People With Tattoos: 3 Typical Personality Traits

Tattoos are already a true social and aesthetic phenomenon. Since moving from prison environments to the fashion runways and to all sorts of demographics in the most western countries, have become so normalized that they are no longer something strange, as was the case a few decades.

According to estimates from the Spanish Academy of Dermatology, one in three Spaniards between the ages of 18 and 35, the millennial generation, has at least one tattoo. It is not an isolated case: in the United States, almost a third of the inhabitants have their skin tattooed in one way or another, according to the Pew Research Center.

Given this rapid expansion, it is normal that social and personality psychologists have been interested in knowing what traits and psychological characteristics define people who wear tattoos.

• You may be interested in: "40 symbolic tattoos with a deep meaning (with photos)"

Personality traits of people with tattoos

It is clear that each individual is a world; This is a principle that all researchers dedicated to the study of individual differences take into account.

However, it is also true that, in many cases, certain personality traits make us more prone to perform certain behaviors. It occurs with the propensity to use drugs, to get married, and to many others, among which apparently is also the fact of getting a tattoo or more.

Recently, a group of researchers from Anglia Ruskin University has carried out A study just for detect those personality traits in which people with tattoos are characterized when compared to the rest of the population.

To carry out this study, a series of volunteers, with or without tattoos, were recruited to fill out a personality test. From the analysis of all the accumulated data, the team discovered three basic personality traits in those who wear tattoos. They are, fundamentally, the three that we will see below.

1. extraversion

Extraversion is a personality trait that tells us about the degree to which people depend on external stimuli in the immediate environment. Specifically, who is an extrovert? tends to seek complex and socially rich environments, and full of stimuli, unlike the introverted people, who show a certain degree of anxiety if they feel overwhelmed by external stimuli.

In practice, extroverted people are more sociable, since they like to be in crowded places very often and where there are large groups, sounds and visual stimuli. They give the impression of being energetic individuals, although situations in which there is a certain degree of loneliness and isolation can cause your mood to drop, something that does not happen with introverts.

• You may be interested in: "Differences between extraverted, introverted and shy people"

2. openness to experience

This research shows that people with tattoos have a significant tendency to welcome new experiences. This means that, in general, the changes that occur in life over time are not seen as something bad, something that does happen, for example, in conservative people.

On the other hand, the search for new experiences is seen as something exciting by those who present this type of personality, while monotonous situations quickly cause boredom. In general, everything related to adventure and the possibility of assuming a certain degree of risk it is experienced with pleasure.

3. Motivation to stand out

It is well known that many people claim to get tattoos simply because they like them or because they have a meaning that they know more than anyone else. Of course, it is quite possible that for hundreds of thousands of people with tattoos this is the case, but this study has found that, in general, Whoever decides to tattoo their skin shows a significant motivation to stand out from the rest.

Based on this data, the fact of resorting to this kind of aesthetic and symbolic resources can be seen as an attempt to build an identity in front of others; have something to tell through stories traced by the ink that decorates the body, being these narrations, normally, something that has to do with the philosophy of life of the person who wears it, or with important events that have occurred in their lives.

After all, even those smallest and most hidden tattoos give rise to questions and excuses to explain how life is lived, or has been lived. The fact that only very few people see some of them is in itself something that strengthens their power to express, given that the discretion and intimacy associated with them cause a clear emotional impact on whoever behold.