What the Condition of Your Office Says About You

First impressions are notorious for being hard to change, but they are also broader than anticipated. We strategize our wardrobe and accessories in order to dress to impress, but if we bring our friend or colleague to our disaster zone of an office to grab something on the way to lunch or a meeting, we have tainted our impression. We have inadvertently become a living example of how anyone can “dress the part.” To avoid ruining a well-cultivated image, there are ways to ensure your space represents your best self.

Source: Huy Nguyen / Pixabay

Your Space as an Extension of You

Researchers have long been investigating how we make personality judgments based on home and office space. Samuel D. Gosling et al. (2002) in the cleverly named study “A Room with a Cue”¹ examining offices and bedrooms found that personal environments prompted similar impressions from independent observers, which demonstrated some degree of accuracy. Many other studies have corroborated what we have long observed anecdotally: We are judged by the objects with which we surround ourselves.

Yet judging attributes such as personality and character involve more than viewing a brag wall of plaques or a Samurai sword won at a martial arts tournament prominently displayed on the desk. Yes, the selection of photos and personal memorabilia showcase personal preferences and priorities, but there is another aspect upon which we are judged in our professional life—our clutter.

Clutter and Perceived Conscientiousness

Terrence G. Horgan et al. (2019) investigated the correlation between physical clutter and personality perception in a piece aptly entitled “Does Your Messy Office Make Your Mind Look Cluttered?”² They found that research participants assessed perceived Big 5 traits of personality through sitting in a researcher’s office that varied in degrees of messiness. They found that participants believed that an individual (a researcher) who maintains a neat, clean, organized, and uncluttered office possesses a greater degree of conscientiousness than someone whose office is more cluttered, and less clean, neat, and organized.

Horgan et al. explain that conscientiousness implicates characteristics such as orderliness, competence, striving for achievement, and discipline. They note that people who are thought to be highly conscientious are dependable, organized, hard-working, self-controlled, and responsible, among other positive traits. They explain that people who are low in conscientiousness are disorderly but easy-going, with less of a goal-oriented focus than their highly conscientious counterparts.

Horgan et al. note that their research is consistent with the idea that perceivers attempt to form consistent impressions of others by attributing traits to them. They give the example of believing that a professor with a clean office possesses other positive qualities, such as having a welcoming nature. They also point out that messiness is conspicuous and noticeable, perhaps leading to the conclusions reached by their study participants that the researcher with the messy office was both less conscientious and less agreeable—through, perhaps, not caring about what other people thought about him, and also more neurotic in terms of being more impulsive and unable to maintain a neat office due to professional stress.

Rules on Space: Considering the Power to Personalize

Not everyone has the luxury of personalizing their workspace, something Horgan et al. note that perceivers consider when making personality judgments. They give the example of observers who believe someone with a very messy office does not control the upkeep or decoration and do not draw the same types of adverse inferences.

The takeaway appears to be that a simple, straightforward method of improving perceived competence, character, and credibility is to clean up the clutter. Undoubtedly, clearing our space will also contribute to clearing our mind.