Question

Researchers at the University of Kansas say that people can accurately judge 90 percent of a stranger’s personality simply by looking at the person’s shoes.

“Shoes convey a thin but useful piece of information about their wearers,” the authors wrote in the new study published in the Journal of Research in Personality. “Shoes serve a practical purpose, and also serve as nonverbal(非語言的) indications with symbolic messages. People tend to pay attention to the shoes they and others wear.”

Medical Daily notes that the details detected in the study include a person’s general age, sex, income, political affiliation(派別), and other personality characteristics, including someone’s emotional stability.

Lead researcher Omri Gillath said the judgments were based on the style, cost, color, and condition of someone’s shoes. In the study, 63 University of Kansas students looked at pictures showing 208 different pairs of shoes worn by the study’s participants. Volunteers in the study were photographed in their most commonly worn shoes, and then filled out a personality questionnaire.

So, some of the results were expected: People with higher incomes most commonly wore expensive shoes, and flashier footwear was typically worn by extroverts(外向者).

However, some of the more specific results are interesting. For example, “practical and functional” shoes were generally worn by more “agreeable” people, while ankle boots went more closely with “aggressive” personalities.

The strangers of all may be that those who wore “uncomfortable looking” shoes tend to have “calm” personalities.

And if you have several pairs of new shoes or take exceptional care of them, you may suffer from “attachment anxiety”, spending a large amount of time worrying about what other people think of your appearance.

There was even a political calculation in the mix with more liberal types wearing “shabbier and less expensive” shoes.

The researchers noted that some people will choose shoe styles to mask their actual personality characteristics, but researchers noted that volunteers were also likely to be unaware that their footwear choices were showing deep awareness into their personalities.

1.According to Omri Gillath, a stranger’s personality can be judged by ___.

A. he age and sex of the person

B. the personality questionnaire by the person

C. the emotional stability of the person

D. the shoes the person wears

2.We can infer from Paragraph 2 that ___.

A. a practical purpose is to wear shoes

B. people want to buy new shoes they pay attention to

C. shoes are vital to their wearers

D. the Journal of Research in Personality is a magazine

3.The underlined word “agreeable” is closest in meaning to __.

A. gentle B. weak C. generous D. considerate

4. Which might be the best title for the passage?

A. Good Shoes, Good Character

B. Bad Shoes, Bad Personality

C. Shoes and Their Wearers’ Personality

D. Shoes Shape A Person’s Character

Answer 1