Art and Culture
Ho and colleagues report that their “research investigates the appreciation of visual arts cross-culturally by hypothesizing and testing a cultural-match effect (i.e., people tend to appreciate same-culture artworks more than they appreciate different-culture artworks)....
Co-Working May Not Support Business Creativity Long Term
Haefliger and Yacoub determined that “Co-working spaces can limit the creativity and innovation of new businesses. . . . These shared spaces . . . may offer initial opportunities to collaborate but, before long,...
Pushes Toward the Familiar
Winet and O’Brien report that “In eight experiments with nearly 6,000 total participants, [they] explored whether people tend to prefer novel, exciting experiences, such as trying a new restaurant, or familiar ones, such as...
Thinking While Wearing a Mask
Smerdon found that “mandatory mask wearing has a negative causal effect on the cognitive performance of competitive chess players. I analyzed the quality of almost 3 million chess moves played by 8,531 individuals (ages...
Why do we love the sea, lakes and rivers?
In “The Surprising Benefits of Blue Spaces” Frankie Adkins and Katherine Latham (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221108-the-doctors-prescribing-blue-therapy) talk about the benefits of time on the ocean and in blue spaces: “When Homo sapiens first evolved some 300,00 years...
The Science of Opera
Interested in opera and in neuroscience? You’ll be fascinated by this article merging the two: Frank Rose’s “Music, Science and Healing Intersect in an A.I. Opera” (The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/arts/music/artificial-intelligence-opera.html). A taste: “’We’ve...
Why we go back to places
Winet and O’Brien report that “In eight experiments with nearly 6,000 total participants, [they]explored whether people tend to prefer novel, exciting experiences, such as trying a new restaurant, or familiar ones, such as returning...
When and how to face the camera
Research by Fauville and colleagues in the virtual world is probably relevant in real life also: “the impact of three nonverbal cues displayed through video conference screenshots (i.e., gaze direction, distance between the face...
Thinking while Standing
Bhat and associates report that “The present study investigated the effects of attending lectures in sitting and standing postures on executive function of young adults. . . . Attending a lecture in a standing...
Seeing, Hearing birds
Hammond and team studied implications of seeing or hearing birds. 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. A sample...
Spiciness and Expectations
Wang, Yang, and Zheng studied how the the way hot sauces look how spicy we perceive them to be, determining that “red hot sauce still generates the strongest expected spiciness. Higher saturation of hot...
Managing Office Temperatures
Research at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for the Built Environment (CBE) “found no evidence for a relationship between temperature and work performance within the range temperatures commonly found in office buildings, and certainly...
Positive Effects of At-Work Nature
Loder and Stoner reviewed studies related to nature (for example, plants, nature views) in workplaces. They report, for example, that “Research has shown that contact with nature can improve task performance, usually through increased...
Nature Urban Strolls
Sudimac, Sale, and Kuhn share that they “conducted an intervention study to investigate changes in stress-related brain regions as an effect of a one-hour walk in an urban (busy street) vs. natural environment (forest)....
How much are views worth?
Crompton and Nicholls report that “Twenty-seven empirical studies were identified that empirically estimated the impact on property values of views of open space. The review differentiated between street level and high-rise building views. Among...
Pregnant People in Green Spaces
Sun and colleagues had “pregnant women between 8 and 14 weeks’ gestational age . . . view one of three, 5-min, VR [virtual reality] videos of an urban scene with different green space levels...
Designing for Sleeping zzzzzz
Several issues ago we wrote about how design can make it easier for people to fall asleep and stay asleep (here), and designing for sleeping has been in the news recently. Would you go...
Developers are swapping to Wood
Regularly, the Space Doctors discuss the psychological benefits of being able to see at least some wood grain. A recent article indicates that wood is currently finding its ways into lots of design solutions...
Robert Downey Junior’s home
Here in The Space Doctors’ newsletter we often talk about how seeing curves (in 2-dimensions in patterns in wallpapers and upholstery and 3-dimensions in the gently rolled arms of a sofa or walls of...
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...
Turf Houses – Biophilic Design on Steroids!
Goodness, I LOVE these! The BBC brings worldwide attention to the turf homes that have gotten people from Iceland through the winter for many generations. Their use of materials, placement in situ, and really...
Designing for Wellbeing Toolkit
Orcun and Desmet developed a toolkit that can be used to create spaces that support wellbeing, which is available at the web address noted below. As Orcun and Desmet report “The current project adopted...
Using the Right Typeface
Chu, Tok, Zhou, and Chen share that “We propose that the typeface’s simulation of a handwritten note creates a sense of connectedness to the information sender (e.g., organization, brand), which subsequently increases consumers’ willingness...
Formality and Charitable Giving
Organizing a fundraiser? You’ll be interested in research conducted by Pfeiffer, Sundar, and Cao. Their work indicates links between language used and the effectiveness of charitable appeals and it is possible that their findings...
Art and Real-life
Stone-Ferrier studied paintings depicting 17th-century Dutch neighborhoods and her findings highlight the cultural information that art can convey. A press release related to Stone-Ferrier’s work reports that “The importance of knowing what’s going on...
Sound Effects on Sights
Sounds have such a profound effect on us. Williams and teammates share that “Visual object recognition is not performed in isolation but depends on prior knowledge and context. Here, we found that auditory context...
Babies and Sensory experiences
Ustun and colleagues’ research boosts our understanding of human sensory systems (and confirms that kale is vile). They report that “The diet of pregnant women exposes fetuses to a variety of flavours consisting of...
Water experiences as a child – lifelong implications
Vitale and colleagues report that via “data from an 18-country sample (N = 15,743) the current work extended previous research by examining: a) blue spaces (coasts, rivers, lakes, etc.) in particular; b) associations between adults’ recalled...
Measuring Cognability
A research team based at the University of Michigan is making available, without charge, an easy-to-use tool that can be used to determine how well a particular area supports the cognitive health of aging...
Designing for Aging Individuals
A team from the University of Stirling has developed a tool that can be used to create environments that support aging individuals and those with dementia; it is available at a weblink in the...
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