Get out there and go for an Open Water Swim!
Overbury, Conroy, and Marks determined that “Open water swimming may lead to improvements in mood and wellbeing, reductions in mental distress symptomatology, and was experienced as a positive, enriching process for many. Blue spaces...
Is Traffic Noise knocking out your Smartness?
Researchers have determined that “as little as 40 decibels of traffic noise – the typical level of background noise in an office environment or kitchen – has a detrimental effect on cognitive performance. Researchers...
Snakes, Cities, Nature and Biphobia
Researchers, in a study published in People and Nature, report that “internet searches indicate a growing prevalence of various biophobias across the world. Countries with larger urban populations show interest in a broader range...
More than what’s in your wine glass…
Professor Joy (I am not making this up!) and team from the University of British Columbia assessed “a number of items including the material features of the winery and the sensorial theme, such as...
Nature and Mood
Bardhan and teammates report that they “conducted one of the first longer-term investigations of daily nature exposure and mood with a mobile app as part of the NatureDose™ Student Study (NDSS). The NatureDose™ app...
ASMR and Biophilia
Mahady, Takac, and De Foe report that “Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a nascent phenomenon wherein a pleasant and relaxing tingling sensation occurs in response to audio and visual triggers like whispering and...
Too much tech in hotel rooms, bring on the Biophilia!
There is a natural limit to everything, including the amount of automation in our lives, and as Amy Tara Koch reports in “Encountering the Infuriating, Overwhelming and Unwanted Smart Tech in My Hotel Room”...
Age of the Modern Farmhouse
Ronda Kaysen shares lots of details about modern farmhouse residential design, labelling it the replacement for McMansions in the psyches of many American residents. As Kaysen shares (“The Modern Farmhouse is Today’s McMansion. And...
Barbie Pink!
With the global PR tsunami pushing people into theatres to see the new Barbie movie, it seems that the colour pink is everywhere. Looking at relatively unsaturated, light shades of pink is definitely relaxing...
Biophilic Offices – more research encouraging us to use Biophilia in the workplace
Yin’s dissertation research determined that “participants experiencing biophilic environment virtually had similar physiological and cognitive responses, including reduced blood pressure and skin conductance and improved short-term memory, as when experiencing the actual environment. . ....
We hear silence…
Silence is not simply the absence of sound; we actively hear it. Goh, Phillips, and Firestone found that “silences can ‘substitute’ for sounds in event-based auditory illusions. Seven experiments introduce three ‘silence illusions,’ adapted...
Yummy scents and then bang goes the diet! The lasting smell of temptation!
Chae, Yoon, Baskin and Zhu link smells and food consumed, studying “the effects of indulgent food scents [the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking, for example] on preference for indulgent food items. . . ....
Keeping up with the Jones – Home decor and market forces!
Grant and Handelman determined that “while consumers readily turn to the home décor marketplace for objects that help them reflect their personal identity, lifestyle media have clearly influenced an emergent cultural understanding of the...
Nature vs Malls – places and thinking
Scherz and colleagues found that people have different sorts of thoughts about other people and about places in different sorts of public spaces. The researchers determined that “Self-related thoughts were less likely in a...
Using Wood in Offices
Ojala and colleagues share that they gathered data “in two rooms: a room with wooden elements and a control room without wood. The participants first performed cognitive tasks by the computer to imitate typical...
Add trees and sky for Creativity
Sharam, Mayer, and Baumann determined that a “nature-view condition [ability to see trees and blue sky] had a significant positive effect on creative fluency (i.e. quantity of output) but not on the quality of...
Trees for Brains
Kuhn and colleagues report that “Previous research has suggested an association between living environment during the first 15 years of life and brain structure. More precisely, urbanicity during upbringing has been shown to be...
Designing for Health and Happiness
Design can definitely make you feel happy, what’s technically known in the psych biz as improving your mental health. Being happier can be good for your physical health, it can make your immune system...
Boosting Physical Health, Via Place Design
The most obvious ways that design can improve physical health is by not actively harming users—off gassing fatal to inhale chemicals, being appropriate ergonomically, etc. Once all of the active threats are eliminated from...
How to design for creativity – The Long Read
The findings that follow are place-independent; they hold, and can be applied, whether people are at home, in a corporate workplace, at a co-working site, or somewhere else entirely. Also, always remember, that a...
Wood for healthy minds
As you ponder your re-design options keep the benefits of using wood in mind. Working natural materials into spaces is an important tenet of biophilic design—and particularly positive results ensue from using materials—such as...
Wild Swimming
Wild swimming has been having a moment, for the last few decades, and likely will get even more attention when people swim in the Seine during the 2024 Paris Olympics—although jumping into the Seine...
Environmental Psychology in the News
The Wonders of Awe Eva Rothenberg (“Why Looking at Awe-Inspiring Art Could Lead to a Happier, Healthier Life,” 2023 https://www.cnn.com/style/article/awe-wonder-art/index.html) gets to the root of why awe is good for us. As she details,...
More nature = less phone use
Minor and colleagues found that “Evidence links greenspace exposure with restorative benefits to cognition and well-being, yet nature contact is declining for younger demographics. . . . we analyzed ~2.5 million observations of logged...
Same place same behaviour
Research study with mice indicates that “Environmental context plays a major role in chemical dependence and addiction, inducing or reinforcing compulsive drug-seeking behavior. . . . ‘To understand what this means in humans, simply...
Culture and Art
Brinkman and colleagues found that people from Austria and from Japan literally use their eyes differently when looking at European and Japanese art and photographs. The researchers report that “Possibly those differences are related...
What shape and colour apartment?
Kleeman and Foster’s study of the implications of spending extended periods of time in home apartments during the COVID-19 lockdowns are fairly predictable: “Compared to the pre-pandemic period, after the lockdown residents reported less satisfaction...
Desirable Amounts of Greenery
In a study relevant to the design of offices everywhere, at home and elsewhere, Elbertse, and Steenbekkers report that their “study aims to explore the effect of different volumes of indoor greenery on perceived...
Neighbourhood Perceptions, Evaluations and Wellbeing
Ayalon determined that “the importance of subjective mediators, rather than objective ones in explaining the association between perceived neighborhood characteristics and wellbeing.” Wellbeing was higher when perceived neighborhood disorder was lower and neighborhood cohesion...
Health by the Sea
Geiger and colleagues report that they analyzed “data from the Seas, Oceans, and Public Health In Europe (SOPHIE) and Australia (SOPHIA) surveys to. . . . find broad cross-country generalizability that living nearer to...
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