Other Environments

Research conducted by Sreedhari Desai and Francesca Gino confirms the importance of the nonverbal cues we find in our physical environment.  They found that “Adults are less likely to cheat and more likely to engage in ‘pro-social’ behaviors when reminders of children, such as teddy bears and crayons, are present.”  When asked to discuss the research, Desai responded that “Child-related cues might unconsciously activate notions of goodness and drive us to get to a pure state and not want to pollute it

Recent research links traveling through doorways and forgetting.  Researchers linked passing through doorways with forgetting thoughts, decisions, and actions.

Costa investigated the tendency of people to sit in the same seat each time they are in a public space.  His research was conducted in academic buildings, but it is applicable in a range of other settings such as workplace conference rooms.  As Costa states, “students choose the same seat over time in university classrooms.

Recent research indicates that brief, brisk (but not running) walks can enhance our ability to remember things.  Designers can respond to this research by creating galleries and similar spaces which allow people to walk quickly (without running) immediately before doing tasks requiring memory.  Salas and his colleagues found that “individuals can gain a memory advantage from a 10-minute walk before studying.”  Study participants walked down several flights o

Seating options provided make it more likely that people will sit with good or bad posture, and recent research indicates that posture is particularly important in healthcare settings.  Bohns and Wiltermuth determined that participants in their study “who adopted dominant poses displayed higher pain thresholds than those who adopted submissive or neutral poses.”  In this case, dominant posture meant sitting up straight, just as your mother encouraged you to sit.

As snow covers most of North America, and office workers’ views of nearby nature are shrouded under a thick white blanket, thoughts turn to potted plants in offices.  Are those plants worth the effort required to keep them alive?  Recent research indicates that they do indeed earn their fertilizer.

Our seated posture influences if we think and behave as if we have power. Two recent studies have extensively explored the relationship between posture and power.  Huang, Galinsky, Gruenfeld, and Guillory summarize this work: “If you want to predict how people . . . will act in any given moment, it may make sense to look at their posture instead of their title.”

In this blog, I frequently discuss ways the physical environment can be used to increase the likelihood that people are in a positive mood.  Nadler and her colleagues have collected additional evidence indicating that when people are in a positive mood, they are more likely to be creative.  Previous research has shown that people in a positive mood think more broadly, which is not only good for tasks such as brainstorming but also social ones such as negotiation. <

Brager and Baker investigated occupant satisfaction in mixed-mode buildings.  They define “mixed-mode” as an “approach to space conditioning that uses a combination of natural ventilation and some form of mechanical ventilation and/or cooling.”   At the study sites, the natural ventilation was provided through operable windows. 

Brown and Cole completed post-occupancy analyses of two Canadian buildings (one green, one conventionally designed) to learn more about occupant comfort in buildings and comfort related behaviors. Green building design generally requires people in the structures to take an active role in maintaining their own physical comfort.  They may need to open and close window blinds, for example.  Often, people in conventionally designed structures do not play as active a role in making their environments physically comfortable.