People negotiating with clients or developing at-client dining experiences can apply recent research related to sharing meals. Fishbach and Woolley report that “When people in a business negotiation share not just a meal but a plate, they collaborate better and reach deals faster. . . .Sharing plates is customary in Chinese and Indian cultures, among others.
Valdimarsdottir and colleagues studied depression levels among a hospitalized group; they linked lighting conditions and depression. The team reports that “Over a third of multiple myeloma (MM) patients report clinical levels of depression during autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT) hospitalization. . . .Patients . . . scheduled to receive an ASCT . . .
Garrett and her team investigated the effects of views of water (for example, of oceans) on wellbeing. They found that “A view of blue space from the home was related to good self-reported [general] health” and that “Visiting blue spaces regularly was associated with high wellbeing.” Also, “Visiting blue space regularly was more likely for those within a 10–15 min walk, and who believed visit locations had good facilities and wildlife present. Longer blue space visits, and those involving higher intensity activities, were associated with higher recalled wellbeing.
Research by Homeke, Holler, and Levinson confirms how important it is that people be able to see each other well during conversations, whether discussions are in-person or electronic. The investigators report that “In face-to-face communication, recurring intervals of mutual gaze allow listeners to provide speakers with visual feedback (e.g. nodding). . . . we investigate the potential feedback function of one of the subtlest of human movements—eye blinking. . . .
Researchers are developing a better understanding of how the sensory experiences of people with autism change over the course of their lives. New studies have shown that “in people with autism . . . sensory responses change between childhood and adulthood. . . . Individuals with autism often report sensitivity to bright lights and loud sounds, as well as a variety of other sensory disturbances and differences. These can lead to problems in their everyday life, for example they might avoid bright or noisy environments. . .
Newly published research indicates that whether people are asked to make selections using check marks or x’s makes a difference. Yoon and Vargas report that “we find that the check and X marks carry different symbolic associations; people associate check with good and X with bad. . . . People who make positively connoted [implied] check marks (as opposed to negatively connoted X marks) to indicate their judgments are more agreeable toward familiar, controversial social policies as well as market research survey items on values and life styles.
Perfecto, Donnelly, and Critcher assessed how people estimate volume. They determined that “The same container is judged larger when right side up than when upside down because of the greater ease of imagining filling an upright container. . . . Imagining pouring water through a narrow opening toward a relatively wide base produces a sense that the container is cavernous and large (compared with identically sized, wide-topped, narrow-based containers).”
Han and Gershoff found that how much control we feel we have in a particular situation influences perceived physical distances. The team learned that “Prior research has found that people perceive positive objects and locations as physically closer than negative ones. . . . across four studies, we show that high (vs. low) control makes positive targets feel closer and negative targets feel more distant in both physical space (Studies 1 and 1a) and time (Studies 2 and 2a).
Researchers have linked living in a greener area with better cardiovascular health. A Yeager-lead team reports that they “measured biomarkers of cardiovascular injury and risk in participant blood and urine. We estimated greenness from satellite‐derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) in zones with radii of 250 m and 1 km surrounding the participants’ residences. . contemporaneous NDVI within 250 m of participant residence was inversely associated with urinary levels of epinephrine . . . and F2‐isoprostane. . . .
Davidovic and colleagues studied preferred colors for street lighting. They report that their “project aimed to compare subjective evaluations of the sidewalk illumination under two street lighting installations, realised by LEDs of 3000 K (warm white) and 4000 K (neutral white). . . . Both installations had comparable sidewalk illuminances as well as other relevant photometric parameters. . . .
