Politics and Your Neat/Messy Office

Is this real? Or just another silly psychological stunt?

Conservatives' bedrooms tended to include more organizational items, including event calendars and postage stamps. They also contained more conventional decorations and items, including sports paraphernalia. Bags of various types, American flags in particular, and alcohol bottles and containers. In general, conservative bedrooms were somewhat neater, cleaner, fresher, organized, and well lit. They were also significantly more likely to contain household cleaning and mending accessories such as laundry baskets, irons and ironing boards, and string or thread. These results appear to confirm theoretical contentions that concerns with cleanliness, hygiene, and order are related to political conservatism (see Table I). Conservative offices tended to be more conventional, less stylish, and less comfortable, in comparison with liberal offices. The bedrooms of liberals suggested that their occupants were indeed relatively high on Openness to Experience. They contained a significantly greater number and variety of books, including books about travel, ethnic issues, feminism, and music, as well as a greater number and variety of music CDs. including world music, folk music, classic and modern rock, and "oldies." Liberal bedrooms also contained a greater number of art supplies, stationery, movie tickets, and a number of items pertaining to travel, including international maps, travel documents, books about travel, and cultural memorabilia. Offices and workspaces used by liberals were judged by our coders as being more distinctive, colorful, and "fresh," and as containing more CDs and a greater variety of books. It should be noted that because of the fairly large number of statistical tests conducted, it is possible that some of the significant findings were obtained by chance.