Are People Who Get Tattoos Really More Reckless and Impulsive?

Anyone over 40 years of age likely remembers an era when a tattoo communicated that you had done time in prison, the navy, or a circus. Much has changed since then.

Tattoos now appear on people from all walks of life. Even though recent research reveals that a tattoo no longer signifies “deviant behavior,” such as rebelliousness or extreme risk-taking (Swami et al., 2016), negative stereotypes die hard, especially among the older generation – the same generation from which hiring managers and people in positions of power disproportionately comes from.

In fact, from a national survey of 401 human resource professionals, 60 percent indicated that a visible tattoo (such as those on the face, hands, or neck) is one of the “best ways not to get hired for a job” (York College of Pennsylvania, 2013). Someone contemplating getting inked ought to consider possible future economic disadvantage from workplace discrimination based on negative tattoo stereotypes against more immediate personal (self-)image and group identity gains.

The decision of whether to get tattooed thus represents a classic intertemporal tradeoff where present desires and benefits are weighed against future costs. Are individuals pursuing a career who choose nonetheless to get inked acting impulsively and displaying shortsightedness and a lack of future orientation?

Study Methods

With this in mind, social psychologist Anne Wilson (Wilfrid Laurier University) and I designed a financially incentivized online experiment as well as an extensive survey to evaluate the hypothesis that people with tattoos are more likely to make shortsighted and impulsive decisions than non-tattooed individuals (Ruffle and Wilson, 2019).

We recruited 1,104 American participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online platform facilitating controlled experimental and survey research. Our study begins with a paid choice experiment: receive one dollar today or wait three weeks to receive $1.10? We continued to gradually increase the payment amount in three weeks until the participant was willing to forego the dollar now for the larger sum in three weeks. The larger the future sum the participant demands in order to relinquish the dollar now, the more shortsighted they are considered to be.

By contrast, the sooner the participant switches from a dollar to the three-week delayed payment, the more future-oriented they are.

Study Findings

We found that non-tattooed respondents gave up the dollar today for a substantially smaller future sum than those with at least one readily visible tattoo. Participants whose only tattoo(s) can be readily hidden with clothing represent an intermediate case. Simply stated, we found that people without tattoos are more future-oriented and the visibly tattooed are, on average, the most present-oriented at this financial task.

Recognizing that our incentivized choice task is one method to measure time preferences and focuses on a specific tradeoff between time and money, we collected other shortsighted behavior and habits measures in the financial, health, and social domains. In each of these domains, the non-tattooed reported less shortsighted behavior than the hidden tattooed who were, in turn, less shortsighted than the visibly tattooed.

For example, compared to tattooed individuals, the non-tattooed tend to make their credit card payments on time more often, consume less alcohol, and smoke fewer cigarettes. They are less likely to post controversial or offensive online opinions and less likely to agree with the statement, “socially, I want to have a good time now, even if my future might suffer as a result.”

Impulsivity is closely related to shortsightedness, and both tendencies reflect little thought given to future outcomes and consequences. We had all participants complete a four-question version of the cognitive reflection test (CRT). Each CRT question has an intuitive but incorrect answer. Thought is required to override one’s gut instinct to arrive at the correct response. Once again, the non-tattooed performed better at this task (i.e., showed less impulsivity) than the hidden tattooed, who do better than the visibly tattooed.

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All of the above results on shortsightedness and impulsivity hold regardless of the motive for getting a tattoo, the number of tattoos, the amount of time contemplated before getting one’s first tattoo, and the time elapsed since one’s most recent tattoo.

The Exception

When we break down our data by gender, we discover one exception to the above pattern: women with only hidden tattoos are no more impulsive or shortsighted than non-tattooed women. Why are men with only hidden tattoos more present-focused and impulsive than non-tattooed males, whereas no such differences exist among women? We conjecture that a tattoo is a minor step for women because body and facial adornments are more socially acceptable for women than men.

The Causality

One remaining question concerns the direction of causality between tattoos and shortsightedness. Are shortsighted individuals more likely to get tattooed, or does getting a tattoo lead to shortsightedness? While the latter hypothesis may seem far-fetched, Shah et al. (2012) demonstrated how limited financial means could produce short-term thinking, even if randomly assigned in an experiment.

Our findings do not support the “tattoos-cause-shortsightedness” direction of causality. We asked our participants how likely they would get a(nother) tattoo within the next year. Strikingly, the non-tattooed individuals who indicated that they are highly likely to get inked within the coming year and the already tattooed are similarly shortsighted. This result supports the notion that shortsightedness predisposes individuals to getting tattooed.

Future Research

There is more to learn about the relationship between tattoos and time preferences. Our study did not ask about the content of the tattoo. One can imagine that some, for example, more risqué or outright offensive tattoos might predict more impulsivity and shortsightedness than other, more thoughtful tattoos.

Also, it would be interesting to explore whether the rise in tattoos reflects increased shortsightedness among the younger generation or a reduced social sigma and greater acceptance of tattoos.

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