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How Environmental Psychology Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of My
0:03
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:12
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuco Bryant, and
0:15
Speaker 1: there's a Jerry over there. Stuff you should know. Actually
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Speaker 1: had to program that was real, because a real real frog.
0:25
Speaker 1: So we're in our nice quiet room here. It's so
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Speaker 1: nice to feel. The walls are dark and padded, ensconced
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Speaker 1: in love, and our chairs are comfy. It doesn't smell
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Speaker 1: that much. Jerry's food is in the stinky as usual. Actually,
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Speaker 1: it's funny you stayed in here when I want to
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Speaker 1: go get a drink to come back. Its smells pretty
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Speaker 1: pollock paneerie, like you can just think it is. I'm
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Speaker 1: just used to it. It's a good smell. And like
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Speaker 1: a restaurant or your dining room at your home or
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Speaker 1: kitchen in the studio, it's a weird smell. You know
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Speaker 1: what kind of food. Jerry hates American food? I know
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Speaker 1: she hates American food. She does, man, she's always eaten
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Speaker 1: great food from all over the World's good job. Uh so, Chuck. Yes,
1:15
Speaker 1: we're talking today about psychology, but not the head shrinking
1:19
Speaker 1: more the head, expanding variety of psychology. Shrink that head,
1:23
Speaker 1: blow it up, because psychology over the years has really
1:27
Speaker 1: kind of increased its scope further and further out of
1:30
Speaker 1: your noggin. Yeah. It kind of started out very focused
1:34
Speaker 1: on the noggin, very and then it was like, well,
1:37
Speaker 1: truth be told, your mom has a lot to do
1:39
Speaker 1: with this stuff too, and your friends going to come
1:42
Speaker 1: out and say it, and your dad, they really screwed
1:44
Speaker 1: you up. And then with this stuff with environmental psychology
1:49
Speaker 1: has really expanded on a macro level. Yeah, because it's
1:52
Speaker 1: saying and not only are you all screwed up by
1:56
Speaker 1: yourself and your friends and family are screwing you up,
2:00
Speaker 1: the physical spaces that you exist in can screw you up,
2:04
Speaker 1: or the other side is great to make you happier,
2:08
Speaker 1: more relaxed, um less stressed out. And we environmental psychologists
2:14
Speaker 1: is what they started to call themselves, UM, are going
2:16
Speaker 1: to figure out exactly the how, what, who, why, when, where,
2:22
Speaker 1: the who's it, the any who, all of it to
2:26
Speaker 1: explain how our environments affect us. And then while we're
2:29
Speaker 1: at it, let's just throw in the whole kitchen sink.
2:32
Speaker 1: We're gonna do it the other way to we're going
2:34
Speaker 1: to figure out how humans affect the environment and how
2:37
Speaker 1: we can make humans better stewards of the environment. But
2:41
Speaker 1: for now, we're going to go take a nap because
2:43
Speaker 1: this is a lot. Yeah, but all of this through
2:45
Speaker 1: the lens of psychology, which, like I read this stuff,
2:50
Speaker 1: I think it's really cool and interesting, and I think
2:53
Speaker 1: you do too initially, but it seems to break down
2:57
Speaker 1: a little bit scientifically. Uh and my whole jam. When
3:03
Speaker 1: I walked in, I was like, I think this is
3:04
Speaker 1: really neat, Like maybe they just shouldn't call it science
3:08
Speaker 1: and they should just say like, hey, let's uh, let's
3:10
Speaker 1: look at how a grocery store can best be planned out, um,
3:14
Speaker 1: and touch on some psychology, but like, don't ask me
3:16
Speaker 1: to prove it with studies that can be replicated. So
3:20
Speaker 1: there are a lot of studies about this stuff. They're legitimate,
3:26
Speaker 1: you know, um, peer reviewed studies, but they're they're real
3:31
Speaker 1: disparate and not necessarily related. And I think what you're
3:34
Speaker 1: talking about is environmental psychology tries to kind of bring
3:37
Speaker 1: them all together and say this is our jam, and
3:40
Speaker 1: that that the thing. The pieces don't necessarily connect yet
3:44
Speaker 1: like you would think they would from you know, looking
3:47
Speaker 1: on the outside, seeing that there's a whole field of
3:49
Speaker 1: psychology dedicated to studying this is it. Hey, I want
3:52
Speaker 1: to be paid a lot of money to consult on
3:54
Speaker 1: a new shopping mall. I I maybe so, but I
3:57
Speaker 1: honestly don't know what what the what the drive is?
4:00
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's interesting stuff though, oh yeah it's
4:04
Speaker 1: but it's famously interesting. Everybody loves environmental psychology, even if
4:08
Speaker 1: you don't know the name of it. And people have
4:10
Speaker 1: understood too that, like, our environments do affect us for
4:14
Speaker 1: way longer than environmental psychology has been around. There's a
4:19
Speaker 1: like every history of environmental psychology that you'll read will
4:22
Speaker 1: give this example of Marco Polo reporting in the thirteenth century.
4:28
Speaker 1: He came across a ruler in China who was curious
4:31
Speaker 1: about why some neighboring state or kingdom was always like
4:34
Speaker 1: super hostile, not only with other kingdoms, but within the
4:37
Speaker 1: kingdom themselves. So he ordered an experiment done where he
4:41
Speaker 1: had soil brought in from that kingdom placed under the
4:45
Speaker 1: chairs of some people, and all the people started arguing.
4:47
Speaker 1: So he concluded it must be in the soil, which
4:50
Speaker 1: is I guess an early scientific experiment. He never explained
4:55
Speaker 1: what was in the soil. Maybe ghosts. Yeah, right, should
5:00
Speaker 1: we talk about Churchill since we're talking about history, Yeah,
5:03
Speaker 1: we gotta kind of leap forward from the thirteenth century. Yeah.
5:06
Speaker 1: Churchill very famously said we shape our buildings and later
5:10
Speaker 1: they shape us belch cigar toke Uh. And he very
5:16
Speaker 1: famously when World War two bombed out the Parliament building,
5:21
Speaker 1: he said, rebuild it just as it was, and everyone
5:24
Speaker 1: else like, hey, governor, shouldn't it be a bit bigger? No? Uh,
5:31
Speaker 1: they had the chance to give everyone a little more space,
5:33
Speaker 1: and no, do it exactly like it was. Uh. He
5:37
Speaker 1: wanted to create a sense of urgency, and he said
5:41
Speaker 1: at critical votes and moments it would be filled beyond capacity,
5:44
Speaker 1: with members spilling out into the aisles. Sarn a little
5:47
Speaker 1: Sean Connery in there. I can't let it pass. In
5:49
Speaker 1: his view, a sustainable, I'm sorry, shootable sense of crowd
5:53
Speaker 1: and urgency. That's pretty good. Key do Roger Moore doing
5:56
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill. No, I've never tried Roger Moore. Yeah, I've
6:02
Speaker 1: never heard anybody do Roger Moore. That was pretty good.
6:07
Speaker 1: So um so. Yeah, there's been this awareness that like
6:11
Speaker 1: like Churchill says, we shape our buildings and later they
6:13
Speaker 1: shape us. But it wasn't a field a part of
6:17
Speaker 1: psychology until the late fifties early sixties. Um. And actually
6:21
Speaker 1: you can trace it back to one group of people
6:24
Speaker 1: at City University, New York, YEP led by what are
6:28
Speaker 1: they the Fighting Manhattan Transfers. They have a great a
6:35
Speaker 1: capella group. Um, they were all they're a bunch of Cooney's.
6:38
Speaker 1: I'm not sure which one this was City Mary, New York,
6:41
Speaker 1: Like you know, they're all over town. Oh I didn't
6:44
Speaker 1: know that. Okay, well I'm not sure which one it
6:47
Speaker 1: was either. But Harold Prashansky was the leader of this
6:49
Speaker 1: group from CUNEY and they were a group of social
6:53
Speaker 1: psychologists and some people at a hospital in New York. Uh,
6:58
Speaker 1: we'll just say hospital because it's probably only one, like
7:00
Speaker 1: there's only one QUNI. Um. They came to this group
7:03
Speaker 1: and said, hey, we're trying to figure out how to
7:05
Speaker 1: make our hospital rooms like way better for patients. He said,
7:09
Speaker 1: we're from hospital, right, he said, okay, we're from un UM.
7:14
Speaker 1: And and Harold Persanski is like, we have no idea
7:17
Speaker 1: how to tell you how to do that? Yeah, So
7:20
Speaker 1: he's he went ahead and founded environmental psychology, which which
7:23
Speaker 1: seeks to do exactly that. Yeah, he wrote the book
7:26
Speaker 1: on it, the first one that is I'm sure they're
7:29
Speaker 1: a gazillion now, uh. In nineteen seventy environmental psychology Colon
7:34
Speaker 1: manned and his physical setting and by man he means
7:38
Speaker 1: person human. But it was nineteen seventy, so there were
7:42
Speaker 1: only men that mattered in nineteen seventy. So he is
7:47
Speaker 1: the father of environmental psychology. He's the father of lies.
7:54
Speaker 1: You know what I think the deal is is so unwieldy,
7:56
Speaker 1: and they're trying to corral this unwieldy thing because it's
8:00
Speaker 1: nature and its design and its color, and it's fabrics
8:03
Speaker 1: and it's people's brains and all right, So we're just
8:06
Speaker 1: gonna gripe about it sporadically throughout the whole episode. So
8:11
Speaker 1: the whole idea of prior to environmental psychology, um and
8:16
Speaker 1: still is the case in a lot of in a
8:18
Speaker 1: lot of cases, is if you're going to do an experiment,
8:21
Speaker 1: they would bring you to a very um just plain
8:25
Speaker 1: lab and their idea was like, let's strip away everything
8:29
Speaker 1: so you're not influenced by anything. They would hose you
8:32
Speaker 1: off exactly, delouse you, and you would be just sitting
8:35
Speaker 1: in a white room with fluorescent bulbs buzzing above your
8:39
Speaker 1: head and Bill Murrays zapping you whenever you gave a
8:41
Speaker 1: wrong answer, and they're like, this is the way to
8:44
Speaker 1: do it. But there are a couple of psychologists Um
8:47
Speaker 1: Roger Barker and Kurt Lewin specifically, that said, um, you
8:52
Speaker 1: know what, that's making things worse. Stripping the world away
8:56
Speaker 1: and putting people in the sterile environments like you're gonna
8:59
Speaker 1: be confounding results just from the outset. It doesn't make
9:02
Speaker 1: any sense in psychology psychologies. Other psychologists said, shut up,
9:06
Speaker 1: be quiet, you two and they said, no, we won't.
9:08
Speaker 1: We're going to go found environmental psychology along with Harold
9:12
Speaker 1: Krushansky and the idea that you have to not only
9:15
Speaker 1: study people in their natural setting to really understand what's
9:20
Speaker 1: motivating their behavior, but also the idea that that natural
9:24
Speaker 1: setting itself is is creating part of their behavior. You
9:28
Speaker 1: can't you can't study that in the lab. So that's
9:30
Speaker 1: one of the things that makes um environmental psychology unusual
9:34
Speaker 1: is it's not meant to be conducted in the lab.
9:36
Speaker 1: It's meant to be conducted in a real world study,
9:39
Speaker 1: a real world setting. And the other thing about it
9:41
Speaker 1: is it's multidiscipline area as well. Unwieldy. It is some
9:47
Speaker 1: would say inclusive, but unwieldy also works as well. Yeah,
9:52
Speaker 1: because what they're looking at is what they call uh
9:55
Speaker 1: molar units, which are very large scale. We're talking about communities,
9:59
Speaker 1: neighbor hoods. Maybe your house, house or or room is
10:02
Speaker 1: probably about the smallest thing you think, or or maybe
10:06
Speaker 1: your personal space. They seem to have adopted that as well. Yeah,
10:10
Speaker 1: it's all over the place. Uh, and it covers every
10:13
Speaker 1: angle that you can think of in terms of how
10:16
Speaker 1: you interact with your environment. UM. Like we said, like um,
10:20
Speaker 1: spatial planning and lighting, economics, acoustics, color, empty space. Yeah,
10:28
Speaker 1: imagine that that's a brain buster right there. It is UM.
10:31
Speaker 1: And so when what they're studying, what environmental psychologists study,
10:35
Speaker 1: or what they call transactions, And this has been a
10:39
Speaker 1: particular bone in my craw. I've never once seen someone
10:45
Speaker 1: concretely defined what a transaction is. I would guess that
10:49
Speaker 1: it's a transaction. It's just how you transact and interact
10:53
Speaker 1: with those things, right, but exactly how like a transaction
10:56
Speaker 1: And I'm totally pulling this out of my key. Start, Well,
10:58
Speaker 1: then you're an environmental problems. But a transaction might be
11:02
Speaker 1: like when you walk into a room and sit down
11:06
Speaker 1: in a chair, that's probably a transaction with that room, right,
11:09
Speaker 1: maybe why not? But my question also is like, Okay,
11:13
Speaker 1: if you sit quietly in a room for an hour,
11:16
Speaker 1: is that a transaction itself? Or is that hour made
11:20
Speaker 1: up of much smaller transactions like you stirring in the
11:24
Speaker 1: room because the concrete floor is making your butt fall asleep,
11:29
Speaker 1: or you start to get scared because you hear a
11:31
Speaker 1: weird noise, and like, all of the things that happened
11:34
Speaker 1: over the hour, are those transactions or is the whole
11:36
Speaker 1: thing a transaction. I've just never heard it concretely defined,
11:41
Speaker 1: and it kind of drove me crazy because I really
11:43
Speaker 1: looked for a solid definition of it. But just suffice
11:46
Speaker 1: to say that in the field of environmental psychology, will
11:48
Speaker 1: they study your transactions, which means your interaction with the environment,
11:53
Speaker 1: And hey, let's just go ahead and say it the
11:55
Speaker 1: environment's interaction with you in return. That's right. I'm sorry,
12:02
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're crabby about one. And that's usually my role,
12:06
Speaker 1: you know, I'm happy to take it over this time.
12:09
Speaker 1: So where you first started seeing the impact of environmental
12:13
Speaker 1: psychology was an architecture, and this has been going on
12:16
Speaker 1: for decades basically, and it makes sense. This part makes
12:20
Speaker 1: the most sense to me. Yeah, like when you transact
12:23
Speaker 1: with a building and a lobby or an elevator or
12:26
Speaker 1: a staircase, or an office or a or air wolf
12:30
Speaker 1: or air wolf or the concierge desk in a hotel,
12:35
Speaker 1: like all of this stuff has Oh, there's always been
12:38
Speaker 1: a lot of thought, probably before they even called it
12:41
Speaker 1: environmental psychology, like how do people interact with this when
12:44
Speaker 1: you walk in? You want people to be uh, feel
12:47
Speaker 1: good and understand where things are. Um, well, now there's
12:52
Speaker 1: a balance that has to be struck. Though I don't
12:54
Speaker 1: know if that actually did exist before environment I think
12:57
Speaker 1: that may have been a contribution from the field. Yes,
12:59
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, I'm sure there was some design or
13:02
Speaker 1: something like that, but the the ideas what you just
13:05
Speaker 1: said to have really been helped along by the field
13:09
Speaker 1: of environments. Like you might be right, because that's what's
13:11
Speaker 1: called bottom up, Like let's really think about how people
13:15
Speaker 1: interact with this environment and whereas before it was topped down, like,
13:18
Speaker 1: let's just build this beautiful building, and it turns out
13:20
Speaker 1: it's really confusing, Yeah, um, because they didn't think about people, know,
13:24
Speaker 1: and there were There are actually two big things that
13:26
Speaker 1: happened in the sixties, well one in the sixties, one
13:29
Speaker 1: in the early seventies that kind of said, oh wait,
13:32
Speaker 1: our environments are physical spaces really do affect us and
13:35
Speaker 1: they can have really negative effects to um. The first
13:38
Speaker 1: one was the Kitty Genovase murder, which we covered, We
13:41
Speaker 1: did a whole episode on there that was Yeah, but
13:44
Speaker 1: the long story short, the popular conception is that, uh,
13:48
Speaker 1: an entire apartment block of people um watched Kitty Genovese
13:52
Speaker 1: be murdered publicly over the course of like an hour,
13:56
Speaker 1: and nobody did anything, even though it's not fully true.
13:59
Speaker 1: But reason that they didn't do anything because they were
14:01
Speaker 1: all isolated from one another. They all figured that somebody
14:05
Speaker 1: else was going to call their architecture messed with their
14:08
Speaker 1: brains and made them less compassionate or um separate at least. Yeah,
14:14
Speaker 1: then they would have been maybe if they lived out
14:16
Speaker 1: in the country or something like that. That was the
14:18
Speaker 1: big first one. Yeah, that which I don't even know
14:20
Speaker 1: if we touched on that in the episode, did we?
14:23
Speaker 1: I think maybe? If not, we just did, all right,
14:27
Speaker 1: consider that a falloup. Uh. The other one was this
14:30
Speaker 1: housing complex in St. Louis in two that was built
14:34
Speaker 1: called Pruitt I Go and it was built in ninety
14:37
Speaker 1: six hundred and seventy units in thirty three eleven story buildings.
14:46
Speaker 1: It was a very big deal because it was touted
14:49
Speaker 1: as being this progressive, really modern place for a housing project,
14:55
Speaker 1: and people are gonna be living in this modern space
14:57
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be amazing and that's going to make
15:00
Speaker 1: a big difference in their lives. Yeah, it was. Actually
15:02
Speaker 1: there was. I looked all over for the what magazine
15:05
Speaker 1: it was, but some architectural magazine magazine named it the
15:08
Speaker 1: best high apartment of the year while it was being designed.
15:12
Speaker 1: And the idea was like, here, we're going to give
15:15
Speaker 1: you this amazing place to live, low income, downtrodden St.
15:19
Speaker 1: Louis people, and you are going to be able to
15:22
Speaker 1: raise yourselves up out of poverty just by living in
15:24
Speaker 1: a nice new this gift from the gods of architecture basically,
15:29
Speaker 1: and the exact opposite happened that within sixteen years by two,
15:35
Speaker 1: the Prude I Go Complex, thirty three eleven story buildings,
15:40
Speaker 1: was raised to the ground and there became a really
15:43
Speaker 1: really negative popular um idea about Prude I Go, and
15:49
Speaker 1: that was that no matter what you did for poor
15:52
Speaker 1: people and in this case read black people, they're going
15:56
Speaker 1: to drag it down to their level. Because within that
16:00
Speaker 1: sixteen years, Prude I Go became blighted by crime, vandalism, um, neglect, disrepair. Uh.
16:10
Speaker 1: The police were afraid to go out there into the complex.
16:13
Speaker 1: There was a sense of lawlessness, and so when it
16:15
Speaker 1: got torn down, everybody said, yep, see, can't do anything
16:18
Speaker 1: for those people. And then later on academics, including environmental psychologist, said,
16:24
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I don't know that that's actually the case.
16:26
Speaker 1: What if it was the actual buildings that were the problem. Yeah,
16:29
Speaker 1: they came in and they called it, Uh, this is
16:31
Speaker 1: dysfunctional architecture. And they said that you did this top
16:35
Speaker 1: down thing. It built this beautiful building, but didn't think
16:38
Speaker 1: about the people, this bottom up approach. You never thought
16:41
Speaker 1: about the residents. Uh. And research later on. This is
16:45
Speaker 1: where we get into a couple of other theories that
16:47
Speaker 1: we've talked about. I know, we talked about the broken
16:49
Speaker 1: windows theory, which basically is the idea that, um, you
16:53
Speaker 1: need to go after the vandal or the person who
16:57
Speaker 1: throws a brick through a window, even though that's low
16:59
Speaker 1: hanging fruit. Uh legally speaking as far as cops go. Yeah,
17:05
Speaker 1: so you need to go after those people because those
17:08
Speaker 1: small things that happen will basically lead to larger things.
17:13
Speaker 1: And that's what happened at Prutago. They were they never
17:15
Speaker 1: changed out the burn light bulbs, they never fixed the
17:17
Speaker 1: broken windows, And if you believe in the broken windows theory,
17:21
Speaker 1: that's a pretty prime example of how something you can
17:23
Speaker 1: get out of hand, right. Um. The other big theory
17:27
Speaker 1: that kind of evolved to explain what happened at prut
17:29
Speaker 1: Igo is called the defensible spaces theory, and that was
17:33
Speaker 1: basically that the designer of this complex had failed to
17:37
Speaker 1: delineate each unit from the other, so that really the
17:42
Speaker 1: only thing that separated units were the thin interior walls.
17:46
Speaker 1: Everything outside was just common public belonged to no one,
17:50
Speaker 1: so it was totally ripe for abuse and um and
17:54
Speaker 1: lawlessness and criminality, criminal behavior. Part of the other problem
17:59
Speaker 1: with the design was at the common areas, the play areas,
18:03
Speaker 1: we're all um uh, we're kind of like around corners
18:07
Speaker 1: were out of view, so there was no way for
18:08
Speaker 1: the community keep an eye on their kids or one another,
18:12
Speaker 1: and so these became hotbeds for crime as well. And
18:14
Speaker 1: inside and out right, wasn't the idea that they were
18:16
Speaker 1: all identical, so there was no sense of individual ownership,
18:21
Speaker 1: which can bring about pride. It was just here, you
18:24
Speaker 1: live here, now, stay here, and that doesn't work with people.
18:29
Speaker 1: Um and so environmental psychologists had this idea um afterwards,
18:34
Speaker 1: as they were kind of thinking about all this stuff,
18:36
Speaker 1: that well, maybe there's some easy things we can do,
18:39
Speaker 1: like I don't know, asking residents what they want or
18:42
Speaker 1: need out of a building while you're designing the building right,
18:46
Speaker 1: or if something doesn't work out or is working out
18:50
Speaker 1: okay and people are moving out, interview them then and say, hey,
18:53
Speaker 1: what do you like about the place as you hate
18:55
Speaker 1: and there's those are like you said, low hanging fruit.
18:58
Speaker 1: But that's the kind of thing that actually and help
19:00
Speaker 1: make a building successful and give people a sense of ownership.
19:04
Speaker 1: And if you feel ownership over a place, you're gonna
19:07
Speaker 1: tell somebody, hey, pick up that trash, that's my walkway,
19:11
Speaker 1: you know, just throw your trash there. If that's really
19:13
Speaker 1: kind of their walkway as much as it is yours,
19:16
Speaker 1: maybe you don't feel quite as moved to say something
19:19
Speaker 1: in that case. So just like think taking that stuff
19:22
Speaker 1: into into account as far as environmental psychology is concerned,
19:26
Speaker 1: helps explain how you can prompt someone to take ownership
19:30
Speaker 1: of a place and therefore get more out of it,
19:33
Speaker 1: but also take care of the place as well, which
19:35
Speaker 1: is that bi directional reciprocal interaction with our physical environments.
19:39
Speaker 1: That is like the basis of environmental psychology. All right,
19:42
Speaker 1: let's take a break here, this is dense. Yeah, we'll
19:48
Speaker 1: be back right after this. Well, now we're on the
20:08
Speaker 1: road driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing
20:11
Speaker 1: or two from Josh can chuck stuff you should know?
20:17
Speaker 1: All right, all right, so let's talk about some of
20:24
Speaker 1: these behaviors um as far as like fitting into a
20:28
Speaker 1: space that have kind of popped up over the years.
20:31
Speaker 1: There's one, two, three of these listed that make a
20:34
Speaker 1: lot of sense to me. Yeah. The first one is territoriality.
20:38
Speaker 1: And you just you put this together. You describe this
20:42
Speaker 1: very plainly. Is like if you go into a coffee
20:45
Speaker 1: shop and you put your bag down on a table
20:47
Speaker 1: and then go over your coffee, or if you just
20:50
Speaker 1: dress up your cubicle with dumb stuff, that's that's you
20:53
Speaker 1: claiming your space, even if it's not your space, Like
20:56
Speaker 1: your cubicle you're like, this is my backpack on this table,
20:59
Speaker 1: don't sit there, Right, that's just territoriality. That's one way
21:03
Speaker 1: that we behave because most places, most spaces are social
21:06
Speaker 1: spaces are used by more than one person. Right. The
21:09
Speaker 1: next one is crowding, which I think is super interesting
21:12
Speaker 1: because crowding, uh is a result of density. But you
21:17
Speaker 1: can have density without being crowded if you have smart design.
21:21
Speaker 1: Like thousands and tens of thousands of people go through
21:25
Speaker 1: a shopping mall every day, but you should never feel
21:28
Speaker 1: crowded in a shopping mall because of the way they
21:30
Speaker 1: have these things designed. Dude, it happens to me every time.
21:34
Speaker 1: Do you feel crowded? It's just it's just a spectrum
21:37
Speaker 1: of how soon starts. Really, every time I go to
21:40
Speaker 1: a mall, you feel crowded. Yeah, And there's the opposite
21:43
Speaker 1: of out should be right, I know, but it's me
21:46
Speaker 1: Like I'm I mean, like really well designed malls, but
21:49
Speaker 1: it's still me, right, still feel crowded. There's a period
21:52
Speaker 1: where like the thing that you mean I would do
21:54
Speaker 1: in the wintertime would be to go walk around the
21:57
Speaker 1: mall because we were like a half a mile away
21:59
Speaker 1: from it. So you mean Momo and I would go
22:01
Speaker 1: walk around the mall. Oh, I thought you meant the
22:03
Speaker 1: interior wall mall. Uh, mall walkers, not the mall. We
22:07
Speaker 1: that's basically what we were doing. But we were just
22:09
Speaker 1: killing time because I worked at the Gap for a
22:11
Speaker 1: month and I didn't know that was the thing before
22:13
Speaker 1: the before the stores opened, the mall was open, and
22:17
Speaker 1: that's where you'll find, uh, some really fantastic jumpsuits walking
22:22
Speaker 1: around and the exercise clothes. Yeah, and they'll have like
22:25
Speaker 1: clubs and coffee clutches and all sorts of stuff. Yeah,
22:28
Speaker 1: it's mall walkings of things. Okay, but you were on
22:31
Speaker 1: the outside of the mall. No, No, we were inside.
22:33
Speaker 1: We have a bag that Momo comes. Um. But so
22:36
Speaker 1: we're walking around the inside just at night or whatever.
22:39
Speaker 1: You know, the youngest ones, they're kind of so um.
22:42
Speaker 1: But every time I'd just be like tense and just
22:45
Speaker 1: feel crowded and like edgy and stressed out before them
22:48
Speaker 1: all opened, Okay, I don't stop with the mall walking
22:52
Speaker 1: thing has nothing to do with that. Alright, malls open,
22:55
Speaker 1: mall's open, you're shopping, maybe even nighttime. Emma was there
22:59
Speaker 1: and we're inside, okay, and there's no one wearing jump
23:02
Speaker 1: and you're not old. But that was well, now we've
23:05
Speaker 1: reached the end of the story. So you would just
23:07
Speaker 1: get anxious, uh, despite the fact that they were purposely
23:11
Speaker 1: designed to not feel crowded, right, And that's part of
23:14
Speaker 1: the challenge of mall design is to to make it
23:16
Speaker 1: so people like me can stand to stay there as
23:19
Speaker 1: long as possible, because the longer you're there, the more
23:22
Speaker 1: shopping you're gonna do. And but you want a bunch
23:26
Speaker 1: of people. You don't want just one person at a
23:27
Speaker 1: time going through the mall because of crowding. You want
23:30
Speaker 1: a bunch of people, so you want to juggle how
23:32
Speaker 1: to get all those people in there shopping at the
23:35
Speaker 1: same time without making one another feel crowded. How are
23:37
Speaker 1: you at genuine crowd crowded things like sports games or concerts?
23:42
Speaker 1: And it's about the same, really, I think. I think
23:46
Speaker 1: because in the situation like that, I'm going into it
23:48
Speaker 1: expecting it. Apparently it surprises me every time I'm at
23:51
Speaker 1: a mall. Will you leave a concert early or wait
23:54
Speaker 1: for people to file out a little bit before you,
23:56
Speaker 1: or you in the middle of that like elbow to
23:58
Speaker 1: elbow hit miss but to crutch scene. It changes from
24:02
Speaker 1: from It depends on how you know, relaxed on feeling
24:06
Speaker 1: and if like you know that they're gonna like play
24:08
Speaker 1: the big song in the last song. Oh yeah, yeah.
24:12
Speaker 1: Usually I don't like sitting around for the encore, but
24:14
Speaker 1: if it's the you know, the song that I came
24:16
Speaker 1: to see, I'll do it right. You're so you're at
24:18
Speaker 1: the Who's the German Tech? No Group, Skinny Puppy, no
24:23
Speaker 1: the So you're at a craft work show. I've actually
24:26
Speaker 1: been to Seacraft, I know. And you're like, I really
24:28
Speaker 1: want to leave, but they haven't played Liver Worst yet?
24:31
Speaker 1: Which is the best song called liver Worst? I don't
24:35
Speaker 1: think so maybe yeah, otivon they definitely do. Uh. We
24:40
Speaker 1: saw them at the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
24:43
Speaker 1: It was amazing. I never went there, or or maybe
24:48
Speaker 1: I did us an opera there. It would be a
24:50
Speaker 1: good place for that. And we left early. Oh really,
24:52
Speaker 1: you didn't wait for the encore? We saw Skinny Puppy too.
24:56
Speaker 1: By the way, I think they're from Washington State, not Germany.
24:58
Speaker 1: But we had to wait for their encore to see
25:02
Speaker 1: like their big song Smothered. Hope they wait until the encore.
25:06
Speaker 1: I know that they do that every single night. Sure,
25:08
Speaker 1: even though it's Skinny Puppy and that's not really their thing,
25:11
Speaker 1: they still do it, all right. So that's crowding you
25:16
Speaker 1: all right, there's three of us in here. How do
25:18
Speaker 1: you feel? I feel fine now. You guys make me
25:20
Speaker 1: feel very relaxed. That's nice. So privacy is the last one, um,
25:25
Speaker 1: and that's you know, people want a private space. Um.
25:29
Speaker 1: But there's a subset of that called personal space, which
25:33
Speaker 1: is not the same thing as privacy. Personal spaces what
25:36
Speaker 1: do they define it as? The one and a half
25:39
Speaker 1: to four ft around you in all directions? Right? There
25:41
Speaker 1: was an anthropologist actually named Edward Hall who came up
25:45
Speaker 1: with that. I'm big on personal space. One of my
25:48
Speaker 1: big pet peeves is being an online for anything and
25:53
Speaker 1: feelingline online different online is what you say in New York, Uh,
26:00
Speaker 1: feeling someone like kicking my heel or breathing down my neck.
26:04
Speaker 1: I'm always just like, just like You're not going to
26:07
Speaker 1: get there any quicker by breathing on me. Dude, please
26:10
Speaker 1: back off. Where are they frauderists? Have you ever considered
26:14
Speaker 1: maybe you're being I'm not sure, subway creep, I don't know.
26:20
Speaker 1: I had a situation a few weeks ago. Cheez, should
26:22
Speaker 1: I even talk about this? Oh boy? I like where
26:26
Speaker 1: this is going? All right, I'll go ahead. And I
26:28
Speaker 1: was in a grocery store and I was really motoring
26:31
Speaker 1: because I was just going to get a couple of
26:32
Speaker 1: things and I want to get out of there. And
26:34
Speaker 1: I went and I cut through the what usually is
26:37
Speaker 1: the sandwich line, of which there was none at the
26:39
Speaker 1: time the deli, Like yeah, but it's a little sort
26:42
Speaker 1: of narrow space where you stand in line. It's like
26:44
Speaker 1: roped off. And I kind of cut through there because
26:46
Speaker 1: there was no one there. And this as this kid
26:50
Speaker 1: was ducking under the little rope and I just sort
26:53
Speaker 1: of shimmy by him and did one of those like whoa,
26:55
Speaker 1: I went by the kid, You did a rick flair?
26:57
Speaker 1: Think No. I didn't say a word, but came come
27:00
Speaker 1: back five minutes later and this, uh, this kid's mother
27:03
Speaker 1: like starts yelling at me that I pushed shoved her kid,
27:08
Speaker 1: and I was like, first of all, I was like,
27:09
Speaker 1: I sort of looked around, was like me, and she
27:11
Speaker 1: was like, yes, she shoved my she shoved my kid,
27:14
Speaker 1: or you shoved my kid. I was like, no, said
27:16
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't shove your kid, and she starts
27:18
Speaker 1: she was like I saw it, and the kid was like, yeah,
27:21
Speaker 1: you did. And I looked at him and I was like,
27:23
Speaker 1: I didn't say it out loud, but I was like,
27:24
Speaker 1: you liar, I did not touch you. And I started
27:27
Speaker 1: again to say no, I didn't. I swear I did
27:30
Speaker 1: not touch your kid. And she was really adamant, and
27:33
Speaker 1: people started looking and I knew the only way out
27:36
Speaker 1: of there was just too And I'm a I'm a
27:39
Speaker 1: big justice guy, so this really was hard for me.
27:42
Speaker 1: But just say, uh ma'am if I did, I'm really
27:45
Speaker 1: really sorry. I have a small child. I was not
27:49
Speaker 1: aware that I did, but I clearly did, and I'm
27:51
Speaker 1: really sorry. And I was like, because I was waiting
27:54
Speaker 1: for a cell phone to come out, you know, so
27:56
Speaker 1: I was like, the only way out of here is
27:58
Speaker 1: just lie and say yeah, up your kid and I'm sorry.
28:01
Speaker 1: You're like, I I have a small child who mus
28:03
Speaker 1: shove all the time and she doesn't tatle like your
28:05
Speaker 1: little really upsetting because it was getting out of hand.
28:08
Speaker 1: I was like, very upset for the rest of the night.
28:09
Speaker 1: How are you feeling now recounting it. I didn't shove
28:13
Speaker 1: that kid. I believe you did touch him. I'll bet
28:16
Speaker 1: every single person listening believes you. Oh man, al right,
28:20
Speaker 1: So where are we? Personal space? That's what I was
28:23
Speaker 1: talking about. Yeah, I shove kids when they get in
28:25
Speaker 1: my way, right exactly. So the upshot of all of
28:27
Speaker 1: this everything we've talked about, the idea that you need
28:30
Speaker 1: um space that is your own, that you can defend,
28:33
Speaker 1: and that you can consider um a place to have
28:37
Speaker 1: privacy and to put your stuff, and um the idea
28:41
Speaker 1: that high density of people in the wrong kind of
28:44
Speaker 1: situation creates crowding. All this stuff contributes to the ultimate
28:49
Speaker 1: goal one of the big goals of environmental psychology busices
28:53
Speaker 1: to create put all this stuff together and create ideal
28:56
Speaker 1: environments that's right, which is a balance of things, not
29:00
Speaker 1: necessarily like just the biggest open place in the world.
29:04
Speaker 1: Because people have to shop and people you have to
29:06
Speaker 1: still have these other things that have to be accomplished.
29:09
Speaker 1: But the quote here is where people feel self assured
29:11
Speaker 1: and competent, where they can familiarize themselves with the environment
29:15
Speaker 1: whilst being engaged with it. And there are four main
29:18
Speaker 1: factors here to that basically say it's ideal or not. Unity.
29:24
Speaker 1: Basically things work well together. Self explanatory, like like the
29:28
Speaker 1: dude saying that has rugg really tied the room together? Yeah, exactly.
29:31
Speaker 1: Um legibility that a person can navigate that space without
29:36
Speaker 1: getting lost. Very important complexity, uh that it's just complex
29:43
Speaker 1: enough to like keep you interested. And then finally mystery,
29:47
Speaker 1: which I think is pretty interesting, which is like you
29:50
Speaker 1: never know what's around the next corner, right, could be
29:54
Speaker 1: a pot of chocolate melted, could be death. Who knows,
29:58
Speaker 1: You won't know until you go. Look, that's right. So
30:01
Speaker 1: a lot of people who own businesses over the years
30:05
Speaker 1: since the you know, the sixties, win environmental psychology has started,
30:09
Speaker 1: has said, hey, you know what, a lot of this
30:11
Speaker 1: stuff about how people behave in spaces, I could use
30:16
Speaker 1: this to make people stay in my space longer, and
30:19
Speaker 1: maybe they'll be likelier to spend some money that I'll
30:22
Speaker 1: get to keep because they came to my space and
30:25
Speaker 1: stayed here and in fact, one of the pioneers of
30:28
Speaker 1: environmental psychology, guy named Philip Cotler Um. He coined the
30:33
Speaker 1: term atmospherics, and atmospherics is exactly what you would think
30:37
Speaker 1: it is. But he he had this very famous quote
30:41
Speaker 1: famous in these circles. I should say that, Um, in
30:46
Speaker 1: some cases, the place, more specifically, the atmosphere of the
30:51
Speaker 1: place is more influential than the product itself in the
30:55
Speaker 1: purchase decision. In some cases, the atmosphere is the primary
31:00
Speaker 1: a product. Yeah, I mean you brought up the Apple store, um,
31:05
Speaker 1: but there are other I don't go to these places,
31:08
Speaker 1: but I've been through and walked by some stores that
31:10
Speaker 1: feel like a nightclub with the way they're lit and
31:14
Speaker 1: the music and the Abercromie and Fitch, I think is
31:19
Speaker 1: what you have been in a republic, But yeah, it's uh.
31:24
Speaker 1: They're they're trying to create an experience. And Emily even
31:28
Speaker 1: does this with her store. But it's not a cheesy nightclub.
31:31
Speaker 1: She tries to create an experience while people come in
31:33
Speaker 1: and they smell nice things and it's relaxing and there's plants.
31:37
Speaker 1: A yoga club, yeah, sort of exact night yoga club basically,
31:42
Speaker 1: but so so, yeah, what she's doing is engaging in
31:44
Speaker 1: atmospheric and it makes total sense. Of course, you want
31:46
Speaker 1: people that not want to like turn around and leave
31:49
Speaker 1: your store, people mill around, just have the product. He
31:52
Speaker 1: was taking it to to the extreme, saying like, sometimes
31:55
Speaker 1: the actual place where you buy the product is even
31:57
Speaker 1: more important to the consumer than the product. I think
32:00
Speaker 1: that's pretty rare, but those are you know, two extremes
32:03
Speaker 1: on the on the spectrum, just the products and the
32:06
Speaker 1: place being more important than the products. Whereas you know
32:09
Speaker 1: most stores fall within that spectrum, right. Yeah, we went
32:12
Speaker 1: to a store in Paris where both of us that
32:14
Speaker 1: just sold a bunch of different things and um, I
32:18
Speaker 1: mean from pottery to quilts to close the plants, and
32:23
Speaker 1: we were both like, I never want to leave this store.
32:26
Speaker 1: It was just so awesome on every level. So like
32:30
Speaker 1: the store is self, the atmosphere made you want to stay. Yeah,
32:33
Speaker 1: the design of it, the mystery I wanted because they had,
32:36
Speaker 1: you know, go of these stairs. What's up there? I
32:38
Speaker 1: see a light shining around that corner. The heck is
32:41
Speaker 1: that bloody candlestick on the stairs? You're like, what's up there?
32:44
Speaker 1: I wish I could remember the name of this place, man,
32:46
Speaker 1: it was just like everything about it was perfect, okay
32:49
Speaker 1: for us, Well, we'll we'll buzz market at some time
32:52
Speaker 1: when you got it. That's right. But one of the
32:54
Speaker 1: one of the places that has really kind of is
32:56
Speaker 1: posed itself as a really great example, understandable example of
33:01
Speaker 1: atmospherics and how they can be used to kind of work.
33:04
Speaker 1: It's mojo on our brains are casinos. Yeah, which we
33:08
Speaker 1: talked about in our episode on casinos. Uh, here's the deal.
33:16
Speaker 1: Humans have triggers and clues that the Germans call site
33:20
Speaker 1: cabs not psite burgers. I want to say, it's so
33:24
Speaker 1: bad right every time? Uh time giver is what that
33:28
Speaker 1: literally translates to our synchronizer, and um, this is like
33:33
Speaker 1: these triggers that we use are how we adjust our
33:37
Speaker 1: biological clocks. Things like where's the sun literally in the sky,
33:42
Speaker 1: or even looking out a window, does it look like
33:44
Speaker 1: dusk or down? Things like that or even literal clocks
33:48
Speaker 1: can allow us to reset our biological clocks. Casinos don't
33:51
Speaker 1: like those things, no, no, because casinos want you to
33:53
Speaker 1: forget all about time and any pressing matters you have
33:56
Speaker 1: on the outside and instead spend your time and your
33:59
Speaker 1: money in the casino, so they remove any out windows
34:02
Speaker 1: to the outdoors far away from the casino floor, so
34:05
Speaker 1: there's no sense of what time of the day it is.
34:08
Speaker 1: There's no clocks or anything like that. They're also very
34:11
Speaker 1: well aware that sound plays a huge role in the environment.
34:15
Speaker 1: So in any casino you will hear all sorts of
34:17
Speaker 1: dinging and buzzing and fells and stuff like that. But
34:20
Speaker 1: it's a constant, it's a it's constantly going on, and
34:23
Speaker 1: then when somebody wins, it rises so much so that
34:26
Speaker 1: everyone in the casino knows somebody just want But the
34:29
Speaker 1: fact that the dinging and buzzing is always going on
34:31
Speaker 1: to some degree, makes your makes you think without thinking
34:36
Speaker 1: that winning is always going on because you've associated these
34:39
Speaker 1: sounds with winning and it's constant, so people must constantly
34:42
Speaker 1: be winning here. Maybe I should play some of these slots. Yeah,
34:44
Speaker 1: you know, the one thing I noticed in Vegas is
34:47
Speaker 1: the the casino doors are never closed to the outside.
34:51
Speaker 1: So if you're walking around and it's add ten degrees
34:55
Speaker 1: in Nevada, which is could be the case in any
34:58
Speaker 1: given month, you walk by that casino and it's just
35:01
Speaker 1: you get hit with a wave of air. Conditioned air
35:04
Speaker 1: like you've never felt before, and you're like, oh, maybe
35:06
Speaker 1: I should go in there for a little Oh totally,
35:08
Speaker 1: you want to go in there just a cool down,
35:09
Speaker 1: and like, well, I've got a five bucks in my pocket,
35:11
Speaker 1: might as well give it to the casino. And then
35:14
Speaker 1: you get a snoop full of like raw cigarette smoke
35:16
Speaker 1: and you're like, we'll go back outside. Awful, it's pretty bad.
35:20
Speaker 1: What else though, mystery, that's a big one in casinos. Yeah,
35:23
Speaker 1: so we should talk about the actual layout of the
35:25
Speaker 1: casino floor. It's we talked about legibility and how you know,
35:29
Speaker 1: you should be able to find your way around. Casinos
35:31
Speaker 1: deliberately make make their casino floors illegible so that you
35:36
Speaker 1: just kind of wander around, like there's a general sense
35:39
Speaker 1: of the direction you want to be going in. It's
35:41
Speaker 1: not like they want you to get lost, because once
35:43
Speaker 1: you get lost, yeah, you you're in trouble and you
35:46
Speaker 1: don't want to you don't want to do anything, You
35:47
Speaker 1: want to just get out of there. They want you
35:49
Speaker 1: to not to literally get lost, but figuratively get lost
35:52
Speaker 1: in the experience, like where you're okay with wandering and right,
35:55
Speaker 1: So they make it so you're you're just kind of meandering,
35:58
Speaker 1: like you said, Um, there's like little offshoots. They are like, oh,
36:01
Speaker 1: what's around this corner? Oh, more slots, Maybe I'll play it.
36:04
Speaker 1: What a great little thing to find, um with For
36:07
Speaker 1: the venues and the restaurants, they're placed along the back
36:10
Speaker 1: of the casino floor, so that you if you're coming
36:12
Speaker 1: just to go to dinner there, you have to go
36:14
Speaker 1: through the casino and wander around and maybe play some
36:17
Speaker 1: slots and then um, Like I was saying that, they
36:20
Speaker 1: don't want you to get lost or feel lost, because
36:25
Speaker 1: environmental psychology is identified a condition called spatial anxiety, where
36:29
Speaker 1: once you're like, wait, which way do I go? You
36:32
Speaker 1: don't want to party, you don't want to gamble, you
36:34
Speaker 1: don't want to shop, you don't want to do anything
36:37
Speaker 1: but get out of there. So they walk a really
36:40
Speaker 1: fine line here and deliberately confusing you with the layout
36:44
Speaker 1: without making you anxious. And they do this partially by
36:50
Speaker 1: unconscious subliminal cues. They will use literally on the floor
36:54
Speaker 1: that show the way that you don't realize you're following.
36:58
Speaker 1: But if you stop and look down at like a
36:59
Speaker 1: casino a floor or an airport floor or something like that.
37:02
Speaker 1: You'll notice that there's probably a different color something is
37:06
Speaker 1: leading you in the passenger you're really supposed to be
37:08
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, whether it's a different color carpet or
37:11
Speaker 1: maybe a runner in the center of a carpet that
37:14
Speaker 1: stands out, or a tile on the edge that feels
37:17
Speaker 1: like it leads you in a different direction. And this
37:20
Speaker 1: is all to help you in wayfinding, which you think
37:23
Speaker 1: of in like nature, but like your wayfinding anytime you're
37:26
Speaker 1: in a big area like that for sure, like you're
37:29
Speaker 1: literally finding your way. There are signs, that's a that's
37:32
Speaker 1: a technique of wayfinding. Yeah, if you if you sign
37:35
Speaker 1: edge is a real thing. They do have signs and casinos,
37:38
Speaker 1: it's not like again, they don't want spatial anxiety, so
37:40
Speaker 1: they'll have a sign that says restaurant this way, just
37:43
Speaker 1: walk through this maze to get there. But they're your
37:48
Speaker 1: steak is waiting on you for that's not the case
37:52
Speaker 1: anymore now. It used to be right, that's all you
37:56
Speaker 1: can eat. Um, So that one thing is signed. It's
38:00
Speaker 1: one thing is um like actually putting a lion on
38:03
Speaker 1: the floor. That you don't realize is they're like, you're
38:06
Speaker 1: not right, like i'm lost, let me look down at
38:09
Speaker 1: the floor and see which way to go. You're not
38:11
Speaker 1: even aware that you're picking up on that I'm following it.
38:14
Speaker 1: They've also figured out that lighting can do the same
38:16
Speaker 1: thing too. Next time you're walking down a bright main corridor,
38:20
Speaker 1: look up and realize that you're following very bright light,
38:24
Speaker 1: and that along some of the corridors and hallways that
38:27
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to be down, the lighting is not
38:30
Speaker 1: nearly as bright, right, Or an information desk or a
38:33
Speaker 1: concierge or uh, something like that that's always got those
38:37
Speaker 1: like usually can lights pointing straight down saying come over here,
38:40
Speaker 1: I'll help you out right. So, um, what's really really
38:45
Speaker 1: interesting to meet Chuck is UM, I didn't see anybody
38:48
Speaker 1: being like this is the next step. This is the
38:50
Speaker 1: next horizon for environmental psychology, although I'd be surprised if
38:55
Speaker 1: it isn't. But all of these findings, all this stuff
38:58
Speaker 1: that we just talked about way finding things like UM,
39:01
Speaker 1: cognitive maps, UM, spatial anxiety, all this stuff appears to
39:05
Speaker 1: translate fully to virtual environments. So all this stuff that
39:10
Speaker 1: environmental psychology has found out about how to make a
39:13
Speaker 1: casino more UM palatable and make you want to like spend.
39:18
Speaker 1: Also works for online storefronts or um how you find
39:23
Speaker 1: your way around, also works for designing video games and
39:26
Speaker 1: that kind of so. So environmental psychology works in the
39:30
Speaker 1: virtual world too. So it's your home, it's your stores,
39:33
Speaker 1: it's your cars, and then it's also virtual the future,
39:38
Speaker 1: the future. You want to take another break and then
39:41
Speaker 1: come back and talk about the whole green movement part,
39:43
Speaker 1: let's do it. Well, Well, now we're on the road,
40:02
Speaker 1: driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
40:05
Speaker 1: two from Josh can chuck stuff you should know? All right,
40:16
Speaker 1: so this is pretty dense. You're right. Why I are
40:21
Speaker 1: we back? Okay? Yeah, I didn't know if that was off, Mike,
40:25
Speaker 1: I'll stay in front of everybody. You didn't call me, Hey, Jerk,
40:29
Speaker 1: I figured it was on. Mike figured we're gonna leave
40:31
Speaker 1: it in. Hey, Jerk, this is dense. You're right for once?
40:35
Speaker 1: Are we recording? Sorry? So yeah, this this is where
40:40
Speaker 1: it gets interesting to me, because finally I think it's
40:43
Speaker 1: all interesting. But the flip side that we mentioned a
40:47
Speaker 1: couple of times is how you affected your environment as well.
40:52
Speaker 1: And I'm all about affecting your environment, like peeing outside
40:58
Speaker 1: this environment, grow plant grow. Um, Like, everyone knows that
41:05
Speaker 1: green spaces are good for your psyche and looking out
41:08
Speaker 1: a window is better. You know. I think I've said
41:10
Speaker 1: before I went to high school that didn't have windows. No,
41:12
Speaker 1: you didn't say that. Yeah, we didn't have windows in
41:15
Speaker 1: our school. What I know, it sounds crazy and it
41:18
Speaker 1: is now that I look back at. We had one
41:21
Speaker 1: common area that had these very high up windows, but
41:24
Speaker 1: none of the hallways, none of the classrooms had windows.
41:26
Speaker 1: My friend, your high school was in the experiment. It
41:29
Speaker 1: might have been. I mean it was built in nineteen
41:32
Speaker 1: seventy nine, so I think I think it was the year. No,
41:38
Speaker 1: I think it very much might have been an experiment.
41:40
Speaker 1: Like kids get distracted with windows, like they'll do some
41:43
Speaker 1: real learning. It rita in high school because you can't
41:46
Speaker 1: see anything. And then they followed your class. We're like,
41:49
Speaker 1: oh god, no, tear it down. But everyone knows that
41:54
Speaker 1: green spaces and looking out a window or taking a
41:57
Speaker 1: walk through a park or something can really be restorative. Um.
42:02
Speaker 1: They even there was one example of botanical gardens one
42:05
Speaker 1: of my our favorite things to do as a family.
42:07
Speaker 1: But they said in the study here it's like leave
42:09
Speaker 1: your family at home. If you really want the benefit,
42:12
Speaker 1: go by yourself. Each of you needs to split up
42:14
Speaker 1: and wander around by yourselves, which hey, I look forward
42:17
Speaker 1: to when we can do that. So that's I mean,
42:19
Speaker 1: that's pretty low hanging again, stuff like, yeah, hanging out
42:24
Speaker 1: in a botanical garden is restorative. But the thing about
42:28
Speaker 1: environmental psychologists are like why, you know, why does that happen?
42:31
Speaker 1: And then also specifically, how can we use that to
42:34
Speaker 1: build ideal environments? And remember back at the very beginning,
42:38
Speaker 1: Harold Prashansky was asked to how to make hospital rooms better,
42:42
Speaker 1: more more conducive to patient well being. He said, put
42:46
Speaker 1: him outside. Well, that eventually became, you know, kind of
42:49
Speaker 1: a a separate arm of environmental psychology that was led
42:54
Speaker 1: by Rachel and Stephen kaplan Um from the University of Michigan,
42:58
Speaker 1: which has a huge EP programs, I believe because of
43:03
Speaker 1: these guys. But starting in the seventies through through the
43:05
Speaker 1: nineties to the end of the nineties, they studied the
43:08
Speaker 1: effects of the outdoors on humans to understand how to
43:13
Speaker 1: improve built outdoor settings to make it to just squeeze
43:17
Speaker 1: and extract every little bit that restorative juice from nature
43:22
Speaker 1: and let it drift down your face like so much
43:25
Speaker 1: naval orange juice, just get all sticky from it and
43:29
Speaker 1: what it's going. It tastes so good and the smell
43:31
Speaker 1: is almost overwhelming, overpowering, but it's just so beautiful and
43:35
Speaker 1: natural that you eventually just faint. That's what their goal was.
43:40
Speaker 1: So they went that way by way of a couple
43:43
Speaker 1: of times. A couple of kinds of attention that they
43:45
Speaker 1: talked about directed attention, which is how if you're in
43:49
Speaker 1: a real structured, human built environment, you're gonna narrow your focus,
43:54
Speaker 1: which can be good to a degree if you're at
43:57
Speaker 1: work or something, but it can lead to depletion and
44:00
Speaker 1: stress and anxiety over time. Uh. The other kind of
44:03
Speaker 1: attention is fascination, which I mean, should we even talk
44:06
Speaker 1: about that? It just says it all. It makes me
44:08
Speaker 1: smile just saying that word fascination, which is expansive and
44:13
Speaker 1: the wilderness and nature is what brings that along. Yeah,
44:16
Speaker 1: they kind of mindset where you know, anything can happen,
44:19
Speaker 1: or you can just kind of trance out or zone out.
44:21
Speaker 1: Your your intense is not being directed right, and they
44:24
Speaker 1: have done There have been plenty of studies where they
44:26
Speaker 1: found that people do recover from sickness and surgery a
44:30
Speaker 1: lot faster, need less meds, and have fewer complications, and
44:34
Speaker 1: just feel better about your recuperation. If your hospital has
44:39
Speaker 1: a green space. They found that not only just a
44:43
Speaker 1: real green space, but if you had a view of
44:45
Speaker 1: a window that was just a picture of an outdoor
44:49
Speaker 1: green space, I still recovered better. They didn't even give
44:53
Speaker 1: you pictures of that stuff. They tried to beat out
44:55
Speaker 1: of you the memory of what the outdoors were like.
44:59
Speaker 1: So they've come up the ratio though of green spaces.
45:03
Speaker 1: Two structures within that green space, like you know, a
45:07
Speaker 1: plaza or a fountain or whatever, um of seventy to thirty.
45:10
Speaker 1: I guess seventy green space human built structures, right. I
45:18
Speaker 1: guess they just kind of worked out out over the average. Yeah,
45:22
Speaker 1: But as I think that's a cool thing to know
45:24
Speaker 1: if you're planning a green spaces there's actual science behind it. Well. Yeah,
45:30
Speaker 1: and even if there's not necessarily science behind how restorative
45:32
Speaker 1: it is, which there is increasingly, the opposite is definitely
45:36
Speaker 1: well proven. Where sensory deprivation drives us nuts very quickly,
45:40
Speaker 1: sensory overload does as well. There is this ninety two
45:44
Speaker 1: study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
45:48
Speaker 1: that found that patients began to exhibit the symptoms of schizophrenia,
45:53
Speaker 1: especially disordered speech, after just a forty three minute movie
45:57
Speaker 1: that was highly intense in sound and color. Yes, sound
46:01
Speaker 1: is a big thing for me if I have if
46:04
Speaker 1: I have more than one different kinds of sound coming
46:08
Speaker 1: at me, Like I'm listening to the radio and like
46:12
Speaker 1: my daughter will play something on a thing. Oh and
46:15
Speaker 1: maybe Emily is saying something to me. Forget it. It's
46:19
Speaker 1: like you're at the mall, dude, I lose it. I
46:21
Speaker 1: gotta get rid of a sound. I can just run
46:23
Speaker 1: and start pushing kids out of the work, shoving kids
46:26
Speaker 1: and put Emiley's mouth and I destroy Ruby's toy. You
46:32
Speaker 1: got mesophonia? Buddy? Is that what that is? Maybe? Usually
46:36
Speaker 1: it's more something like that. If it's one thing chewing,
46:40
Speaker 1: it doesn't bother me. Two people chewing might be a problem,
46:44
Speaker 1: especially if they're hum chewing. Man like those people Matt m.
46:51
Speaker 1: Dylan and the Flamingo kid. Did he hump you? Yeah?
46:55
Speaker 1: It was like he went to his girlfriend's parents house
46:57
Speaker 1: for dinner. He's like, no, no, And I haven't seen
47:00
Speaker 1: that in a long time. I haven't either, but never
47:03
Speaker 1: forget that part. So um. One of the big challenges
47:07
Speaker 1: now that environmental psychology has taken on is this idea
47:11
Speaker 1: that they got to figure out how to make people
47:13
Speaker 1: want to take care of the planet more, And they're
47:15
Speaker 1: figuring it out. But basically all they're doing is repurposing
47:17
Speaker 1: social psychology and its findings on consumerism and redirecting it
47:22
Speaker 1: toward more conservation minded stuff, which is interesting, like the
47:27
Speaker 1: finding like um, like, some people like new things. So
47:30
Speaker 1: if you present something is new and novel and nobody's
47:33
Speaker 1: adopted it yet, some people will say, oh, I want
47:35
Speaker 1: to try that. Other people are more competitive, for if
47:38
Speaker 1: they find out Shelbyville is about to win a recycling award,
47:41
Speaker 1: they're going to redouble their efforts so their town wins it.
47:44
Speaker 1: Or if this celebrity endorses this product a sort of
47:47
Speaker 1: an obvious one, sure, Like James Spader wears sustainably sourced
47:52
Speaker 1: suits that are made of recycled tires. No. I read that,
47:57
Speaker 1: and I was like, good for you, James Spader, right,
48:00
Speaker 1: and made you want to wear a suit like that,
48:01
Speaker 1: didn't it? I wondered how you would make a rubber
48:04
Speaker 1: suit it was comfortable and fashionable. The fraudst love it, um,
48:08
Speaker 1: But there there's a you know, there's a big debate
48:10
Speaker 1: over whether that is really part of environmental psychology or
48:14
Speaker 1: if it's taking too big of a bite. And in
48:15
Speaker 1: the nineties something called conservation psychology came along and it
48:19
Speaker 1: wants to do the same exact thing. And there's also
48:22
Speaker 1: ecological psychology that wants to do the same thing. So
48:25
Speaker 1: there's a big leg leg wrestling match going on. And
48:29
Speaker 1: that guy Philip Cotler that you referenced earlier, earlier, the
48:32
Speaker 1: guy who was like, how can we better sell things
48:35
Speaker 1: to people? He is now um, kind of going the
48:39
Speaker 1: way of environmental psychology with making things greener, right, right, right,
48:43
Speaker 1: He's flipped. So even if they are right, he turned
48:47
Speaker 1: into a dirty rat. Even if they are trying to
48:50
Speaker 1: nudge us into that behavior, it's tough to fault him
48:52
Speaker 1: for pro nudging people toward pro conservation behavior. So that's
48:57
Speaker 1: environmental psychology, everybody. That's what we've found out about it.
49:01
Speaker 1: If you want to find out more about it, just
49:02
Speaker 1: go start reading. You can spend years and years doing it.
49:06
Speaker 1: And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail. Uh,
49:12
Speaker 1: this is anonymous, but very interesting. Hey, guys, listen to
49:15
Speaker 1: four years of podcasts in a year's time. Today I saw, boy,
49:19
Speaker 1: You've got a lot of years to go anonymous. Today
49:22
Speaker 1: I saw the new post on Guardian Angels and began
49:24
Speaker 1: to listen, and about the fifteen minute mark, Chuck says
49:28
Speaker 1: the guy gets a job at McDonald's in the Bronx,
49:30
Speaker 1: and says, the McDonald's late night scene in New York
49:33
Speaker 1: City is still nuts, but you're not getting murdered, but
49:36
Speaker 1: it is crazy town. I stopped immediately and replayed what
49:38
Speaker 1: you said because I couldn't believe it. My uncle was
49:42
Speaker 1: murdered last year at McDonald's in the Bronx. I couldn't
49:47
Speaker 1: believe it. Did you read this one? The details are
49:50
Speaker 1: horrific and mostly sensationalized for the media, which of course
49:53
Speaker 1: makes me angry. But he was an amazing man and strong,
49:56
Speaker 1: loving force in my life. Could it be I'm just
49:58
Speaker 1: super sensitive to this week, given that this is a
50:01
Speaker 1: year from that, But imagine that though I imagine being
50:05
Speaker 1: an anonymous like this, What are the chances that you
50:07
Speaker 1: would even say that and the podcast would be published
50:10
Speaker 1: almost exactly a year later? I remember listening to a
50:13
Speaker 1: podcast where he talked about when people see their numbers
50:16
Speaker 1: like eleven eleven, what's the name of that? The better mineff.
50:23
Speaker 1: That's where you see like something, you learn about something,
50:25
Speaker 1: and then you see it. Everyone right, that's what she's
50:27
Speaker 1: talking about, UM or when people use old gimmicks to
50:30
Speaker 1: find out what sex or baby will be in it
50:33
Speaker 1: being because you're training yourself, allowing your subconscious through to
50:36
Speaker 1: make it seem like your number is appearing more often,
50:40
Speaker 1: or that you've got an answer. Thank you for always
50:42
Speaker 1: giving me something to think about besides my stressful job. Guys,
50:46
Speaker 1: and I will see you in Brooklyn. I'll be I'll
50:51
Speaker 1: be the one who's blacked out in the shadows with
50:54
Speaker 1: the modulated voice. No no, no no, she'll she's she's pregnant
50:58
Speaker 1: and and maybe we'll be able to say miss Anonymous. Well,
51:01
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Anonymous. I'm sorry about your uncle, UM
51:04
Speaker 1: and this uh, this time of year. It is very
51:08
Speaker 1: bizarre though, that that happened. We can attest for sure
51:10
Speaker 1: it was not planned. Email back, She's are excited that
51:13
Speaker 1: we're reading this. UM. Well, if you want to get
51:15
Speaker 1: in touch with us, like Anonymous did, you can go
51:18
Speaker 1: on to stuff you Should Know dot com and check
51:19
Speaker 1: out our social links. You can also send us an
51:22
Speaker 1: email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
51:29
Speaker 1: you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How
51:31
Speaker 1: stuff works for more podcasts for my heart radio because
51:33
Speaker 1: at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
51:36
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows,