Space for personality

Because your digital environment is likely full of coronavirus coverage already, this week I wanted to focus on a topic that’s only obliquely related to the pandemic.

I hope that one consequence of people spending weeks or months at home will be the time and mental energy to think about how to optimize these spaces for living and, in many cases, working. That’s why I wanted to share what we know about personality and how it relates to our homes and workspaces.

Spy trials

During World War II, the United States Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA, had to figure how to select good spies from a large set of potential recruits. They called in a dream team of psychologists and psychiatrists to devise assessments to predict who could succeed in the field. The dream team designed four situational assessments to cover the skills spies would likely need to avoid failure: one tested navigation, one the ability to lie under intense stress, and a third physical strength and problem solving. In the fourth test, the recruits entered a simulated bedroom laid out with 26 belongings. They were given four minutes to look around and were then asked to make inferences about the person who inhabited the bedroom. 

A good spy can pick up a lot from a four-minute observation of an environment. The objects we bring into our space and how we arrange it can reveal our preferences, behaviors, and our personality. 

Yes, our personality. 

Image source. Can you guess the personality of the person who lives in this home? I would guess high openness to experience and a love of nautical scenes.

The big five

For those less familiar with psychology, the model of personality backed by scientific research is the five-factor model, also known as “the big five”.

Perhaps you’ve taken a Myers Briggs (MBTI), Enneagram, or True Colors personality test in the past. Sorry to say, while these can be fun and a good way to start conversations with others, they are not backed by any substantive research. If you want to understand what makes for a good personality assessment, here’s an explanation comparing the MBTI and the five-factor model.

Let’s take a look at the big five personality traits. An easy way to remember the five is using the OCEAN acronym: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. 

Openness to experience. People who are open to experience tend to be curious, to have a lot of varied interests, and to be imaginative.

Conscientiousness. People who are conscientious tend to behave carefully, responsibly, and to show self-discipline.

Extraversion (its opposite is introversion). People who are extraverted tend to be sociable and talkative. 

Agreeableness. People who are agreeable show sympathy and warmth to others and are unlikely to start confrontations.

Neuroticism (its opposite is emotional stability). People who are emotionally stable (i.e., low in neuroticism) tend to be calm and not easily upset.

Do you know how you score on each of these traits? If you want to take a quick test, here’s a ten-item version. It doesn’t get faster than that.

What do spaces reveal about our personality?

In studies testing what we can infer about people based on first impressions formed from photos, from short videos, or from brief interactions, the personality trait we can best pick up on is extraversion. Within seconds of talking to a new person, you can likely guess if the person is a sociable party animal or quiet and reserved. But it’s likely harder to guess whether the person has varied interests or what their imagination is like.

Examining people’s spaces reveals other aspects of personality. Unlike other first impressions, spaces are most likely to reveal people’s levels of openness to experience, their conscientiousness, and third, their level of extraversion. 

Let’s take a look at the evidence. 

In one landmark study, a group of researchers visited people’s homes and offices when they were absent and tried to guess the personality traits of the occupants. A task much like that of the WWII spy recruits. The two goals were to understand 1) what cues in a person’s environment observers use to make guesses and 2) what cues in a person’s environment are actually related to their personality.

Offices

Ninety-four office workers in varied workspaces (a commercial real estate agency, an advertising agency, a business school, an architecture firm, and a retail bank) participated In the office portion of the study. They took a longer version of the kind of five-factor personality test linked above and also nominated one or two peers to evaluate their personality using the same test. Participants and their peers didn’t agree 100% of the time, but there was a pretty good correlation between individual and peer personality ratings. Yes, your close coworkers know what you’re like. The combined judgments from the individuals and the peers were used as a measure of personality.

Separately, two sets of research assistants visited each office to make observations. One set looked around and then evaluated the personality of the occupant using the same personality test used by the office workers and their peers. Another set coded 43 different environmental features of each office. Some examples: how modern the space was, how large it was, how colourful it was, how strong of an odor the space had, how many books there were, etc.

In terms of personality, observers were best able to pick up whether office occupants were open to experience. What tipped them off? Offices of open-to-experience people tended to be distinctive, stylish, and unconventional. But observers also used other cues, which were not as accurate, to predict openness to experience. For example, observers believed that offices that were more decorated, colorful, modern, and looked expensive had occupants who were more open to experience. 

As an aside, a recent US executive order ("Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again”) from president Trump mandates all new federal buildings to be built in a uniform, classical style “derived from the forms and principles of classical Greek and Roman architecture". Forget about any distinctive or unconventional office buildings! Perhaps a sign of being low in openness to experience.

Observers were also able to surmise whether office occupants were conscientious. Conscientious workers tended to have offices that were clean, neat, and organized, in good condition, and that lacked clutter. But again, there were cues that observers used to guess about conscientiousness that were less accurate, such as whether an office was roomy, inviting and comfortable, formal, and that used space well.

People's level of extraversion could also be guessed from their offices. People who were more extraverted tended to have offices that were more inviting and decorated, perhaps because extraverted workers want others to visit them and so created spaces that would support coworker visits. 

While the other two personality traits (agreeableness and neuroticism) didn’t leave many physical clues behind, there was one other interesting relationship I wanted to point out. Agreeable office workers tended to have offices in more high-traffic areas. You could imagine that people who are more sympathetic to others’ needs and conflict-averse would do better in high-traffic areas than disagreeable people who might not put up with others’ noise or use the location as a launching pad for conflict with coworkers.

Homes

Homes are a more personal space than offices, so it might not be surprising that bedrooms offered observers even stronger clues about personality than workspaces. In fact, bedrooms offered such strong clues that strangers who had never seen or interacted with their occupants were almost as accurate at guessing the occupants' personalities as peers evaluating a close coworker’s personality. Wow, right?

Using a study procedure very similar to that outlined above, eighty-three young adults participated and let observers into their bedrooms. They completed personality tests and asked friends to evaluate their personalities. The spying took place as before. One set of research assistants evaluated each participant’s personality after examining their bedroom, and another set coded 42 environmental features of each bedroom. 

As with offices, bedrooms offered the strongest clues about people’s openness to experience, conscientiousness, and extraversion. People who were open to experience tended to have distinctive rooms with varied books and magazines. Those who were conscientious tended to have comfortable, organized, empty, clutter-free and modern rooms with ample natural light. Was this last relationship because conscientious people were more likely to choose bedrooms that get more light? Were they more likely to keep their curtains or shades open? We don’t know. But these questions would be cool to explore. Finally, people who were extraverted tended to have rooms with more noise entering from the rest of the home, perhaps because extraverted people prefer to live around other extraverted people who also… make noise.

While observers weren’t great at picking up whether people were agreeable or emotionally stable, they used some interesting clues to make their guesses. They believed that spaces that are modern, stylish, clean, cheerful, and organized have agreeable occupants. And they believed that spaces that have good light and that smell fresh have emotionally stable occupants. I don’t know about you, but these kinds of links make me very curious. Were people using pleasing space features to guess that the occupant had pleasing personality traits? 

Image source. People who are conscientious tend to have comfortable, organized, empty, clutter-free and modern rooms with ample natural light. Did someone say the Kardashian-West compound?

Personality and purchases

So how do our spaces come to reflect our personalities? One way to see how we fill our spaces is by looking at what we buy. 

In a cool and kind of kooky study, bank customers who agreed to participate completed a personality assessment and a life satisfaction questionnaire, and shared their spending data with researchers. The goal was to look at the relationship between personality, spending, and life satisfaction. Were people who spent their money on categories of things that fit their personalities more satisfied with their lives?

A separate group of people evaluated the big-five personality traits of different spending categories (yes, you read that right). The whole list makes for good reading but let’s look at the three personality traits that leave physical traces in our environments (i.e., openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion). 

High openness-to-experience spending categories? Those include arts and crafts, DIY projects, hobbies, photography, entertainment, music, cinema, and travel. Meanwhile, spending categories that are high in conscientiousness are computers and technology, health and fitness, insurance, and accounting. Thrilling stuff. Finally, extraverted spending categories include eating out, days out and tourism, gambling, motor and other sports, and entertainment.

People who had purchases that were more similar to their personalities tended to have better life satisfaction. So, if you were an introvert who somehow spent all your money on motor sports, gambling, and entertainment, you’d likely be less satisfied with your life than you could otherwise be. Our personalities guide our preferences and behaviors, so it makes sense to use our resources (time, money, and energy) on experiences and possessions that fit our personalities rather than to try to fight against them.

Looking at the list of spending categories, you can also begin to see how objects that signal certain personality traits accumulate in a home or workplace. For example, openness to experience, with its DIY projects, arts and crafts, and various hobbies is likely to leave traces. I score high on openness to experience and this is certainly true in my home. If you came over to my living room, you could spot some painting and printmaking supplies, a knitting project, an in-progress DIY fireplace screen, and a flute (relearning to play in my 30s, cause why not).

Now that we’ve entered kooky experiment territory, prepare yourself. Cause this next one is weirder. People prefer everyday products whose personality matches their own and that of other people they believe to like the product.  

Let’s unpack that. People in this study were shown three instances of four everyday product categories: screwdrivers, coffee makers, soap dispensers, and wine. In the first phase of the study, they described the personalities of the different products. Some examples of common responses are below. If you thought that a coffeemaker couldn’t be sociable, kind, and warm, then think again.

Image source. Personality traits of everyday products.

People were then asked to assess whether their own personality was similar to that of the different products and to assess their preference for the different items. Ten months later, they were mailed pictures of the same items with instructions to evaluate how similar they (the people) were to the kind of people who like each item.

People’s preference for particular items was related to how similar they thought the product's personality was to their own and to how similar they believed they were to other people who like the product.

Personality matters. It guides what we prefer, what we do, and the kinds of things we drag into our homes and workspaces.

So, what can I do with this?

Do you have some extra stay-at-home time now or coming up? You could think about how well your home fits your personality, and what you might change to better support your personality and that of others you live with. For example, if you’re conscientious but you live with someone who is not, you likely know how hard it is for them to keep things clean and organized. You could spend some time adding storage to hide the mess or help to clean up some clutter, since their behaviour is unlikely to change. Are you open to experience but haven’t been doing the kind of free time activities you enjoy (e.g., because you’re glued to your phone, etc.)? This could be a great time to bring out some hobby supplies and leave them in an area where you are likely to see them and engage with them more frequently. Are you an extravert already sick of working from home? Perhaps you’re used to meeting with friends at restaurants or bars and haven’t bothered doing much to make it comfortable to entertain at home. You could set up your kitchen and living room to be better hangout areas for when the time comes. It’s hard enough to do the things we want to do and that fit who we are, so this could be a chance to rework the home environment to make positive behaviors easier. 

Are you a designer? You know there’s no one-size-fits-all space, but what can you do to make spaces adaptable to people’s needs? In homes, people are more likely to have varied goals for some spaces than others. In one relevant study, people were asked to come up with the emotions or perceptions they’d like different rooms and spaces in a home to evoke. Some spaces showed consensus. For example people tended to agree that entryways should be inviting.

Image source. What emotions or perceptions should entryways evoke?

For other spaces, there was more variety in people’s opinions.Take kitchens. Some people want the kitchen to be about organization or productivity. Others want it to be about family or togetherness. These preferences might have to do with personality: people who are conscientious might care about organization, while those who are extraverted might want a kitchen that supports socializing.

Image source. What emotions or perceptions should kitchens evoke?

Living rooms are another example. For some people, an ideal living room is cozy or relaxing. For others, an ideal living room is about togetherness and family. Again, personality might have to do with the ideal qualities people have in mind for a space.

Image source. What emotions or perceptions should living rooms evoke?

If you’re designing a home for an individual, you could take the three personality traits that affect how people set up their spaces — openness to experience, conscientiousness, and extraversion — into consideration. And if you’re designing for one of many possible individuals (e.g., on a renovation for a house that will go up for sale), you could focus on building in flexibility into spaces that are likely to be used differently by people with different personalities, such as kitchens and living rooms.

One way to begin to guess people’s likely personality is by using geography. Personality traits vary across the world and even within a city. Within the United States, this study assessed personality traits of people living in 860 cities (the full table is here). If you’re designing a home or office in an area where people tend to have high openness to experience, like Santa Monica, then you can likely take more risks and create an unconventional, unique space. But if you’re working in a low openness to experience area, like Monmouth County, NJ, then a space that’s more traditional and less distinctive might be more appreciated. Perhaps a classical column or two would help.