended to rely on gender and racial stereotypes based on their guesses about the occupant's gender and race.
Researchers also note that a person's office may not offer as many clues about the occupant's personality as their home.
"[Offices] may provide a window into only a subset of traits because of the limited scope of activities and forms of self-expression that occur in office environments," write the authors. "It is possible, for example, that the corporate setting promotes the expression of work related traits (e.g. conscientiousness) but stifles the expression of non-work-related traits (e.g. agreeableness)?"