Perceived Personality Differences Between Cardinal and Relational Direction-Givers
Meghan Rossini
The ability to give and follow directions is an essential component of human life. It is hypothesized that humans developed superior wayfinding abilities during the hunting and gathering stages of our evolutionary history. Humans lived on larger areas of land than did any of our evolutionary relatives, and thus the ability to find one’s way home over a vast area of land was necessary for survival (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1978). As humans evolved, wayfinding remained an essential element of human intellect. Although an innate human ability, wayfinding is not a simple task. Spatial navigation requires many complex processes. Using fMRI brain scans, researchers have shown that seemingly simple navigation tasks actually require complex processes such as landmark identification, use of proprioceptive cues, and calculations of heading vectors (Rodriguez, 2010). What may seem like a simple task of getting from here to there, in reality involves myriad brain processes.
Although the ability to give and follow directions is innate to humans as a species, much research conducted has shown that men and women perform these tasks differently. As many other studies have demonstrated, Choi (2001) found that men tend to rely on Euclidean cues, which include cardinal directions (e.g North, South, East and West) and distance estimates, whereas women rely more heavily on landmarks and other topological attributes. Another study, conducted by Lawton (2001), found similar results. Lawton’s results indicated that, when asked to navigate to a new location, women tended to use relational directions (e.g. right, left, up, down), whereas men used cardinal directions more frequently. Many other studies have found that men tend to use more distance estimates, whereas women tend to use more relational terms when describing navigation (Devlin, 2003; MacFadden, Elias, & Saucier, 2003; Rhaman, Anderson, & Govier, 2005).
Even though men tend to favor giving directions in cardinal terms, and are often better able to understand cardinal directions than are women, the literature also consistently shows that mentioning landmarks is essential for directions to be intelligible and helpful, especially when landmarks are described at decision points in a route (Daniel & Denis, 2004; Honda & Nihei, 2007; Nothegger, Winter, & Raubal, 2004). MacFadden et al. (2003) also found that sex differences are not detected between how men and women read maps, but only in how they give directions based on those maps. By tracking the eye movements of participants, the researchers were able to find that when looking at a map, women spent no more time looking at landmarks than did men, and men spent no more time looking at Euclidean cues than did women (MacFadden
et al., 2003). The researchers concluded that sexually dimorphic exploration or attention to certain features does not exist when looking at maps, but does exist when giving directions (MacFadden et al., 2003).
A 2012 virtual navigation study conducted by Anderson, Dahmani, Konishi, and Bohbot also studied the eye movements of participants, and found that although women did rely more heavily on landmarks to navigate through new environments, men also used landmarks to a substantial degree to find their way. The study also noted that sex differences in navigational abilities occurred in environments devoid of landmarks, but that this difference disappeared when there were two or more landmarks in the environment (Anderson et al., 2012). Additionally, this study found that women’s landmark orientation gaze remained at a constant level throughout the experiment, whereas men’s landmark orientation gaze decreased with time (Anderson et al., 2012).
Studies have also investigated the differences in navigation techniques utilized by heterosexual and homosexual men. Rahman, Andersson, and Govier (2005) found that for men, but not for women, sex interacted with sexual orientation in navigation strategies. Both heterosexual and homosexual men used cardinal directions more frequently than did women; however, homosexual men tended to use relational cues less often and used landmarks significantly more often than did heterosexual men. (Rahman, et al., 2005). This result held true even after spatial ability, right-left orientation, and general intelligence were controlled for statistically (Rahman, et al., 2005). The authors note that these findings reinforces the growing body of work that demonstrates that homosexual men tend to perform differently than heterosexual men on spatial cognitive tasks.
Studies have consistently shown significant differences in wayfinding techniques between men and women, but very few studies have investigated humans’ perceptions of different types of directions. A number of studies have demonstrated that cardinal directions tend to be more precise than are relational directions. Ward, Newcombe, and Overton (1986) found that students who used cardinal directions to describe navigation between different locations tended to have fewer omission or commission errors than did participants who relied more heavily on landmarks to give the same directions. With this information, it is possible that individuals would perceive cardinal directions as more precise than they would relational directions. To bolster this claim, cardinal directions, as opposed to any type of relational directions, are used exclusively in the highly precise fields of robotics, qualitative spatial reasoning, and artificial intelligence (Schneider, Chen, Viswanathan, & Yuan, 2011). The association between cardinal directions and highly mathematical disciplines may lead to the perception that those who use cardinal directions are precise or perfectionists.
The relationship between precision and perfectionism is well established. From studies showing that scores of precision correlate with scores of perfectionism in anorexic women (Julien, O’Connor, Aardema, & Todorov, 2006), to studies showing that diagnosed perfectionists take longer on precision tasks than do those not afflicted by perfectionism (Rhéaume et. al., 2000), the relationship between precision and perfectionism is clear.
Although research has investigated the perceptions of the quality of different types of directions (Devlin, 2003), to the author’s knowledge no studies have been conducted to determine the perceptions of the personalities of different types of direction-givers. Given the connection between cardinal directions and precision, the current study proposed to investigate this concept more carefully. It was hypothesized that participants would rate individuals who gave cardinal directions as higher in perfectionism than they would individuals who give directions using relational terms. In addition to researching the perception of perfectionism in cardinal direction-givers, the researcher wanted to investigate how different types of direction-givers are rated on various other personality scales. Specifically, this study investigated how participants perceive direction-givers in terms of openness, conscientiousness, and extraversion. Again, the researcher found no past studies that directly addressed these issues. However, previous studies have shown that perfectionism can stifle the constructive reasoning necessary for creativity (Grieves, 2010).
A common stereotype is that creative individuals are more open-minded, whereas perfectionists are more rigid in their beliefs. For these reasons, the researcher hypothesized that individuals who give cardinal directions would be rated as having lower levels of openness than would those who use relational directions. Additionally, the researcher hypothesized that participants would rate individuals who give cardinal directions as having different
levels of conscientiousness and extraversion than they would rate individuals who give relational directions.
Finally, given that the literature clearly shows that men tend to give directions using cardinal directions and women tend to give directions using landmarks and relational terms, it was hypothesized that men would find cardinal directions to be more helpful than relational directions, whereas women would find relational directions to be more helpful than cardinal directions.
Method
Research Design
The current study utilized a between-subjects design, in which type of direction (cardinal or relational) was the independent variable and scores on the Big Five Inventory and Perfectionism Inventory were the dependent variables. An additional between subjects analysis was also run with gender and type of direction used as the quasi-independent and independent variables and usefulness of direction as the dependent variable. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two treatments. Participants in Group One were presented with a transcript describing how to navigate from the Admissions Building to the Winthrop Annex using only cardinal directions and distance estimates. Participants in Group Two were presented with directions between these same locations. However, these directions were given using relational terms and landmarks.
Participants
Sixty Connecticut College undergraduates participated in for this study. Of the participants, 76.7% were women (n = 46) and 23.3% were men (n = 14). Participants ranged in age from 18 to 22. Of the sample, 88.3% of students selfidentified as Caucasian/White (n = 53), 6.7% identified as Asian/Asian Pacific (n = 4), 1.7% as Hispanic (n = 1), and 3.3% (n = 2) identified as Other. All participants consented to be exposed to one experimental condition and to take all parts of the questionnaire. Thirty students were exposed to cardinal directions and 30 students were exposed to relational directions. All participants’ responses were included in the results. Five participants left one to two questions blank and for statistical purposes, the researcher replaced the unanswered questions with the mean score for the questions left unanswered.
The researcher primarily obtained subjects by posting a participant sign-up sheet on the psychology bulletin board. A link to the study was also sent to non-psychology majors to make the sample more representative of the college population. 70.0% of participants signed up for the study on the psychology bulletin board (n = 42) and 30.0% of participants (n = 18) were sent a link to the study. Both men and women were able to participate in the study, but the researcher was not looking for a specific number of men or women. Students of any class year were accepted in this study as well. 8.3% of participants were seniors (n = 5), 18.3% were juniors (n = 11), 43.3% were sophomores (n = 26), and 30.0% were freshman (n = 18). Participants were given 30 minutes of research credit for completing the questionnaire. No students dropped out of the study, and students were not asked to return for follow-up tests.
Materials
This experiment used two different measures: the Big Five Inventory and the Perfectionism Inventory. Each participant was asked to answer both of these questionnaires as though she/he were the individual who gave the directions. Additionally, two author-generated questions were asked to assess the usefulness of different direction types (see Appendix A-1) Finally, students were asked to answer five demographic questions.
The Big Five Inventory (BFI; John, Donahue, & Kentle, 1991) is a 44-item self-report questionnaire that measures five major components of personality: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. However, the current study only asked questions from the Openness, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion subscales. Thus, a total of 27 items from BFI were asked of participants (see Appendix A-2 for the measure). Items on the BFI were answered on a Likert Scale with 1 indicating ‘strongly disagree’ to 5 indicating ‘strongly agree.’ An example item is: “Does a thorough job.” These subscales contained nine reverse scored items. After items were reverse scored, high scores represented high levels of Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, or Extraversion. This measure has been shown to have good reliability and validity. The Cronbach’s alpha for Extraversion is .83, for Openness is .77, and for Conscientiousness is .78 (Rothmann & Coetzer, 2003).
This experiment also utilized the Perfectionism Inventory (PI; Hill et al., 2004). The measure can be found in Appendix A-3. This is a 59-item questionnaire, which includes seven subscales. However, the researcher only used the Organization, Planfulness, and Striving for Excellence subscales. Thus, 21 questions from the PI were given to participants. Questions were answered with a Likert scale ranging from 1 indicating ‘strongly disagree’ to 5 indicating ‘strongly agree.’ A sample question from the PI is: “My work needs to be perfect, in order for me to be satisfied.” High scores on this scale represent high levels of perfectionism whereas low scores indicate low levels of perfectionism. The PI has good internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha for the subscales ranging from .83 to .91 (Fischer & Corcoran, 2007). The PI has convergent validity along its subscales and shows significant correlation with other perfectionism inventories such as the MPS-HF and the MPS-F (Fischer & Corcoran, 2007).
The last five items on this survey consisted of demographic questions (see Appendix A-4). This section included questions about age, gender, race, class year, and major.
To test the reliability of the subscales of these measures, Cronbach’s alphas were run for each subscale used. Subscales, as opposed to full measures, were checked because certain unnecessary subscales from the BFI and PI were not included in this study. Within the BFI, the Extraversion subscale had a Cronbach’s alpha level of .867, the Conscientiousness subscale had a Cronbach’s alpha of .777, and the Openness subscale had a Cronbach’s alpha of .860. Within the PI, the Organization subscale had an alpha of .942, the Planfulness subscale had an alpha of .911, and the Striving for Excellence subscale had an alpha of .883. Finally, the author-generated
questions had a Cronbach’s alpha of .910.
Procedure
Students were recruited to participate in this study from the Psychology 101 and Psychology 102 subject pool and through personal email. Students who signed up to take part in this study were emailed a link to Qualtrics, which brought them to the current study. Upon receiving the email, students had 10 days to complete the study. Participants who did not complete the study within five days of receiving it were sent a reminder email. When participants followed the link to take the study, they were first presented with the Informed Consent Form (see Appendix B). Upon consenting to participate in the study, students were randomly assigned to one of the two experimental conditions. After reading the transcript of either cardinal (see Appendix C-1) or relational (see Appendix C-2) directions, students were given the questionnaires, which included the previously mentioned items from the BFI, PI, author-created items, and demographic information. Upon completing the questionnaire, or deciding not to take part in the study, participants were given a debriefing form (see Appendix D), which explained the intent of the research project and gave participants resources to read if they desired further information on the topic. Students who desired class credit for participating in this study could print out the debriefing form to receive 30 minutes of credit.
There were no known ethical issues involved in this study.
Results
Analysis focused on the differences between participants’ scores on the author-generated questions, BFI, and PI after being exposed to one of the two types of directional conditions. It can be assumed that all groups were initially comparable since students were randomly assigned to one of these two groups.
To evaluate the hypothesis that participants would rate cardinal direction-givers as less open than they would rate relational direction-givers and to evaluate whether the two groups would score differently on scales of Conscientiousness and Extraversion, a two-way between subjects multivariate analysis of variance was performed. The analysis did not indicate a significant multivariate effect for gender, Wilks’s lambda = .873, F(3, 56) = 2.71, p = .054, η 2 = .127. Due to a priori hypotheses and because the p-value approached significance, univariate tests were run for the dependent variables. For direction type, univariate tests indicated a significant difference for Openness, F(1, 58) = 6.72, p = .012, η2 = .104. There was no significant difference for levels of Extraversion, F(1, 58) = 2.59, p = .113, η2 = .043 or for Conscientiousness, F(1,58) = 0.432, p = .513, η2 = .007.
To evaluate the hypothesis that cardinal direction-givers would be rated as having higher levels of perfectionism than would relational direction-givers, a two-way between subjects MANOVA was performed on scores of perfectionism from the PI. The analysis indicated a significant multivariate effect for perfectionism subscales, Wilks’s lambda = .818, F(3, 56) = 4.16, p = .010; η2 =.182. Univariate tests were run for the dependent variables. For direction type, univariate tests indicated significant differences for Organization, F(1, 58) = 5.10, p = .028; η2 = .081, Planfulness, F(1, 58) = 10.09, p = .002; η2 = .148, and for Striving for Excellence, F(1, 58) = 9.17, p = .004; η2 = .137.
Additionally, to evaluate the hypothesis that men would find cardinal directions to be more helpful than would women, a 2 (type of direction) x 2 (gender) between subjects MANOVA was performed on the author generated questions about the helpfulness of the directions. The results of this analysis indicated a significant multivariate effect for type of direction, Wilks’s lambda =.583, F(2, 55) = 19.66, p < .001, η2 = .417. The analysis did not indicate significant results for gender, Wilks’s lambda = .973, F(2, 55) = 0.73, p = .485, η2 = .026. Results also did not indicate a significant interaction between type of direction and gender, Wilks’s lambda = .920, F(2, 55) = 2.38, p = .102, η2 =.080. Univariate results indicated a significant effect for personal helpfulness of cardinal versus relational directions, F(1, 56) = 24.87, p < .001, η2 = . 308. Further, univariate results indicated an interaction effect between gender and ratings of how helpful others would find different types of directions, F(1, 56) = 4.40, p = .041, η2 = .073. Simple effects tests indicated no significant difference in how helpful men thought different directions would be for others, F(1, 56) = 0.01, p = ns. Simple effects tests did indicate a significant difference in how helpful women thought cardinal and relational directions would be for others, F(1, 56) = 17.77, p < .01. Women reported that relational directions would be more helpful for others than would be cardinal directions.
The means and standard deviations of scores on the author-generated questions, BFI and PI are presented in Table 1.
Discussion
Two of the hypotheses in the present study were supported: participants rated individuals who used cardinal directions as higher in perfectionism than they rated individuals who gave directions using relational terms, and cardinal direction-givers were rated significantly lower in levels of openness than relational direction-givers were rated. Two hypothesis were not supported by the results: participants did not rate cardinal direction-givers differently on levels of conscientiousness and extraversion, and men did not find cardinal directions to be more helpful than did women.
The significant findings suggest that individuals perceive those who give cardinal directions to be higher in levels of perfectionism and lower in levels of openness than those who give relational directions. The significant nature of these results suggests that people do make assumptions about certain personality traits of others based on the type of directions they give. Ward et al.’s 1986 study, which found that cardinal directions tend to be more precise than relational directions, and Grieves’ study (2010), which found that perfectionism can stifle openness and creativity, suggested that cardinal direction-givers might be rated as having more perfectionist tendencies, and as being less open to new experiences. However, with no known previous research on the topic, it was not possible to draw any conclusions about personality judgments based on direction giving methods. The findings of this study suggest that individuals judge aspects of others’ personalities based on the type of directions they give.
The hypotheses that cardinal and relational direction givers would be rated differently on scores of conscientiousness and extraversion were not supported. Measures of conscientiousness and extraversion were included in this study for exploratory purposes. No research exists that suggests that individuals would think cardinal direction-givers and relational direction-givers would differ on these scales, so lack of support for these findings was not surprising. Additionally, the hypothesis that men would find cardinal directions to be more helpful than women would find them to be was not supported by the data. This surprising result directly contradicts the data of many studies, including Devlin (2003), Rhaman et al. (2005) and MacFadden et al. (2003). It was expected that since men tend to give cardinal directions more often than women do, men would find this type of direction to be more helpful, but the results did not support this hypothesis. However, the findings do suggest that relational directions were found to be overall more helpful than were cardinal directions, and that women believed relational directions would be more helpful for others than would cardinal directions, but men thought that both types would be about as helpful for others. These findings can be interpreted as supporting previous work, such as studies by Daniel and Denis (2004) and Nothegger et al., (2004) which showed that landmarks are necessary for directions to be intelligible and helpful.
It is important to understand these findings for a number of reasons. Countless studies have shown that we make judgments about people based on superficial information (Behling & Williams, 1991; Bock & Kanarek, 1995; Windhager, Schaefer, & Fink, 2011). This study adds to the robustness of the claim that humans make judgments of others using extraneous information. Additionally, with the knowledge that how one gives directions results in judgments about one’s personality, individuals may want to purposely signal their personalities to others. For example, individuals who work in highly precise fields, such as engineering, may want to signal that they are perfectionists, and thus fit for the job, by using exclusively cardinal directions. On the other hand, those who wish to appear open to new experiences may want to avoid exclusive use of cardinal directions, as this type of direction giving may signal a low level of openness to new experiences.
The findings related to the helpfulness of cardinal and relational directions are the most important findings of this study. Neither men nor women found cardinal directions to be particularly helpful. In fact, both groups reported that they found the cardinal directions to be ‘unhelpful’ or ‘very unhelpful’ and that they were ‘unconfident’ or ‘very unconfident’ that a prospective student would be able to follow the directions. This suggests that when giving directions, regardless of the gender of the person asking directions, individuals should use relational terms and landmarks as opposed to Euclidian directions. Without the use of landmarks and relational terms, directions
can become difficult to follow, especially for individuals unfamiliar with the environment.
The major limitation of this study was the homogenous sample. Although the results indicated that men did not find cardinal directions to be more helpful than women found them to be, only 14 men participated in this study. It is possible that a larger sample of men could have led to different results. Furthermore, this study was conducted on a college campus and only included college students and was thus not a representative sample of the American population in terms of education level. It is likely that less educated individuals would find cardinal directions to be even less helpful than the participants of this study found them to be. However, participants were almost exclusively psychology majors. Students studying engineering, mathematics, robotics, or any discipline that uses cardinal directions, may have found cardinal directions to be more helpful and may not have made such assumptions about the personalities of people who use this type of direction.
An additional limitation of this study was the need for participants to answer questions as though they were the person giving directions. Although the study’s instructions clearly asked participants to answer all questions as though they were the direction-giver, students may have been confused since they were probably used to answering questions about themselves in psychology studies. One participant admitted that she answered the first half of the study as herself, not the direction-giver, and it is not possible to tell if other participants made similar mistakes. Unfortunately, this type of mistake would undermine the validity and findings of this study. If participants answered as themselves, not as the direction-giver, this mistake would nullify the effects of the independent variable.
After conducting this study, many questions remain unanswered. As far as the researcher can tell, this was the first study investigating perceived personality traits of different direction-givers. The results of this study clearly indicated that personality judgments can be based on the type of directions an individual gives, thus it would be interesting to see whether individuals make judgments about other personality characteristics based on direction type. Specifically, this study only looked at three of the subscales of the BFI; further research could investigate the remaining two subscales. Additionally, sampling from a non-college population would be an important future study. The composition of Connecticut College is relatively homogeneous, and it is difficult to tell whether these results would be found in a more diverse sample.
References
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Although the ability to give and follow directions is innate to humans as a species, much research conducted has shown that men and women perform these tasks differently. As many other studies have demonstrated, Choi (2001) found that men tend to rely on Euclidean cues, which include cardinal directions (e.g North, South, East and West) and distance estimates, whereas women rely more heavily on landmarks and other topological attributes. Another study, conducted by Lawton (2001), found similar results. Lawton’s results indicated that, when asked to navigate to a new location, women tended to use relational directions (e.g. right, left, up, down), whereas men used cardinal directions more frequently. Many other studies have found that men tend to use more distance estimates, whereas women tend to use more relational terms when describing navigation (Devlin, 2003; MacFadden, Elias, & Saucier, 2003; Rhaman, Anderson, & Govier, 2005).
Even though men tend to favor giving directions in cardinal terms, and are often better able to understand cardinal directions than are women, the literature also consistently shows that mentioning landmarks is essential for directions to be intelligible and helpful, especially when landmarks are described at decision points in a route (Daniel & Denis, 2004; Honda & Nihei, 2007; Nothegger, Winter, & Raubal, 2004). MacFadden et al. (2003) also found that sex differences are not detected between how men and women read maps, but only in how they give directions based on those maps. By tracking the eye movements of participants, the researchers were able to find that when looking at a map, women spent no more time looking at landmarks than did men, and men spent no more time looking at Euclidean cues than did women (MacFadden
et al., 2003). The researchers concluded that sexually dimorphic exploration or attention to certain features does not exist when looking at maps, but does exist when giving directions (MacFadden et al., 2003).
A 2012 virtual navigation study conducted by Anderson, Dahmani, Konishi, and Bohbot also studied the eye movements of participants, and found that although women did rely more heavily on landmarks to navigate through new environments, men also used landmarks to a substantial degree to find their way. The study also noted that sex differences in navigational abilities occurred in environments devoid of landmarks, but that this difference disappeared when there were two or more landmarks in the environment (Anderson et al., 2012). Additionally, this study found that women’s landmark orientation gaze remained at a constant level throughout the experiment, whereas men’s landmark orientation gaze decreased with time (Anderson et al., 2012).
Studies have also investigated the differences in navigation techniques utilized by heterosexual and homosexual men. Rahman, Andersson, and Govier (2005) found that for men, but not for women, sex interacted with sexual orientation in navigation strategies. Both heterosexual and homosexual men used cardinal directions more frequently than did women; however, homosexual men tended to use relational cues less often and used landmarks significantly more often than did heterosexual men. (Rahman, et al., 2005). This result held true even after spatial ability, right-left orientation, and general intelligence were controlled for statistically (Rahman, et al., 2005). The authors note that these findings reinforces the growing body of work that demonstrates that homosexual men tend to perform differently than heterosexual men on spatial cognitive tasks.
Studies have consistently shown significant differences in wayfinding techniques between men and women, but very few studies have investigated humans’ perceptions of different types of directions. A number of studies have demonstrated that cardinal directions tend to be more precise than are relational directions. Ward, Newcombe, and Overton (1986) found that students who used cardinal directions to describe navigation between different locations tended to have fewer omission or commission errors than did participants who relied more heavily on landmarks to give the same directions. With this information, it is possible that individuals would perceive cardinal directions as more precise than they would relational directions. To bolster this claim, cardinal directions, as opposed to any type of relational directions, are used exclusively in the highly precise fields of robotics, qualitative spatial reasoning, and artificial intelligence (Schneider, Chen, Viswanathan, & Yuan, 2011). The association between cardinal directions and highly mathematical disciplines may lead to the perception that those who use cardinal directions are precise or perfectionists.
The relationship between precision and perfectionism is well established. From studies showing that scores of precision correlate with scores of perfectionism in anorexic women (Julien, O’Connor, Aardema, & Todorov, 2006), to studies showing that diagnosed perfectionists take longer on precision tasks than do those not afflicted by perfectionism (Rhéaume et. al., 2000), the relationship between precision and perfectionism is clear.
Although research has investigated the perceptions of the quality of different types of directions (Devlin, 2003), to the author’s knowledge no studies have been conducted to determine the perceptions of the personalities of different types of direction-givers. Given the connection between cardinal directions and precision, the current study proposed to investigate this concept more carefully. It was hypothesized that participants would rate individuals who gave cardinal directions as higher in perfectionism than they would individuals who give directions using relational terms. In addition to researching the perception of perfectionism in cardinal direction-givers, the researcher wanted to investigate how different types of direction-givers are rated on various other personality scales. Specifically, this study investigated how participants perceive direction-givers in terms of openness, conscientiousness, and extraversion. Again, the researcher found no past studies that directly addressed these issues. However, previous studies have shown that perfectionism can stifle the constructive reasoning necessary for creativity (Grieves, 2010).
A common stereotype is that creative individuals are more open-minded, whereas perfectionists are more rigid in their beliefs. For these reasons, the researcher hypothesized that individuals who give cardinal directions would be rated as having lower levels of openness than would those who use relational directions. Additionally, the researcher hypothesized that participants would rate individuals who give cardinal directions as having different
levels of conscientiousness and extraversion than they would rate individuals who give relational directions.
Finally, given that the literature clearly shows that men tend to give directions using cardinal directions and women tend to give directions using landmarks and relational terms, it was hypothesized that men would find cardinal directions to be more helpful than relational directions, whereas women would find relational directions to be more helpful than cardinal directions.
Method
Research Design
The current study utilized a between-subjects design, in which type of direction (cardinal or relational) was the independent variable and scores on the Big Five Inventory and Perfectionism Inventory were the dependent variables. An additional between subjects analysis was also run with gender and type of direction used as the quasi-independent and independent variables and usefulness of direction as the dependent variable. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two treatments. Participants in Group One were presented with a transcript describing how to navigate from the Admissions Building to the Winthrop Annex using only cardinal directions and distance estimates. Participants in Group Two were presented with directions between these same locations. However, these directions were given using relational terms and landmarks.
Participants
Sixty Connecticut College undergraduates participated in for this study. Of the participants, 76.7% were women (n = 46) and 23.3% were men (n = 14). Participants ranged in age from 18 to 22. Of the sample, 88.3% of students selfidentified as Caucasian/White (n = 53), 6.7% identified as Asian/Asian Pacific (n = 4), 1.7% as Hispanic (n = 1), and 3.3% (n = 2) identified as Other. All participants consented to be exposed to one experimental condition and to take all parts of the questionnaire. Thirty students were exposed to cardinal directions and 30 students were exposed to relational directions. All participants’ responses were included in the results. Five participants left one to two questions blank and for statistical purposes, the researcher replaced the unanswered questions with the mean score for the questions left unanswered.
The researcher primarily obtained subjects by posting a participant sign-up sheet on the psychology bulletin board. A link to the study was also sent to non-psychology majors to make the sample more representative of the college population. 70.0% of participants signed up for the study on the psychology bulletin board (n = 42) and 30.0% of participants (n = 18) were sent a link to the study. Both men and women were able to participate in the study, but the researcher was not looking for a specific number of men or women. Students of any class year were accepted in this study as well. 8.3% of participants were seniors (n = 5), 18.3% were juniors (n = 11), 43.3% were sophomores (n = 26), and 30.0% were freshman (n = 18). Participants were given 30 minutes of research credit for completing the questionnaire. No students dropped out of the study, and students were not asked to return for follow-up tests.
Materials
This experiment used two different measures: the Big Five Inventory and the Perfectionism Inventory. Each participant was asked to answer both of these questionnaires as though she/he were the individual who gave the directions. Additionally, two author-generated questions were asked to assess the usefulness of different direction types (see Appendix A-1) Finally, students were asked to answer five demographic questions.
The Big Five Inventory (BFI; John, Donahue, & Kentle, 1991) is a 44-item self-report questionnaire that measures five major components of personality: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. However, the current study only asked questions from the Openness, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion subscales. Thus, a total of 27 items from BFI were asked of participants (see Appendix A-2 for the measure). Items on the BFI were answered on a Likert Scale with 1 indicating ‘strongly disagree’ to 5 indicating ‘strongly agree.’ An example item is: “Does a thorough job.” These subscales contained nine reverse scored items. After items were reverse scored, high scores represented high levels of Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, or Extraversion. This measure has been shown to have good reliability and validity. The Cronbach’s alpha for Extraversion is .83, for Openness is .77, and for Conscientiousness is .78 (Rothmann & Coetzer, 2003).
This experiment also utilized the Perfectionism Inventory (PI; Hill et al., 2004). The measure can be found in Appendix A-3. This is a 59-item questionnaire, which includes seven subscales. However, the researcher only used the Organization, Planfulness, and Striving for Excellence subscales. Thus, 21 questions from the PI were given to participants. Questions were answered with a Likert scale ranging from 1 indicating ‘strongly disagree’ to 5 indicating ‘strongly agree.’ A sample question from the PI is: “My work needs to be perfect, in order for me to be satisfied.” High scores on this scale represent high levels of perfectionism whereas low scores indicate low levels of perfectionism. The PI has good internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha for the subscales ranging from .83 to .91 (Fischer & Corcoran, 2007). The PI has convergent validity along its subscales and shows significant correlation with other perfectionism inventories such as the MPS-HF and the MPS-F (Fischer & Corcoran, 2007).
The last five items on this survey consisted of demographic questions (see Appendix A-4). This section included questions about age, gender, race, class year, and major.
To test the reliability of the subscales of these measures, Cronbach’s alphas were run for each subscale used. Subscales, as opposed to full measures, were checked because certain unnecessary subscales from the BFI and PI were not included in this study. Within the BFI, the Extraversion subscale had a Cronbach’s alpha level of .867, the Conscientiousness subscale had a Cronbach’s alpha of .777, and the Openness subscale had a Cronbach’s alpha of .860. Within the PI, the Organization subscale had an alpha of .942, the Planfulness subscale had an alpha of .911, and the Striving for Excellence subscale had an alpha of .883. Finally, the author-generated
questions had a Cronbach’s alpha of .910.
Procedure
Students were recruited to participate in this study from the Psychology 101 and Psychology 102 subject pool and through personal email. Students who signed up to take part in this study were emailed a link to Qualtrics, which brought them to the current study. Upon receiving the email, students had 10 days to complete the study. Participants who did not complete the study within five days of receiving it were sent a reminder email. When participants followed the link to take the study, they were first presented with the Informed Consent Form (see Appendix B). Upon consenting to participate in the study, students were randomly assigned to one of the two experimental conditions. After reading the transcript of either cardinal (see Appendix C-1) or relational (see Appendix C-2) directions, students were given the questionnaires, which included the previously mentioned items from the BFI, PI, author-created items, and demographic information. Upon completing the questionnaire, or deciding not to take part in the study, participants were given a debriefing form (see Appendix D), which explained the intent of the research project and gave participants resources to read if they desired further information on the topic. Students who desired class credit for participating in this study could print out the debriefing form to receive 30 minutes of credit.
There were no known ethical issues involved in this study.
Results
Analysis focused on the differences between participants’ scores on the author-generated questions, BFI, and PI after being exposed to one of the two types of directional conditions. It can be assumed that all groups were initially comparable since students were randomly assigned to one of these two groups.
To evaluate the hypothesis that participants would rate cardinal direction-givers as less open than they would rate relational direction-givers and to evaluate whether the two groups would score differently on scales of Conscientiousness and Extraversion, a two-way between subjects multivariate analysis of variance was performed. The analysis did not indicate a significant multivariate effect for gender, Wilks’s lambda = .873, F(3, 56) = 2.71, p = .054, η 2 = .127. Due to a priori hypotheses and because the p-value approached significance, univariate tests were run for the dependent variables. For direction type, univariate tests indicated a significant difference for Openness, F(1, 58) = 6.72, p = .012, η2 = .104. There was no significant difference for levels of Extraversion, F(1, 58) = 2.59, p = .113, η2 = .043 or for Conscientiousness, F(1,58) = 0.432, p = .513, η2 = .007.
To evaluate the hypothesis that cardinal direction-givers would be rated as having higher levels of perfectionism than would relational direction-givers, a two-way between subjects MANOVA was performed on scores of perfectionism from the PI. The analysis indicated a significant multivariate effect for perfectionism subscales, Wilks’s lambda = .818, F(3, 56) = 4.16, p = .010; η2 =.182. Univariate tests were run for the dependent variables. For direction type, univariate tests indicated significant differences for Organization, F(1, 58) = 5.10, p = .028; η2 = .081, Planfulness, F(1, 58) = 10.09, p = .002; η2 = .148, and for Striving for Excellence, F(1, 58) = 9.17, p = .004; η2 = .137.
Additionally, to evaluate the hypothesis that men would find cardinal directions to be more helpful than would women, a 2 (type of direction) x 2 (gender) between subjects MANOVA was performed on the author generated questions about the helpfulness of the directions. The results of this analysis indicated a significant multivariate effect for type of direction, Wilks’s lambda =.583, F(2, 55) = 19.66, p < .001, η2 = .417. The analysis did not indicate significant results for gender, Wilks’s lambda = .973, F(2, 55) = 0.73, p = .485, η2 = .026. Results also did not indicate a significant interaction between type of direction and gender, Wilks’s lambda = .920, F(2, 55) = 2.38, p = .102, η2 =.080. Univariate results indicated a significant effect for personal helpfulness of cardinal versus relational directions, F(1, 56) = 24.87, p < .001, η2 = . 308. Further, univariate results indicated an interaction effect between gender and ratings of how helpful others would find different types of directions, F(1, 56) = 4.40, p = .041, η2 = .073. Simple effects tests indicated no significant difference in how helpful men thought different directions would be for others, F(1, 56) = 0.01, p = ns. Simple effects tests did indicate a significant difference in how helpful women thought cardinal and relational directions would be for others, F(1, 56) = 17.77, p < .01. Women reported that relational directions would be more helpful for others than would be cardinal directions.
The means and standard deviations of scores on the author-generated questions, BFI and PI are presented in Table 1.
Discussion
Two of the hypotheses in the present study were supported: participants rated individuals who used cardinal directions as higher in perfectionism than they rated individuals who gave directions using relational terms, and cardinal direction-givers were rated significantly lower in levels of openness than relational direction-givers were rated. Two hypothesis were not supported by the results: participants did not rate cardinal direction-givers differently on levels of conscientiousness and extraversion, and men did not find cardinal directions to be more helpful than did women.
The significant findings suggest that individuals perceive those who give cardinal directions to be higher in levels of perfectionism and lower in levels of openness than those who give relational directions. The significant nature of these results suggests that people do make assumptions about certain personality traits of others based on the type of directions they give. Ward et al.’s 1986 study, which found that cardinal directions tend to be more precise than relational directions, and Grieves’ study (2010), which found that perfectionism can stifle openness and creativity, suggested that cardinal direction-givers might be rated as having more perfectionist tendencies, and as being less open to new experiences. However, with no known previous research on the topic, it was not possible to draw any conclusions about personality judgments based on direction giving methods. The findings of this study suggest that individuals judge aspects of others’ personalities based on the type of directions they give.
The hypotheses that cardinal and relational direction givers would be rated differently on scores of conscientiousness and extraversion were not supported. Measures of conscientiousness and extraversion were included in this study for exploratory purposes. No research exists that suggests that individuals would think cardinal direction-givers and relational direction-givers would differ on these scales, so lack of support for these findings was not surprising. Additionally, the hypothesis that men would find cardinal directions to be more helpful than women would find them to be was not supported by the data. This surprising result directly contradicts the data of many studies, including Devlin (2003), Rhaman et al. (2005) and MacFadden et al. (2003). It was expected that since men tend to give cardinal directions more often than women do, men would find this type of direction to be more helpful, but the results did not support this hypothesis. However, the findings do suggest that relational directions were found to be overall more helpful than were cardinal directions, and that women believed relational directions would be more helpful for others than would cardinal directions, but men thought that both types would be about as helpful for others. These findings can be interpreted as supporting previous work, such as studies by Daniel and Denis (2004) and Nothegger et al., (2004) which showed that landmarks are necessary for directions to be intelligible and helpful.
It is important to understand these findings for a number of reasons. Countless studies have shown that we make judgments about people based on superficial information (Behling & Williams, 1991; Bock & Kanarek, 1995; Windhager, Schaefer, & Fink, 2011). This study adds to the robustness of the claim that humans make judgments of others using extraneous information. Additionally, with the knowledge that how one gives directions results in judgments about one’s personality, individuals may want to purposely signal their personalities to others. For example, individuals who work in highly precise fields, such as engineering, may want to signal that they are perfectionists, and thus fit for the job, by using exclusively cardinal directions. On the other hand, those who wish to appear open to new experiences may want to avoid exclusive use of cardinal directions, as this type of direction giving may signal a low level of openness to new experiences.
The findings related to the helpfulness of cardinal and relational directions are the most important findings of this study. Neither men nor women found cardinal directions to be particularly helpful. In fact, both groups reported that they found the cardinal directions to be ‘unhelpful’ or ‘very unhelpful’ and that they were ‘unconfident’ or ‘very unconfident’ that a prospective student would be able to follow the directions. This suggests that when giving directions, regardless of the gender of the person asking directions, individuals should use relational terms and landmarks as opposed to Euclidian directions. Without the use of landmarks and relational terms, directions
can become difficult to follow, especially for individuals unfamiliar with the environment.
The major limitation of this study was the homogenous sample. Although the results indicated that men did not find cardinal directions to be more helpful than women found them to be, only 14 men participated in this study. It is possible that a larger sample of men could have led to different results. Furthermore, this study was conducted on a college campus and only included college students and was thus not a representative sample of the American population in terms of education level. It is likely that less educated individuals would find cardinal directions to be even less helpful than the participants of this study found them to be. However, participants were almost exclusively psychology majors. Students studying engineering, mathematics, robotics, or any discipline that uses cardinal directions, may have found cardinal directions to be more helpful and may not have made such assumptions about the personalities of people who use this type of direction.
An additional limitation of this study was the need for participants to answer questions as though they were the person giving directions. Although the study’s instructions clearly asked participants to answer all questions as though they were the direction-giver, students may have been confused since they were probably used to answering questions about themselves in psychology studies. One participant admitted that she answered the first half of the study as herself, not the direction-giver, and it is not possible to tell if other participants made similar mistakes. Unfortunately, this type of mistake would undermine the validity and findings of this study. If participants answered as themselves, not as the direction-giver, this mistake would nullify the effects of the independent variable.
After conducting this study, many questions remain unanswered. As far as the researcher can tell, this was the first study investigating perceived personality traits of different direction-givers. The results of this study clearly indicated that personality judgments can be based on the type of directions an individual gives, thus it would be interesting to see whether individuals make judgments about other personality characteristics based on direction type. Specifically, this study only looked at three of the subscales of the BFI; further research could investigate the remaining two subscales. Additionally, sampling from a non-college population would be an important future study. The composition of Connecticut College is relatively homogeneous, and it is difficult to tell whether these results would be found in a more diverse sample.
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