Introversion and High Spatial Ability Is Associated With Origami Proficiency

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH

published: 02 March 2022

doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.825462

Edited by:

Lara L. Jones,

Wayne State University, United States

Reviewed by:

Thora Tenbrink,

Bangor University, United Kingdom

Ágota Krisztián,

Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary

*Correspondence:

Mitsuhiko Hanada

[email protected]

Specialty section:

This article was submitted to

Cognition,

a section of the journal

Frontiers in Psychology

Received: 30 November 2021

Accepted: 04 February 2022

Published: 02 March 2022

Citation:

Hanada M (2022) Introversion

and High Spatial Ability Is Associated

With Origami Proﬁciency.

Front. Psychol. 13:825462.

doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.825462

Introversion and High Spatial Ability

Is Associated With Origami

Proﬁciency

Mitsuhiko Hanada

Department of Complex and Intelligent Systems, Future University Hakodate, Hakodate, Japan

This study examined the relationship between origami performance, personality traits,

and spatial ability. The researchers asked 43 Japanese university students (19 women

and 24 men) to fold three models of origami (paper folding). Their performance was

assessed by the number of successes in correctly folding the paper to make the

models. They also answered the personality inventory NEO-FFI and completed the

block-design test of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale IV, which measures the spatial

ability of people. The results showed that although origami performance demonstrated

no signiﬁcant relation with neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness, or

conscientiousness, it improved as introversion tendency and spatial ability increased.

There were no differences based on sex in origami performance. The ﬁndings suggest

that performing origami requires spatial ability, which supports the view that origami

is a potential educational material for training and enhancing spatial ability, and that

introversion is advantageous to origami performance.

Keywords: origami, paper folding, spatial ability, personality, big-ﬁve model, introversion, extraversion

INTRODUCTION

Origami is well known as the traditional Japanese practice of paper folding, although paper folding

has been traditionally performed in other regions as well, such as China, Spain, and Germany

(McArthur and Lang, 2013). Traditionally, there are a limited number of origami models; however,

recently, a number of new origami models have been introduced. Origami is currently practiced

worldwide. It is generally used for amusement, especially for children. There are many beautiful

and complex origami ﬁgures that can be now considered a type of art (Lang, 2011; McArthur and

Lang, 2013, 2017).

Origami has also been analyzed mathematically, and the computational aspects of origami, such

as the computational complexity of ﬂat folding, have been studied in the ﬁeld of computational

geometry (Demaine and O’Rourke, 2007). Origami is also used in engineering applications. For

example, Miura-ori is famous for rigid origami folding, which has been proposed for the folding of

solar panels in space (Hull, 2013).

Origami is also used in kindergarten schools and childcare in Japan to build a basic

understanding of geometric shapes and concepts among children (Akimaru et al., 2007). Origami

is popular in Japanese childhood education, probably because Fröbel, a German educator, who

created the foundation of childhood education, included origami in his educational materials,

and childhood education in Japan has been inﬂuenced by his education theory. He considered

that origami can help children understand geometrical concepts intuitively (Igarashi, 2012).

Furthermore, a number of attempts have been made to use origami for education in elementary

and middle schools (Higginson and Colgan, 2001; Robichaux and Rodrigue, 2003; Boakes, 2009;

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Hanada Origami, Introversion, and Spatial Ability

Golan and Jackson, 2009; Wares, 2011, 2016; Arıcı and Aslan-

Tutak, 2015; Burte et al., 2017), as well as in colleges (Boakes,

2011). Improvement of geometrical understanding by origami

have been reported (Boakes, 2009, 2011; Arıcı and Aslan-

Tutak, 2015; Burte et al., 2017). Origami has been considered

to stimulate and train spatial ability while folding paper, that

is, geometrically transforming a paper’s shape and making

geometrical ﬁgures, which can contribute to the development of

geometrical concepts (Boakes, 2009, 2011; Taylor and Hutton,

2013; Cakmak et al., 2014; Burte et al., 2020).

Although recent mathematical and technological analyses of

origami have been actively explored, and origami has been

used for education, psychological studies of origami have been

rather scarce. However, several studies have examined the eﬀects

of origami on the improvement of spatial ability as well as

geometrical understanding, and the developmental eﬀect of

spatial abilities were demonstrated for students in elementary

schools (Taylor and Hutton, 2013; Burte et al., 2017), children

with mathematical diﬃculty (Krisztián et al., 2015), middle-

and high-school students (Boakes, 2009; Arıcı and Aslan-Tutak,

2015) and college students (Boakes, 2011). Moreover, training

eﬀects of origami on spatial ability was demonstrated on a

study of neuroscience (Jaušovec and Jaušovec, 2012). Thus,

origami has positive developmental and training eﬀects on spatial

ability. However, it is still unknown whether people with high

spatial ability perform origami well. Physical exercise has good

eﬀects on cognitive abilities (Hötting and Röder, 2013), but

good performers of physical exercise do not mean people with

high cognitive abilities. Similarly, positive relationship between

origami performance and spatial ability is not logically derived

from positive eﬀects of origami on spatial ability. Although

aspects of spatial ability were measured by mental paper folding

(Ekstrom et al., 1976), spatial ability may not be critical for

origami because origami is a task of actually, but not mentally,

folding paper. Thus, this study examined the relationship

between origami performance and spatial ability. A positive

relationship between origami performance and spatial ability

would strengthen the claim that spatial ability is needed for

origami and that origami is a potential educational material for

training spatial ability.

Although origami is said to raise good emotional

characteristics and personality such as carefulness and

perseverance, very few studies have experimentally examined the

psychological aspects related to origami. Hence, this study also

examined the relationship between origami performance and

personality. One of the famous factor models of personality is the

Big Five model, which describes the personality of human beings

using the ﬁve factors: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to

experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness (Digman, 1990;

Goldberg, 1990). The Big Five model is supported for people from

various cultural backgrounds, although variations across cultures

have been noted (De Raad et al., 2010). The Big Five personality

traits are related to creativity (Batey and Furnham, 2006;

Furnham and Bachtiar, 2008; Furnham et al., 2008), and

academic performance (O’Connor and Paunonen, 2007).

Origami is claimed to require cautiousness and perseverance

because those engaged in it, called folders, have to carefully

read origami diagrams and instructions and then follow

instructions to fold models accurately. Most origami models

cannot be folded if the order, location, and manner of

folding are incorrect in the crucial folding steps. Cautiousness

is generally regarded as a facet of conscientiousness, and

perseverance is also related to this factor. If people need to be

cautious and perseverant in performing origami, conscientious

people would obtain a high score for origami performance.

Conscientiousness is also associated with achievement-striving,

and high conscientiousness is positively related to high academic

success (Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham, 2003; Noftle and

Robins, 2007; O’Connor and Paunonen, 2007; Poropat, 2009).

Further, conscientiousness is associated with higher performance

in many domains of cognitive tasks in older adults (Sutin et al.,

2019). This suggests that conscientiousness is positively related

to origami performance.

Origami is also said to raise children’s creativity (Pope

and Lam, 2009; Gur and Kobak-Demir, 2017); however,

little empirical evidence has been presented to support this.

Performing origami following instructions may appear to be

unrelated to creativity, but it involves some aspects of problem-

solving (Tenbrink and Taylor, 2015; Burte et al., 2017), and a high

level of creativity would help in these aspects of problem-solving

in origami. Studies have found that openness to experience

has been related to creativity (Furnham et al., 2005) and

cognitive ﬂexibility (McCrae, 1987; Costa and McCrae, 2010).

A study has found that openness is also associated with higher

cognitive performance in older adulthood (Sutin et al., 2019). If

creativity and cognitive ﬂexibility help in performing origami, the

performance of origami would be related to openness.

Extraversion/inversion is also related to cognitive

performance; extraverts tend to be better at dividing attention

to various tasks (Eysenck, 1982), resistance to distraction

(Dornic and Ekehammar, 1990; Campbell, 1992; Dobbs et al.,

2011), and retrieval from memory (Eysenck and Eysenck,

1979), whereas introverts perform better at vigilance (Shaw

et al., 2010) and reﬂective problem-solving (Kumar and Kapila,

1987; Koelega, 1992). It is suggested that these associations

of extraversion/introversion with cognitive performance are

mediated through several psychological mechanisms, such

as arousal and attentional control (Eysenck, 1982; Matthews,

2009). Although extraversion seems to be associated with better

performance than introversion as a whole (Matthews, 2009),

some studies reported that extraversion was negatively related

to academic performance (Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham,

2003; Furnham et al., 2003). Paper folding consists of many

physical and mental operations, and extraversion/introversion

is related to many cognitive functions, which may be related to

extraversion/introversion in some ways, although it cannot be

properly said which way it is.

Neuroticism has been reported to be related to poor

cognitive performance (Eysenck, 1983; Eysenck and Eysenck,

1985) and was sometimes negatively associated with academic

performance (Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham, 2003;

Poropat, 2009), mainly due to susceptibility to high anxiety

and stress in people with high neuroticism (Eysenck, 1967;

Eysenck and Eysenck, 1985; O’Connor and Paunonen, 2007).

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Hanada Origami, Introversion, and Spatial Ability

People with high neuroticism may feel stressed and anxious

when they have to perform a task in the presence of an

experimenter or examiner, and when their performance is

going to be evaluated. Thus, those with high neuroticism

might perform origami more poorly, although it would not be

speciﬁc to origami. Agreeableness is not generally related to

cognitive or academic performance (O’Connor and Paunonen,

2007). Hence, agreeableness can be said to be unrelated to

origami performance.

The present study examined the relationship between origami

performance and spatial ability and the Big Five personality traits.

It formulated the following hypotheses that consider the above-

discussed arguments: (1) As spatial ability increases, origami

performance increases, (2) Conscientiousness and openness

would be positively, and neuroticism would be negatively, related

to origami performance; extraversion/introversion might be

related to origami performance in some way, and agreeableness

would not be related to origami performance. To test these

hypotheses, we conducted an experiment in which participants

answered questions on a Big Five personality inventory, took

a test of spatial ability, and performed origami tasks. We

also collected data on participants’ self-evaluations of school

subjects and origami experiences to help interpret the data

on the relationship between spatial ability, personality, and

origami performance.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Participants

A total of 43 Japanese undergraduate and graduate students (20–

24 years old, 19 women and 24 men) majoring in information

sciences, participated in the experiment. The purpose of the

experiment was withheld from the participants.

Materials

Intelligence Test of Spatial Ability

The present study used the block-design test included in the

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) IV (Wechsler, 2008) to

measure spatial ability. In the task, participants arranged red and

white blocks to match a displayed pattern. This test is considered

to require spatial visualization ability and motor skills. It has

been used for assessing spatial skills (Serbin and Connor, 1979;

Casey et al., 2014).

Personality Inventory

This study used the Japanese version of the NEO-FFI Personality

Inventory as a measure of participants’ personalities. The NEO-

FFI is a short version of the revised NEO personality inventory

(Costa and McCrae, 2010). It measures the Big Five personality

traits of neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience,

agreeableness, and conscientiousness using 60 questions (12

for each trait).

Origami

The participants were asked to fold the following three origami

models: Crane, Iris, and Windmill. Crane: The crane is a

traditional Japanese origami model known worldwide as a symbol

of peace. Iris: The iris is also a traditional Japanese origami

model, albeit not as popular as the crane, even among the

Japanese. Windmill: This model was created by Haga (2014), who

is famous for origamics (Haga, 2008), mathematical analysis of

origami, and the application of origami to geometry education.

The windmill is diﬃcult to fold because it includes tato folding,

a folding technique that requires the application of substantial

tension on the paper [The windmill origami model of Haga

(2014) is diﬀerent from the well-known traditional windmill

model and is much more diﬃcult to fold.]. Images of the folded

origami models are shown in Figure 1. The participants folded

these models by looking at origami diagrams with Japanese

instructions for each model. The diagrams and instructions for

Haga’s windmill were copied from Haga’s book (Haga, 2014),

whereas the diagrams for the crane and iris were taken from an

Internet site (Takeuchi, n.d.).

Questionnaires

At the beginning of the experiment, the participants reported

demographic information, such as age and sex, by answering

a questionnaire. After completing the origami tasks, the

participants ﬁlled out another questionnaire with the following

questions (by selecting from the provided options): When

were the ﬁrst and last times you performed origami? (4–

6 years old, 7–12 years old, 13–16 years old, 19–22 years

old, never performed origami, or not remember when); How

often do you fold origami? (3–4 days per week, 1–2 days per

week, 1–2 times per month, 1–2 times per year, or never);

What origami models are you good at folding? How well

did you fold each of the origami models? (1: very poor to

7: very good), and How much did you enjoy folding each

of the models (1: not at all to 7: very much). They were

also asked about their proﬁciency in school subjects [Japanese,

mathematics, foreign language (English), science, social studies,

physical education, art, and music]. The participants responded

by choosing the appropriate number (1: very poor to 7:

very good), whether they like having fun outdoors (yes

or no), and whether they like jigsaw puzzles (yes, no,

neither yes nor no).

Procedure

The experiment was conducted in a partitioned area of

a quiet oﬃce room, and the participants completed the

tasks and evaluations in the following order. (1) Answering

questionnaire on demographic information; (2) Taking up

WAIS block-design test; (3) Answering questions on Personality

Inventory NEO-FFI; (4) Folding origami models in the

following order: crane, iris, and windmill; and (5) Answering

the ﬁnal questionnaire. The participants folded the crane

and iris models until they reported the completion of the

folding or gave up on the completion of the models. A time

limit of 20 min was set for folding the windmill model;

otherwise, the experiment would have overextended if the

participants were given as much time as they needed to decide

to discontinue the process of folding the model. Origami

performance was recorded using a video camera, although

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Hanada Origami, Introversion, and Spatial Ability

FIGURE 1 | Photographs of origami ﬁgures for the origami tasks. The crane and iris are traditional Japanese origami models. The windmill was folded following the

diagram and instructions in Haga’s book (Haga, 2014).

the data were not analyzed. The experiment lasted from

50 min to 2 h.

Data Analysis

The participants were categorized into groups according to

their performance level (i.e., the number of successes in the

origami tasks). The study conducted MANOVA using Wilks

3, with the scores in the personality trait scales and block-

design test as dependent variables, and the origami performance

group as an independent variable. Furthermore, to determine

diﬀerences between the groups in detail, we conducted an

ordered logistic regression analysis (Agresti, 2003), with the

standardized scores in the personality trait scales and block-

design test as the independent variables, and the performance

group as the dependent variable, thus reversing the independent

and dependent variables from those for the MANOVA. The data

on self-evaluation of school subjects were analyzed similarly. The

cross-tables of the origami performance and the results of the

questionnaires were tested using Fisher’s exact test, with multiple

comparisons corrected using Bonferroni’s method. All of the

above analyses were conducted using R (R Core Team, 2020).

RESULTS

The cases in which the participants ﬁnished folding the origami

models without any omitted steps in the instructions, regardless

of the quality of the ﬁnished work, were categorized as successful

folding, and those in which they gave up folding the paper

to achieve the desired model or ﬁnished it incorrectly, were

categorized as unsuccessful folding. Five types of success were

identiﬁed: no success, success for only the crane model, success

for only the iris model, success for the crane and iris models,

and success for all three models. The number of participants

for each of the ﬁve types is presented in Table 1. Eight

participants (19%) correctly folded all the models. Twenty-four

participants (56%) successfully folded the crane and iris, but not

the windmill, and 11 (26%) successfully folded at most one model.

Thus, we categorized the participants into three groups based

on the number of successes in folding, namely, at most one,

two, and three, to represent unskilled, ordinary, and proﬁcient

folders, respectively.

The mean standardized scores of the ﬁve personality traits

in NEO-FFI and the block-design test of WAIS IV for each of

the three groups regarding origami performance are shown in

Figure 2. The MANOVA on the standardized scores for the NEO-

FFI and block-design test showed that the main eﬀect of the

groups was signiﬁcant [3 = 0.565, F(12,70) = 1.92, p = 0.046,

= 0.248], indicating diﬀerences among the three groups. The

results of the ordered logistic regression analysis are presented in

Table 2. The order of the three groups was set according to the

number of successes: “zero or one success,” “two successes,” and

“three successes.” The coeﬃcients for the extraversion and block-

design test scores were found to be signiﬁcant: the less extroverted

(i.e., the more introverted) the participants were, the more they

tended to succeed; the higher the score for the block-design test,

the more they tended to succeed. These results were consistent

with the mean scores of the groups (Figure 2). As the number

of successes increased, the score for extraversion decreased, and

the scores for the block-design test increased. The coeﬃcients

for neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness, and

conscientiousness in the logistic regression analysis were not

signiﬁcant (p > 0.1).

The sample size may be small for this logistic regression

analysis. Maximum likelihood estimates of logit model

coeﬃcients have substantial bias in small samples. The

number of events per variable (EPV), which indicates the

number of outcome events per the number of candidate

predictors, are generally recommended to be 10 or greater

(Peduzzi et al., 1996). However, this rule would not be applied

in that analysis. The expiatory variables for that regression

analysis are not correlated so much. The correlation coeﬃcients

TABLE 1 | Result patterns of the origami tasks.

Zero or one success Two successes Three successes

Zero Only crane Only iris Crane and iris Crane, iris, and windmill

2 3 6 24 8

N = 43.

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Hanada Origami, Introversion, and Spatial Ability

FIGURE 2 | Mean standardized scores for personality traits in NEO-PPI and

the block-design test of the WAIS-IV for each group, categorized based on

the number of origami successes. The error bars represent standard errors. N,

neuroticism; E, extraversion; O, openness to experience; A, agreeableness; C,

conscientiousness.

TABLE 2 | Ordinary logistic regression analysis of the origami successes with the

scores for NEO-FFI and block-design test of the WAIS-IV.

Coefﬁcient (Standard error) t

Neuroticism 0.016 (0.040) 0.391

Extraversion −0.204 (0.068) −2.989**

Openness 0.055 (0.065) 0.841

Agreeableness −0.002 (0.061) −0.029

Conscientiousness 0.009 (0.056) 0.154

Block-design test 0.137 (0.061) 2.239*

Intercepts: g1| g2 = 2.07, g2| g3 = 5.70, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01.

between expiatory variables were less than 0.3 except the

correlation between conscientiousness and openness (0.359).

It is unsurprising, because the Big-Five personality traits are

known to be fairly independent of each other, and spatial ability.

In the case that explanatory variables are uncorrelated, we can

approximately estimate the eﬀect of each variable separately,

with one explanatory variable. For just one explanatory variable,

a much smaller number of samples is required. Thus, the

required sample size would be much smaller than that suggested

by the EPV of 10 for that analysis. Still, the number of the

samples are fairly small. Since it was reported that Firth

(1993) penalized maximum likelihood estimator [equivalently,

maximum penalized likelihood with powers of the Jeﬀreys (1946)

prior as penalty] instead of maximum likelihood estimator

eliminates most of the bias in the logistic regression due

to small samples (Rainey and McCaskey, 2021). Hence, the

ordered logistic regression was conducted by the method of

Firth’s maximum penalized likelihood using R package brglm2

(Kosmidis et al., 2020; Kosmidis, 2021). The results were similar

to those by the maximum likelihood method, though the

regression coeﬃcients were a little smaller than the ones shown

in Table 2 as a whole. The regression coeﬃcient of extraversion

was still signiﬁcant (p = 0.012), and that of spatial ability

was almost signiﬁcant (p = 0.052), while the other regression

coeﬃcients were not signiﬁcant (p > 0.10). Thus, the results of

this logistic regression were fairly robust.

The scores for the self-evaluation of the school subjects were

similarly analyzed. The mean standardized scores for each of

the three groups regarding origami performance are shown in

Supplementary Figure 1. The MANOVA of the standardized

scores for school subjects showed a signiﬁcant main eﬀect of the

group [3 = 0.443, F(16,66) = 2.07, p = 0.020, η

= 0.32]. The

results of the ordered logistic regression with the standardized

scores as independent variables and the grouping as the

dependent variable are shown in Supplementary Table 1. Only

the coeﬃcient for physical education was found to be signiﬁcant:

as the self-evaluation scores for physical education decreased, the

origami performance improved. The ordered logistic regression

was also conducted by the method of Firth’s maximum penalized

likelihood to this data. Although the regression coeﬃcients

became smaller on the whole, the results were similar to that of

the maximum-likelihood logistic regression. Only the coeﬃcient

of physical education was signiﬁcant (p = 0.031).

Table 3 shows the cross-tabulation of performance (zero

or one, two, and three successes) × sex of the participants

(female and male), frequency of performing origami, and the

last time the participants performed origami. As some cells in

the tables had very small numbers, some response categories

regarding the frequency of performing origami and the last

time of origami folding were integrated. Fisher’s exact test

correcting multiple comparisons using Bonferroni’s method,

which tested the independence of origami performance, sex,

frequency, and the last time of origami folding, showed that

sex and frequency of performing origami were not signiﬁcantly

related to origami performance (p > 0.1). Meanwhile, the last

time of origami folding was related to origami performance

(p < 0.05); skilled origami performers tended to have performed

origami more recently.

DISCUSSION

This study examined the relationship between origami

performance, personality traits, and spatial ability. The

participants folded three models of origami, and their

performance was assessed by the number of successes in

folding the models correctly. They also took the personality

inventory NEO-FFI and completed the block-design test

of the WAIS IV, which measures spatial ability. The results

showed that origami performance improved as introversion

tendency and spatial ability increased; however, it demonstrated

no signiﬁcant relationship with neuroticism, openness to

experience, agreeableness, or conscientiousness. The ﬁndings

suggest that performing origami requires spatial ability and that

introversion is advantageous to origami performance.

The study did not score the quality of the folded origami owing

to the diﬃculty of achieving an objective scoring. We tried to

make the standard for evaluating the quality of folding for each

model, and scoring the folded ﬁgures. However, it was found to

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Hanada Origami, Introversion, and Spatial Ability

TABLE 3 | Number of origami successfully folded crossed by sex, frequency of

performing origami, and last time of origami folding.

Number of origami successfully folded

Zero or one Two Three

Sex

Female 4 11 4

Male 7 13 4

Frequency of origami folding

Sometimes 3 11 6

Never 8 13 2

Last time of origami folding

Earlier than university entrance 8 10 1

Later than university entrance 2 11 7

Not remember 1 3 0

be diﬃcult to rate the quality of the folded ﬁgures objectively

and there remained some subjective elements in the evaluation.

Moreover, the quality of almost all the correctly folded origami

ﬁgures was fairly high, and was not varied so much. On the

other hand, whether origami folding is correctly accomplished

can be determined objectively to a fair degree. Therefore, this

measure of performance evaluation for origami folding would

be appropriate. However, relationship between the quality of

folded origami ﬁgures and spatial ability/personality would be an

interesting issue. How to evaluate the folded ﬁgures objectively is

an issue for the future.

Spatial ability was positively related to origami performance;

good/poor origami performers have higher/lower spatial abilities.

The need and use of spatial ability while folding paper physically,

but not mentally following origami instructions, is yet unknown

and there is a lack of clear empirical evidence. The positive

relationship between origami performance and spatial ability

shown in this study strongly suggests that spatial ability is needed

to perform origami correctly. Prior studies have found that

origami has been used to improve spatial ability and geometrical

understandings (Higginson and Colgan, 2001; Robichaux and

Rodrigue, 2003; Boakes, 2009, 2011; Golan and Jackson, 2009;

Wares, 2011, 2016; Burte et al., 2017). The ﬁndings of this study

provide the basis for the use of origami to improve spatial ability,

although further studies should be conducted on how to use

origami as educational materials, and actual training eﬀects of

origami on the improvement of spatial ability.

The study hypothesized that extraversion/introversion might

be associated with origami proﬁciency in some way. The results

indicated that the more introverted the participants were, the

better they were at folding the origami models. Since the

reported relations of extraversion/introversion to performance

of cognitive tasks depend on the task itself, extraverts are

better at dividing attention to various activities (Eysenck, 1982),

resisting distraction (Dornic and Ekehammar, 1990; Campbell,

1992; Dobbs et al., 2011), and retrieving from memory (Eysenck

and Eysenck, 1979), whereas introverts perform better in

vigilance (Shaw et al., 2010) and reﬂective problem-solving tasks

(Kumar and Kapila, 1987; Koelega, 1992). The origami tasks of

this study should not demand divided attention and retrieval

from memory so much, because the participants folded paper

reading the instructions. However, some vigilance would be

required for folding paper, and some amount of reﬂective

problem solving is needed to translate the origami instructions

to actual physical folding. Thus, introverts may beneﬁt from high

vigilance and reﬂective problem-solving abilities. Alternatively,

the diﬀerence in origami performance between introverts and

extraverts may be explained by the diﬀerent ways in which

they engage in social interactions. Extraverts like communicating

with other people, whereas introverts tend to prefer activities

without social interaction (Kirkcaldy and Furnham, 1991).

Hence, introverts may be more familiar with activities performed

alone, such as reading books compared with extraverts (Eysenck

and Eysenck, 1964). Origami is an activity that is usually

performed alone, which may be ideal for introverts. In addition,

introverts may have more experience in origami folding, probably

because it can be performed alone, whereas extroverts may have

fewer experiences, probably because they prefer social activities

such as team sports to origami (Eagleton et al., 2007). This

explanation is consistent with the results shown in Table 3 that

skillful folders tended to have performed origami more recently.

Introverted people may be relatively poor at social interactions,

but good at non-social activities, and thus, their introversion

would prove to be advantageous for performing origami. It is

noteworthy that this relation between origami performance and

extraversion cannot be explained by the correlation between

spatial ability and extraversion as the correlation between the

scores of the block-design test and extraversion trait was

extremely weak (r = −0.073), and the eﬀect of extraversion on

origami performance shown in the ordered logistic regression

(Table 2) did not include those of the other explanatory

variables, including extraversion. Furthermore, no signiﬁcant

relationship between spatial intelligence and extraversion was

reported (Roberts, 2002).

The study also hypothesized that openness and

conscientiousness are related to origami performance. The

results showed no correlations, which is rather surprising,

considering the clearly observed relationship between

introversion and origami performance. The lack of relationship

between conscientiousness and origami performance may be

explained by the long-term nature of personality; carefulness

and perseverance, which are components of conscientiousness,

and was hypothesized to contribute to origami performance,

would be rather long-term tendencies of behaviors (Duckworth

et al., 2007), and it might not reﬂect the short-term mental

concentration needed to perform our origami task. Alternatively,

lack of care and perseverance may not be a primary cause of

origami failure; those traits would not contribute to high origami

performance if a participant did not understand how to fold the

origami models in the ﬁrst place.

Although we hypothesized a positive relationship because

openness is related to creativity, it was found that openness was

not related to origami performance. Openness was reported to be

related to divergent thinking (McCrae, 1987), which is considered

the basis of creativity. Performing origami following instructions

should be a type of problem- solving in which well-deﬁned

solutions exist. Hence, convergent, but not divergent thinking,

is important for origami. Since openness is not a good indicator

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fpsyg-13-825462 February 24, 2022 Time: 18:2 # 7

Hanada Origami, Introversion, and Spatial Ability

of convergent thinking ability, it might not reﬂect origami

performance eﬃciently. The lack of a relationship between

openness and origami performance may also be explained by

the view that creativity is not a single construct and may

consist of several aspects of creativity, which are related to

diﬀerent cognitive abilities and styles. A study reported that

artistic, scientiﬁc, and verbal creativity can be separated, and

object visualization is related to artistic creativity and spatial

visualization is associated with scientiﬁc creativity (Kozhevnikov

et al., 2013). Artists seem to have higher openness than scientists,

although highly creative scientists tend to have higher openness

than non-creative ones (Feist, 1998). Hence, openness is related

more to artistic creativity than to scientiﬁc creativity. Since

origami performance following instructions is associated with

spatial ability, it may relate to scientiﬁc creativity, but it may

not be related to verbal and artistic creativity (However, artistic

creativity should be needed for the creation of new origami

models.). The weak relationship between openness and scientiﬁc

creativity may explain the lack of a signiﬁcant relationship

between origami performance and openness.

We also hypothesized that neuroticism is negatively related to

origami performance due to its susceptibility to mental stress.

However, in this study, it was noted that neuroticism was

higher for good origami performance than for poor performance

(Figure 2), although this diﬀerence in origami performance

was not statistically signiﬁcant. Since our origami task is like

a play activity, but not like a cognitive or academic test, the

task may not invoke mental stress even to people with high

neuroticism. Alternatively, origami may not be aﬀected by stress

levels. Measurement of the stress level during or after origami

would clarify which of these explanations is correct.

Origami is becoming increasingly popular worldwide, with

many exhibitions of artistic origami works in recent times

(McArthur and Lang, 2013, 2017). Moreover, the mathematical

and computational aspects of origami have been analyzed in

the ﬁelds of mathematics and technology by various studies

(Demaine and O’Rourke, 2007; Hull, 2013). Meanwhile, studies

on origami in the ﬁeld of psychology have been scarce. The

present study showed that introversion and spatial ability are

related to origami performance. In the area of education, origami

is popular in Japan’s kindergarten and childcare facilities, and it is

attracting attention in other countries. Many attempts have been

made to improve spatial ability and geometric understanding

using origami as a mathematical material (Boakes, 2009, 2011;

Taylor and Hutton, 2013; Cakmak et al., 2014). Introverted people

are observed to be good at origami; they may be more interested

in the geometry of paper folding than extraverts. Mathematical

education by origami may be more appropriate for introverted

people than for extraverts. Whether the eﬃcacy of geometrical

education using origami diﬀers between extraverts and introverts

would be an issue to be addressed through future studies.

This study had several limitations. First, all of the participants

were young university students; the ﬁndings on the relationship

between origami performance, extraversion, and spatial ability

may not apply to children and older populations. Second, the

participants were Japanese, and almost all Japanese had some

experience in origami folding during their childhood. Thus, the

present results may not be generalizable to people from diﬀerent

cultural backgrounds and with diﬀerent education levels. Third,

the study used three origami models for origami tasks, but

there may be more appropriate origami models for studying

the relation between origami performance, spatial ability, and

personality. Although further studies are required to examine

these issues, the present work provides the ﬁrst step in elucidating

the psychological aspects of origami.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be

made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

ETHICS STATEMENT

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and

approved by the Ethics Committee of Future University

Hakodate. The patients/participants provided their written

informed consent to participate in this study.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

The author conﬁrms being the sole contributor of this work and

has approved it for publication.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the members of my laboratory who

assisted in the preparation of the experimental materials and

data acquisition.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found

online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.

2022.825462/full#supplementary-material

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