Research Design Connection: Messy Offices: Consequences

by Sally Augustin, Ph.D. | March 4th, 2019

Findings of a study conducted by Horgan, Herzog, and Dryszlewski indicate that designers should not only keep their own workplaces looking neat, but that they should also support any potential efforts by the users of the offices they develop to maintain a neat looking desk via drawers/cabinets/etc., where desktop items can be “stashed.” Horgan and team investigated, “How perceivers’ impressions of a researcher’s personality might vary as a function of the messiness of the researcher’s office…Participants from the U.S. were randomly assigned to sit in a researcher’s office (A) that was either clean, neat, organized, and uncluttered or one (office B) that was somewhat messy (experiment 1) or very messy (experiments 2 & 3). They guessed the Big 5 traits of the researcher afterward. In each experiment, participants thought that the office B researcher was less conscientious than the office A researcher. In experiments 2 and 3, participants also thought …