A Disorganized Office Is A Sign Of…

Did you see any of the new stories about John Jost and teams’s forthcoming research paper? The one about how “behavioural residue” can be used to predict political leanings?

“Conservative rooms tended to be cleaner, more brightly lit, better organized, less cluttered, and also more conventional and ordinary in terms of decoration,” Jost said during a panel discussion on “The Neuroscience of Elections and Human Decision-Making” at NYU, adding: “Conservatives’ rooms were rated by independent raters as better organized and tidier in general.”

Specifically, individuals who reported a more conservative ideology also had bedrooms that contained more organizational and cleaning supplies, including calendars, postage stamps, ironing boards and laundry baskets.

Liberals’ rooms on the other hand were marked by more clutter, including more CDs, a greater variety of CDs, a greater variety of books and more color in the room in general.

I just want to note that by this standard, I must be one of the most liberal people in the world, since my office is all about a great variety of books, a great variety of CDs, and an astonishingly great variety of clutter.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada
This work by Chris McLaren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada.