Character
In his 2003 book 10 Steps to Sales Success, Tim Breithaupt proposes a set of four personality types evolving from Carl Jung's work: Socializer, Director, Thinker, and Relater. Breithaupt writes that toilet paper management is an important detail for Thinkers, while Directors don't care so long as the paper is available. In her 2001 book Three Keys to Self-Understanding, Pat Wyman locates having an opinion on toilet paper hanging on the Enneagram of Personality, which classifies people as Ones, Twos, Threes, and so on: "Ones know the answer to such dilemmas."
Gilda Carle, a therapist and Cottonelle consultant, offers her theories on character traits:
If you roll over, you like taking charge, crave organization and are likely to over-achieve.
If you roll under, you're laid-back, dependable and seek relationships with strong foundations.
If you don't care as long as it's there, you aim to minimize conflict, value flexibility and like putting yourself in new situations.
David Grimes, a columnist, takes a more sarcastic attitude towards bathroom-informed personality tests:
If you are the kind of person who prefers the paper to roll over the top, then you are an outgoing, free-spending type who gets his kicks trying to sneak 11 items through the 10-items-or-less line at the grocery store; if you are the kind of person who prefers the paper to roll from the bottom, then you are a naturally suspicious sort who vacuums his house three times a day and thinks Jerry Springer is god. Or perhaps the other way around.
A reporter for the trade journal Fund Action relays a story of a mutual fund firm that profiled job candidates with questions that would be analyzed by a psychologist. One of the questions was "Which way do you hang toilet paper? So it unrolls from the front or the back?". The story does not reveal the name of the firm or its preferred answer.