Are you a 'hater' or a 'liker?' It may surprise you but a new study finds that "haters", or people who generally like fewer things, are likely to be better workers.
Since haters spend so much time on fewer activities, it gives them the opportunity to hone their skills in specific tasks, the study noted.
Assuming that our disposition motivates behaviour, lead author Justin Hepler from University of Illinois suggested that people who like many things also do many things during the course of a week while people who dislike many things do very few things with their time.
"Indeed, some people may be more active than others not because they want to be active per se, but because they identify a large number of specific behaviours in which they want to engage," Hepler added.
Although haters and likers did not differ in the types of activities they pursued, haters tended to do fewer activities throughout the week than likers.
Haters and likers also did not differ in how much time they spent doing activities throughout the week. They merely differed in the number of activities they did.
As a result, haters spent more time on a given activity.
Thus, haters could be characterised as less active because they do fewer things, or they could be characterised as more focused because they spend more time on the small number of things they do.
Researchers suggest that their findings may have implications for understanding the development of skills and expertise.
For example, likers may adopt a jack-of-all-trades approach to life, investing small amounts of time in a wide variety of activities.
In contrast, when haters find an activity they actually like, they may invest a larger amount of time in that task, allowing them to develop a higher skill level compared to likers.
The study was published in the journal Social Psychology.
