A man with a tattoo of guns and a skull might be assumed to be antisocial and violent. But what if he is just really into Guns N' Roses, a band that uses guns and skulls in its imagery?
A new study examinedhow accurately people judge a stranger's personality based solely on the content of any tattoos. The answer: not very accurately.
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The researchers photographed 375 tattoos of 274 adults, who also filled out questionnaires about their personalities. Then a separate group of 30 college students and professors made judgments about the first group's personalities by simply looking at the photos.
The people tasked with viewing the photos had similar assessments of the various people depicted. But those judgments were largely inaccurate.
For example, people with tattoos with death-related imagery were judged to be less agreeable and more neurotic — assumptions that didn't align with self-reported personality traits.
But there was one exception.
"We were surprised to see that people accurately judged someone's openness based only on seeing a photo of a tattoo," Brooke Soulliere,one of the study's authors, said in a news release. "When people see a wacky or goofy tattoo, they assume that person is open to experience. And ... they're correct about it."
People with quirkier tattoos were accurately judged as being open-minded and as appreciating artistic and abstract endeavors.
One way to carry this research forward would be to look at whether people's behavior toward people with tattoos changes based on these personality judgements, researchers said.
A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 32% of adults in the United States have tattoos and that 22% have more than one.