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...
Feeling Happy at Home
Shepherd, Selvey, Earon, and Wiking studied row house communities in Denmark and in the United Kingdom and learned that “The key drivers to happiness [resident wellbeing]: balancing the private and the communal; personalising the...
Exercise Effects and Biophilia
Zhang and colleagues learned that “Physical activity performed in a natural environment, especially among green spaces, is associated with mental health benefits. . . . [study participants] engaged in incremental cycling exercise at a...
Memories, Selfies and other Photos
Selfies play a different role in our lives than other photos. A Niese-lead team found that “When photographing moments in their lives, people can use a first-person (capturing the scene as they saw it)...
If you want a bargain, avoid long sun exposure….
Maybe some things are better off done away from daylight. Sun and colleagues report that “We examine sunshine-induced mood and its impacts on investors’ bidding decisions in the primary market where seasoned equities are...
Pulses of Background Music
Felszeghy and teammates set out learn how listening to music influences stress levels and performance of manual tasks by studying dental students listening to what was categorized as “slow background music”: “the music reduced...
More on Subjective Perception
Feeling things as it turns out, relates to believing things. Dinse, Newen, and Tegenthoff learned in a study using hypnosis that “If we sincerely believe that our index finger is five times bigger than...
Growing up Green is Good!
Mygind and colleagues determined via data collected for 5-to 12-year olds that “Vegetation cover around the home might support the formation of social skills through higher order reasoning about emotion experience and cause and...
Benefits of Virtual Art
Trupp and colleagues have learned that seeing art virtually shares benefits with seeing it “live”: “Brief online art viewing can significantly reduce negative mood and anxiety. . . . we used a Monet interactive art...
Let there be light – the power of Circadian Rhythms
Figueiro and Pedler make useful suggestions related to circadian lighting: “Open the window shades in your home or office but be careful to avoid creating glare. . . . When sitting by a window,...
Garden!
Fjaestad and team’s work confirms the value of gardening; they learned via data gathered from people 46 to 80 years old that “Compared to participants who did not engage in gardening, those who gardened...
Block out Traffic Noise
Block Out Traffic Noise Huang and colleagues’ work confirms the value of soundproofing in-town residential walls. The researchers report that “Road traffic noise was estimated at baseline residential address using the common noise assessment...
Get your Kids into Nature
Li and Sullivan determined that when “Perceived childhood nature exposure was calculated as a cumulative score based on the perceived nature in residential surroundings from up to three childhood home locations weighted by duration...
Why Objects Matter
Sharfenberger and associates determined that “being physically close to objects helps consumers to feel psychologically close to the more abstract meaning of these objects. Four experimental studies . . . indicate that being proximal...
Closer Greenspace Less Likelihood of Postpartum Depression
Sun and colleagues found that “A reduced risk for PPD [postpartum depression was associated with total green space exposure based on street-view measure [500 m buffer. . .], but not NDVI [normalized difference vegetation...
Eating in darkness…
Veronique Greenwood’s article (“Some Restaurants Around the World Offer Dining With a Difference – Guests Eat in Complete Darkness. How Does This Change the Way We Taste?” 2023, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230411-what-dining-in-the-dark-does-to-your-tastebuds ) really gets you thinking...
Sunlight
Vermeer has been the darling of the art world, and loads of people outside that hallowed circle, for years, and in “Why We Want to Live (and Work) in That Vermeer Light” Emily Barger...
Plants Prevail
As they do most Springs when plants revive outside, plants inside are a hot topic. In “Eight Ways Indoor Plants Can Improve Your Home” (2023, https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230324-eight-ways-indoor-plants-can-improve-your-home) Dominic Lutyens shares that worldwide “a trend for...
Managing your at-work Energy Levels…
A Zhang-lead team found “a time allocation effect, such that for a given period of the workday (i.e., the morning or the afternoon), the greater the proportion of time a knowledge worker spent in...
We like what we know
Darda and colleagues share that they “we explored Northern American and Indian participants’ aesthetic judgments and preferences for abstract and representational artworks. . . . no evidence was found for an ingroup bias ....
Do our preferences change?
Aleem and Grzywacz looked at our responses to aesthetics over time and report that “A handful of studies that have measured aesthetic preferences at multiple moments show that preferences may change in as little...
Birdsong and Wellbeing
Hammoud and colleagues report that they “used the Urban Mind smartphone application to examine the impact of seeing or hearing birds on self-reported mental wellbeing in real-life contexts. . . . Everyday encounters with...
Language and Judgements
Rizzo and team’s work indicates how important word choice is for conclusions drawn; they found that “sensory language (e.g., words like ‘crumble’ and ‘juicy’ that engage the senses) shapes consumer responses to influencer-sponsored content....
Assessing Art
Kuhnapfel and colleagues report that “in a gallery-like setting . . . we tracked movements of participants that engaged an abstract artwork. . . . moving more/more dynamically related to more reported insight. ....
Movie Houses…
Oscars have just been distributed, so movies won’t be completely dominating the news again for a few more months yet, but the homes we see and cherish after we catch sight of them in...
Recycling for the Planet and our Minds
In “The Most Ingenious Recycled Homes,” Clare Dowdy (2023, https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230302-the-most-ingenious-recycled-homes) makes the point that recycling is not only good for the planet but can also give us a psychological boost because it makes us...
Making the Metaverse
Programmers out there are actually creating the metaverse, but clearly in no time at all it is going to have as big an effect on how we think and behave as the physical world...
More Benefits of Feeling Awed
We can be awed by design in a variety of ways, for example, via exquisite workmanship or use of unique or special materials. Prade and Saraglou share that “Given that awe experiences promote collective...
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