What does your space say about you? Research Findings Fridays (on Monday)

Ever wonder how much your living or working space can say about you, or if it can say anything at all? This interesting study proposes that our living spaces (in this case bedrooms and offices) reflect and reinforce who we are.  If that is the case, then these personal spaces must reveal information about us to those who do not know us.  The study reveals that blind observers are able to make accurate inferences about the personalities of people who inhabit those spaces. Click on the reference below to see the article.

Gosling, S.D., Ko, S. J., Mannarelli, T., & Morris, M. E. (2002). A room with a Cue: Personality Judgments Based on Offices and Bedrooms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(3), 379-398.

Basically they asked a group of observers to note their impressions about people based solely on the rooms they inhabit, without any prior information about the inhabitants. The observers rated the inhabitants' personalities based on bipolar scales for five personality traits (The Big Five, Costa & McCrae, 1992). The five traits include Openness (to experience), Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Emotional Stability (aka Neuroticism in The Big Five).

They found that observers generally agreed on (gave the same responses) and were accurate (based on previous self reports from the inhabitants as well as peer reports) about the personality traits of the inhabitants. Strongest agreement and accuracy were found for openness, conscientiousness and extraversion (emotional stability and agreeableness least agreement and accuracy) for both offices and bedrooms.

This is interesting because the findings suggest that although our personal environments are telling, they may only be for certain parts of our personalities - whether we have an openness to experience or not, whether we are conscientious or not, and how extroverted or introverted we are.

Our personal environments are crafted by conscious and unconscious choices and behavioural residue.  As an interior design consultant, I believe that these personal environments in turn affect the well being and productivity of people who live in them.  Additionally, this study shows that personal spaces can also guide the impressions of onlookers.  That's why interior design is an important factor in our lives and its effects are felt at a conscious and subconscious level.  Whether you are seeking to portray the right message (i.e. in your office) or you're looking to benefit from a well designed, familiar, comfortable environment (i.e. in your home), thoughtful interior design can play a big role in achieving those goals.

How do you think your living or working space portrays you?  What would you infer about the people who inhabit the spaces below (take styling into consideration - it is a powerful, reality altering tool)?

via OWI

via Dwell

 Home of Abigail Ahern via 79 ideas

See you later,