Who’d live in a house like this? (Image: David Cleveland/Getty)
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 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.
Advertisement
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 couples move in together it can cause so much consternation because what seems a perfectly natural thing to do in one’s space is contested by your partner.”
Some things we deliberately put on show to say something about ourselves. “It could be a photo of our wedding day, a poster of our favourite band or a flag from our home country,” says Lindsay Graham who worked on the study with Gosling. These are known as identity claims.
Then there are the items and decor that actively influence our thoughts and feelings. We’re not deliberately saying something about ourselves with these, but they still speak volumes. “If we’re trying to create intimacy or cosiness, we may arrange furniture so it encircles the centre of the room,” says Graham. The very fact you have arranged it this way reveals that socialising is important to you.
The lighting, keepsakes we place on shelves, the colours we paint our walls – these all control emotion too. “Colours in particular are things that regulate how we want to feel or an impression we want to convey,” says Graham. “Beige walls, for instance, could reflect not being open because you are conventionally going with the trend, or it could be a reflection of knowing what’s current and modern.”
But the items that perhaps reveal the most about us are the “behavioural residue” – the things that materialise as we live our lives. “It might be a parking ticket,” says Graham. “It gives some indication of how people behave outside the home. Perhaps they weren’t being conscientious and minding the signs, or maybe they were being impulsive. In some ways, the behavioural residue is the most interesting because it’s not being monitored.”
Gosling and Graham want to know whether you can still glean anything about the individuals who share a home – and whether it can reveal secrets about the couple’s relationship.
Working with four students, Graham visited the living rooms of 100 couples. They made meticulous records of everything, taking between 8000 and 10,000 photos. Graham is now combing through these observations and attempting to marry them with personality surveys filled out by each couple.
It’s still early days for the research. “One thing is clear,” says Graham. “There are traces of behaviours present, such as an alphabetised record collection, piles of unopened bills and open laptops on coffee tables that are clues about the daily lives these couples share.”
Read more: “The secret life of your home“
A living room never lies
Three personality traits that can be read from your home
Openness to ideas
Rooms filled with distinctive or unusual objects. Original art rather than popular posters. Books on varied topics.
Conscientiousness
Neat, tidy, organised spaces.
Extroversion
Chairs organised in a way that allows people to socialise. Lots of glasses for entertaining people. A home set up to allow large-scale interaction.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Walls can talk”
