Lindberg, Tran and Banasiak used an online survey to study how personality influences responses to office design. The research team defined extraversion as “the degree to which one is outgoing and social, while neuroticism is a measure of negative emotionality (versus emotional stability and even-temperedness) and is positively correlated with anxiety and unhappiness.”
The Lindberg lead team determined that “difference in exposure [to others, as in an open workplace] had relatively little effect on perceived control for individuals in the low neuroticism category, but individuals in the high neuroticism category felt much less control in an exposed work space than in a more enclosed work space.” Additional findings related to extraversion and office design: “While the results were not significant [they are very close to significant]…individuals scoring high on extroversion rated their performance in enclosed and exposed work-space environments similarly…while individuals scoring low on extroversion [these people were relatively more introverted] rated their performance in enclosed environments higher than their performance in exposed environments.”
The researchers concludes that their “findings question the widely held architectural design assumption that physical proximity and open office designs are desirable for social interaction and, consequently, improved communication and innovation.”
Casey Lindberg, Diemtrinh Tran, and Meredith Banasiak. 2016. “Individual Differences in the Office: Personality Factors and Work-Space Enclosure.” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, vol. 33, pp. 105-120.
Sally Augustin, PhD,a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.