Have Boots Will Travel
Researchers at the University of Kansas say that people can accurately judge 90 percent of a stranger’s personality simply by looking at the person’s shoes.
“Shoes convey a thin but useful slice of information about their wearers,” the authors wrote in the new study published in the Journal of Research in Personality. “Shoes serve a practical purpose, and also serve as nonverbal cues with symbolic messages. People tend to pay attention to the shoes they and others wear.”
Medical Daily notes that the number of detailed personality traits detected in the study include a person’s general age, their gender, income, political affiliation, and other personality traits, including someone’s emotional stability.
Lead researcher Omri Gillath said the judgments were based on the style, cost, color and condition of someone’s shoes. In the study, 63 University of Kansas students looked at pictures showing 208 different pairs of shoes worn by the study’s participants. Volunteers in the study were photographed in their most commonly worn shoes, and then filled out a personality questionnaire.
So, what do your shoes say about your personality?
Some of the results were expected: People with higher incomes most commonly wore expensive shoes, and flashier footwear was typically worn by extroverts.
However, some of the more specific results are intriguing. For example, “practical and functional” shoes were generally worn by more “agreeable” people, while ankle boots were more closely aligned with “aggressive” personalities.
The strangest of all may be that those who wore “uncomfortable looking” shoes tend to have “calm” personalities.
I love boots but I love boots that do not bite the toes that tickle them. Do I have attachment problem? No I don’t think so but they have and I love to break them. It often happens they get used to the toes that wiggle into the tip of the shoes on a daily basis. Once my boots know who is the master it is all smooth going. Did I tell you the first pair of Italian shoes I had in the eighties with a chisel cut? It was two toned and a beaut. Before I could break them I had to visit the US. I thought I would make a splash and on arrival the customs fellow stopped me. He was sure I was a Columbian drug dealer and had me searched thoroughly and at the end he asks sheepishly,’ You are clean. But why walk like that?’
You don’t mess up with the Customs. So I said, ‘O Lord do I have to explain I was born with the walk?’ I managed to pass though that time but every time I go abroad I make it a point to remove my shoes. Lately my wife tells me that it is mandatory and for security reasons I have no right to sport everywhere my shoes, the only elegance that I allow myself.(ack: The Sideshow-Yahoo News blog)
benny
