New Study Investigated if Shoes Reveal Personality Type

New Study Investigated if Shoes Reveal Personality Type

 

 

They say you can’t judge a book from its cover but can you judge someone’s personality by his or her shoes?  That is something that researchers considered in a study published in the Journal of Research in Personality.  “Participants provided photographs of their shoes, and during a separate session completed self-report measures. Coders rated the shoes on various dimensions, and these ratings were found to correlate with the owners’ personal characteristics. A new group of participants accurately judged the age, gender, income, and attachment anxiety of shoe owners based solely on the pictures. Shoes can indeed be used to evaluate others, at least in some domains.”

Boston.com reported, “researchers asked 63 undergraduate students to look at more than 200 photos of favorite shoes that were submitted by fellow students and to rate the wearers personalities, whether they were clingy or detached in their relationships, and whether their political ideology was liberal or conservative.” Although respondents guessed that liberals wore less attractive or less stylish shoes, that wasn’t the reality.  Another misconception was that attractive people with well-kept shoes were more conscientious.  Self-assessments proved otherwise.  “Some of the conclusions drawn, however, were fairly obvious: Attractive and stylish shoes were correctly correlated with a higher income.”

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