How to throw a great party!

THE ENVIRONMENTAL NEUROSCIENCE OF A GREAT PARTY (THE KIND OF TITLE THAT DEFINITELY DESTROYS THE FUN)

‘Tis the time of year for parties—and in many parts of the world, with the right disease fighting precautions in place, it may be possible for people to gather to celebrate whatever they choose to celebrate, in December 2021.

All parties are alike in some ways.  At least in the fast-fading-from-memory multiple real live humans gathered together in a single, actual physical place, at the same time for a party.  They almost always involve food/wine/other alcoholic beverages (at least that’s the way we remember things when we dig out our fat pants from the bottom of our closet on January 2) and often some sort of entertainment (although clearly if there was more music and dancing at parties, we’d burn off at least enough of the calories we consume to avoid use of the fat pants).

Sometimes parties are tumultuous times where way too many people are packed into a space with lots of inebriating beverages and other parties find 6 people acting like grown-ups and using their best Sunday School manners as they sit around a dining table moving sedately through a carefully planned and prepared menu of foods that generally have foreign (no matter where you’re from) and unpronounceable names.

All this variety in the sort of party you might decide to host makes it a challenge to generalise about how space can support the party you want to have—but The Space Doctors do not avoid challenges, they welcome them!

The most basic thing to think about as you plan and have a party is what your home is telling your guests about who you are as a person and how to behave when they’re in it.

Unless you anticipate really destructive partygoers (and if they’re that destructive, why are you letting them into your home?) don’t pick up all your photos, vases, knick-knacks, etc.  A space that’s barren stresses visitors in multiple ways (remember, we didn’t spend our early days as a species living inside an empty white cube but in open spaces with plants, ones that today we’d say have the sorts of moderate visual complexity (discussed here), where we feel good today. A stressed guest is one that has trouble remembering their party manners.  Too little going on visually is stressful because it’s alien and also because it doesn’t give your guests much to go on when they’re trying to figure out what to talk with you about (no surprise there) and also how to talk with you (literally).  For instance, how far we stand from someone when we talk to them depends on how important they seem to be and how formal they are—both bits of information people can pick up from things that may be in your home.

The basic design and upkeep of your home will also give party goers an idea how they should act onsite.  Does every throw pillow seem carefully positioned and does the spine of each of the books on your bookshelf perfectly align with the outer edge of the shelf on which it sits?  These are just a couple of the silent cues people to your home will note as they decide whether to put a coaster under the refreshing glass of something that you’ve provided them when they arrived.  If it doesn’t seem like you’ve dusted in a while, they won’t get too worked up about a few crumbs that seem to miss the plate in their hand and fall onto the couch upholstery. If you care about couch crumbs and tabletops, make that readily apparent to anyone who arrives at your home by cleaning up.

In this Party Issue, we take you through some steps to ensure that your party goes with a swing! Read on!