What Your Toilet Paper Reveals About Your Personality

This is the closest PsyBlog gets to toilet humour.

This is the closest PsyBlog gets to toilet humour.

Do you hang your toilet roll with the end of the paper hanging ‘over’ or with the end hanging ‘under’?

According to a survey by Dr Gilda Carle, ‘over’ people are more assertive.

Assertive people are more likely to be in leadership roles and to have a take-charge attitude, says Dr Carle.

Those hanging the roll ‘under’ are more likely to be submissive.

Submissive people tend to be more agreeable, flexible and empathetic, says Dr Carle.

To create the toilet paper personality test, Dr Carle surveyed around 2,000 people of all ages, asking them whether they rolled the paper over or under.

Some people, Dr Carle has found, actually switched the toilet roll in other people’s houses (around one in five).

Naturally it was those ‘over’ people imposing their dominant personality on submissive ‘unders’.

The rich roll over

Rolling under might also be linked to lower earnings, another survey has found.

73% of those earning under $20,000 rolled under, while 60% of those earning over $50,000 roll over.

(Who knew there were so many surveys on toilet roll alignment?)

 

Note: this survey was not published in a reputable peer-reviewed journal!


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Hello, and welcome to PsyBlog. Thanks for dropping by.

This site is all about scientific research into how the mind works.

It’s mostly written by psychologist and author, Dr Jeremy Dean.

I try to dig up fascinating studies that tell us something about what it means to be human.

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Author: Jeremy Dean

Psychologist, Jeremy Dean, PhD is the founder and author of PsyBlog. He holds a doctorate in psychology from University College London and two other advanced degrees in psychology. He has been writing about scientific research on PsyBlog since 2004. He is also the author of the book "Making Habits, Breaking Habits" (Da Capo, 2013) and several ebooks.