Rounding up - Blair McPherson

There are two types of people those who instinctively round up numbers and those who find the practice irritating and unnecessary. When you fill your car up with petrol and the pump stops at £49-73p do you squeeze another drop in to get it to £50? If you overshoot can you live with £50-08p or do you have to go for £50-50p? What does this say about you? 

Rounders up are not neater people. Those who can cope without rounding up are not more numerate. There is no correlation by gender, age or race. Rounding up does not indicate a predisposition to be optimistic or keeping things simple. Those who do not round up are no less creative but do appear less tolerant. 

What does this tell us about human nature and what are the implications for organisations? 

The research would need to be repeated on a larger scale before any definitive conclusions 

could be reached but the findings to date would strongly indicate that people are different

and some are intolerant of that difference.  Organisations should take this into consideration in how they run their business.

www.blairmcpherson.co.uk