Preferred Emotional States (02-15-18)
Jeanne Tsai conducts culture-based research on emotions and her findings are useful to anyone attempting to develop places or objects that support desired emotional experiences. Dawson, reporting on the 2017 International Conception of Psychological Science in Vienna states that “Tsai and her collaborators have found that. . . . Cross-culturally people characterize emotions as positive or negative (called ‘valence’) and stimulating or soothing (called ‘arousal’). ‘Ecstatic’ and ‘relaxed’ are both positive-valence emotions, for example, but ‘ecstatic’ is high arousal, while ‘relaxed’ is low arousal. When asked about how they would ideally like to feel, European Americans typically preferred excitement and elation more than did Chinese, who preferred calm and relaxation more than did European Americans. There were no differences in how much European Americans and Chinese reported actually feeling those emotions, however. ‘Cultural factors may shape how we want to feel more than how we actually feel,’ Tsai said. This ideal affect difference shows up in children’s books, magazine ads, and the official portraits of politicians and business leaders. American media figures sported broad, open, teeth-baring ‘excited’ smiles more frequently than did their Chinese counterparts, who more often expressed calmer, closed smiles.”
Joe Dawson. 2018. “Emotions in Context: What We Know About How We Feel.” Observer, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 25-26.
Selecting and Erring (02-14-18)
Buechel and Townsend investigated how people decide which products to buy and the repercussions of those decisions. The team reports that their “research identifies a systematic error in consumers’ preferences and predicted liking for product aesthetics. Consumers predict a faster decrease in liking for high (vs. low) arousal potential product designs (i.e., intense colors or intense patterns) over repeat exposure because high-arousal-potential designs are expected to become increasingly irritating. These predictions are misguided, however, falsely leading consumers to avoid products with high-arousal potential designs when making a decision for extended product use.”
Eva Buechel and Claudia Townsend. “Buying Beauty for the Long Run: (Mis)Predicting Liking of Product Aesthetics.” Journal of Consumer Research, in press, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucy002
Standing and Working (02-13-18)
Makkonen and colleagues studied how standing desks influenced the at-work experiences of employees at a software company. They determined that, among the employees of the Finnish software company where they collected data, “the usage of standing instead of sitting workstations results in only modest promotions of physical activity, does not have an effect on mental alertness . . . decreases musculoskeletal strain in the neck and shoulders, although increasing it in the legs and feet.” Using standing desks didn’t significantly affect employees’ satisfaction with their workstations.
Markus Makkonen, Minna Silvennoinen, Tuula Nousiainen, Arto Pesola, and Mikko Vesisenaho. 2017. “To Sit or to Stand, That is the Question: Examining the Effects of Work Posture Change on the Well-Being at Work of Software Professionals.” International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, vol. 17, no. 4, no pagination.
Using a Foreign Language: Implications (02-09-18)
Research by Hayakawa and Keysar indicates that when design-related decisions are being made the language being used in a space and the language that design research was conducted in should be carefully considered. The team report that “Mental imagery plays a significant role in guiding how we feel, think, and even behave. These mental simulations are often guided by language, making it important to understand what aspects of language contribute to imagery vividness and consequently to the way we think. Here, we . . . present evidence that using a foreign language leads to less vivid mental imagery than using a native tongue. . . .participants using a foreign language reported less vivid imagery of sensory experiences such as sight and touch than those using their native tongue. . . . Together, the findings suggest that our mental images change when using a foreign tongue, leading to downstream consequences for how we make decisions.” So, for example, our reports of sensory experiences seem to be different depending on whether we’re using our native language or a second, foreign language. All study participants were fluent in the foreign language used.
Sayuri Hayakawa and Boaz Keysar. 2018. “Using a Foreign Language Reduces Mental Imagery.” Cognition, vol. 173, pp. 8-15.
Changing Rooms and Exercising (02-07-18)
When people have access to showers and changing rooms, are they more likely to ride a bicycle or walk to work? A research team headed by Biswas analyzed data collected from over 53,000 people who answered questions on the 2007 – 2008 Canadian Community Health Survey, and determined that “Compared with younger ages, workers 50 to 75 years old were more likely to cycle to work if WS/CR [showers and changing rooms] were available.” So, older individuals were more likely to ride their bicycles to work when WS/CR were available but people 49 years old or younger were not more likely to ride a bike to work if WS/CR were available. The likelihood of workers of any age walking to work was not significantly affected by the presence of WS/CR. Statistical techniques were used to eliminate living in an urban or rural area as an explanation for the effects seen. Depending on worker/space user demographic profiles and organizational goals, devoting space to WS/CR may or may not be a good use of resources.
Aviroop Biswas, Peter Smith, and Monique Gignac. “Access to Showers and Change Rooms at Work Associated With Active Commuting Among Older Workers: Findings from a National Population Survey.” Journal of Applied Gerontology, in press.
More on Environmental Noise (02-06-18)
New research indicates how important it is to block the flow of environmental sound (from aircraft, trucks, trains, etc.) into buildings and to reduce outside noise levels via traffic routing/management, building orientation, etc. Munzel and his team report that “Noise has been found associated with annoyance, stress, sleep disturbance, and impaired cognitive performance. . . . studies have found that environmental noise is associated with an increased incidence of arterial hypertension, myocardial infarction, heart failure, and stroke. . . . especially nighttime noise increases levels of stress hormones and vascular oxidative stress, which may lead to endothelial dysfunction and arterial hypertension.” The Munzel lead group share that environmental noise is stressful and that it affects human bodies at a cellular level.
Thomas Munzel, Frank Schmidt, Sebastian Steven, Johannes Herzog, Andreas Daiber, and Mette Sorensen. 2018. “Environmental Noise and the Cardiovascular System.” Journal of the American College of Cardiology, vol. 71, no. 6, DOI: 10.1016/j.jacc.2017.12.015.
Light and Thinking (02-05-18)
Research with rats confirms that being in dim light may not be good for our cognitive performance (“Does Dim Light Make Us Dumber,” 2018). Previous research has linked brighter light with improved “cognitive performance in school children, healthy adults, and patients in early stages of dementia” (Soler, Robison, Nunez, and Yan, in press). The Michigan State press release states that “Spending too much time in dimly lit rooms and offices may actually change the brain's structure and hurt one's ability to remember and learn.” It reports that the Soler lead team “studied the brains of . . . rats . . . after exposing them to dim and bright light for four weeks. The rodents exposed to dim light lost about 30 percent of capacity in the hippocampus, a critical brain region for learning and memory, and performed poorly on a spatial task they had trained on previously. The rats exposed to bright light . . . showed significant improvement on the spatial task. . . . when the rodents that had been exposed to dim light were then exposed to bright light for four weeks (after a month-long break), their brain capacity - and performance on the task - recovered fully. The study. . . is the first to show that changes in environmental light, in a range normally experienced by humans, leads to structural changes in the brain.” The light levels experienced by the test rats are reported in Hippocampus, but the usefulness of reproducing the exact lighting levels tested on the rats in offices, etc., has yet to be established. Soler and colleagues exposed rats to light levels of 1,000 lux or 50 lux for 12 hours at a time, with dark periods between the lighted ones.
Joel Soler, Alfred Robison, Antonio Nunez, and Lily Yan. “Light Modulates Hippocampal Function and Spatial Learning in a Diurnal Rodent Species: A Study Using Male Nile Grass Rat (Arvicanthis Niloticus).” Hippocampus, in press.
“Does Dim Light Make Us Dumber?” 2018. Press release, Michigan State University, http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2018/does-dim-light-make-us-dumber/.
Cost-Benefit Analyses (02-02-18)
Kim, Zafari Bellanger, and Muennig probed the costs and benefits of creating a park. Anyone assessing the potential value of any sort of design solution will find it useful to take a look at their work (the Kim team’s methods for calculating outcome values are reported in detail at http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2017.304243). Kim and colleagues wanted to “examine health benefits and cost-effectiveness of implementing a freeway deck park to increase urban green space. . . . [they] built a microsimulation [computer] model that included increased exercise, fewer accidents, and less pollution as well as the cost of implementation and maintenance of the park. We estimated both the quality-adjusted life years gained and the societal costs for 2017. Implementation of a deck park over sunken parts of Cross-Bronx Expressway appeared to save both lives and money.”
Sooyoung Kim, Zafar Zafari, Martine Bellanger, and Peter Muennig. “Cost-Effectiveness of Capping Freeways for Use as Parks: The New York Cross-Bronx Expressway Case Study.” American Journal of Public Health, in press, doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2017.304243.
Less Annoying Experiences (02-01-18)
Pohl, Gabriel, and Hubner set out to learn how to improve wind farm residents’ responses to wind turbine noise. Their findings are useful whenever some people may be less than happy with designed conditions. The research team learned via interviews with people living in a wind farm in Germany that “Noise annoyance was minimally correlated with distance to the closest WT [wind turbine] and sound pressure level, but moderately correlated with fair planning. . . . The planning and construction process has proven to be central − it is recommended to make this process as positive as possible.” Pohl and his colleagues found that wind farm neighbors were less stressed when they were treated with respect while the farm was being planned. The research team determined, for example, that information about the turbines needed be shared with them and that nearby residents needed be involved in the planning possess itself.
Johannes Pohl, Joachim Gabriel, and Gundula Hubner. 2018. “Understanding Stress Effects of Wind Turbine Noise – The Integrated Approach.” Energy Policy, vol. 112, pp. 119-128, http://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.10.007.
Music and In-Store Crowding (01-31-18)
Knoeferle, Raus, and Vossen studied ties between in-store music tempo and whether shoppers felt crowded. As the report, “Research suggests that in-store crowding can lower customers’ spending. . . we [tested different] in-store music tempos and measured social density [crowding] in six European retail stores. Analyzing over 40,000 individual shopping baskets, we found that. . . . .fast music strongly increased spending under high-density conditions. The increase in shopping basket value was driven by customers buying more items rather than buying items that were more expensive. Fast music thus alleviated negative effects of social density.” The research team categorized songs with more than 107 beats per minute as fast and those with 82 or fewer beats per minute as slow. Designers can recommend that particular types of music be played in different stores, at different times, to maximize sales.
Klemens Knoeferle, Vilhelm Raus, and Alexander Vossen. 2017. “An Upbeat Crowd: Fast In-Store Music Alleviates Negative Effects of High Social Density on Customers’ Spending.” Journal of Retailing, vol. 93, no. 4, pp. 541-549.
Politics and Preferences (01-30-18)
Ordabayeva and Fernandes investigated links between political opinions and product selections. Their findings can be used by people making design recommendations or trying to make sense of research data. Ordabayeva and Fernandes found that “Conservative ideology leads consumers to differentiate from others vertically in the social hierarchy through products that signal that they are better than others, and liberal ideology leads consumers to differentiate from others horizontally in the social hierarchy through products that signal that they are unique from others.”
Nailya Ordabayeva and Daniel Fernandes. “Better of Different? How Political Ideology Shapes Preferences for Differentiation in the Social Hierarchy.” Journal of Consumer Research, in press, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucy004
Consistent Responses to Sounds (01-29-18)
During a recently completed study, people from around the world categorized music they heard in consistent ways. The regularities in their assessments support functional soundscaping, which is often discussed in Research Design Connections. A research team lead by Mehr found that when people from 60 countries listened to songs from 86 cultures they could often identify the purpose of the song (for example, to lull children to sleep). Mehr and colleagues share that “vocal music exhibits recurrent, distinct, and cross-culturally robust form-function relations that are detectable by listeners across the globe. . . . Despite participants’ unfamiliarity with the societies represented, the random sampling of each excerpt, their very short duration (14 s[econds]), and the enormous diversity of this music, the ratings demonstrated accurate and cross-culturally reliable inferences about song functions on the basis of song forms alone. . . . findings are consistent with the existence of universal links between form and function in vocal music. . . . [for example] lullabies tend to be rhythmically and melodically simpler, slower, sung by one female person, and with low arousal relative to other forms of music.”
Samuel Mehr, Manvir Singh, Hunter York, Luke Glowacki, and Max Krasnow. “Form and Function in Human Song.” Current Biology, in press, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.12.042.
Moving in Museums (01-26-18)
Pelowski and his team reviewed “factors that could influence our interactions with museum-based art.” They report, for example that “Upon entering a gallery, visitors often pause and survey the room, determining which objects should be engaged with and identifying a desired path to follow. . . . Visitors . . . tend to move to the right upon entering a gallery and may give more attention to works on the right side of a room. There is a tendency to follow the wall around a room and to leave at the first doorway. . . . Visitors typically do not backtrack to see works missed on the first go-through.”
Matthew Pelowski, Michael Forster, Pablo Tinio, Maria Scholl, and Helmet Leder. 2017. “Beyond the Lab: An Examination of Key Factors Influencing Interaction with ‘Real’ and Museum-Based Art.” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 245-264.
Risky Music (01-25-18)
The music to be played in a space is regularly considered as design decisions are made. Elvers and Steffens’ research indicates that potential playlists need to be carefully chosen: “Listening to music before, during, or after sports is a common phenomenon. . . In this study. . . . listening to motivational music led to greater risk taking but did not improve [sports] performance. This effect was more pronounced in male participants and among those who listened to their own playlists.” Listening to motivational music increased risk taking without improving overall performance when people were participating in a sport; future research will need to determine if increased risk taking occurs in other contexts as well, for example, while trading stocks. Motivational music is described as being selected by study participants because they believe it will enhance their performance.
Paul Elvers and Jochen Steffens. “The Sound of Success: Investigating Cognitive and Behavioral Effects of Motivational Music in Sports.” Frontiers in Psychology, in press.
Encouraging Older People to Walk (01-23-18)
Keskinen and colleagues were interested in learning more about how the design of their neighborhoods influences distances walked outdoors by older people (age 75 to 90). To complete their study, Keskinen and her team determined if water was present near study participants’ homes and assessed landscape diversity in the same areas. The researchers found that “higher habitat diversity within natural areas correlates with higher PA [physical activity] among older people without walking difficulties and the presence of water correlates with higher PA among those with walking difficulties.
Kirsi Keskinen, Merja Rantakokko, Kimmo Suomi, Taina Rantanen, and Erja Portegijs. 2018. “Nature as a Facilitator for Physical Activity: Defining Relationships Between the Objective and Perceived Environment and Physical Activity Among Community-Dwelling Older People.” Health and Place, vol. 49, pp. 111-119, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2017.12.003.
Take Care When Naming (01-22-18)
Designers are often asked to name their projects, etc., and research by Dohle and Montoya makes it clear that names for spaces and objects need to be carefully chosen. The researchers found that “Prior research has demonstrated that high processing fluency [something being easier to pronounce] influences a wide range of evaluations and behaviors in a positive way. . . we demonstrate that increasing the fluency of pharmaceutical drug names [making them easier to pronounce] increases drug dosage. . . . drugs with fluent names are perceived as safer than those with disfluent names and this effect increases drug dosage for both synthetically produced and herbal drugs. . . . people chose a higher dosage for themselves and for a child if the drug bears a fluent (vs. disfluent) name.”
Simone Dohle and Amanda Montoya. 2017. “The Dark Side of Fluency: Fluent Names Increase Drug Dosing.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 231-239.
Urban Psychology (01-19-18)
Ellard directs the Urban Realities Laboratory at the University of Waterloo. He reports that some of his Laboratory’s research findings include: “Street-level facades that are low in visual complexity not only cause participants to self-report lower levels of interest and pleasure, but their levels of autonomic arousal become low. The biometric signature of a low-complexity street looks very much like the signature shown by participants in laboratory studies who are experiencing states of boredom.” Also, “Immersion in greenspace in cities, even when it is modest (a community garden in the city) or complicated by potentially unpleasant connotations (a garden in a psychiatric hospital or a cemetery) exerts a profoundly positive effect on emotional state and a lowering of physiological arousal.” Research findings also indicate that “There is often a mismatch between a participant’s measured physiological state and their own assessment of their state of arousal. Participants in Mumbai, for instance, reported calmness during a close encounter with chaotic traffic but physiological signatures suggesting high physiological arousal.”
Colin Ellard. 2017. “A New Agenda for Urban Psychology: Out of the Laboratory and Onto the Streets.” Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health, vol. 2, https://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/journal2-ellard.html
Seeing Nature and Body Image (01-18-18)
A recently published study indicates that nature images in a space and being in nature do more than just help people restock their mental processing power and de-stress. Swami and team found that “exposure to images of natural, but not built, environments resulted in improved state body image. . . . [and a] walk in a natural environment resulted in significantly higher state body appreciation [a feature of positive body image], whereas [a] walk in a built environment resulted in significantly lower scores. . . . spending time in the green space led to improved state body appreciation [a feature of positive body image].”
Viren Swami, David Barron, and Adrian Furnham. 2018. “Exposure to Natural Environments, and Photographs of Natural Environments, Promotes More Positive Body Image.” Body Image, vol. 24, pp. 82-94, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2017.12.006
Designing Exercising for Personality (01-17-18)
New research indicates the best sorts of exercise opportunities to provide to employees and other groups. A press release from the British Psychological Society, reporting on the work of John Hackston, states that “The effectiveness of someone’s exercise regime may depend on their individual personality type. . . . [data collected via surveys determined that] people with extraverted personality types were more likely to prefer exercising at the gym. Staff with a preference for objective logic were also more likely to stick with a regimented exercise plan than those who view feelings and values as being more important. More creatively minded staff, particularly those who enjoy working with new ideas, were much better suited to outdoor activities such as cycling and running when compared to a structured gym regime. . . Hackston added:. . . ‘Organisations can help their staff to improve their fitness using this research, with increased fitness potentially leading to lower illness-related absences and increased employee satisfaction.’”
“Don’t Like Going to the Gym? It Could Be Your Personality.” 2018. Press release, The British Psychological Society, https://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=182502&CultureCode=en
Kids and Red (01-16-18)
A research team lead by Siu indicates that children and adults have similar associations to the color red. This research is important because as Siu and colleagues indicate “Color has been identified as a key consideration in ergonomics. Color conveys messages and is an important element in safety signs, as it provides extra information to users.” The researchers report that while previous studies have shown that adults link red with “hazard/hazardous,” their research indicates that children 7 to 11 years old associate red with “don’t.” This information means that the color red is a good choice for warning signage, regardless of viewer age.
Kin Siu, Mei Lam, and Yi Wong. 2017. “Children’s Choice: Color Associations in Children’s Safety Sign Design.” Applied Ergonomics, vol. 59, pp. 56-64.
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