Glimcher and Tymula studied the effects of outdoor light intensity on risk taking behavior over a two-year period. They “found that increased luminance leads to less risk taking. . . . the effects are . . . consistent, significant.” Some useful definitions: “Risk attitudes refer to people’s willingness to take known risks. . . . ‘luminance’ is a measurement of the amount of light that falls on the surface of the earth.
Temperature influences decision-making. Working with people experiencing temperatures perceived as comfortable, Hadi and her team learned that “cold (warm) temperatures may lead individuals to rely more (less) on emotions when making decisions.” So, when cold people are more likely to make emotion-based decisions and the reverse is true for those who are warm. Also, “participants in the affective [emotional] task conditions showed a significant average increase in [perceived] temperature while those individuals in the cognitive condition displayed a significant average decrease in temper
Fulcher and Hayes’s work confirms that surface colors send powerful messages. The duo worked with a group of children from 5 to 10 years old (average age a little over 7) finding that “children took longer to build a feminine object [feminine: cat; masculine: dinosaur] with blue bricks than with pink bricks. In the free-play task, boys built more masculine objects than girls did, regardless of the color of bricks they were given. . . . . These findings suggest that toy color and type can impact how children interact and play with toys.”
Cialone and her team evaluated differences in responses to images. They asked professional sculptors, architects, and painters as well as a control group of people with other professions questions “about spatially complex pictures [Google street view, interior of St. Paul’s church, for example]. . . . Profession profoundly relates to how we think about space. . . .
Luffarelli and his colleagues researched associations to symmetrical and asymmetrical logos. Building on research showing that “symmetrical (asymmetrical) brand logos . . . . [are] evaluated more (less) favorably (Henderson & Cote, 1998),” the Luffarelli team found that “visual asymmetry is associated with excitement in memory. . .
Drew reports on a symposium held at the 2017 meeting of the Association for Psychological Science that focused on how the form of our bodies influences our thoughts.
Typefaces bring different sorts of tastes to mind. Velasco and his team have found via a study with words written in 3 languages (Spanish, English, and Chinese) and conducted with participants from 3 countries (Columbia, the United Kingdom, and China) that “People associate tastes and taste words (e.g., “bitter,” “sweet,” etc.) with shape features in predictable ways. . . . rounder typefaces were reliably associated with the word sweet, whereas more angular typefaces were associated with the other tastes in all 3 languages and countries. . . .
Green design is fast becoming the standard for creating new places and objects. It’s good for th
Recent research confirms that colder objects seem heavier than ones at a neutral temperature. Dunn and his team share that “It has long been known that a . . . cooled stimulus is perceived as heavier than the same object at a neutral temperature—termed Weber's Phenomenon (WP). In the current study, we re-examined this phenomenon. . . . In normal condition, when the same forces were applied [when items weighed the same amount], all subjects displayed a clear preference for the cooled tactile stimulus as being heavier than the tactile-only stimulus. . . .
Chim and her colleagues studied the alignment between people’s preferred mood and their responses to the activities they’re engaged in. The investigators determined that “people derive more enjoyment from activities that match how they ideally want to feel (their “ideal affect”). . . . the authors conducted 4 studies that examined whether valuing calm and other low arousal positive states (LAP) increased enjoyment of calming (vs. exciting) activities. . . . the more participants valued LAP, the more enjoyment they experienced during calming (vs.
