environmental psychology

Buell, Kim, and Tsay found that there are positive repercussions when chefs and people ordering food can see each other.  The team created “transparency” by linking chefs and people ordering in their restaurants via video conferencing software on iPads.  They determined via “two field and two lab experiments in food service contexts . . . that reciprocal transparency, where both consumers and employees can see each other, can improve both consumer experiences and objective service quality. . . .  Customer perceptions of service value were higher when chefs could observe them . . .

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.

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.”

Lowe and Ramanathan investigated the consequences of acoustic reverberation in retail spaces.  They found that “relatively higher levels of acoustic reverberation can increase a consumer’s willingness to try unfamiliar products.  . . . Reverberation (reverb) refers to the prolongation of sound (Valente, Hosford-Dunn and Roeser 2008). Extremely high levels of reverberation might be understood or described as echo. . .  . Reverb levels are affected by the characteristics of an environment in which a sound is made.

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. . .