 "Photo: Daniel Feeser")
Associate professor of psychology Sam Gosling has spent a lot of time in other people's bedrooms - and offices.
Gosling recently published a paper called "A Room With a Cue: Personality Judgments Based on Offices and Bedrooms." In that paper, Gosling discusses what a person's office says about him or her. The big open windows in UT President Larry Faulkner's office, for example, suggest that Faulkner is an open, accessible administrator. The books of poetry and the artwork he displays represent his creative personality.
Every office is a window into its inhabitant's personality, Gosling writes. He explains that we can't rely only on how clean an office is to judge the occupant's personality, and identifies five character traits that can be revealed: extroversion/introversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experiences.
The clues Gosling relies on in his paper are merely generalizations; they may not directly correlate with a person's character. However, Gosling's research can be useful for in informal survey of the personalities behind the desks here at the University.
Diagnosing mess
Dave Laude, associate dean of the College of Natural Sciences, has arranged all the photographs on his desk to face outward for the viewing pleasure of visitors to his office. "This is a distinct characteristic of someone with an extroverted personality," says Gosling.
Laude's office reveals extroversion on many levels, from the open doors of his office to the bowls of candy that sit on his secretary's desk.
Gosling says that the environments people create contain two kinds of objects: identity claims and behavioral residue. Identity claims are intentionally placed there by the inhabitant. They can be trinkets or statements made for personal value or reflection, or they can be objects that aim to express directly to others how the object's owner views himself or herself.
Behavioral residue is the unintentional display of a person's character, such as clutter.
Color and brightness are thought to indicate how kind or sympathetic someone may be. Executive Vice President and Provost Sheldon Eckland-Olson's office is an example; Eckland-Olson has a display of brightly painted Mexican masks covering a significant portion of his bookshelves.
Conscientiousness, or how organized, time-oriented or prepared employees may be, is also visible through their work area. Both extremes of organization exist on the UT campus. Art Education professor Jarvis Ulbricht has files of art magazines arranged chronologically from 1964 and drawers of neatly color-coded folders of information on students and staff members. Ulbricht also has a drawer-full of immaculate scrap paper that he says he cut into strips himself.
Student body president Omar Ochoa's office is at the other extreme. It contains a sleeping bag, small mountains of paperwork and textbooks from last semester. Ochoa also has a chess set on which he plays with visitors, two small trophies on his desk and his Texas Cowboys outfit, complete with chaps, hanging on a hatrack.
Ochoa says he spends 50 hours a week in his office. "Sometimes I just stay the night here," he said.
However, having a messy office doesn't necessarily mean you're a messy worker.
"You may want your lawyer to be very organized and have a clean desk, but if you are meeting with someone, perhaps from advertising, you would want their desk to be covered in papers and ideas that represent his ability to be creative," explained Gosling.
Rank is also a factor in organization, as people with higher rank generally have someone else to do their filing.
How emotionally stable or stressed a person is can be evident in their work space. And an office can also showcase someone's openness to new experiences.
UT librarian Dorothy Carner's office decorations consist of only a few bits of longhorn memorabilia and family photos. This could indicate that her personality is more conservative, since she doesn't venture out into more office decorations.
When it comes to a personal living space, "Everything got where it is, because someone put it there," said Gosling. "What we want to look at is what is there and how it is working in that space."
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