A messy desk leaves a carefree impression: a study – Xinhua

CHICAGO, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) – An extremely messy personal space seems to suggest that its owner is more neurotic and less pleasant, said researchers at the University of Michigan (UM).

In three experiments, about 160 participants were randomly assigned to sit in a clean and loose research office, or in another office that was either "a little" or "very" messy.

All offices were decorated identically to suggest that it belonged to a male researcher. They included various personal items, such as a baseball cap hanging from a door hook, a cup containing sweets, a baby picture, science books and specialist magazines in a library.

In the neat office, the papers were neatly arranged on the desk, books and newspapers were placed on the shelves, file drawers were labeled with tags and all garbage was in the trash.

The messy "little" desk had books leaning on the shelves, a textbook and papers resting on the floor, and a wall clock at an hour's time. The "very" messy desk seemed even dirtier, more disorganized and more cluttered.

The participants tried to guess the researcher's personality based on the appearance of the office, assessing his extraversion, his pleasantness, his sense of consciousness, his neuroticism and his openness to the experience. In each experiment, participants thought that the disordered researcher was less conscientious than the neat researcher.

"When there are clues related to less cleanliness, order, organization and clutter on the main land of an owner, the tax collectors attribute a less conscientious conscience to the landlord," he said. said senior author Terrence Horgan, professor of psychology at UM-Flint.

In everyday life, if people think that a person may be careless, grumpy and indifferent because his office is very messy, these impressions could then affect how they decide or even if they decide to to deal with it in the future, either personally or professionally, say the researchers.

Participants also thought that the messy researcher at the office was less pleasant and more neurotic than the researcher at the office. The more messy offices led some participants to believe that the owner had one or more negative personality traits.

The researchers said that, from the point of view of the tax collectors, high neuroticism, insufficient awareness and lack of approval could signal potentially unwanted qualities in an employee.

The results were published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.