What objects in your home say about your relationship…
Tuesday, August 22, 2023.
When many social science students are doing an internship in grad school, they might have an assignment that has them doing in-home therapy.
Many years ago, I was at a graduation party for some doctoral students in Springfield Massachusetts. I remember how a young woman described how when she visits a client…
“almost without thinking I look around at the whole layout and what’s in my field of vision. But I’m particularly interested in any prominently displayed objects. It gives me an immediate sense of the family, and the people who live there.”
That makes even more sense to me now.
Studies have shown it is possible to draw some limited conclusions about human personality from carefully observing their personal spaces like homes or offices (Gosling et al., 2002).
What about old married couples though? Is it possible to tell anything about relationships from objects that are prominently displayed? Research by Lohmann, Arriaga and Goodfriend (2003) suggests that indeed it is…
How the research was conducted
In this research participants were asked to sit in the room in which they most often entertained guests and rank order their 5 most prized objects. They were then asked a subtly different question: which objects did they most want visitors to notice?
Then later on in the questionnaire they were asked how these objects had been acquired.
Were they acquired on their own, by their partner or together?
Joint acquisition covered the situation where the object had been given as a gift to both of them, or was bought when they were together.
Two measures were calculated from this objective (pun very much intended) data:
Couple markers – % of prized objects jointly acquired.
Couple displays – % of objects jointly acquired that they wanted visitors to notice…
What do the objects tell us?
These percentages were then compared with a series of measures assessing the health of participant’s relationships.
First, the results showed that couples who were closer, better adjusted, and perceived their relationship as long-term were more likely to want visitors to notice jointly acquired objects.
Second, the results also showed that closer couples were more likely to have a higher percentage of ‘couple markers’ – prized possessions that were jointly acquired.
This study is a really good illustration of how our homes reflect not only our individual personalities, but it’s also is a window into your relationship with your life partner.
Why not look take a moment and look around your own living room – If I were your guest, what would I see? What would you show me?
Be well, and Godspeed.
RESEARCH:
Lohmann, A., Arriaga, X.B. and Goodfriend, W. (2003), Close relationships and placemaking: Do objects in a couple's home reflect couplehood?. Personal Relationships, 10: 437-450. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6811.00058
A room with a cue: Personality judgments based on offices and bedrooms.
Gosling, S. D., Ko, S. J., Mannarelli, T., & Morris, M. E. (2002). A room with a cue: Personality judgments based on offices and bedrooms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(3), 379–398. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.3.379
