New psychology research uncovers surprisingly consistent misjudgments of tattooed individuals

A new study published in the Journal of Research in Personality finds that while people tend to form strong and consistent impressions about someone’s personality based on their tattoos, those impressions are often off the mark. In particular, observers assumed certain tattoos revealed traits like agreeableness or extraversion, but most of these guesses didn’t line up with how tattooed individuals described themselves—except in one case. Tattoos rated as “wacky” were modestly linked to higher openness to new experiences.

Tattoos have become increasingly common in the United States, with recent surveys suggesting that nearly a third of adults have at least one. Yet tattoos still carry social baggage. People often make snap judgments about others based on body art, assuming, for instance, that tattooed individuals are more rebellious, neurotic, or less conscientious than others. Most past research has focused on whether people with tattoos are judged differently from those without. But this approach overlooks the rich variety of tattoo types and styles, as well as the personal reasons behind getting them.

The researchers behind the current study wanted to explore not just how people judge others based on tattoos, but whether those judgments are accurate—and whether certain features of tattoos, like size or content, reliably signal anything about a person’s personality. They also aimed to test whether knowing the meaning behind a tattoo could help people make more accurate assessments.

“We were partially inspired by a series of studies that compared how we judge people with and without tattoos,” said study author William J. Chopik, an associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University and director of the Close Relationships Lab.

“People will make all sorts of assumptions about people with tattoos—that they are risky, addicted to substances, and are all around more negative. But then we acknowledged that some of these judgments might depend on what the tattoo looks like. We assumed that tattoos are all a bit different from each other and that might guide judgments. Thus, it was less a comparison between someone with or without a tattoo. Rather, we felt people would judge people based on whether the tattoo is something like skull on fire or a moving memorial with flowers.”

The research involved 274 tattooed adults between the ages of 18 and 70. Most were women (71 percent), and the majority were White, although individuals from other racial and ethnic backgrounds were also represented. Each participant completed a well-established personality questionnaire that assessed the five major dimensions of personality: agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience. Participants also described the meaning of their tattoos and allowed the research team to photograph them.

The study gathered 375 tattoo images in total. Some participants shared two tattoos, though most provided just one. The photos and accompanying personal descriptions were then shown to a group of 30 raters, including undergraduate and graduate students as well as professors trained in psychology.

Half of the raters were asked to assess the personality of the tattooed individuals based on the photo alone. The other half received both the photo and a written explanation of the tattoo’s meaning. None of the raters judged the same tattoo in both formats. All raters used the same personality scale to evaluate how agreeable, conscientious, extraverted, neurotic, and open to experience they believed the tattooed person to be.

To analyze the judgments, the researchers employed a lens model—a framework that examines how people use visible cues in the environment (in this case, tattoo characteristics) to form impressions and whether those cues actually reflect the traits they seem to signal. Raters also assessed 18 specific tattoo features such as size, style, imagery (e.g., life versus death), and how “wacky” or serious the tattoo seemed.

Overall, people were fairly consistent in how they judged tattoos. Raters tended to agree with one another about what certain tattoo features might suggest about personality. For instance, cheerful and colorful tattoos were linked to impressions of higher agreeableness. Large, traditional-looking tattoos were associated with higher extraversion. Tattoos that appeared low in quality or included death imagery led raters to perceive the wearer as more neurotic or less agreeable.

However, these judgments were largely inaccurate. When the researchers compared how participants were rated with how they described themselves, most of the links between tattoo features and personality fell apart. Except for one pattern: people who had tattoos described by raters as “wacky” were somewhat more likely to score higher on openness to experience in their self-assessments.

Adding a description of the tattoo’s meaning did not consistently improve the accuracy of judgments. Although including the story behind a tattoo increased consensus among raters when judging traits like neuroticism, it didn’t significantly enhance their ability to assess whether the tattoo reflected the person’s actual personality.

One of the clearest results came from comparing cue validity (whether tattoo traits truly reflect personality) with cue utilization (whether raters rely on those traits when making judgments). For most personality traits, raters used cues that had little or no connection to how tattooed individuals actually saw themselves. The only meaningful match between cue validity and utilization was found for openness to experience. In this case, tattoos judged as more eccentric or unusual were both used by raters and modestly indicative of a person’s actual level of openness.

For the other traits—like agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness—the visual cues that raters relied on were not valid indicators. In fact, for some traits, the cues used were negatively correlated with actual self-reports. That means raters were not just guessing incorrectly—they were sometimes consistently wrong.

“We did a pretty in depth job of trying to code aspects of the tattoos,” Chopik told PsyPost. “One reason researchers do this is try to figure out how people are using something like how large the tattoo is or if its colorful (or has flowers) to make judgments about people. So one surprising thing is just how little people were using particular features of the tattoos. There were some indicators, like if a tattoo was wacky/strange, that people were latching onto (which was indeed an accurate indicator). But it was a bit strange to see that people were agreeing on judgments but we couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was guiding their judgments.”

The findings suggest that while people feel confident making assumptions about others based on their tattoos, those assumptions rarely hold up. Tattoos seem to invite personality judgments, and people tend to use consistent mental shortcuts based on the artwork they see. But in most cases, these judgments do not reflect reality. They are shaped more by stereotypes and surface-level impressions than by meaningful psychological differences.

One exception, again, was the trait of openness. Open people were more likely to have tattoos that observers found quirky or offbeat. This finding supports earlier research suggesting that people high in openness tend to express themselves through unconventional or creative outlets—including body art.

“People did indeed agree on what people with certain tattoos are like,” Chopik said. “This is called ‘consensus’—that people reach a consensus for how to judge people with particular types of tattoos. But were those judgments accurate? Not really. There was some evidence that tattoos helped provide people evaluate if someone was open to experience (e.g., artistic, open-minded, exploratory) based on their tattoo, and indeed that person is open to experience. But by and large, the judgments weren’t accurate even though people tend to share some idea of what they think of someone with that tattoo.”

The study is one of the first to use a structured model to test whether people can accurately judge personality based on tattoos. Still, the authors note some limitations. The tattoo cues analyzed were relatively broad, and the researchers didn’t explore in depth how or why observers made the judgments they did. Raters may have relied on gut feelings or cultural associations more than any conscious reasoning.

Additionally, the setting of the study—a controlled environment where raters were asked to assess personality traits based on isolated images—differs from real-world interactions, where people might see tattoos alongside other personal cues like clothing, facial expressions, or speech.

“We’re not entirely sure what’s guiding people’s judgments,” Chopik said. “Although they were pretty inaccurate about the judgments, but they were indeed forming consistent judgments. So we may have been incomplete about the tattoo cues/aspects that we were looking at. We also had information about the meaning behind tattoos that some of the raters were provided. We look forward to coding more of those descriptions. That might be more influential in guiding judgments because people describing tattoos also convey a bunch of things about themselves when they do it.”

The study, “Ink and Identity: Personality perceptions based on tattoos,” was authored by Brooke Soulliere, William J. Chopik, Alejandro Carrillo, W. Keith Campbell, Brandon Weiss, and Joshua D. Miller.