Do you tend to live and work in an environment that is almost always neat and tidy? Or, if you have, say, an office, does it tend to messy and unkempt? Either one of those things say something about you. But what they say may surprise you. Read on:
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This article appeared in the Sunday, Sept. 22 issue of The New York Times Magazine.
For some time, psychologists and other researchers have been studying
how personality traits affect health and health-related choices. Not
surprisingly, they have found that people blessed with innate
conscientiousness, meaning that they are organized and predictable,
typically eat better and live longer than people who are disorderly.
They also tend to have immaculate offices.
What has been less clear is whether neat environments can produce
good habits even in those who aren’t necessarily innately conscientious.
To find out, researchers at the University of Minnesota conducted a
series of experiments, the results of which were published online last month in Psychological Science.
In the first experiment, they randomly assigned a group of college-age
students to spend time in adjacent office spaces, one of which was
exquisitely neat, the other wildly cluttered with papers and other
work-related detritus. The students spent their time filling out
questionnaires unrelated to the study. After 10 minutes, they were told
they could leave and were offered an apple or a chocolate bar as they
exited. Those students who sat in the orderly office were twice as
likely to choose the apple than those who sat amid the mess.
A second experiment, however, found that working in chaos has its
advantages, too. In this one, college students were placed in a messy or
a neat office and asked to dream up new uses for Ping-Pong balls. Those
in messy spaces generated ideas that were significantly more creative,
according to two independent judges, than those plugging away in offices
where stacks of papers and other objects were neatly aligned.
The results were something of a surprise, says Kathleen D. Vohs, a
behavioral scientist at the University of Minnesota and the leader of
the study. Few previous studies found much virtue in disarray. The
broken-windows theory, proposed decades ago, posits that even slight
disorder and neglect can encourage nonchalance, poor discipline and
nihilism. Chaos begets chaos.
But in the study by Dr. Vohs, disordered offices encouraged
originality and a search for novelty. In the final portion of the study,
adults were given the choice of adding a health “boost” to their
lunchtime smoothie that was labeled either “new” or “classic.” The
volunteers in the messy space were far more likely to choose the new
one; those in the tidy office generally opted for the classic version.
“Disorderly environments seem to inspire breaking free of tradition,”
Dr. Vohs and her co-authors conclude in the study, “which can produce
fresh insights.”
The implications of these findings are also practical. “My advice
would be, if you need to think outside the box” for a future project,
Dr. Vohs says, then let the clutter rise and unfetter your imagination.
But if your primary goal is to eat well or to go to the gym, pick up
around your office first. By doing this, the naturally messy can acquire
some of the discipline of the conscientious.
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