The meat of the article: "Overall, people were fairly consistent in how they judged tattoos. Raters tended to agree with one another about what certain tattoo features might suggest about personality. For instance, cheerful and colorful tattoos were linked to impressions of higher agreeableness. Large, traditional-looking tattoos were associated with higher extraversion. Tattoos that appeared low in quality or included death imagery led raters to perceive the wearer as more neurotic or less agreeable.
However, these judgments were largely inaccurate. When the researchers compared how participants were rated with how they described themselves, most of the links between tattoo features and personality fell apart. Except for one pattern: people who had tattoos described by raters as “wacky” were somewhat more likely to score higher on openness to experience in their self-assessments"
“We surveyed the mother-in-laws and high-school bullies of our participants to gauge personality traits.”