Latest Blog Posts
Sirolo and team investigated how moving from private offices to an activity-based workplace influences work environment satisfaction one year after the move. They learned via data collected from people who had relocated from private offices to activity-based offices that “personnel’s criticisms concerned the reasons for the change, their opportunities to influence the office design and the extent to which their views were taken into account. Environmental satisfaction decreased after moving to the ABO. The personnel’s ratings of the workplace change process before the relocation were associated with the later change in environmental satisfaction. . . . degree of agreement with management’s reasons for the change was the strongest predictor of the change in environmental satisfaction. Organizations that move from private offices to an ABO should invest in high-quality change management and simultaneously develop both work and facilities. Special attention should be paid to clarifying the rationale for the change to the employees and to providing them with opportunities to influence during the change. Organizations should continue to monitor user experiences and evaluate the effects of the change after the office redesign and should take corrective action as needed.”
Pia Sirolo, Annu Haapakangas, Marjaana Lahtinen, and Virpi Ruohomaki. 2022. “Workplace Change Process and Satisfaction with Activity-Based Office.” Facilities, vol. 40, no. 15/16, pp. 17-39, https://doi.org/10.1108/F-12-2020-0127
Yildirim and colleagues set out to learn more about how design influences user assessments of workplaces. They investigated, via a survey distributed in Ankara, Turkey, “the effects of location of closed offices on the front facade, rear facade and side facade plans and the indoor layout (left and right users’ cabinets) on perceptual evaluations of users of physical environmental factors. . . . it was determined that office users on the front and side facades generally perceived more positively the offices’ environmental factors than office users on the back facade. In addition, it was determined that offices with storage cabinets located to the right of users (Type A) were perceived more positively than storage cabinets located to the left of users (Type B).”
Kemal Yildirim, Mehmet Hidayetoglu, and Sinem Unuvar. 2022. “The Effects of Location and Layout of Offices on Perceptual Evaluations of Users.” Facilities, vol. 40, no. ½, pp. 1-19, https://doi.org/10.1108/F-11-2020-0123
Suhaimi and teammates studied aesthetic preferences. They learned that “There is a long history of humans attempting to understand what drives aesthetic preference. One line of inquiry examines the effects of typicality and novelty on aesthetic responses to designed products. There is currently a wide support towards the ‘Most Advanced Yet Acceptable’ (MAYA) principle, and studies underpinning this have focused on everyday objects. Despite the differences in the function of everyday objects, what they all have in common is their visibility. This does not tell us whether the aesthetic processing will be the same when applied to less visible objects. A study was undertaken using industrial boilers as stimuli and conducted on 7-point Likert scales with participants from Australia and China. The results are unequivocal: novelty makes a medium contribution, while typicality makes a low contribution. This is inconsistent with the notion that typicality is a major determinant of aesthetic preference.”
Safia Suhaimi, Blair Kuys, Deirdre Barron, Nuoya Li, Zainurul Rahman, and Allan Whitfield. “Robing the Extremes of Aesthetics: The Role of Typicality and Novelty in the Aesthetic Preference of Industrial Boilers.” Empirical Studies of the Arts, in press, https://doi.org/10.1177/02762374221094137
Van Kerckhove and teammates probed how form influences impressions made. Their work “proposes surface mimicry—that is, designing a product to visually resemble another product—as an effective intervention to communicate property information to consumers. Specifically, it advances the notion that exposure to surface mimicry primes property mapping, a thinking style that leads consumers to transfer property information from one product onto another. To this end, three studies show that exposure to a target food product (e.g., kiwifruit) mimicking visual characteristics of another, modifier food product (e.g., popsicle) induces a transfer of attribute values of the modifier onto the target product for salient, alignable attributes on which the products differ (e.g., tastiness). . . . the effect is shown to persist, but it attenuates [reduces] when the difference in belief(s) about the target and mimicked product is substantial (e.g., the taste expectations for Brussels sprouts and popsicles).”
Anneleen Van Kerckhove, Caroline De Bondt, and Maggie Geuens. “Products in Disguise: Communicating Product Benefits with Surface Mimicry.” Journal of Consumer Research, in press, ucac015, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucac015
Zeloni and Pavani report on sounds that humans link to sadness. They share that “In Western music and in music of other cultures, minor chords, modes and intervals evoke sadness. . . . we asked expert musicians to transcribe into music scores spontaneous vocalizations of pre-verbal infants to test the hypothesis that melodic intervals that evoke sadness in music (i.e., minor 2nd) are more represented in cry compared to neutral utterances. Results showed that the unison, major 2nd, minor 2nd, major 3rd, minor 3rd, perfect 4th and perfect 5th are all represented in infant vocalizations. However, minor 2nd outnumbered all other intervals in cry vocalizations, but not in neutral babbling. These findings suggest that the association between minor intervals and sadness may develop in humans because a critically relevant social cue (infant cry) contains a statistical regularity: the association between minor 2nd and negative emotional valence.”
Gabriele Zeloni and Francesco Pavani. “Minor Second Intervals: A Shared Signature for Infant Cries and Sadness in Music.” i-Perception, in press, https://doi.org/10.1177/20416695221092471
The Mason team’s findings support calls to keep light levels low in spaces where people are sleeping. The group reports that their “laboratory study shows that, in healthy adults, one night of moderate (100 lx) light exposure during sleep increases nighttime heart rate, decreases heart rate variability (higher sympathovagal balance), and increases next-morning insulin resistance when compared to sleep in a dimly lit (<3 lx) environment. Moreover, a positive relationship between higher sympathovagal balance and insulin levels suggests that sympathetic activation may play a role in the observed light-induced changes in insulin sensitivity. . . . Attention to avoiding exposure to light at night during sleep may be beneficial for cardiometabolic health.”
Ivy Mason, Daniela Grimaldi, Kathryn Reid, and Phyllis Zee. 2022. “Light Exposure During Sleep Impairs Cardiometabilic Function.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 119, no. 12, e2113290119, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2113290119
Research by Wali and teammates confirms that walkability boosts health. They share that they examined “high resolution data for 476 participants in the Rails and Health study on health care costs, mode specific MVPA[ moderate-to-vigorous physical activity], parcel-level built environment, and neighborhood perception surveys. . . . A 1% increase in bike, walk, and transit-related MVPA was associated with lower health care costs by −0.28%, −0.09%, and −0.27% respectively. A one-unit increase in neighborhood walkability index correlates with a 6.48% reduction in health care costs. . . . The results suggest the potential to alter behaviors and lower health care costs through retrofitting neighborhoods.”
Behram Wali, Lawrence Frank, Deborah Young, Brian Saelens, Richard Meenan, John Dickerson, Erin Keast, Jennifer Kuntz, and Stephen Fortmann. “Pathways from Built Environment to Health Care Costs: Linking Objectively Measured Built Environment with Physical Activity and Health Care Expenditures.” Environment and Behavior, in press, https://doi.org/10.1177/00139165221083291
Research by Londono and de Maya indicates how attentive we are to human-like design elements. The duo share that “The current research focuses on how anthropomorphizing [providing them with human characteristics] retail cues such as dump bins influences consumer behavior. . . . Using eye-tracking technology in an ecological shopping environment, we tracked shoppers' gazes through the store and analyzed their visual attention. Results show that attaching anthropomorphic forms to dump bins positively affects attitudes toward the displayed products. In addition, we demonstrate that displaying a vice product in an anthropomorphic dump bin increases both attitude toward the product and purchase intention, compared to the display of a virtue product. These findings suggest that anthropomorphism has an empathy-helping underlying psychological mechanism that, when applied to retail communication activities, can contribute to justifying the purchase of vice products.”
Juan Londono and Salvador de Maya. “The Influence of Anthropomorphic Cues in Retailing: The Moderating Effect of Vice Versus Virtue Products.” Psychology of Marketing, in press, https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21655
Coutrot and colleagues set out to learn more about how where we grew up influences our sense of direction; what they’ve learned may help explain previously baffling programming research findings, for example. The Coutrot-lead team report that “how the environment in which one grew up affects later cognitive abilities remains poorly understood. Here we used a cognitive task embedded in a video game to measure non-verbal spatial navigation ability in 397,162 people from 38 countries across the world. Overall, we found that people who grew up outside cities were better at navigation [had a better sense of direction]. More specifically, people were better at navigating in environments that were topologically similar to where they grew up. Growing up in cities with a low street network entropy (for example, Chicago [less heterogeneous, more gridlike, for example]) led to better results at video game levels with a regular layout, whereas growing up outside cities or in cities with a higher street network entropy [more heterogeneous, streets not meeting at right angles frequently, for instance] (for example, Prague) led to better results at more entropic video game levels.” So, the design/form of where you grow up influences your sense of direction/wayfinding ability for the rest of your life.
A.Coutrot, E. Manley, S. Goodroe, C, Gahnstrom, G. Filomena, D. Yesiltepe, R. Dalton, J. Wiener, C. Holscher, M. Hornberger, and H. Spiers. 2022. “Entropy of City Street Networks Linked to Future Spatial Navigation Ability.” Nature, vol. 604, pp. 104-110, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04486-7
Santangelo and associates studied the effects of hearing music on decisions made. They determined that “music is frequently played while we are engaged in other activities that rely on decision-making (e.g., driving). . . . We analyzed response times and accuracy from more than 100-thousand decisions and mapped the effects of music onto decision-process components with a mechanistic model of decision-making. We found evidence . . . . [that] decisions—across domains—were faster but less accurate with music. . . . Overall, our results suggest that background music shapes our decisions by making us less cautious.”
Agustin Santangelo, Casimir Ludwig, Joaquin Navajas, Mariano Sigman, and Maria Leone. “Background Music Changes the Policy of Human Decision-Making: Evidence from Experimental and Drift-Diffusion Model-Based Approaches on Different Decision Tasks.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, in press, https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001189
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