Are You Perceived As A Sociable Neighbor?
Research says Americans unconsciously use holiday decorations to communicate friendliness and cohesiveness to their neighbors.
A report published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology suggests you can positively sway what your neighbors think of you.
Naïve raters (those who did not know the people or the homes they were rating) were asked to identify the friendly residents of a neighborhood simply by looking at home exteriors, and to identify which aspects of the homes formed their impressions. Researchers also examined the possibility that residents who decorate for Christmas but who have few friends on the block may be using the decorations and other clues as a way of communicating their accessibility to neighbors.
Participants rated residents based only on photographs of home exteriors. The subject homes had been preselected for their presence/absence of Christmas decorations and the resident’s self-rated degree of social contact with neighbors (low/high).
As expected, raters used Christmas decorations as a cue that the residents were friendly and cohesive. Decoration interacted with sociability in a complex but interpretable way. In the absence of Christmas decorations, raters accurately distinguished between the homes of sociable and non-sociable residents. They attributed their impressions to the more “open” and “lived in” look of the sociable residents’ homes.
When Christmas decorations were present, raters attributed greater sociability even to non-sociable residents. The results support the idea that residents can use their home's exterior to communicate attachment to a community and their desire to integrate themselves into the neighborhood’s social activities.
Christy Rosen Clement is a Pricing Strategy Advisor®, Seller Representative Specialist®, Military Relocation Professional® and REALTOR® at Palermo Real Estate Professionals in South Tampa
