Temperature and Decision-Making (08-15-17)
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 temperature.”
Rhonda Hadi Dan King, and Lauren Block. 2015. “Mental Thermoregulation: Affective and Cognitive Pathways for Non-Physical Temperature Regulation.” Conference Proceedings, Society for Consumer Psychology, pp. 155-157, http://www.myscp.org/conferences/documents_scp.aspx#.WY4ZT63My1s
The Power of Color (08-14-17)
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.”
Megan Fulcher and Amy Hayes. “Building a Pink Dinosaur: The Effects of Gendered Construction Toys on Girls’ and Boys’ Play.” Sex Roles, in press.
It’s Walkable, But Do They Walk? (08-11-17)
Travers and her colleagues investigated the link between walkability and actual walking among a group of Australian adults over 65 years old. Looking at areas in a 400-meter radius around participants’ homes, the team “found no association between walkability of the built environment and walking behavior of participants. Although retirement village residents lived in more highly walkable environments, they did not walk more and their overall levels of physical activity were lower than those of community residents.”
Cheryl Travers, Andrew Dixon, Alice Laurence, Suzanne Niblett, Katrina King, Peter Lewis, Neville Owen, Martin Veysey, on behalf of the Retirement Health and Lifestyle Study Research Group.” Environment and Behavior, in press.
Reverberations in Retail Spaces (08-10-17)
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. The size of a room, the surfaces in that room, and the number and physical constitution of objects in a room all effect how and whether sound is reflected or absorbed. . . . Sound will typically reverberate less in crowded spaces, as sound waves are absorbed and disrupted by objects in the environment. Thus, low reverberation may lead to a feeling similar to that of being physically crowded, which should lead to more conservative choices (Maeng, Tanner and Soman 2013).”
Michael Lowe and Suresh Ramanathan. 2015 “Headspace: The Effects of Acoustic Reverberation on Willingness to Try.” Conference Proceedings, Society for Consumer Psychology, pp. 159-160, http://www.myscp.org/conferences/documents_scp.aspx#.WY4ZT63My1s
Symmetry and Perceived Energy (08-08-17)
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. . . . the combination of a symmetrical (asymmetrical) logo with an exciting brand personality harms (boosts) customer-based, company-based, and financial-based equity.” So while asymmetric logos are not as positively received as symmetrical ones, they are associated in viewers’ minds with higher energy levels.
Jonathan Luffarelli, Antonios Stamatogiannakis, and Haiyang Yang. 2015, “The Asymmetrical Logo Effect: The Interplay of Brand Personality and Logo Aesthetics on Brand Equity.” Conference Proceedings, Society for Consumer Psychology, pp. 209-210, http://www.myscp.org/conferences/documents_scp.aspx#.WY4ZT63My1s
Our Bodies Influence How We Think (08-07-17)
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. Drew describes work presented by Jessica Witt, a professor at Colorado State University: “People who weigh more tend to perceive a target they must walk to as farther away compared with those who weigh less.” Amy Cuddy, of the Harvard Business School, discussed her research on body posture and psychological state, sharing that “In aggregate, studies examining the effects of postural feedback on feelings of power [e.g., sitting in a more open position and feeling more powerful] and mental states have shown stronger evidence than those that focus on behavioral and physiological outcomes.” More open postures are those in which people are less protective of the trunks of their bodies; people sitting in an extended recliner chair are in an open posture; sitting upright with hunched-in shoulders is a closed posture.
Amy Drew. 2017. “How Our Bodies Do – And Don’t – Shape Our Minds.” Observer, vol. 30, no. 6, pp. 8, 9, and 28.
Warm Backgrounds, Warm Assessments (08-04-17)
Choi, Chang, Lee, and Chang investigated how color can influence assessments. They found via “experiments and field surveys in the USA and South Korea. . . . that an anonymous person against a warm color background (vs. neutral and cold color background) is perceived to be one with warmer personality.” Also, “nurses’ perception of warmth from a hospital’s ambient color affects their favorable judgment of the hospital and intention to take on an extra role.”
Jungsil Choi, Young Chang, Kiliae Lee, and Jae Chang. 2016. “The Effect of Perceived Warmth on Positive Judgment.” Journal of Consumer Marketing, vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 235-244.
Typefaces and Taste (08-03-17)
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. . . . Moreover, the results also indicate that all of the participants evaluated the angular typefaces in Spanish and English as more bitter, salty, and sour than the round typefaces in Spanish and English, but this angular/rounded effect was not found with Chinese typefaces. Additionally, the rounder typefaces were evaluated as sweeter than the angular typefaces in all languages and countries.” These findings are consistent with prior research linking curvier shapes to comfort.
Carlos Velasco, Andy Woods, Xiaoang Wan, Alejandro Salgado-Montejo, Cesar Barnal-Torres, Adrian Cheok, and Charles Spence. “The Taste of Typefaces in Different Countries and Languages.” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, in press.
Trees and Comfort (08-02-17)
Urban trees have an important effect on how weather is experienced. Researchers from the University of British Columbia have found that “Even a single urban tree can help moderate wind speeds and keep pedestrians comfortable as they walk down the street, according to a new . . . study that also found losing a single tree can increase wind pressure on nearby buildings and drive up heating costs. . . . ‘We found that removing all trees can increase wind speed by a factor of two, which would make a noticeable difference to someone walking down the street. For example, a 15 km/h wind speed is pleasant, whereas walking in 30 km/h wind is more challenging,’ said lead author Marco Giometto. . . .Trees also moderated the impact of wind pressure on buildings, particularly when it goes through small gaps in and between buildings. ‘. . . removing all the trees around buildings drove up the building’s energy consumption by as much as 10 per cent in winter and 15 per cent in summer,’ said Giometto. . . . even bare trees in the winter months can moderate airflow and wind pressure, contributing to a more comfortable environment.” This study was published in Advances in Water Resources.
“Trees Can Make or Break City Weather.” 2017. The University of British Columbia, Press release, https://news.ubc.ca/2017/07/26/trees-can-make-or-break-city-weather/.
Crowd Control (08-01-17)
Sieben and her team studied crowd management. Their work verifies the value of installing stanchions connected by ropes (or something similar; called the “corridor setup” by researchers) to funnel crowds through a space. As the Sieben group details, “an experiment in which a large group of people . . . enters a concert hall through two different spatial barrier structures is analyzed. These two structures correspond to everyday situations such as boarding trains and access to immigration desks. . . . Participants clearly evaluate the corridor setup more positively than the semicircle setup [people gathered in a naturally occurring semicircular crowd in front of a door]: it is seen as more comfortable, juster and progressing faster. . . . Less inappropriate behavior is observed here.”
Anna Sieben, Jette Schumann, and Armin Seyfried. 2017. “Collective Phenomena in Crowds—Where Pedestrian Dynamics Need Social Psychology.” PLoS One, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0177328.
Brighter Art Preferred in Healthcare Facilities (07-31-17)
Nielsen and Mullins collected information from hospitalized patients about their preferences for art in healthcare facilities. The team found that “the presence of coloured visual art in hospitals contributes to health outcomes by improving patients’ wellbeing and satisfaction. . . . . Overall, patients preferred art in brighter colours. . . . patients experienced more positive memories and emotions if they perceived the colours of the art as brighter. . . . in social interaction [for example, conversations], the art featuring brighter colours was used [for example, talked about] to a higher degree and received more positive reaction to art featuring darker tones.”
Stine Nielsen and Michael Mullins. 2017. “Breaking out of the Snow Cave – the Significance of Colour in Healthcare Environments.” In Chris Shaw, John Cooper, and Marc Sansom (eds). Final Programme Visioning the Future: Designing for Change in People-Centered Health Systems. 2017. European Healthcare Design Conference 2017, London, United Kingdom, p. 168.
Healthcare Employees: Visibility and Performance (07-28-17)
Two studies presented at the 2017 meeting of the Environmental Design Research Association link more visual contact between health care workers and enhanced employee performance. Gharaveis and his team found that “with high visibility in emergency departments, teamwork and collaborative communication will be improved, while the frequency of security issues will be reduced. . . . Teamwork involves nurses, support staff, and physicians and affects efficiency and safety. Hsieh and Cai determined that “physical environments that reduce the ease of access (i.e., physical or visual access) between [clinical] team members are linked with feelings of social isolation, reduced staff-to-staff communications, and reduced perceptions of teamwork. . . . an empirical study of three nursing units at the Princeton Medical Center. . . . support the findings from earlier studies that physical and/or visual access between team members are key to care team communication and teamwork.”
Arsalan Gharaveis, Debajyoti Pati, Kirk Hamilton, and Mardelle Shepley. 2017. “The Impact of Visibility on Teamwork, Collaborative Communication, and Security in Emergency Departments.” In Jung-Hye Shin, Mimi Narayan, Samuel Dennis (eds.). Voices of Place: Empower, Engage, Energize; Proceedings of the 48th Annual Conference of the Environmental Design Research Association. The Environmental Design Research Association, St. Paul, MN, pp. 198-199.
Erin Hsieh and Hui Cai. 2017. “Designing for Clinician Teamwork: What Is Decentralization Is [sic] Doing to Your Team? In Jung-Hye Shin, Mimi Narayan, Samuel Dennis (eds.). Voices of Place: Empower, Engage, Energize; Proceedings of the 48th Annual Conference of the Environmental Design Research Association. The Environmental Design Research Association, St. Paul, MN, p. 223.
Urban Green Spaces and Public Health (07-26-17)
Newly published research supports studies of relationships between urban green spaces and public health. Van den Bosch and colleagues report that “We defined the indicator of green space accessibility as a proportion of an urban population living within a certain distance from a green space boundary. We developed a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based method and tested it in three case studies in Malmö, Sweden; Kaunas, Lithuania; and Utrecht, The Netherlands. . . . Based on reviewing the literature and the case studies, a 300 m[eter] maximum linear distance to the boundary of urban green spaces of a minimum size of 1 hectare are recommended as the default options for the indicator. The indicator can serve as a proxy measure for assessing public accessibility to urban green spaces, to provide comparable data across Europe and stimulate policy actions that recognise the importance of green spaces for sustainable public health.”
Matilda van den Bosch, Pierpaolo Mudu, Valdas Uscila, Maria Barrdahl, Alexandra Kulinkina, Brigit Staatsen, Wim Swart, Hanneke Kruize, Ingrida Zurlyte, and Andrey Egorov. 2016. “Development of an Urban Green Space Indicator and the Public Health Rationale.” Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 159-167.
Prompting Sit – Stand Changes: Benefits (07-21-17)
Barbieri and team set out to learn more about how people use sit-stand desk options. They “compared usage patterns of two different electronically controlled sit-stand tables during a 2-month intervention period among office workers. . . . Twelve workers were provided with standard sit-stand tables (nonautomated table group) and 12 with semiautomated sit-stand tables programmed to change table position according to a preset pattern, if the user agreed to the system-generated prompt (semiautomated table group). Table position was monitored continuously. . . . On average, the table was in a ‘sit’ position for 85% of the workday in both groups; this percentage did not change significantly during the 2-month period. Switches in table position from sit to stand were, however, more frequent in the semiautomated table group than in the nonautomated table group. . . A semiautomated sit-stand table may effectively contribute to making postures more variable among office workers and thus aid in alleviating negative health effects of extensive sitting.” More on the test conditions: the semiautomated tables were “equipped with a system designed to control table configuration according to a programmable schedule.” This schedule was 10 minutes of standing (i.e., having the table at a taller height) for each 50 minutes spent sitting (i.e., having the table at a shorter height). Table height could be adjusted only when change prompts were received and overall 82% of all change prompts were followed. Ten percent of change suggestions were rejected and 8% were either postponed or ignored.
Dechristian Barbieri, Divya Srinivasan, Svend Mathiassen, and Ana Oliveira. 2017. “Comparison of Sedentary Behaviors in Office Workers Using Sit-Stand Tables With and Without Semiautomated Position Changes.” Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, vol. 59, no. 5, pp. 780-795.
Too Loud to Study (07-20-17)
Bratt-Eggen and her team researched sound levels in open-plan study spaces. The investigators collected information in “five open-plan study environments at universities in the Netherlands. A questionnaire was used to investigate student tasks, perceived sound sources and their perceived disturbance, and sound measurements were performed to determine the room acoustic parameters. This study shows that 38% of the surveyed students are disturbed by background noise in an open-plan study environment. Students are mostly disturbed by speech when performing complex cognitive tasks like studying for an exam, reading and writing. Significant . . . correlations were found between the room acoustic parameters and noise disturbance of students [so measured noise levels were higher in the spaces where students were most likely to have difficulty studying].”
P. Bratt-Eggen, Anne van Heijst, Maarten Hornikx, and Armin Kohlrausch. 2017. “Noise Disturbance in Open-Plan Study Environments: A Field Study on Noise Sources, Student Tasks and Room Acoustic Parameters.” Ergonomics, vol. 60, no. 9, pp. 1297-1314.
Curvier Preferred (07-19-17)
Cotter and team’s research adds to our understanding of human beings’ preference for curved items. They report that “A preference for smooth curvature, as opposed to angularity, is a well-established finding for lines, two-dimensional shapes, and complex objects. . . . We [found that] people preferred curved over angular stimuli. . . . For one stimulus set—the irregular polygons. . . . People with more knowledge about the arts . . . showed greater curvature preferences, as did people higher in openness to experience. . . . Unlike other low-level factors that appear largely among novices, such as preferences for realistic over abstract images (Parsons, 1987), curvature preference was heightened among people with greater knowledge and interest in art, at least for this set of images [irregular polygons].”
Katherine Cotter, Paul Silvia, Marco Bertamini, Letizia Palumbo, and Oshin Vartanian. 2017. “Curve Appeal: Exploring Individual Differences in Preference for Curved Versus Angular Objects.” i-Perception, vol. 8, no. 2, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2041669517693023.
Color Preferences (07-18-17)
Schloss and Palmer investigated why people tend to prefer particular colors. Their findings align with common sense: “There are well-known and extensive differences in color preferences between individuals . . . there are also within-individual differences from one time to another. . . . they have the same underlying cause: people’s . . . experiences with color-associated objects and events. . . . preference for a given color is determined by the combined valence (liking/disliking) of all objects and events associated with that color.”
Karen Schloss and Stephen Palmer. “An Ecological Framework for Temporal and Individual Differences in Color Preferences.” Vision Research, in press.
Cut the Dust to Cut the Fat (07-17-17)
An article published in Environmental Science and Technology reports that exposure to dust can affect how much someone weighs. The study’s findings indicate that easy dust removal/low dust accumulation environments (as well as curtailing the use of certain chemicals) may help keep our BMIs in healthy zones. A press release from the American Chemical Society indicates that “Poor diet and a lack of physical activity are major contributors to the world’s obesity epidemic, but researchers have also identified common environmental pollutants that could play a role. Now one team reports . . . that small amounts of house dust containing many of these compounds can spur fat cells to accumulate more triglycerides, or fat, in a lab dish. . . . The researchers collected samples of indoor dust from 11 homes in North Carolina and tested extracts from the samples. . . . Extracts from seven of the 11 dust samples triggered the pre-adipocytes to develop into mature fat cells and accumulate triglycerides. Extracts from nine samples spurred the cells to divide, creating a larger pool of precursor fat cells. Only one dust sample had no effect. . . . This suggests that the mixture of these chemicals in house dust is promoting the accumulation of triglycerides and fat cells. . . . house dust is a likely exposure source of chemicals that may be able to disrupt metabolic health, particularly in children.”
“House Dust Spurs Growth of Fat Cells in Lab Tests.” 2017. Press release, American Chemical Society, https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2017/july/house-dust-spurs-growth-of-fat-cells-in-lab-tests.html.html
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