Mapping: How To (05-14-18)
Lloyd, Rodgers, and Roberts probed how the way that color is used on maps affects wayfinding. The team’s studies focus on New York City subway maps. Lloyd, Rodgers and Roberts had hundreds of participants use “an on-screen map to plan a number of journeys. . . .Each journey contained one or more ‘navigational hazard’ such as where one route switched places with another route, merged with another route or trunk, or passed under another trunk. . . . The three colour-coding schemes studied were: ‘route colouring’ where each end-to-end route is coloured distinctly; ‘trunk colouring’ where routes are coloured according to the trunks they run along; and the intermediate ‘shade colouring’. . . . Participants’ performance when navigating from one station to another was determined by recording how many mistakes they made and how long they took to complete each task.. . . in planning simple journeys with at most one change, the route-coloured map scored the highest usability, while in planning complex journeys with multiple changes, the trunk-coloured map scored the highest usability. . . . on routes with jump hazards – where riders have to move from one branch line to another . . . trunk colouring was more effective.” Lloyd, Rodgers, and Roberts will present their findings at Diagrams2018 in Edinburgh and at the Transit Mapping Symposium (2018) in Montreal.
Dan Worth. 2018. “Research Shows How ‘Navigational Hazards’ in Metro Maps Confuse Travellers.” Press release, university of Kent, https://www.kent.ac.uk/news/science/17983/research-shows-how-navigationa...
Designing for Active Living (05-11-18)
Kim, Park, and Hong investigated links between design and nonmotorized travel (for instance, walking and biking). They learned that “nonmotorized users tend to choose more clustered destinations than motorized users. . . . Transportation networks and nonmotorized facilities [for example, bike racks] at trip destinations are especially important factors for nonmotorized mode choice.” Characteristics of potential destinations, such as net population and employment densities, mix of land uses, and length of bicycle facilities [racks] present are all positively associated with non-motorized travel; as each of them increases, so does nonmotorized travel. Also, “balanced land uses, especially between residential and nonresidential uses, seem to attract more nonmotorized trips.”
Dohyung Kim, Jiyoung Park, and Andy Hong. 2018. “The Role of Destination’s Built Environment on Nonmotorized Travel Behavior: A Case of Long Beach, California.” Journal of Planning Education and Research, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 152-166, DOI: 10.1177/0739456X16688765.
Office Acoustics (05-09-18)
Acoustical issues complicate workplace design. Yadav and colleagues have learned that “international standard, ISO 3382-3[-based] solutions aren't always effective for the short conversational distances in open-plan offices . . . ‘The local acoustic treatment we've studied so far includes the use of high-back chairs -- with or without sound absorption near the head -- and 'retroreflective ceilings' that reflect sound back in the direction of the source, which allows you to hear your own voice reflected back to your ears much louder than is possible with flat or other types of hard ceiling surfaces or absorptive ceilings," Yadav [Manuj Yadav, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Sydney] said. People tend to ‘simply put, lower their voices when they receive some support in the form of reflections from the room and nearby surfaces,’ Yadav said. . . . Yadav and colleagues have found that their local acoustic treatment ‘can, in many cases, provide substantial enhancement for speech communication at short distances and reduce the disturbance due to ambient noise when you're trying to concentrate.’”
“Can ‘Local Acoustic Treatment’ Reduce Speech Distraction Within Open-Plan Offices?” 2018. Press release, Acoustical Society of America, http://www.sciencenewsline.com/news/2018050721040007.html
Responses to Stereotypes (05-08-18)
Gill and Lei studied how stereotypes influence responses to products and how color affects those reactions. They determined that “Counter‐stereotypical products (CSPs) are targeted at groups that are opposite to the stereotypical users of these products (e.g., face‐cream for men, construction tools for women). . . . Overall, CSPs targeting men faced more barriers than those targeting women, and this was especially so for publicly consumed CSPs (e.g., purse for men) as compared to privately consumed ones (e.g., hair‐remover for men).” The researchers also “examined the effect of a common marketing tool—product design color (e.g., using blue for men and pink for women)—in reducing the above barriers. It was found that blue is effective in reducing stereotype‐based barriers for CSPs targeting men. For CSPs targeting women, using pink was only effective for women scoring high on femininity, and it backfired for those scoring low on femininity.”
Tripat Gill and Jing Lei. “Counter-Stereotypical Products: Barriers to Their Adoption and Strategies to Overcome Them.” Psychology of Marketing, in press, https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21101
Designing for Company Size (05-07-18)
Yang and Aggarwal investigated how company size influences people’s expectations/evaluations of firms; their findings can be used to create settings that support income-enhancing interactions. The team studied “the effect of size on consumers’ expectations and evaluations of company behaviors. Consumers expect higher communion [more personal/intimate interactions] from small compared to large companies, and consequently, small relative to large companies garner lower evaluations when they exhibit low communion behavior. These high communion expectations are driven by the relatively lower marketplace power of small companies. . . . . perceptions of power underlie the effect of company size on expectations for communion.”
Linyun Yang and Pankai Aggarwal. “No Small Matter: How Company Size Affects Consumer Expectations and Evaluations.” Journal of Consumer Research, in press, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucy042
Lighting and Purchasing (05-04-18)
Guido and his team studied the effects of lighting color on purchases made. They report that “According to multidisciplinary research, the blue light has important consequences for human beings’ productivity and well‐being, as it positively influences their circadian, endocrine, and neurobehavioral functions. . . . [Guido and colleagues determined that] consumers who are exposed to certain conditions of blue lighting (identified by an emission spectrum centered at 460 nm; i.e., ‘actinic blue’), in either a room environment or via a smartphone, are more inclined to purchase hedonic [pleasurable] rather than utilitarian [useful]products. . . . [than people experiencing] white lighting (identified with an emission spectrum centered at 635 nm; i.e., ‘warm white’).”
Gianluigi Guido, Luigi Piper, Irene Prete, Antonio Mileti, and Carla Trisolini. 2017. “Effects of Blue Lighting in Ambient and Mobile Settings on the Intention to Buy Hedonic and Utilitarian Products.” Psychology and Marketing, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 215-226, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mar.20984
Scents in Stores (05-03-18)
Kechagia and Drichoutis probed the how scents smelled influence shoppers’ attitudes. The duo report that via a laboratory experiment they studied “subjects’ willingness to pay for two unbranded products—a mug and a chocolate. . . . Our results show a statistically and economically significant effect on subjects’ willingness to pay: valuations increased up to 49% for subjects who were exposed to a citrus scent as compared to the control group [no scent introduced into the environment]. . . . Our results generally confirm the large literature from the marketing and psychology fields which indicates that scents may induce consumers in spending more by increasing their valuation for the product.”
Varvara Kechagia and Andreas Drichoutis. 2017. “The Effect of Olfactory Sensory Cues on Willingness to Pay and Choice Under Risk.” Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, vol. 70, pp. 33-46, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2017.07.005
Personality and Color Preferences (05-02-18)
Pazda and Thorstenson studied the colors preferred by extraverts and introverts. They found that when they changed “chroma [saturation] . . . while holding hue and lightness constant. . . . that extraversion was positively associated with a preference for high-chroma colors, but not low-chroma colors [people who were more extraverted had a higher preference for more saturated colors].”
Adam Pazda, and Christopher Thorstenson. 2018. “Extraversion Predicts a Preference for High-Chroma Colors.” Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 127, pp. 133-138, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.01.028
Consequences of Being Seen, Confirmed (05-01-18)
Chib, Adachi, and O’Doherty confirmed the social facilitation effect. They report that “Throughout our lives we must perform tasks when being observed by others. Previous studies have shown that the presence of an audience can cause increases in an individual’s performance as compared to when they are not being observed—a phenomenon called ‘social facilitation’. . . .We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor brain activity while healthy human participants performed a skilled-task during conditions in which they were paid based on their performance and observed and not observed by an audience. . . .[our] findings illustrate how neural processing of social judgments gives rise to the enhanced motivational state that results in social facilitation of incentive-based performance.” The outcomes describe by Chib and colleagues result when people are doing a simple or well-rehearsed task and are reversed when people are being observed and doing a new or more difficult one. Participants in the Chib-lead study were playing a simple video game.
Vikram Chib, Ryo Adachi, and John O’Doherty. “Neural Substrates of Social Facilitation Effects on Incentive-Based Performance.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, in press, https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsy024
Kids and LEDs (04-30-18)
Pulay and Williamson investigated the response of pre-K students to LED (light emitting diodes) and fluorescent lighting in classrooms. They report that “Previous research has demonstrated that lighting influences adult worker productivity and mood in a workplace. However, because children process stimuli faster, it [was] unknown whether LED lighting would have the same influence in a learning environment. Researchers. . . . [observed] child engagement behaviours in a pre-K classroom under LED lighting and fluorescent lighting fixtures to compare differences. Students displayed more engaged behaviours under the LED lighting condition.”
Alana Pulay and Amy Williamson. “A Case Study Comparing the Influence of LED and Fluorescent Lighting on Early Childhood Student Engagement in a Classroom Setting.” Learning Environments Research, in press, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10984-018-9263-3
Culture and Coffee Houses (04-27-18)
Talheim and team studied how cultural differences within China influence everyday physical experiences. As they report, “Traditional paddy rice farmers had to share labor and coordinate irrigation in a way that most wheat farmers did not. We observed people in everyday life to test whether these agricultural legacies gave rice-farming southern China a more interdependent culture and wheat-farming northern China a more independent culture. . . . we counted 8964 people sitting in cafes in six cities and found that people in northern China were more likely to be sitting alone. . . . we moved chairs together in Starbucks across the country so that they were blocking the aisle. . . . People in northern China were more likely to move the chair out of the way, which is consistent with findings that people in individualistic cultures are more likely to try and control the environment. People in southern China were more likely to adjust the self to the environment by squeezing through the chairs.” It is important to note that many of those observed have probably never been farmers or farmed.
Thomas Talheim, Xuemin Zhang, and Shigehiro Oishi. 2018. “Moving Chairs in Starbucks: Observational Studies Find Rice-Wheat Cultural Differences in Daily Life in China.” Science Advances, vol. 4, no. 4, eaal8469, http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/4/eaap8469.full
Coffee Scent: Implications (04-25-18)
Madzharov and her colleagues have determined that the scent of coffee has a powerful effect on humans—employers should probably invest in coffee makers that generate lots of coffee aromas and position those coffee makers in break areas throughout their offices. The Madzharov-lead team explored “the effect of an ambient coffee-like scent (versus no scent) on expectations regarding performance on an analytical reasoning task as well as on actual performance. . . . people in a coffee-scented (versus unscented) environment perform better on an analytical reasoning task due to heightened performance expectations. . . . [and] people expect that being in a coffee-scented environment will increase their performance because they expect it will increase their physiological arousal. . . . a coffee-like scent (which actually contains no caffeine) can elicit a placebo effect.” Note that when a coffee odor was present, “The scent smelled like coffee but contained no actual caffeine or other stimulants.”
Adriana Madzharov, Ning Ye, Maureen Morrin, and Lauren Block. “The Impact of Coffee-Like Scent on Expectations and Performance.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, in press, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2018.04.001
What Becomes Popular? (04-23-18)
Berger and Packard set out to answer the question “Why do some cultural items become popular?” They focused their research on music and without further studies it’s difficult to be certain how their results generalize to other cultural items. Berger/Packard report that “Although some researchers have argued that success is random, we suggest that how similar items are to each other plays an important role. . . . we examined the relationship between [song] lyrical differentiation (i.e., atypicality) and song popularity. Results indicated that the more different a song’s lyrics are from its genre, the more popular it becomes. This relationship is weaker in genres where lyrics matter less (e.g., dance) or where differentiation matters less (e.g., pop) and occurs for lyrical topics but not style.”
Jonah Berger and Grant Packard. “Are Atypical Things More Popular?” Psychological Science, in press, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618759465
Human Minds Fascinating – More Evidence (04-20-18)
A research team lead by Barilari confirms that humans process sensory information in intriguing ways. They report that “Across cultures and languages, people find similarities between the products of different senses in mysterious ways. By studying what is called cross-modal correspondences, cognitive psychologists discovered that lemons are fast rather than slow, boulders are sour, and red is heavier than yellow. Are these cross-modal correspondences established via sensory perception or can they be learned merely through language? We [demonstrate] that early blind people [blind before the age of 3 years and reported to have neither perception nor visual memory of colors] . . . also think that red is heavier than yellow. . . . We demonstrated . . . that such cross-modal correspondences [color-weight] are established even in the absence of the direct sensory experience (of colors, in this case) probably from linguistic patterns that encode semantic relationships. However, first-hand perceptual experience may strengthen cross-modal intuitions, in addition to semantic aspects.”
Marco Barilari, Adelaide de Heering, Virginie Crollen, Olivier Collignon, and Roberto Bottini. “Is Red Heavier Than Yellow Even for the Blind?” i-Perception, in press, DOI: 10.1177/2041669518759123
Millennials at Work (04-19-18)
Goro and Plaisance used a widely-distributed survey to research the workplace-related expectations of people in the workforce. They presented their findings at the 2018 conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology in a report titled “Using Science to Debunk Millennial Rumors in the Workplace.” Goo reports that “‘the millennial generation reported wanting face-to-face time with their bosses on a weekly basis.’” Plaisance added that their study results “’negate the reputation of millennials to be job-hoppers and disloyal to organizations.’” In addition, “non-millennials more strongly agree on the importance of a positive culture and environment [at work], and the need to have friends at work. . . . millennials also reported that the opportunity for promotion is more important to them than making meaningful contributions to the organization. . . . millennials showed a strong preference for working remotely, job title importance, and sacrificing compensation for being valued and doing work they enjoy.”
Robin Gerrow. 2018 “They Want What?” Press release, Society for industrial and Organizational Psychology, http://www.siop.org/article_view.aspx?article=1793
Elevation Above Street Level and Risk-Taking (04-18-18)
Esteky and colleagues linked what floor we’re on in a building and our response to financial risks – being even a few stories higher or lower in a building produces a noticeable effect on how humans think. The researchers determined that “high physical elevation increases risk-seeking tendencies.” The effect is stronger when elevation is something people are aware of because they look out of a window. The investigators also report that “In an unpublished study, we found that consumers at higher (vs. lower) elevations are more likely to consume juice from an unfamiliar (vs. familiar) fruit. We interpret this finding as evidence that consumers at higher elevations are more like to take sensory risks than are their counterparts at lower elevations.”
Sina Esteky, Jean Wineman, and David Wooten. “The Influence of Physical Elevation in Buildings on Risk Preferences: Evidence from a Pilot and Four Field Studies.” Journal of Consumer Psychology, in press, DOI: 10.1002/jcpy.1024
Branding and Design (04-17-18)
Bajaj and Bond investigated links between design elements and brand-related opinions. They share that “asymmetry in brand elements evokes arousal [excitement] in observers, which spills over to impressions of the brand itself. . . . symmetry was negatively associated with perceptions of brand excitement. . . . Among the . . . academic research . . . a common finding has been the broad benefits of symmetry for perceptions of beauty, perfection, etc. . . . our findings suggest that for brands whose positioning relies on excitement, the direct, positive effect of symmetry through esthetic pleasure may be offset by its indirect, negative effect through inferences regarding brand personality. . . . results suggested a strong association between visual symmetry and brand sophistication; indeed, luxury brands often adopt a classical style characterized by calmness, order, and idealism, in which symmetry is a fundamental characteristic.”
Aditi Bajaj and Samuel Bond. 2018. “Beyond Beauty: Design Symmetry and Brand Personality.” Journal of Consumer Psychology, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 77-98, https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1009
Labels and Evaluations (04-16-18)
Work by Anglada-Tort and his colleagues confirms that labels influence our opinions of various sorts of art. As the Anglada-Tort team reports, previous research has “shown that titles influence peoples’ evaluation of visual art.” The Anglada-Tort lead team “investigated whether names presented with music pieces influenced aesthetic and value judgments of music. Experiment 1 . . . focused on linguistic fluency. The same music excerpts were presented with easy-to-pronounce (fluent) and difficult-to-pronounce (disfluent) names. Experiment 2 . . . studied the affect heuristic. The same music excerpts were presented with positive (e.g., Kiss), negative (e.g., Suicide), and neutral (e.g., Window) titles. . . . Participants . . . evaluated the same music more positively when presented with fluent names compared to disfluent names. . . . presenting the music with negative titles resulted in the lowest judgments. Moreover, music excerpts presented with neutral and negative titles were remembered significantly more often than positive titles. . . . music excerpts were more liked in the presence of titles than in their absence.”
Manuel Anglada-Tort, Jochen Steffens, and Daniel Mullensiefen. “Names and Titles Matter: The Impact of Linguistic Fluency and the Affect Heuristic on Aesthetic and Value Judgements of Music.” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, in press, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/aca0000172
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