environment behavior

Beverly and colleagues probed the sorts of experiences that can reduce stress in frontline healthcare workers.  They report that they “piloted a three-minute Tranquil Cinematic-VR simulation of a nature scene to lower subjective stress among frontline healthcare workers in COVID-19 treatment units. . . . A convenience sample of frontline healthcare workers, including direct care providers, indirect care providers, and support or administrative services, were recruited from three COVID-19 units located in the United States. . . .

Researchers have evaluated what people from different cultures categorize as creative.  Data were gathered from people from Russia and the United Arab Emirates.  Kharkhurin and colleagues found that “The concept of creativity varies by culture. . . . Creative daring . . . appears to be a key feature of creativity in the Western, but not in the Eastern tradition.  . . .

McDonald, Bockler, and Kanske studied how hearing different sorts of music influences our thinking about other people.  They determined that “Music is a human universal and has the ability to evoke powerful, genuine emotions. But does music influence our capacity to understand and feel with others?

Seo evaluated responses to service robots in hotels.  They determined that “female service robots generated more pleasure and higher satisfaction compared to that of male service robots, and its influence is amplified when the level of anthropomorphism is high [the robots are more human-like] rather than low. Findings highlight the benefit of female service robots in a hotel setting which is only effective when the service robot is humanized, which provides useful guidelines for hoteliers when applying service robots in their service settings.” 

Nanayakkara and colleagues studied links between activity-based workplace design and organizational culture via interviews and surveys.  They report that “The objective of this paper is to examine the influence of introducing activity-based working (ABW) on existing organisational culture. It was addressed from the perspective of the management of large corporate organisations. . . . Workplace designs directly influence culture by supporting the systems, symbols, engagement/motivation and behaviours of the organisation and employees. . . .