Do you open your advent calendar all in one go or wait? Have your say

Are you a rule breaker or a rule follower?

Have you spent your life carefully walking around lawns with signs imploring you not to go on the grass, or are you someone who enjoys leaping over the fence and scurrying across the forbidden section?

When riding a , do you wait dutifully at the lights until it turns green again even if no pedestrians are in sight, or do you make your excuses to yourself and trundle on through?

If you spot a 50p piece falling out of the pocket of a stranger walking in front of you, do you rush to pick it up and dutifully alert them to the nearly lost cash, or are those 50 big ones going straight into your coin purse?

These questions get to the heart of a person's character and whether or not they love to keep in line, or whether they see themselves as above the littler-laws of the land.

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Arguably, there is no better way to tell who a person is than by scrutinising their advent calendar behaviour.

“Individual differences in how people approach advent calendars can be attributed to a combination of cognitive, behavioural and psychosocial factors,” , a consultant counselling psychologist, told Stylist. “Early childhood experiences, personality traits and learned behaviours play a role in shaping these tendencies. It could reflect a balance between adherence to structure and the impulse for immediate gratification."

Clearly, as Dr Birah explained, it is no small matter.

The psychologist argues that skipping ahead in an advent calendar might suggest that you have a desire for instant pleasure, which may in turn highlight an unconscious need for satisfaction or a lack of impulse control.

A famous psychological test - often repeated at schools - involving marshmallows studies how long participants can last before they eat one of the squidgy sweeties laid out in front of them. Those who last longer are more likely to thrive in adulthood, the test claimed.

In more recent years, psychologists have reassessed the study and now argue that impulse control develops across your childhood and teenage years, and that how conscientious, rule-following and impulsive we are can change from moment to moment.

So just because you rip open your advent calendar all in one go on December 1 doesn't mean you're bound to be a wrong-un.

However, Dr Birah argues that waiting for the correct date to open up a given door - or in the case of the designed by make-up artist to the stars Hannah Martin and crammed full of amazing cosmetic goodies, open that day's boxed treat - may help you enjoy the calendar a little more.

“The ritualistic aspect can tap into psychological mechanisms related to pleasure, nostalgia and the satisfaction of delayed gratification," she says.

Which camp do you fall into? Are you an open-all-in-one-dayer, or a rule-following, steady-does-it kind of advent calendar enthusiast? We'd love to know the answer in our poll.