How we arranged and organized our rooms can say a lot about us for many of us our bedrooms are the most
personal and intimate spaces in our home
Colors and smells can give away your sensory interests and small decorations can hint at your taste and personal style
For example a messy room can mean that you're disorganized while a very neat and clean room can suggest that you're uptight.
In Malcolm Gladwell's acclaimed book "Blink" he references Samuel Gosling a personality and social
psychologist who studies how people's behavior appearance and
Physical environment affects how they're perceived. Gosling names three variables in a bedroom that gives out clues to a person's personality
identity claims behavioural residue and thoughts and feelings regulators.
An Identity Claim is a deliberate expression about how you want to be perceived by others for example
Putting your favorite books on a shelf serves as an identity claim
Because the people who enter your room can instantly get a good perspective of the things you're interested in
Behavioral residue on the contrary is the unintentional results of your behavior.
If you leave your shoes scattered around the floor. It's probably because you're lazy
you didn't intentionally leave them there to give the impression that you're
unorganized. Thoughts and feelings regulators are objects that affect the way you feel in your room
Candles that you put on top of your desk to give your room a calm feeling is an example of a thoughts and feelings regulator
So if a stranger enters your room and takes a look around they'll be able to Gather certain aspects about your personality just by observation
Gosling proved this in an experiment involving eighty college students using a highly respected questionnaire called the big five
inventory which measures people across five dimensions one:
Extraversion. Are you sociable and fun-loving or retiring and reserved?
Two: Agreeableness, are you trusting and helpful or suspicious and uncooperative?
Three:
Conscientiousness, are you organized and self disciplined or disorganized and weak weld?
Four: emotional stability
Are you worried and insecure or calm and secure?
Five:
Openness to new experiences are you imaginative and independent or down-To-Earth and conforming?
He first had close friends of those eighty college students fill out the questionnaire
then he had another group of total strangers who had never met the eighty college students go into their dorm rooms and
Along with the clipboard and 15 minutes to look around told them to fill out a very similar questionnaire
The close friends of the college students calculated their friends extraversion and agreeableness way more accurately than the strangers
which makes sense because you have to personally know somebody in order to make a better judgment of his or her personality but
Surprisingly the strangers did a far better job than the students friends at predicting conscientiousness,
emotional stability and Openness to new experiences
This demonstrates that it is possible for people who have only known you for a short time to learn a lot about you
Just and also by looking around your bedroom
Little details like having a bottle of sleeping pills on your desk which suggests that you have trouble with falling asleep
Or leaving clothes and unfinished food all around your floor
Which hints that you don't have time to stay organized can say a lot about your passions, desires,
work and psychological state of mind
Now look around your room and try to take note of any objects that can potentially reveal parts of who you are
which objects do you think most strongly portray your personality? Comment your answers down below.
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