A recent news story made some of us feel guilty about our cluttered homes and work spaces – were we unintentionally turning our family, friends, and co-workers into bigots? The headlines read: “How litter and graffiti can poison our minds by turning us more racist;” “Racism and homophobia worse in chaotic environments;” and “Dutch study finds that unclean environments feed stereotypes.”
Researchers in Utrecht, Netherlands, took advantage of a strike by cleaning staff at the city’s train station. Amidst the gathering trash, they asked white travelers to fill out surveys about Muslims and homosexuals. They also took note of how far the survey participants sat from a nearby man, sometimes black and sometimes white. After the strike ended, and the station was cleaned up, the researchers took another survey. They found that when the station was a mess, the participants seemed to agree about 10% more with stereotypes — both negative and positive.
Does the study actually support the headlines? Are we breeding prejudice if we don’t keep our surroundings neat? Some mental health professionals gave me their opinions, which I’ll explore over the next few weeks.
Nancy B. Irwin, a doctor of clinical psychology, points out that Nazi Germany was an orderly place – so order does not necessarily lead to open minds. She adds: “Further, the study does not seem to account for whether the subjects looked down on blacks, or simply moved away because they were the “odd man out,” the only one that didn’t look like the others. You could run this study with different colors of jackets (100 white ones and one black one) and probably get the same conclusion, yet it would not mean that the subjects thought the black jacket was inferior in quality to the white ones.”
So, while you may have to watch your reactions to others when you’re under stress, letting clutter pile up will not make you or the people around you less tolerant. I’d like to speak for all of us who are less than neat, and ask you not to stereotype us as prejudiced.
Later, I’ll look at some of the study’s other implications, such as the rise of positive stereotyping in disorderly environments, and the relation with obsessive compulsive disorder.
Tweet This Post