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...
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...
How to Feel Safe/Secure at Home
We’re more apt to feel safer, that where we live is more “neighbourly,” and actually be more secure when: Cooler colours predominate in the space we’re in. We’re sitting or sleeping so that we...
Odd Spaces can make Great Spaces!
If when you read “odd places” in the title of this article and thought, “at last, what I should do with that weird space under the stairs OR that 2 foot by 3 foot...
Places for Dogs, Cats, and Fish
Our pets, at the very least, seem like our very good friends, and we can make sure that they enjoy living in our homes as much as we enjoy having them share it with...
Merging Households
As the weather gets warmer, people move, and often people who are romantically linked decide to take the plunge and move in together. People who with tight enough bonds to decide to move in...
Gender and place experience
Men and women can experience spaces in slightly different ways from time to time: Women have a better sense of touch than men, in technical terms, they are more “tactically sensitive” than men. This...
Feeling crowded makes us angry..
Next time you’re feeling crowded or putting together some sort of event, etc., where people might feel crowded, apply these research findings from Reyt and colleagues: “Crowded waiting areas are volatile environments, where seemingly...
Personality and musical taste
Greenberg and teammates report that they “built on theory and research in personality, cultural, and music psychology to map the terrain of preferences for Western music using data from 356,649 people across six continents....
Fear affects us physically
Tashjian and colleagues studied what happens to us when we’re in a scary place (for this project, a haunted house with 17 rooms) and the social nature of fear-type responses. They share that “Threats...
Living and Loving
February is love month. We’ve been hearing this since we have been old enough to hear anything at all. The consumer products juggernaut that fills all our communications with advertisements, sometimes now flowing like...
Let music and scents be the food of love!
In many a boudoir scene on the silver screen, not only do candles predominate, but before the person to be romanced arrives, some scent is sprayed in the air and background music begins to...
What does your home say about you?
At least according to the experts in these sorts of things, it seems most likely that people will form their most useful opinions of others when they actually have some idea who those other...
Getting along in the office too
Talking of love. Creating offices where people are going to get along is also important. We are not necessarily talking about having a romance over the water-cooler, but so people feel comfortable in a...
Photos on Dating Sites
There is an entire industry, oodles of professionals, who want to make sure that you dating site photo is all that it can possibly be and immediately leads to the love of your life....
How background music affects our interactions.
Chang and Kim’s findings will be particularly interesting to you if you’ve spent a lot of time during lockdowns watching movies. They report that “Films in general, and background music in particular, have the...
How Openness among Residents blooms
The personality makeup of citizens seems to evolve with neighbourhoods. Gotz and teammates report that “Rising house prices may change the personality make-up of US cities within a few years, with residents becoming increasingly...
Want to make a good first impression?
We all like to be liked and want to make a good impression. Tooley “found that a space that is aesthetically satisfying and valued, contributes to the likeability of its occupants. . . ....
Starting Anew – Aargh! to Aahh!
People putting together plans for new homes pass through a set of predictable phases. The first is euphoria: “Wow, I’m going to have the opportunity to do something new, to create the sort of...
TIPI – Designing for your personality
Ever wondered how you align with your friends and family? One of the things that’s clearest about space design is that everyone feels better when their personality aligns with the place that they find...
Creating places to mingle in your home
Places where people will have positive, pleasant conversations: Will allow everyone who wants to make eye contact at any time they feel like it. Parties require the sorts of everyone sits in a ring...
Which face mask is best?
How easy or difficult is it to understand someone wearing different sorts of face masks? Researchers lead by Brown determined via data collected from people with normal hearing that “cotton masks with filter inserts...
Banking Happiness
Faraji-Rad and Lee determined that “Merely anticipating a future sad event motivates consumers to ‘accumulate happiness’ in order to enhance their ability to cope with the anticipated sadness later—a phenomenon that we call banking...
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...
How to Encourage Conversation at a Party
Science makes it clear that there are some hard and fast rules about spaces where people have great conversations—you can apply them throughout your home, creating multiple conversation zones—even if you don’t have any...
How to make Food taste nicer! The Definitive Guide!
So, you’ve got people coming over and you’d like them to leave with memories of eating all sorts of yummy (and if you’re really hardcore, nutritious) food at your party—and you definitely don’t want...
Holiday Colours
There are particular hues that we’re much more likely to see at the end of the year and in related celebrations than others. Don’t be surprised if they have you feeling in very particular...
Scent and Heat!
At this time of year we can become particularly attuned to the smells in our homes and offices, regularly because they’re not very good. If you actively manage the scents in your home and...
Refreshment time!
During the holidays, we often need to not only work at whatever our job is but also spend time catching up with family, friends, and colleagues, all of this can lead us desperate to...
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