SHOES and PERSONALITY

[Joanne ~ Spud*]

There are many variations to this soon-to-be published report.  I'll just post this article.

retrieved 06/15/12 http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/judge-90-percent-people-person...

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" pe....

"Shoes have great variety of styles, brands, looks, and functions. Because of this variety, shoes can carry individual difference information, but do they? We suggest that the answer is yes," the study authors wrote.

And if you have several pairs of new shoes or take exceptional care of them, you may suffer from "attachment anxiety," spending an inordinate amount of time worrying about what other people think of your appearance.

There was even a political calculation in the mix with more liberal types wearing "shabbier and less expensive" shoes.

The researchers noted that some people will choose shoe styles to mask their actual personality traits, but researchers noted that volunteers were also likely to be unaware that their footwear choices were revealing deep insights into their personalities.

[J and Riley (and Luna)]

I can't wear flats :(  I have size 9.5 feet and they're really narrow, so flats just kinda.. fall off my feet.

I always have to buy shoes with laces, buckles or straps like these:

[Joanne ~ Spud*]

For you youngins' out there, are you aware of what us old folks used to call Flip Flops?  They were known as Thongs.  But since panty thongs ruined the name for these shoes, the name was reinvented to Flip Flops, not thongs. But I still call them Thongs and get some strange looks.   Can you imagine a young college person hearing me say, "I hate wearing thongs.  I just hate anything running between my toes"

But I've done this too many times.

[J and Riley (and Luna)]

I think many people still call them "thong sandals" (they do around here anyway), especially if they're more expensive ones and not just the foam/plastic type. 

I've always called these flip flops too: