Room With a Cue: Personality

¶ … room with a cue: Personality judgments based on offices and bedrooms. The authors, Samuel D. Gosling, Sei Jin Ko, Thomas Mannarelli and Margaret E. Morris are professors in psychology and organizational behavior at various universities. They received funding from the University of Texas, College of Liberal Arts, INSEAD, and the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies for the production of the research. The article is directed to a primarily academic audience, but it has implication for military and paramilitary organizations also. They present a model that links the individual and the material world within which the individual operates. To do so they test the hypothesis "that individuals also select and craft physical environments that reflect and reinforce who they are."

The authors make use of quantitative data collected from two independent studies. The data are used to support the argument that there is a link between the physical cues present in an environment and the assessment individuals make of the individual. They are also simultaneously assessing Brunswik's lens model. The authors draw methodological support for their research design from the Zero Acquaintance studies. In these studies, respondents were invited to make judgments on the personality of individuals they had never met. The later comparison between the finding of the author's studies, the Zero Acquaintance studies and Long-term Acquaintance studies is interesting. It is possible to infer that the authors are making a case for the superiority of the model and method they employed.

The evidence from the personal space of an individual is linked an observer's judgment by documenting the personal space and observers perceptions of the individual. Two independent studies were conducted one at an office building and the other at a dorm facility. The two spaces represented different facets of the same issue and could be used to establish the validity of the data and the reliability of the measures. The findings of the research suggest that it is possible to make accurate judgments of individuals from an assessment of their personal space.

An impediment in the research is that the authors fail to provide an adequate assessment of stereotypes that influence the meaning of cues. The authors establish that stereotypes can be problematic. They however only look at gender-based stereotypes. It is apparent that ethnic, sexual orientation and religious stereotypes were ignored. Stereotypes are an intervening variable that can potentially pollute the process of inferring personality from the environment by the observer.

I find the article to be highly informative and very interesting. It addresses a concern that is often considered general information, in a scientific manner. It therefore takes phenomenon that is in the public domain and applies academic rigor to its explication. This act is insightful and consistent with the highest traditions of research. I also wondered if the studies should have employed a dependent data set instead of an independent. Thus assessing how the same group would relate to a change of environment. Alternately, the personal space of the office worker could have been analyzed for congruence with the workspace.