How shoes can reveal what’s in your soul

You really can judge a person by their shoes and they do not need to see anything else to do so, a new study has revealed. Psychologists from the University of Kansas found that the style, value, colour and condition of the footwear can paint a picture of the owner's emotional, political and other vital personality traits. It is such a giveaway that in the tests, observers who were shown a picture of a pair of shoes guessed around 90 percent of the wearer's personal characteristics. 63 students looked at photographs showing 208 different pairs of shoes belonging to volunteers in the experiment.

Each of the volunteers filled in a personality questionnaire and each was told to provide their most commonly worn shoes for the experiment. The observers were asked to look at each pair and guess the gender, age and social status of the owner. This including whether the owner was an extrovert or introvert, liberal leaning or conservative, their emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness. "Shoes convey a thin but useful slice of information about their wearers," the Daily Mail quoted the researchers as saying. "Shoes serve a practical purpose, and also serve as nonverbal cues with symbolic messages. People tend to pay attention to the shoes they and others wear. "Shoes have great variety of styles, brands, looks, and functions. Because of this variety, shoes can carry individual difference information, but do they? "We suggest that the answer is yes," they said.