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Welcome to the Research Design Connections blog, started in 2007. Recent blog entries are available here. Earlier blog entries (one for every working day since the beginning of May, 2007) are available to subscribers.
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Hoendervanger and colleagues continue to study the experience of working in activity-based offices. They determined via field and lab studies that “Activity-based work environments are widely adopted; however, research shows mixed findings regarding privacy issues, satisfaction with the work environment, and task performance. . . . The results from both studies confirm that perceived [person-environment] fit is a function of activity, work setting, and personal need for privacy, with indirect effects on satisfaction with the work environment . . . and task performance. . . . Across both studies, a misfit was perceived particularly among workers high in personal need for privacy when performing high-complexity tasks in an open office work setting. Hence, we recommend that organizations facilitate and stimulate their workers to create better fits between activities, work settings, and personal characteristics.”
Jan Hoendervanger, Nico van Yperen, Mark Mobach, and Casper Albers. “Perceived Fit in Activity-Based Work Environments and Its Impact on Satisfaction and Performance.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, in press, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.101339
Herd and Mehta set out to learn more about how to encourage creative thinking. They report that “Imagination visual mental imagery, a mental simulation process that involves imagining an end user interacting with an end product, has been proposed as an efficient strategy to incorporate end-user experiences during new product ideation. . . . The present work delineates the imagination visual mental imagery construct and argues that such mental imagery can take two different routes—one that is more feelings-based (i.e., feelings-imagination), and one that is more objective (i.e., objective-imagination). Further, we propose that although these two approaches will equally benefit outcome usefulness, they will have differential impact on outcome originality. Across five studies, we demonstrate that adopting a feelings-imagination versus an objective-imagination approach induces higher empathic concern, enhancing cognitive flexibility, which leads to higher outcome originality.” An emotion-focused approach can be best when originality is important.
Kelly Herd and Ravi Mehta. 2019. “Head Versus Heart: The Effect of Objective Versus Feelings-Based Mental Imagery on New Product Creativity.” Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 36-52, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucy058
Nearby greenery has again been linked to mental wellbeing. Houlden and colleagues report that their “study was designed to examine whether the amount of greenspace within a radius of individuals’ homes was associated with mental wellbeing, testing the government guideline that greenspace should be available within 300m[eters] of homes. . . . [statistical analyses] revealed positive and statistically significant associations between the amount of greenspace and indicators of life satisfaction and worth. . . . an increase in 1 ha [hectare] of greenspace within 300 m of residents was associated with a statistically significant . . . increase in life satisfaction . . . [sense of self] worth and happiness. . . . This therefore provides some support for the inclusion of greenspace within 300 m of homes.”
Victoria Houlden, Joao de Albuquerque, Scott Weich, and Stephen Jarvis. “A Spatial Analysis of Proximate Greenspace and Mental Wellbeing in London.” Applied Geography, in press, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2019.102036
Features of neighboring homes influence what we think about our own house. Kuhlmann investigated “whether the size of one’s home relative to others in their [resident’s] neighbourhood influences their housing satisfaction. . . . [and found] evidence that relative position matters. Those living in comparatively small houses are more likely to express dissatisfaction with their home than people living in units that are large relative to other houses in their neighbourhood cluster.”
Daniel Kuhlmann. “Coveting Your Neighbour’s House: Understanding the Positional Nature of Residential Satisfaction.” Housing Studies, in press, https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2019.1651832
Schmidt and colleagues wanted to learn more about how nonverbal messages influence how people think and behave. They “recorded participants' EEG brain responses while they played a risk game developed in our laboratory. . . . we predicted that cognitive control would be reduced in the helmet group [that is, people playing the game while wearing a bicycle helmet although they were not near a bicycle], indicated by reduced frontal midline theta power, and that this group would prefer riskier options in the risk game. . . . we found that participants in the helmet group showed significantly lower frontal midline theta power than participants in the control group, indicating less cognitive control. . . . Our results suggest that wearing a bike helmet reduces cognitive control, as revealed by reduced frontal midline theta power, leading to risk indifference when evaluating potential behaviors.” It is likely that the effect observed, tying feeling protected/safe and lower levels of cognitive control, is likely to be found in contexts beyond those tested.
Barbara Schmidt, Luisa Kessler, Clay Holroyd, and Wolfgang Miltner. “Wearing a Bike Helmet Leads to Less Cognitive Control, Revealed by Lower Frontal Midline Theta Power and Risk Indifference.” Psychophysiology, in press, https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.13458
Researchers studying beauty have found that math can be beautiful, just like landscapes and sonatas. A study by Steinerberger and Johnson, published in Cognition,reports that “average Americans can assess mathematical arguments for beauty just as they can pieces of art or music. The beauty they discerned about the math was not one-dimensional either: Using nine criteria for beauty — such as elegance, intricacy, universality, etc. — 300 individuals had better-than-chance agreement about the specific ways that four different [mathematical] proofs were beautiful. . . . For the study, they [researchers] chose four each of mathematical arguments, landscape paintings, and [classical] piano sonatas. . . . The researchers’ nine dimensions elaborated from Hardy’s six were: seriousness, universality, profundity, novelty, clarity, simplicity, elegance, intricacy, and sophistication. . . . for both the artworks and math arguments a high rating for elegance was most likely to predict a high rating for beauty.”
“Study Show We Like Our Math Like We Like Our Art: Beautiful.” 2019. Press release, Yale University, https://news.yale.edu/2019/08/07/study-shows-we-our-math-we-our-art-beau...
Ng and colleagues investigated the benefits tenants link to science parks; some benefits reported have design implications. The team, via an online survey completed by tenants in multiple science parks in the Netherlands, identified three types of science park tenants: “The three tenant types sought different benefits through different attributes. Commercially-orientated firms associated science park attributes as ways for being near customers. Mature science-based firms associated attributes with a wider range of benefits, such as image benefits, being near customers and other firms. Young technology-based firms were more cost-driven and focused on image benefits. The associations between various types of facilities and the benefits that tenant types seek, provide insights for practitioners in terms of the design and management of science parks.” Science parks were defined “as physical areas where multiple knowledge-intensive organisations and institutes co-locate and where innovation is formally and informally leveraged.”
Wei Ng, Robin Junker, Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek, Myriam Cloodt, and Theo Arentze. “Perceived Benefits of Science Park Attributes Among Park Tenants in the Netherlands.” The Journal of Technology Transfer, in press, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-019-09744-x
Li and colleagues investigated how crowding at malls influences routes travelled. They determined that “High crowdedness (evenly distributed between routes) does not impact wayfinding strategies or initial route choices. Navigators tend to avoid crowds by moving close to the boundaries of the environment in high crowdedness. . . . Participants were asked to locate a store inside the virtual building as efficiently as possible. . . . The results showed that crowdedness did not affect wayfinding strategies or initial route choices, but did affect locomotion in that participants in the high crowdedness condition were more likely to avoid crowds by moving close to the boundaries of the environment.”
Hengshan Li, Tyler Thrash, Christoph Holscher, and Victor Schinazi. “The Effect of Crowdedness on Human Wayfinding and Locomotion in a Multi-Level Virtual Shopping Mall.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, in press, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.101320
Reese, Oettler, and Katz set out to learn more about how people bond to places. As they describe, “Place attachment – the cognitive-emotional bond people have to specific places – is associated with various psychological outcomes and behaviors. While it is well-established that both important social as well as physical features determine how strongly people attach to a place, it is largely unexplored how the loss of such features causally affects place attachment. . . . Results [of research conducted by the Reese-lead team] revealed that imagining the loss of both a physical and a social feature combined resulted in lowest anticipated attachment to the place. Closer data inspection suggests that social features seem more important than physical features. . . . . Findings suggest that proposed changes (e.g., in urban policy decisions) may affect attachment.”
Gerhard Reese, Leonie Oettler, and Laura Katz. “Imagining the Loss of Social and Physical Place Characteristics Reduces Place Attachment.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, in press, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.101325
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