Research in our lab represents a reinvigorated interest in examining how personality impacts what ordinary people do in their everyday lives. As such, our research builds on much of the vital work that has been done over the past 30 years on personality structure and measurement. With the structural and measurement foundations of personality now secure, researchers can return to the much-needed task of examining the impact of personality in the real world. Attention should now be directed to the tasks and activities that occupy individuals’ lives—individuals go to work, listen to music, spend time in their gardens, exercise, worship, maintain their houses, speak, and eat, yet very little is known about how these everyday acts are related to personality and how others use these behaviors to form impressions of one another. As David Funder (2001) has recently observed, “…the catalog of basic facts concerning the relationships between personality and behavior remains thin.”
In the spirit of Paul Rozin’s (2001, 2008) recent calls to conduct exploratory research on real-world social psychological phenomena, our lab is investigating how personality is expressed and perceived in several domains of everyday life, including:
Some forms of everyday expression may be deliberate attempts to make statements to others. For example, an individual could communicate her liberal values by including images of and links to liberal political icons (e.g., Malcolm X) on her personal webpage. Other forms of expression may simply be unintended consequences of an individual’s actions—“behavioral residue.” For example, a very organized individual may have an office with a clean, tidy desk, alphabetized books, color-coded files, and neatly arranged post-it notes.
We also examine how observers use everyday manifestations to form impressions of others. For example, what impressions are formed about a person on the basis of his music collection? Are these impressions accurate?
On the basis of our work on personal environments (e.g., offices, bedrooms), we have developed a model articulating (1) the mechanisms by which individuals impact the environments they inhabit and (2) the processes that observers use to make inferences about the occupants on the basis of these spaces (Gosling, Ko, Mannarelli, & Morris, 2002).
Our research focuses on the following issues:
Everyday manifestations of personality – Which cues are reliably linked to what individuals are like?
Everyday person perception – Which cues do individuals use to form their impressions of others?
Consensus – Do observers agree with one another in their impressions of others?
Accuracy – Are observers impressions of others accurate?
Stereotype use – how do stereotypes hinder or promote consensus and accuracy?
Sei Jin Ko, Thomas Mannarelli, Jason Rentfrow, Matthias Mehl, Simine Vazire
Carney, D. R., Jost, J. T., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2008). The secret lives of liberals and conservatives: Personality profiles, interaction styles, and the things they leave behind. Political Psychology, 29, 807-840.
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.
Gosling, S. D., Craik, K. H., Martin, N. R., & Pryor, M. R. (2005). Material attributes of Personal Living Spaces. Home Cultures, 2, 51-88.
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.
Mehl, M. R., Gosling, S. D., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006). Personality in its natural habitat: Manifestations and implicit folk theories of personality in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 862-877.
Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2003). The do re mi’s of everyday life: The structure and personality correlates of music preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 1235-12561.
Rentfrow, P. J., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2008). A theory of the emergence, persistence, and expression of geographic variation in psychological characteristics. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 339-369.
Vazire, S. & Gosling, S. D. (2004). e-Perceptions: Personality impressions based on personal websites. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 123-132.
Vazire, S., Naumann, L. P., Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2008). Portrait of a narcissist: Manifestations of narcissism in physical appearance. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 1439-1447.
* The research described here is based upon work partially supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0422924. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.