environmental psychology

Biliciler, Raghunathan, and Ward evaluated how disorder influences product assessments.  They report that “an advertisement for kitchen tools might display the tools alongside various ingredients, or an advertisement for a bookstore might showcase pictures of the store’s interior. One underlying visual characteristic of such images is the degree of ‘entropy’—or disorder—in their content. . . . we find that while high-entropy images shift consumers’ temporal focus to the past, low-entropy images shift their temporal focus to the future.

Marquet and colleagues link area walkability and greenness to the activity levels of users.  They found “Using a nationwide sample of working female adults . . . [and] seven days of GPS and accelerometry data. . . . [that] Higher activity space walkability was associated with higher levels of moderate-vigorous physical activity, and higher activity space greenness was associated with greater numbers of steps per week. . . . Highest levels of moderate-vigorous physical activity were observed for participants with both high walkability and high greenness in their activity spaces.

Chen, Ruttan, and Feinberg studied how art becomes sacred and their findings are likely applicable to other sorts of objects/situations.  The researchers report that they “used art as a case study to develop and test a theory wherein collective transcendence beliefs—beliefs that an object links the collective to something larger and more important than the self, spanning space and time—are a key determinant of the sacredness of objects. . . .

Abrams writes about online trials, but her text includes insights into factors that legal professionals find significant in physical courtrooms.   Abrams shares that courtrooms “tend to feel grand and formal, bedecked with wood paneling, an American flag, and security guards.  In a more familiar setting—the living room or the break room at work—might behavior and decision-making differ? ‘Many times, when people come into the courthouse, they’re acting nonchalant,’ said Judge Richard Young. . . .

Colenberg  and colleagues studied available privacy and workplace satisfaction.  They report that “Eight design features were defined that were expected to influence visual, acoustic and physical privacy, noise from other people and acoustic quality, and which would be easy to report for users. Data were collected through an online survey among office workers in the Dutch public sector. . . . The data indicate that small, relatively isolated rooms predict privacy and noise satisfaction better than privacy screens, soft flooring, and visibility control.