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Taylor and colleagues report that synesthesia occurs in the virtual world just as it does in the physical one.  The Taylor-lead team shares that “Synaesthesia is a condition where people experience unusual sensory or cognitive sensations in response to apparently unrelated stimuli. . . . Results indicated that VR is capable of capturing elements of synaesthetic perception that other methods have been unable to, such as texture, small degrees of movement, and 3D structure.”

Rebecca Taylor, Sarune Savickaite, Susanna Henderson, and David Simmons. 2023. “Using Immersive Virtual Reality to Recreate the Synaesthetic Experience.”  i-Perception, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 1-37, https://doi.org/10.1177/20416695231166305

Farzanfar and Walther, in a comprehensive open access article, probe visuals that humans respond most positively toward.  They share that “the human visual system uses structural regularities in contour—lines that mark the outline of various shapes in a scene—to help us process information efficiently. . . . we found that aesthetic judgments of natural scenes were lower when line drawings of scenes were evaluated compared with when their photographs were evaluated. Line drawings of cities and other human-made artifacts, on the other hand, were liked more than their photographed counterparts. . . . an inherently more complex scene category, such as a city, is more likely to reach the optimal arousal point when presented as a drawing than as a comparably more complex color photograph. By contrast, natural scene categories are liked more as photographs than as line drawings, presumably because the decrease in complexity in the drawings moves them away from the optimal arousal point. Similarly, perceptual grouping cues such as symmetry that increase information gain are associated with aesthetic responses . . . and have been found to contribute to aesthetic judgments to some degree in our study.” This article is packed with details that will interest many designers.

Delaram Farzanfar and Dirk Walther. 2023. “Changing What You Like:  Modifying Contour Properties Shifts Aesthetic Valuations of Sciences.”  Psychological Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976231190546

Pan and Jiang build on previously conducted research to identify implications of feeling awed; design can induce awe in multiple ways, for example via workmanship or material use.  Pan and Jiang probed “global self-continuity (GSC), a sense of connectedness among past, present, and future selves . . . [and] examined the relationship between awe and GSC. . . . We found awe positively associated with . . . and predicted . . . GSC.” 

Xinyu Pan and Tonglin Jiang.  2023. “Awe Fosters Global Self-Continuity:  The Mediating Effect of Global Processing and Narrative.”  Emotion, vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 1618-1632, https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001187

Design can encourage nostalgic feelings, via images, objects, or scents, for instance.  Abeyta and Juhl’s work confirms positive effects of feeling nostalgic: they “hypothesized that nostalgia, a bittersweet emotion that entails reflecting sentimentally on the past, helps restore meaning for lonely people. . . . Results [of two studies conducted] supported the hypothesis: The relation between loneliness and meaning deficits was reduced among nostalgic individuals and this was driven by the fact that nostalgia (whether measured or experimentally induced) was linked with greater meaning for highly lonely individuals.”

Andrew Abeyta and Jabob Juhl. 2023. “Nostalgia Restores Meaning in Life for Lonely People.”  Emotion, vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 1791-1795, https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001190

Rosa and teammates probed links between gardening and depression and their findings should support developing and maintaining spaces for gardening.  The team conducted a literature review and learned that “some horticultural interventions plus usual care (i.e., continuing normal routine for healthy people or treatment for unhealthy ones) may reduce depressive symptoms more than usual care alone, with most studies suggesting a moderate . . . or large effect. . . .  Our findings suggest that some horticultural interventions are effective and safe to use as a complementary strategy to reduce adults' depressive symptoms.”

Claudio Rosa, Talisson Chaves, Silvia Collado, Lincoln Larson, Kangjae Lee, and Christina Profice.  2023. “Horticultural Interventions May Reduce Adults’ Depressive Symptoms:  A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials.”  Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol. 91, 102112, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102112

Woo and colleagues studied the cognitive implications of nighttime scenting; it is possible that their findings are useful in other contexts.  The investigators report that “Male and female older adults . . . age 60–85, were enrolled in the study and randomly assigned to an Olfactory Enriched or Control group. Individuals in the enriched group were exposed to 7 different odorants a week, one per night, for 2 h, using an odorant diffuser. Individuals in the control group had the same experience with de minimis amounts of odorant. Neuropsychological assessments and fMRI scans were administered at the beginning of the study and after 6 months. A statistically significant 226% improvement was observed in the enriched group compared to the control group on the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and improved functioning was observed in the left uncinate fasciculus, as assessed by mean diffusivity. Minimal olfactory enrichment administered at night produces improvements in both cognitive and neural functioning. Thus, olfactory enrichment may provide an effective and low-effort pathway to improved brain health.” Scents used by the researchers were rose, orange, eucalyptus, lemon, peppermint, rosemary, and lavender.

Cynthia Woo, Blake Miranda, Mithra Sathishkumar, Farideh Dehkordi-Vakil, Michael Yassa, and Michael Leon. 2023. “Overnight Olfactory Enrichment Using an Odorant Diffuser Improves Memory and Modifies the Uncinate Fasciculus in Older Adults.” Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 17, https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2023.1200448

Lee and Yoon studied the effects of natural design elements on the experiences of people waiting in healthcare emergency departments.  They report their “findings offer empirical evidence for the positive impact of including natural elements in these waiting areas. We created four high-fidelity virtual environments that incorporated natural elements in three ways, i.e., the presence of plants, the use of nature images and natural materials, and a combination of those two, in addition to a controlled environment without natural elements. We tested how subjects responded to each environmental setting. Our findings demonstrated that the inclusion of natural elements significantly lowered patients' anxiety in hospital environments, confirming previous research, and the presence of natural elements improved perceived wait time, as well as service quality through anxiety and perceived wait time. The combination yielded higher scores in anxiety, perceived wait time, and service quality than the other conditions.”

Jisun Lee and So-Yeon Yoon. 2023. “Nature and Patient Waiting:  Mediating Effects of Anxiety and Perceived Wait Time on the Association Between Nature and Service Perception.”  Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol. 91, 102113, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102113

Hooyberg and colleagues studied human responses to being in different sorts of spaces via virtual reality and it seems likely that their findings can also be applied in other settings. The investigators report that “beaches caused lower breathing rates than urban environments and lower SCR [skin conductance responses] than green environments. . . .  the heart rate, HF-HRV [high-frequency heart rate variability], and MAP [mean arterial pressure] did not react differently to the beach than to the urban and green environments. . . . Self-reported measures showed that, under moderate stress, beaches decreased the negative mood and perceived stress, whereas green environments did not and urban environments generally had more adverse effects on the negative mood, perceived stress, positive mood, and perceived quality for relaxation. This study demonstrates that beaches slow down breathing and reduce the sympathetic nervous system activity, and highlights the benefits of beaches for health and wellbeing.”

Alexander Hooyberg, Nathalie Michels, Henk Roose, Gert Everaert, Ilias Mokas, Robert Malina, Marie-Anne Vanderhasselt, and Stefaan De Henauw. 2023. “The Psychophysiological Reactivity to Beaches Vs. to Green and Urban Environments:  Insights from a Virtual Reality Experiment.”  Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol. 91, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102103

Cabiro and colleagues investigated the psychological implications of living in an urban area.  They found “no association between urbanicity [living in an urban area or not doing so] and multitasking abilities. However, additional analyses revealed that other variables related to the engagement with their physical environment, such as time spent outdoors, and time spent in nature were associated with multitasking abilities. This goes in line with the previous research showing the restorative effects that short-term exposure to nature can have on cognition. . . . In line with previous research, dwellers living in highly urban areas showed a global bias as compared to those living in less urban areas.”  Useful background information: “physical objects can be processed visually by focusing on the details (i.e., local processing style) or the objects' overall shape (i.e., global processing style).”

Marina Cabiro, Sonja Sudimac, Emil Stobbe, and Simone Kuhn.  “Urbanization Is Positively Associated with Global Perceptual Style.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, in press, 102100, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102100

Di Dio and associates studied human responses to abstract art created by a robot.  They report that participants in their study “were asked to give beauty (BJ) and liking (LJ) judgments. . . . Aesthetic judgments were made in a blind-baseline condition, devoid of authorship information, and a primed condition, where authorship information (human or robot) was provided. . . . The human-authored paintings received a [significantly] higher liking rating in the primed than the blind and robot conditions; opposite, the robot-authored paintings received a lower beauty rating in the primed than the blind condition. These results suggest a resistance to accepting artificial intelligence in the production of art and highlight the emotional component associated with human art-making.”

Cinzia Di Dio, Martina Ardizzi, Sara Schieppati, Davide Massaro, Gabriella Gilli, Vittorio Gallese, and Antonella Marchetti.  “Art Made by Artificial Intelligence:  The Effect of Authorship on Aesthetic Judgments.” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, in press, https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000602