People, Places, and Things

Many people set aside their summer vacations as times for creativity—during their breaks they’ll finally start to work on that book or screenplay or painting that’s been floating around in their heads since last summer, for example. Read More

Scenting for Success

Selecting a scent, whether it’s to spritz in a room or on yourself, can be tricky. The findings of recent scientific studies can take the guesswork out of creating a smell-scape that works for you. Read More

Privacy and Smart Phones

Privacy is important to humans because it gives us control over our current and future experiences. New research indicates that smart phones are setting our concept of privacy on its head. Read More

The [Unfortunate] Joy of Multi-Tasking

A slew of studies show that when humans multi-task their performance on the things that they’re doing is not as good as it would be if they did each separately. People use their immense powers of creativity to find ways to use spaces and the stuff in them to do several things at the same time—often with hilarious and sometimes with tragic results. Read More

Mother Nature: Design Guru

Nature uses the same basic design principles over and over again in spaces we enjoy visiting. When we recognize those principles and apply them ourselves, our lives improve. Read More

Sun, Yes!

It is officially Spring in the Northern Hemisphere. All of us living north of the Equator can expect to see more and more of the sun, as our day lit hours become longer and brighter. Read More

Green: The Color

On March 20, Spring begins in North America. No color is more closely linked to Spring than green. Green is the color of tree buds and grass shoots. "Spring green" has a place on the color wheel between green and blue and Spring Green, Wisconsin is the home of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin. Besides "spring," what else do we associate with the color green? Read More

Red-dy for Romance

The color red has been linked to romance and Valentine's Day for a really long time. Should it be? Should you repaint, or at least buy a new shirt featuring this hue, before Valentine's Day? The research evidence is clear about how you should get your world red-dy for February 14. Read More

Perceiving and Politics

The United States is now fully engaged in its quadrennial (every 4 years) presidential politics frenzy. As Americans, endlessly and fruitlessly, debate people with other political perspectives, it's interesting to learn that people with different political perspectives literally look at the world differently. Read More

A Room with a View

Thinking of booking a vacation? Moving to a new home? If either question has crossed your mind recently, you've probably wondered if it's worth it to shell out extra money for rooms with views. Read More

Shopping 101

The yearly holiday shopping madness is about to conclude. Stores are packed and the people in them are busily boosting the economy. But what are people really up to at the mall? Read More

The Same Old Stuff – Can Be Great!

As the year-end holidays approach, people scheduling holiday events often face a dilemma -- should they do things the way they always have or try something different? Should they serve the same homemade soup on a holiday eve that they have for the last decade or so? What about the tried-and-true holiday decorations -- should they be retired? Read More

Seating Planning

Two recent studies of where people prefer to sit make drafting seating plans for holiday events a little bit easier. Read More

Walls Talk

Humans are social animals, and we communicate. All the time. Even when we're not speaking words we're sending messages to each other. Read More

A Special Space

Wilson Hospice House, designed by Perkins + Will, recently won the Caritas Project's Generative Space Award. This recognition is appropriate because its design has a special psychological effect on the people who spend time there. Read More

Temperature Debates

As the seasons change, debates in homes and offices turn to where to set the thermostat. These heated discussions continue indefinitely.

From a psychological perspective, what should the temperature be inside a building? Read More

Words and Experiences

Many metaphors we use everyday in conversation are linked to bodily experiences, and researchers are intensely investigating these connections. Adults and children both use sensation-based metaphors with ease and these figures of speech are not just found in English.

Some of the findings of psychologists to date: Read More