PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENTS
Consider the two dorm rooms below. Before the occupants moved in, the rooms were identical. But after just a few weeks the different personalities of the occupants have left their marks on the physical environments. As you can see, physical environments, such as bedrooms and offices, are rich with evidence about the people who occupy them.
A Room With A Cue
Our
research is based on the hypothesis that the environments individuals craft
around themselves, such as offices and bedrooms, are rich with information about
the occupants’ personalities, abilities, values, and lifestyles. It seems
likely, for example, that the pictures a person
selects to hang on her walls, the books she chooses to read, and the way she
arranges the items that fill the space around her all reflect aspects of her
personality and values. We further
hypothesize that observers use information in personal environments to form
impressions about occupants. Some of these impressions
may be accurate and others may not.
Interactionist
theories (e.g., Buss, 1987; Snyder & Ickes, 1985) suggest
that individuals select and create their social environments (e.g.,
friendships, social activities) to match and reinforce their dispositions,
preferences, attitudes, and self-views; extraverts choose friends, colleagues,
and relationship partners who enable them to express their extraverted nature.
We propose that individuals also select and craft physical environments
that reflect and reinforce who they are.
My collaborators and I have recently articulated a model explaining how individuals can impact the environment around them and, in turn, how physical environments can serve as repositories of individual expression (Gosling, Ko, Mannarelli, & Morris, 2002).
Our model was formulated in the context of
personal environments, however it can be applied to other contexts of social
perception. For example, an individual’s physical appearance may hold many
clues to what he or she is like; hairstyle and clothing can be used to make
identity claims, and clothing and accessories can provide evidence of past or
anticipated behaviors. As in rooms, observers may use this information to form
impressions about individuals. Indeed, many elements of an individual’s
appearance may be crafted precisely to influence others’ perceptions (Goffman,
1959).
OUR ASSESSMENT TEAM IN ACTION
Our empirical research has focused on impressions of occupants based on their bedrooms and offices. Our findings, which varied slightly across contexts (offices and bedrooms) and traits, suggest that personal environments elicit similar impressions (i.e., consensus) from independent observers, that observer impressions show some accuracy, and that observers rely on valid cues in the rooms to form impressions of occupants. Findings also suggest that sex and race stereotypes partially mediate observer consensus and accuracy. Perceptions based on personal environments generally elicited stronger consensus and accuracy correlations than found in zero-acquaintance research.
Representative Publications:
Gosling, S. D., Ko, S. J., Mannarelli, T., & Morris, M. E. (2002). A Room with a cue: Judgments of personality based on offices and bedrooms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 379-398. [Available in pdf]
Gosling, S. D., Craik, K. H., Martin, N. R., & Pryor, M. R. (2005). The Personal Living Space Cue Inventory: An analysis and evaluation. Environment and Behavior, 37, 683-705. [Available in pdf]
Gosling, S. D., Craik, K. H., Martin, N. R., & Pryor, M. R. (2005). Material attributes of Personal Living Spaces. Home Cultures, 2, 51-88. [available in pdf]