In honor of Halloween, I thought I’d run a little survey to see what kinds of Halloween activities people enjoy and explore relationships between certain activities (and the holiday as a whole), and personality! For this survey, I wanted to learn about peoples’ attitudes towards the holiday and whether they are associated with any aspects of personality. I tend to think of Halloween as a holiday for extraverts given the fact that it is kind of an outgoing holiday (with all the dressing up and interacting with strangers…), so I thought I’d gather some data.
For this survey, I chose some common Halloween activities and asked people to rate how much they disliked or liked them (simple enough)! Whereas there are a lot of Halloween activities that I’d categorize as “outgoing”, I’m betting that it still has something for everyone! So it could be interesting to see whether there are some activities that may appeal to certain personalities more than others. (I apologize in advance for leaving out whichever activity you most enjoy — survey respondents have a limit to the number of things they will tolerate rating!)
Most people like Halloween
Before I get into the different activities, I thought I’d examine a broader question — what are peoples’ attitudes towards Halloween in general? As you can see in the figure below, almost 4 out of every 5 people like Halloween at least a little bit. As far as how much people like Halloween, you can expect slightly more than 1-in-4 folks to be really big fans. That being said, around 1-in-5 people are either going to be indifferent or at least slightly negative (but it is worth reiterating — a larger percentage of people have strong positive feelings towards Halloween than have negative and indifferent feelings combined!)
Figure 1. “Sisters! All Hallows’ Eve has become a night of frolic, where children wear costumes and run amok.”
How to read this graph: This is a stacked bar graph, meaning each color reflects the % of respondents choosing that option, and they are stacked next to each-other, with the total % choosing any one of them at the far end (79.7% chose one of the “Like” options for Halloween.)
An extravert’s holiday
My hypothesis was confirmed (happens less often than you would think) — Halloween is a holiday for extraverts! As you can see below, the average rating gets more positive as extraversion scores increase. I will add that on average, even the most introverted person has slightly positive feelings towards the holiday, but it does look like among introverts, you’re more likely to run across folks who aren’t all that into it whereas the extraverted crowd is going to have more folks who are planning their costumes in July.
Figure 2. Halloween attitudes (“How much do you dislike or like Halloween in general?”) get more positive as extraversion increases (for the stats nerds: r(161) = 0.25, p = .001).
How to read this graph: “Liking rating” goes from 1 (Dislike strongly) to 7 (Like strongly). Lower numbers mean more introverted/higher numbers mean more extraverted. Each Jack O’Lantern is a person’s response (they are jittered a bit to help with visibility.) The line reflects the best estimate for the average response, assuming the relationship between the two variables is a straight line.
Halloween activities
Most liked activities
Winners
On the right, I’ve ranked the activities from highest rated to lowest rated on average. It looks like eating candy is our overall winner, which makes sense to me — who doesn’t love a good Reese’s? (Reese’s is a pretty consistent winner on the candy front…) Our second spot is Fall festivals — maybe this is sort of an indirect Halloween event since it is more about Fall, but I added it because I love me a good Fall festival, and it turns out that most everybody else does too (if there are apple cider donuts, count me in.) Next we have non-horror tv/movies (we all love a good Hocus Pocus rewatch), trick-or-treating, and decorating to round out the top 5.
Losers
Haunted houses are not for everyone and this survey bears that out. It is also a bad day for reading — that one surprised me, though I’m also the guy writing a data-driven blog about Halloween activities. Finally, folks are really not keen on making costumes for their kids — which is understandable when it is the 4th or 5th time they change their mind about what they want to be the night before…
Note. We went with a range voting (or score voting) method here, meaning I just took the average rating and ranked by that.
Personality and attitudes towards halloween activities
Extraversion
I already showed that more extraverted people tend to be more fond of Halloween in general. When I break this down by activity it turns out that extraversion also shows the strongest associations with the largest number of activities. There were some obvious positive associations with extraverts rating going to parties and haunted houses more positively (though interestingly, both introverts and extraverts are similar in their love of fall festivals!) Dressing up is a bit more of an extravert-preferred activity (not a surprise to me at least…), as is handing out candy and trick-or-treating with children. Some more surprising positive associations were with crafting, pumpkin carving and reading halloween themed books. As far as non-existent associations, things like baking, eating candy, and watching non-horror Halloween-themed TV/movies are equally loved by all (note also that these activities were rated more highly on average, which makes sense.)
Conscientiousness
The only relationship of any significance for conscientiousness was a positive association with going to family-friendly Halloween parties. So if you need somebody to help you organize a neighborhood Halloween block party, look for that reliable neighbor who is always the first to welcome a new resident with a batch of freshly baked brownies.
Agreeableness
True to form, folks with more agreeable personality-types had higher ratings for activities that focused on being helpful to others. Specifically, more agreeable people rated handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, going trick-or-treating with children, and going to family-friendly Halloween parties more highly.
Emotional stability
You know that friend of yours who is pretty chill? Take them to a Fall festival — they’ll have a good time. Aside from rating fall festivals more highly, people scoring higher on emotional stability also like handing out candy, family-friendly parties, and family-friendly haunted houses (just don’t expect them to scream.)
Openness to experience
You know that friend of yours who is always game to try something new? Take them to a Fall festival — they’ll have a good time. Actually, you can also take them to a haunted house — an adult or family-friendly one, they’re not picky. People higher in openness to experience just want a fun new experience — Fall festivals and haunted houses are sure to deliver on that front.
What have we learned?
Generally speaking, people like Halloween — it is meant to be fun after all. It also looks like on average, Halloween is more of an extravert’s holiday — which makes some sense given how social and outgoing many of the traditions are. That being said, there does seem to be something for pretty much everyone!
If you are an introvert and have a really extraverted friend, just know that they are probably going to want to go bigger than you do for Halloween. Try your best to get into the spirit with them. If you are an extravert with a really introverted friend, I know you’re excited, but if you want to do a themed dress up, keep it simple (my Halloween-loving spouse has mastered the science of this), and if you want to go to a party, maybe follow it up with a wind-down by watching Hocus Pocus and ordering a pizza afterwards.
Most importantly, don’t skimp on the candy.
Happy Halloween!
I really enjoy doing these silly surveys and I’d love to be able to do more! While I get some volunteer responses, to get a good sample, I also pay survey-takers. If you enjoy this kind of content and want to see more, please throw a few bucks my way!
Survey details
Sample size
163 participants (USA)
151 from Cloud Research Crowdsourcing platform
12 from social media (r/samplesize, Facebook)
Demographics
50% female; 50% male
Median age = 37 (youngest = 18, oldest = 71)
Materials
Personality questionnaire was the BIG5 Ten Item Personality Inventory
Lang, F. R., John, D., Ludtke, O., Schupp, J., & Wagner, G. G. (2011). Short assessment of the Big Five: robust accros survey methods except telephone interviewing. Behavior Research Methods, 43, 548-567.
A PERSONALITY PRIMER
Extraversion: Sociabile, assertive, energetic
Conscientiousness: Organized, dependable
Agreeableness: Warm, sympathetic to others
Emotional stability: Calm, steady
Openness to experience: Curious, imaginative, willing to try new things