Environmental Psych in the News – Brown noise….?!
Dani Blum (2022, “Can Brown Noise Turn Off Your Brain?, The New York Times,https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/23/well/mind/brown-noise.html) effectively presents much of the science that underpins Space Doctors discussions of science-based soundscaping, as discussed in this article (also...
Re-nesting – The Long Read
Even if as you read this it isn’t officially autumn yet, you know that summer is past and we are beginning to settle into another winter slog toward Spring and a return to indoor-outdoor...
What is Home-y?
Many a quest is underway to create a place where someone or other, or some group or other, will feel at home. Workplaces, restaurants, stores, healthcare facilities . . . you name it, even actual...
The Most Common and Important Errors Design Professionals Seem to Make
None of us are perfect, even people who design for a living. Unfortunately, design professionals regularly do the following things, which are oh so very un-good for the people using what they’ve designed: Signalling...
Nature Soundscapes help us focus and more…
In a recent study “EEG and Heart Rate data were recorded from 10 participants within an [real-world] office in London. Each participant listened to a Moodsonic Soundscape (lapping lake waves) . . . and...
Headphones and Privacy
Mueller and colleagues share that “Office workers lately use active noise-cancelling (ANC) headphones to improve the acoustic situation by blocking unwanted sound. . . . Two studies were conducted to examine if ANC headphones...
Circadian Rhythms and Weight Gain….
There’s a new reason to install circadian lighting: weight management. Teruel and colleagues determined that “Disruption of the circadian clocks that keep the body and its cells entrained to the 24-hour day-night cycle plays...
Reduce stress – exercise outdoors!
Das and Gailey studied the implications of exercising in green spaces during the pandemic. They report that “Previous cross-sectional literature reports protective effects of outdoor exposure on mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. We...
Music and Pain
Howlin, Stapleton, and Rooney collected information from adults experiencing acute pain. They share that “Music is increasingly being recognised as an adjuvant [auxiliary] treatment for pain management. Music can help to decrease the experience...
Views outside help prevent us from getting lost…
New research confirms that being able to see outside as we travel through a building helps us keep from getting lost. Qi, Lu, and Chen report that “General hospitals in China always present significant...
Colours and Concert-Halls
Chen and Cabrera studied experiences in concert halls; select surfaces were different colours for the various conditions tested. Study participants rated “loudness, reverberance, and their visual and auditory preference for multiple virtual reality scenes...
Colour and Taste – Sweet and Salty
Wang and Chang studied colours used on popcorn packaging and report that “Four experimental package design colours (red, blue, yellow, and white) and three popcorn tastes (sweet, salty, and tasteless) were used to evaluate...
Late Night Sets
Wonder how talk shows seem to have all ended up with the same sets? Read Jacqui Palumbo’s article in CNN style, “How the Late Night Talk Show Set Became an American Icon” (at https://www.cnn.com/style/article/late-night-set-design-history/index.html). ...
Avoid that coffee before you shop?
Biswas and team report that “Consumers often shop online and in physical stores immediately after or while consuming caffeine. This is further facilitated by the increasing prevalence of coffee shops and also with some...
Flying high!
It may seem that planes, trains, automobiles, buses, and other vehicles that move you from place to place (and some that you’ve only seen on a screen somewhere, such as spacecraft), are designed entirely...
Plants, Biophilic Design and Technology…
Plants and Biophilic Design You’re very apt to see potted plants, real or artificial, in any transit hub because research has shown that when plants are present in public spaces, people are friendlier, which...
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Automobiles Our driving performance improves when we’re smelling lemon, so next time you’re buying an in-car air freshener, go lemon. If you can tune the colour of the lights used in your car at...
Ever wanted to take the Hotel decor home with you?
Hotels are, literally, our homes away from home. We spend time in them when we’re on vacation and having a good time, but also when we’re on business trips and trying like crazy to...
Waiting in Line….
Have you ever found yourself getting all agitated while waiting in a queue for tickets? Bouncing from one foot to the other while you’re waiting for the shop assistant to finish helping the people...
For the love of Robots…
Although more and more things around us are being automated, from hotel check-ins to whole dining experiences, that doesn’t mean that we necessarily like working with a robot or anything “smart”. Did you know...
The Way we Work Now…
Megan Tatum has written an interesting article for the BBC online about the importance of aligning workplace options with user mindsets (“The People Who Hate Working from Home,” 2022, https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220616-the-people-who-hate-working-from-home). Tatum’s article is written...
Photographing everything in your home?
I love this article. Barbara Iweins has photographed each and every thing in her home and Oscar Holland of CNN discusses her images in a recent article (“A Photographer Cataloged All 12, 795 Items...
Plants = meditation
Researchers found that looking at plants and guided meditation have similar effects on our mental state. Archary and Thatcher, investigating recovery from mental fatigue (which also degraded mood) found that “distress significantly decreased for...
Benefits of looking at art and cultural content online
Trupp and colleagues found there are significant benefits to looking at visual art and cultural content electronically, even very briefly: “When experienced in-person, engagement with art has been associated—in a growing body of evidence—with...
What do humans find beautiful?
Krpan and van Tilburg share that they “developed and empirically evaluated the Aesthetic Quality Model, which proposes that the link between [visual] complexity and beauty depends on another key visual property—randomness. According to the...
Circadian lighting and sleep
Benedetti and colleagues found that circadian lighting in offices can improve how well people sleep at night. They “tested the effects of optimized dynamic daylight and electric lighting on circadian phase of melatonin, cortisol...
Art!
Almost all of us have art of some sort in our homes, but that art can range from a Picasso to a first finger painting by a grandchild. Art can be most useful in...
Attractiveness and scent….
Chen and Spence studied how scents influence perceptions of facial attractiveness; it seems likely that their findings can also be applied in other contexts. The duo report they studied “whether the presentation of a...
Gardening is good for you – more evidence!
Researchers determined, via a study published in PLoS ONE, that “many people may indeed reap mental health benefits from working with plants — even if they’ve never gardened before. . . . gardening activities...
Why do we love the smell after it has rained?
Nabhan, Daugherty, and Hartung report that “Desert dwellers know it well: the smell of rain and the feeling of euphoria that comes when a storm washes over the parched earth. That feeling, and the...
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