Although shoes aren’t usually the first thing that others judge about you, they are at the top of the list of things that can reveal much about who you are. It’s being said that it’s one of the first things noticed in a person. The shoes that you wear regularly can reveal personal characteristics about yourself as well as what you do daily.
A new study carried out recently claims we can really judge someone from their shoes.
Researchers at the University of Kansas found that people were able to correctly judge a stranger’s gender, national identity, class, race, social standing, income, age, political beliefs, and other emotional personality traits by simply looking at their shoes.
The study, published in the August edition of the Journal of Personality Research, showed that 90 percent of the shoe owner’s personality could often be told by looking at what they wore on their feet.
How Can Shoes Tell About A Person
Whether you want to admit it or not, we all put a lot of thought into the shoes we choose to wear. Considerations like comfort, style, and practicality cross our minds at least once.
For example, if you have a lot of errands to run on a particularly hot day, you will probably put on knit sneakers.
Over time, these considerations become habitual, a personality trait. That is, we can work backward and gauge a person’s personality through their shoes alone.
Can shoes tell about a person? Yes. In a 2012 study, researchers investigated people’s precision in judging the characteristics of an unknown person based solely on the shoes he or she wears most often. They found that:
► Ratings of shoes correlate with shoe owners’ characteristics.
► Age, income, and attachment anxiety can be judged from a picture of a person’s shoe.
► Shoes convey a thin but useful slice of information about their wearers.
Here are some examples of how to do just that.
1. Dress Shoes
What comes to mind whenever you see someone with Dress shoes, I guess it’s professionalism. Dress shoes are a giveaway that a person is mostly in a professional and formal environment. When you put on dress shoes, you are dressed for success. Even if this means putting away your comfort, you won’t take your eye off the ball and you will remain focused on your goal.
What’s the implication of this? You are everyone’s go-to person, whether it’s for advice or a favor. Dress shoes put you in a reliable position; it makes people see you as responsible and makes them want to rely on you for what they feel you are deemed fit for. Even if your personality might not be everyone’s cup of tea, they know that you are reliable.
Additionally, dress shoes reveal that you are intelligent, mature, confident, and goal-oriented.
2. Slip-Ons
Slip-on shoes are comfortable and convenient, but they are also much more than that. The same can be said about the people who wear them.
These people are comfortable, formal-casual, and stylish; these shoes are at the intersection between introversion and extroversion. If you are the kind of person who loves to wear slip-ons regularly, you probably don’t like to stand out much, and perhaps you also love being comfortable and uncomplicated.
But this doesn’t mean you don’t know how to keep appearances.
3. Knit Sneakers
In the past, there was always a negative connotation attached to sneakers. If you wore these “street shoes,” you were likely to be someone who is most likely to commit a crime.
But now, times have changed and sneakers have become a cultural statement.
Sneakers are usually worn by people in their teens or early twenties, but of course, they are not limited to this age group. Additionally, it entails that you are aware of fashion trends and like to keep up with them.
At the same time, your preference for sneakers could reveal your conformist nature. If you wear the most trendy sneakers, you like to blend in and be accepted.
4. Flats
Wearing flat shoes does not necessarily mean that you have a flat personality. Instead, all it means is that you’re easy-going, modest, free from egotism, and focused.
It also denotes that, apart from the fact that you are comfortable in your shoes, you are also comfortable with yourself and with the life you’ve achieved for yourself. In other words, you don’t believe that you need to wear heels to be taken seriously.
At the same time, printed flats are your way of adding some spice to your footwear without compromising your comfort. If you regularly wear flats, especially ballet flats, you are considered to be easygoing and have a soft personality. You enjoy looking intelligent and feminine. You are modest, focused, and a very determined and hard worker.
Also, you are motivated and do not stop at being motivated but go out of your way and comfort zone to achieve the goals you’ve set for yourself. In other words, you are the kind of person who makes things happen, which can be inferred based on the professional style of the shoe and also its ability to provide comfort and ease when walking around.
You do quite a bit of standing and walking on a daily basis, which is another reason why you wear these more often than heels. These aren’t statement shoes, so you don’t have the intent of looking flashy or sexy but rather agreeable and polite. You consider yourself both introverted and extroverted, maybe more on the introverted side.
Conclusion
It is a well-known saying that a book should not be judged by its cover. However, the same rule doesn’t extend to shoes, according to research, whether it’s age, gender, nationality, personality, or attachment styles.
As it turns out, you can accurately tell a lot about a person from the shoes that they wear.
Of course, these rules are flexible and not rigid, meaning that in some cases, you might not be able to accurately tell someone’s personality by merely looking at their shoes.
But for the most part, though, it would appear that shoes are the window to the soul.
