Colors' Consequences
Shades to get the job done, whatever the goal
Shades to get the job done, whatever the goal
Why blue? When blue?
Guiding minds to desired destinations
Extraversion, introversion, and chroma
Hung and associates evaluated mentally refreshing spaces, those that are cognitively restorative. They report that “Two populations, one in Taiwan and one in Sweden, were experimentally compared by showing them photos of restorative landscapes from each country. The results showed that restorativeness was affected more by photos of the restorative landscape in Sweden than in Taiwan. The results showed that restorativeness in terms of psychological and physiological responses was affected.
Arshamian lead a team that identified scents perceived as pleasant by cultures worldwide. They report that they asked people “from 9 diverse nonwestern cultures—hunter-gatherer to urban dwelling—to rank . . . odorants from most to least pleasant. . . . there was substantial global consistency. . . . Taken together, this shows human olfactory perception is strongly constrained by universal principles. . .
Schwartz, Pierson, and Reece’s work directly relates to animal sounds but can potentially be extended to other contexts. The researchers found that “A growing body of research demonstrates that humans can accurately perceive the emotional states of animals solely by listening to their calls, highlighting shared evolutionary ancestry. . . . One hypothesis is that humans rely on simple acoustic heuristics to make such judgments, for example, perceiving higher-pitched calls as reflecting heightened emotional arousal (the ‘pitch rule’).
In an open access article, Loos and colleagues review study findings related to how humans communicate with each other via scents. Their work is useful to people pondering remote and face-to-face interactions (at work and otherwise) and to those considering adding scents to environments.
Nurmi and Pakarinen’s work probes the effects of virtual sessions on our energy levels and mental performance. The researchers report that they “challenge the commonly held belief that virtual meeting fatigue manifests as exhaustion (i.e., active fatigue) resulting from overloading demands and instead suggest that participation in virtual meetings may lead to increased drowsiness (i.e., passive fatigue) due to underload of stimulation.
Redhead and team shed new light on how landmarks can be designed to help people navigate through a space. They report that in their study “participants learned a route through a computer-generated maze using directional arrows and wall-mounted pictures. On the test trial, the arrows were removed, and participants completed the maze using only the pictures. In the nostalgia condition, pictures were of popular music artists and TV characters from 5 to 10 years ago. In the control condition, they were recent pictures of these same artists and characters. . . .