Beige walls. A parking ticket discarded on the kitchen counter. Files neatly placed on the desk in the corner of the living room. Even the banal, mundane and seemingly insignificant aspects of our homes reveal a surprising amount about us. They lay our personalities bare.
Psychologist Sam Gosling at the University of Texas at Austin can tell a lot about a person from their belongings and the way they are arranged. His landmark study in 2008 centred on the dorms of college students, which start each term bare and identical and within weeks reflect the personalities of their occupants.
Lately, Gosling and his team have turned their attention to a more complicated problem, the living rooms of couples. "People often have no insight into how their spaces relate to their psychology," says Gosling. "That's why when ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.
No comments:
Post a Comment