Shoes As A Reliable Cue To Personality, Study
Christopher Philip
One of the most salient cues shoes possess is their degree of attractiveness and comfort. The researchers say in their paper that these cues were particularly interpretable according to the owner’s personal characteristics.
It has long been postulated that a person can be judged from their shoes. However, until recently, this commonly repeated rule of thumb has never received any empirical support.
A new study led by Omri Gillath published in the Journal of Research in Personality has found that shoes reliably predict certain factors of personality based on nothing more than photographs of a persons’ most commonly worn footwear.
It’s likely that due to the existence of such a great variety of styles, brands, looks and functions of shoes, that it is possible that each person is able to find just the right shoe to fit their personality. That, or, vast shoes styles are created because people demand that their personalities be best represented by their footwear. Either way, it seems, shoes make great indicators of certain personality features.
In the study, images of shoes were provided by undergraduate students. Afterwards, each participant completed a battery of questions through an online questionnaire.
The results showed that the questionnaires filled out by participants matched the assessments made by others with respect to age, gender, income, and even attachment anxiety.
It’s important to note that the shoes were rated similarly across independent raters. In other words, the rates agree with one another about what the shoes said about a person.
Second, the raters used only “thin slices” of information to make their assessments. We know that people commonly produce quick first impressions, and usually, these are quite accurate. However, that only shoes were used, shows how quickly, easily, and perhaps most importantly, how accurately we are at making judgments about people with only simple cues.
One of the most salient cues shoes possess is their degree of attractiveness and comfort. The researchers say in their paper that these cues were particularly interpretable according to the owner’s personal characteristics. The researchers note that those wishing to make accurate judgments about others from their footwear should pay particular attention to these traits.
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Resources
Gillath, Omri; Angela J. Bahns; Fiona Ge and Christian S. Crandall. Shoes as a source of first impressions. Journal of Research in Personality. 2019; 46: 423-430.
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