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Show MONDAY, MARCH 11, 2002 UNIVERSITY JOURNAL CAMPUS NEWS PAGE 2 Study: Personal space GOVERNOR’S HONORS ACADEMY can speak volumes BY KAREN APPERSON KNIGHT RIDDER TRIBUNE CAMPUS Be careful-your personal space may betray you. There's the ski-lift tickets tucked ina | corner of your bedroom mirror. O, the range of books on your shelves-and bow meticulously you arrange them. Such behavioral residue, as a Texas AT SOUTHERN UTAH UNIVERSITY . psychologist calls it, might be a mother lode of clues about personality. “People want to learn about others,” said at samuel Gosling, of the University of Texas office, ’s person a into go Austin. “When they they naturally look around, Counselor Applications for the upcoming Governor’s Honors Academy are currently being accepted in the School Relations Office. The Academy runs July 10-20®, 2002. A $600 stipend and upper division college credit is available to the counselors selected. The deadline for the application is March 20, 2002. If you have any questions regarding the Academy, please feel free to contact the Academy Director, Jared Wilcken, at 865-8190 or wilcken@suu.edu. because these places are very rich with information about people.” In a new study of personal spaces, which appears this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Gosling and some colleagues did some looking around of their own- scientifically, of Observers do agree on who is dependable based on their offices and bedrooms. The observers also agree on who's agreeable, who’s extraverted, and especially on who's open-‘“the person who'’s going to choose the new item on the menu or be found in the poetry section of the bookstore; someone who has broad interests,” Gosling says. Just because observers reached a consensus, however, didn’t mean they were always right. at offices, observers-although In looking in agreement among themselves-tended to be wrong about who was actually agreeable. In this case, Gosling ; 7| speculates, the observers might be misapplying | cues that show dependability-such as how organized a personal space is-to incorrectly infer agreeableness. Conversely, observers | looking at bedroom spaces could somehow tell how calm and relaxed the occupants tended to . course. Gosling and his team be. “I was surprised that people could detect in the San Francisco area. bedrooms,” Gosling says. studied 94 office workspaces The team also examined 83 student bedroom and living spaces-dorm rooms and the like-at the than anything.” But, like office observers, eight untrained “observers” were enlisted to cues such as whether a bedroom was University of California, Berkeley. Seven of survey the rooms, and could use whatever information they found helpful to judge the personality of the rooms’ occupants. In the study, the scientists determined personality by asking the room’s occupants about themselves and by quizzing their peers. The observers, meanwhile, used only objects and other cues to make their assessments. Cues such as tidiness, lack of clutter and alphabetization of books proved to be valid for telling someone’s level of dependability. Creative decor, and variety of books, of magazines or CDs, were reliable indicators someone’s OPenness to NEw experiences. «If[ wanted to know about your openness, 1 would do better to look in your environment than ask one of your close friends. That's what this study suggests,” Gosling said. Other personality traits that were investigated were extraversion, agreeableness and emotional stability. These are broad labels that embrace specific behaviors, said Gosling. “By agreeable, we mean trusting, sympathetic, nice, not rude.” By dependable, the researchers said they mean whether someone | emotional stability in is prompt and organized. “I find that puzzling more bedroom observers couldn’t tell who was agreeable; as a group they tended to misuse colorful, comfortable and inviting as signs of agreeableness. Whether an office seemed to be an inviting place proved to be a valid cue for a extraversion, the study found; but whether bedroom seemed inviting was not. There were also huge differences across the offices, Gosling notes. “We looked at an advertising agency where every single office seemed to be people making a desperate plea, a statement that they are a creative person”-while real estate and bank workspaces were far more conservative. Gosling and his colleagues also examined the role of stereotypes in judging personality. Inevitably, observers would be able to guess the sex of many room occupants, and sometimes even the race. As it turned out, the more information there was about people’s traits in their personal spaces, the less observers seemed ‘to rely on such stereotypes. Personal spaces can reveal tendencies that a photo, video clip, even a short meeting with a person cannot, the study noted. “We can leatn a lot about an individual from their space,” Gosling says, “but what we learn is not what we learn from meeting them. i Do you enjoy working with students? Can you tutor in an academic subject? Would you like to have free room and board for six weeks? Do you enjoy outdoor activities? Are you at least 21 years of age? Have you completed two years of college? e jb o yul Apply for a Summer Tutor Supervisor position with Upward Bound Visit the Upward Bound Office Sharwan Smith Center Suite 205 Applications due Monday, March 25, 2002 Find out mor ahout th R, poshon and r il upoon up o spplcaeti ar45cath5 M pm. |