Skip to main content

Beach or mountains? The choice may reveal your personality





Look at the two photographs: would you choose the beach or the mountains for a vacation? Psychologists believe the choice reveals your personality.

Past research showed that extroverts need ‘affiliation’ – i.e. being with and talking to people – and ‘exhibition’ – i.e. getting attention from and entertaining people. Introverts need less affiliation and exhibition. Extroverts like people bustling around. Introverts function better in specific office spaces with fewer visual and audio distractions.

Most of the previous research focused on social situations rather than physical surroundings. Psychologists at the University of Virginia said that no study had looked at extroversion and introversion in connection with natural environments. Hence they conducted a series of five experiments.

The university psychologists found that extroverts and introverts preferred different landscapes for their vacations. Extroverts preferred wide-open spaces, including the beach, while introverts preferred the woods, forests, and mountains. The majority of people choose a photograph of the beach.

Researchers think that woods and mountains are great places for solitude and self-reflection, which suits introverts, and beaches offer interactions with more people, which suits extroverts.

In another experiment, researchers analyzed a database of 613,000 people across America to see whether extroversion and introversion were associated with different American states. Researchers found that residents in mountainous US states were more introverted than residents in flat states.

Does living in the mountains make people more introverted or do introverts gravitate towards mountainous regions? Researchers did another experiment. They sent groups of students into flat open areas or forested secluded areas on the University campus and analyzed their feelings of extroversion or introversion.

Researchers found that the terrain resulted in different levels of happiness for extroverts and introverts. Introverts were more stressed in open spaces than when they were surrounded by trees. But overall geography does not change personality. This last experiment was a short study so the researchers would like to conduct more research on the effects of geography on extroverts and introverts.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/08/06/what-your-vacation-choices-say-about-your-personality/

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pir-E-Kamil - The Perfect Mentor by Umera Ahmed: book review

The Perfect Mentor pbuh  (2011) is set in Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan. The novel commences with Imama Mubeen in medical university. She wants to be an eye specialist. Her parents have arranged for her to marry her first cousin Asjad. Salar Sikander, her neighbour, is 18 years old with an IQ of 150+ and a photographic memory. He has long hair tied in a ponytail. He imbibes alcohol, treats women disrespectfully and is generally a “weird chap” and a rude, belligerent teenager. In the past three years he has tried to commit suicide three times. He tries again. Imama and her brother, Waseem, answer the servant’s call to help Salar. They stop the bleeding from his wrist and save his life. Imama and Asjad have been engaged for three years, because she wants to finish her studies first. Imama is really delaying her marriage to Asjad because she loves Jalal Ansar. She proposes to him and he says yes. But he knows his parents won’t agree, nor will Imama’s parents. That
1 comment
Read more

Flaws in the Glass, a self-portrait by Patrick White: book review

The manuscript, Flaws in the Glass (1981), is Patrick Victor Martindale White’s autobiography. White, born in 1912 in England, migrated to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. For three years, at the age of 20, he studied French and German literature at King’s College at the University of Cambridge in England. Throughout his life, he published 12 novels. In 1957 he won the inaugural Miles Franklin Literary Award for Voss, published in 1956. In 1961, Riders in the Chariot became a best-seller, winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 1973, he was the first Australian author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Eye of the Storm, despite many critics describing his works as ‘un-Australian’ and himself as ‘Australia’s most unreadable novelist.’ In 1979, The Twyborn Affair was short-listed for the Booker Prize, but he withdrew it from the competition to give younger writers the opportunity to win the award. His autobiography, Flaws in the Glass
Post a Comment
Read more

The Beggars' Strike by Aminata Sow Fall: book review

The Beggar’sStrike (1979 in French and 1981 in English) is set in an unstated country in West Africa in a city known only as The Capital. Undoubtedly, Senegalese author Sow Fall writes of her own experiences. It was also encapsulated in the 2000 film, Battu , directed by Cheick Oumar Sissoko from Mali. Mour Ndiaye is the Director of the Department of Public Health and Hygiene, with the opportunity of a distinguished and coveted promotion to Vice-President of the Republic. Tourism has declined and the government blames the local beggars in The Capital. Ndiaye must rid the streets of beggars, according to a decree from the Minister. Ndiaye instructs his department to carry out weekly raids. One of the raids leads to the death of lame beggar, Madiabel, who ran into an oncoming vehicle as he tried to escape, leaving two wives and eight children. Soon after, another raid resulted in the death of the old well-loved, comic beggar Papa Gorgui Diop. Enough is enou
8 comments
Read more