Neuroscience
People who are more dominant are quicker at processing information that appears in the vertical dimension of space, psychologists have found. The result comes from an expanding field of psychology looking at the ways that personality and culture can affect how we interact with the world.
Sara Moeller and colleagues asked dozens of students to identify as fast and as accurately as possible whether a letter on a computer screen was a "p" or a "q". On each trial, the letter always appeared randomly in one of four locations: to the left, right, above or below the screen mid-point. The test was repeated hundreds of times, with the students' attention always brought back to the centre of the screen after each letter presentation.
Students with more dominant personalities (judged by their agreement with statements like "I impose my will on others") were far quicker at identifying letters that appeared above or below the midpoint than would be expected based on their speed at identifying letters appearing to the left or right. By contrast, speed of response to the horizontal letters was not associated with personality dominance.
A second experiment replicated the finding with more students, a different measure of personality dominance and with the letters' positioning following a predictable rather than a random pattern.
Our language is littered with dominance metaphors that refer to the vertical dimension: we speak of "upper" classes and of people "high" in authority. Past research has shown that priming participants to think of verticality speeds their response to stimuli that are related to dominance in some way. According to Moeller and her co-workers, the new finding goes a step further by showing that having a dominant personality can actually bias people towards the vertical dimension.
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Moeller, S.K., Robinson, M.D., Zabelina, D.L. (2008). Personality Dominance and Preferential Use of the Vertical Dimension of Space: Evidence From Spatial Attention Paradigms. Psychological Science, 19(4), 355-361. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02093.x
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
"It's beneath me": How dominant personalities are biased towards the vertical
People who are more dominant are quicker at processing information that appears in the vertical dimension of space, psychologists have found. The result comes from an expanding field of psychology looking at the ways that personality and culture can affect how we interact with the world.Sara Moeller and colleagues asked dozens of students to identify as fast and as accurately as possible whether a letter on a computer screen was a "p" or a "q". On each trial, the letter always appeared randomly in one of four locations: to the left, right, above or below the screen mid-point. The test was repeated hundreds of times, with the students' attention always brought back to the centre of the screen after each letter presentation.
Students with more dominant personalities (judged by their agreement with statements like "I impose my will on others") were far quicker at identifying letters that appeared above or below the midpoint than would be expected based on their speed at identifying letters appearing to the left or right. By contrast, speed of response to the horizontal letters was not associated with personality dominance.
A second experiment replicated the finding with more students, a different measure of personality dominance and with the letters' positioning following a predictable rather than a random pattern.
Our language is littered with dominance metaphors that refer to the vertical dimension: we speak of "upper" classes and of people "high" in authority. Past research has shown that priming participants to think of verticality speeds their response to stimuli that are related to dominance in some way. According to Moeller and her co-workers, the new finding goes a step further by showing that having a dominant personality can actually bias people towards the vertical dimension.
_________________________________
Moeller, S.K., Robinson, M.D., Zabelina, D.L. (2008). Personality Dominance and Preferential Use of the Vertical Dimension of Space: Evidence From Spatial Attention Paradigms. Psychological Science, 19(4), 355-361. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02093.xPost written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Looking For The Brain Basis Of Chimp Personality
Some chimps are more outgoing than others. Some like trying out new foods and games while their friends stick to the tried and tested. In short, chimps have different personalities, just like people do. What's more, psychologists investigating chimp...
- Sweet-toothed And Sweet Natured - How People Who Like Sweet Things Are Sweet
"Honey", "Sweetheart", "Sugar": how come so many terms of endearment pertain to sweetness? Might the metaphor be grounded in a real link between sweet taste and pleasing personality traits and behaviour? Brian Meier and his team had dozens of students...
- Men With Brown Eyes Are Perceived As More Dominant, But It's Not Because Their Eyes Are Brown
White men with brown eyes are perceived to be more dominant than their blue-eyed counterparts. However, a blue-eyed man looking to make himself appear more dominant would be wasting his time investing in brown-coloured contact lenses. A new study by Karel...
- Satisfaction Guaranteed!
Our bias for the left-hand side of space could be distorting large-scale surveys. Past research has shown that when people are asked to bisect a horizontal line down the centre, most will cross the line too far to the left. This leftward bias is thought...
- Three-person Groups Best For Problem-solving
Individuals may outperform groups when it comes to brainstorming for ideas (see earlier post), but for logic-based problem solving, it seems three-person groups work best. That’s according to Patrick Laughlin and colleagues who tested 760 students on...