October 8, 2019 • 51 mins
In the 60s, psychology expanded from exploring inside the mind to exploring the inside of buildings. Environmental psychology looks at how our spaces affect us – from how a busy mall can create a panic attack to how looking at nature can speed recovery from surgery.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuco Bryant, and
there's a Jerry over there. Stuff you should know. Actually
(00:22):
had to program that was real, because a real real frog.
So we're in our nice quiet room here. It's so
nice to feel. The walls are dark and padded, ensconced
in love, and our chairs are comfy. It doesn't smell
that much. Jerry's food is in the stinky as usual. Actually,
it's funny you stayed in here when I want to
go get a drink to come back. Its smells pretty
(00:45):
pollock paneerie, like you can just think it is. I'm
just used to it. It's a good smell. And like
a restaurant or your dining room at your home or
kitchen in the studio, it's a weird smell. You know
what kind of food. Jerry hates American food? I know
she hates American food. She does, man, she's always eaten
(01:07):
great food from all over the World's good job. Uh so, Chuck. Yes,
we're talking today about psychology, but not the head shrinking
more the head, expanding variety of psychology. Shrink that head,
blow it up, because psychology over the years has really
kind of increased its scope further and further out of
(01:30):
your noggin. Yeah. It kind of started out very focused
on the noggin, very and then it was like, well,
truth be told, your mom has a lot to do
with this stuff too, and your friends going to come
out and say it, and your dad, they really screwed
you up. And then with this stuff with environmental psychology
has really expanded on a macro level. Yeah, because it's
(01:52):
saying and not only are you all screwed up by
yourself and your friends and family are screwing you up,
the physical spaces that you exist in can screw you up,
or the other side is great to make you happier,
more relaxed, um less stressed out. And we environmental psychologists
(02:14):
is what they started to call themselves, UM, are going
to figure out exactly the how, what, who, why, when, where,
the who's it, the any who, all of it to
explain how our environments affect us. And then while we're
at it, let's just throw in the whole kitchen sink.
We're gonna do it the other way to we're going
(02:34):
to figure out how humans affect the environment and how
we can make humans better stewards of the environment. But
for now, we're going to go take a nap because
this is a lot. Yeah, but all of this through
the lens of psychology, which, like I read this stuff,
I think it's really cool and interesting, and I think
you do too initially, but it seems to break down
(02:57):
a little bit scientifically. Uh and my whole jam. When
I walked in, I was like, I think this is
really neat, Like maybe they just shouldn't call it science
and they should just say like, hey, let's uh, let's
look at how a grocery store can best be planned out, um,
and touch on some psychology, but like, don't ask me
to prove it with studies that can be replicated. So
(03:20):
there are a lot of studies about this stuff. They're legitimate,
you know, um, peer reviewed studies, but they're they're real
disparate and not necessarily related. And I think what you're
talking about is environmental psychology tries to kind of bring
them all together and say this is our jam, and
that that the thing. The pieces don't necessarily connect yet
(03:44):
like you would think they would from you know, looking
on the outside, seeing that there's a whole field of
psychology dedicated to studying this is it. Hey, I want
to be paid a lot of money to consult on
a new shopping mall. I I maybe so, but I
honestly don't know what what the what the drive is?
I don't know. It's interesting stuff though, oh yeah it's
but it's famously interesting. Everybody loves environmental psychology, even if
(04:08):
you don't know the name of it. And people have
understood too that, like, our environments do affect us for
way longer than environmental psychology has been around. There's a
like every history of environmental psychology that you'll read will
give this example of Marco Polo reporting in the thirteenth century.
He came across a ruler in China who was curious
(04:31):
about why some neighboring state or kingdom was always like
super hostile, not only with other kingdoms, but within the
kingdom themselves. So he ordered an experiment done where he
had soil brought in from that kingdom placed under the
chairs of some people, and all the people started arguing.
So he concluded it must be in the soil, which
is I guess an early scientific experiment. He never explained
(04:55):
what was in the soil. Maybe ghosts. Yeah, right, should
we talk about Churchill since we're talking about history, Yeah,
we gotta kind of leap forward from the thirteenth century. Yeah.
Churchill very famously said we shape our buildings and later
they shape us belch cigar toke Uh. And he very
(05:16):
famously when World War two bombed out the Parliament building,
he said, rebuild it just as it was, and everyone
else like, hey, governor, shouldn't it be a bit bigger? No? Uh,
they had the chance to give everyone a little more space,
and no, do it exactly like it was. Uh. He
(05:37):
wanted to create a sense of urgency, and he said
at critical votes and moments it would be filled beyond capacity,
with members spilling out into the aisles. Sarn a little
Sean Connery in there. I can't let it pass. In
his view, a sustainable, I'm sorry, shootable sense of crowd
and urgency. That's pretty good. Key do Roger Moore doing
Winston Churchill. No, I've never tried Roger Moore. Yeah, I've
(06:02):
never heard anybody do Roger Moore. That was pretty good.
So um so. Yeah, there's been this awareness that like
like Churchill says, we shape our buildings and later they
shape us. But it wasn't a field a part of
psychology until the late fifties early sixties. Um. And actually
you can trace it back to one group of people
(06:24):
at City University, New York, YEP led by what are
they the Fighting Manhattan Transfers. They have a great a
capella group. Um, they were all they're a bunch of Cooney's.
I'm not sure which one this was City Mary, New York,
Like you know, they're all over town. Oh I didn't
know that. Okay, well I'm not sure which one it
(06:47):
was either. But Harold Prashansky was the leader of this
group from CUNEY and they were a group of social
psychologists and some people at a hospital in New York. Uh,
we'll just say hospital because it's probably only one, like
there's only one QUNI. Um. They came to this group
and said, hey, we're trying to figure out how to
make our hospital rooms like way better for patients. He said,
(07:09):
we're from hospital, right, he said, okay, we're from un UM.
And and Harold Persanski is like, we have no idea
how to tell you how to do that? Yeah, So
he's he went ahead and founded environmental psychology, which which
seeks to do exactly that. Yeah, he wrote the book
on it, the first one that is I'm sure they're
a gazillion now, uh. In nineteen seventy environmental psychology Colon
(07:34):
manned and his physical setting and by man he means
person human. But it was nineteen seventy, so there were
only men that mattered in nineteen seventy. So he is
the father of environmental psychology. He's the father of lies.
You know what I think the deal is is so unwieldy,
(07:56):
and they're trying to corral this unwieldy thing because it's
nature and its design and its color, and it's fabrics
and it's people's brains and all right, So we're just
gonna gripe about it sporadically throughout the whole episode. So
the whole idea of prior to environmental psychology, um and
still is the case in a lot of in a
(08:18):
lot of cases, is if you're going to do an experiment,
they would bring you to a very um just plain
lab and their idea was like, let's strip away everything
so you're not influenced by anything. They would hose you
off exactly, delouse you, and you would be just sitting
in a white room with fluorescent bulbs buzzing above your
(08:39):
head and Bill Murrays zapping you whenever you gave a
wrong answer, and they're like, this is the way to
do it. But there are a couple of psychologists Um
Roger Barker and Kurt Lewin specifically, that said, um, you
know what, that's making things worse. Stripping the world away
and putting people in the sterile environments like you're gonna
(08:59):
be confounding results just from the outset. It doesn't make
any sense in psychology psychologies. Other psychologists said, shut up,
be quiet, you two and they said, no, we won't.
We're going to go found environmental psychology along with Harold
Krushansky and the idea that you have to not only
study people in their natural setting to really understand what's
(09:20):
motivating their behavior, but also the idea that that natural
setting itself is is creating part of their behavior. You
can't you can't study that in the lab. So that's
one of the things that makes um environmental psychology unusual
is it's not meant to be conducted in the lab.
It's meant to be conducted in a real world study,
a real world setting. And the other thing about it
(09:41):
is it's multidiscipline area as well. Unwieldy. It is some
would say inclusive, but unwieldy also works as well. Yeah,
because what they're looking at is what they call uh
molar units, which are very large scale. We're talking about communities,
neighbor hoods. Maybe your house, house or or room is
(10:02):
probably about the smallest thing you think, or or maybe
your personal space. They seem to have adopted that as well. Yeah,
it's all over the place. Uh, and it covers every
angle that you can think of in terms of how
you interact with your environment. UM. Like we said, like um,
spatial planning and lighting, economics, acoustics, color, empty space. Yeah,
(10:28):
imagine that that's a brain buster right there. It is UM.
And so when what they're studying, what environmental psychologists study,
or what they call transactions, And this has been a
particular bone in my craw. I've never once seen someone
concretely defined what a transaction is. I would guess that
(10:49):
it's a transaction. It's just how you transact and interact
with those things, right, but exactly how like a transaction
And I'm totally pulling this out of my key. Start, Well,
then you're an environmental problems. But a transaction might be
like when you walk into a room and sit down
in a chair, that's probably a transaction with that room, right,
(11:09):
maybe why not? But my question also is like, Okay,
if you sit quietly in a room for an hour,
is that a transaction itself? Or is that hour made
up of much smaller transactions like you stirring in the
room because the concrete floor is making your butt fall asleep,
or you start to get scared because you hear a
(11:31):
weird noise, and like, all of the things that happened
over the hour, are those transactions or is the whole
thing a transaction. I've just never heard it concretely defined,
and it kind of drove me crazy because I really
looked for a solid definition of it. But just suffice
to say that in the field of environmental psychology, will
they study your transactions, which means your interaction with the environment,
(11:53):
And hey, let's just go ahead and say it the
environment's interaction with you in return. That's right. I'm sorry,
I'm glad you're crabby about one. And that's usually my role,
you know, I'm happy to take it over this time.
So where you first started seeing the impact of environmental
psychology was an architecture, and this has been going on
(12:16):
for decades basically, and it makes sense. This part makes
the most sense to me. Yeah, like when you transact
with a building and a lobby or an elevator or
a staircase, or an office or a or air wolf
or air wolf or the concierge desk in a hotel,
like all of this stuff has Oh, there's always been
(12:38):
a lot of thought, probably before they even called it
environmental psychology, like how do people interact with this when
you walk in? You want people to be uh, feel
good and understand where things are. Um, well, now there's
a balance that has to be struck. Though I don't
know if that actually did exist before environment I think
that may have been a contribution from the field. Yes,
(12:59):
I mean, yes, I'm sure there was some design or
something like that, but the the ideas what you just
said to have really been helped along by the field
of environments. Like you might be right, because that's what's
called bottom up, Like let's really think about how people
interact with this environment and whereas before it was topped down, like,
let's just build this beautiful building, and it turns out
(13:20):
it's really confusing, Yeah, um, because they didn't think about people, know,
and there were There are actually two big things that
happened in the sixties, well one in the sixties, one
in the early seventies that kind of said, oh wait,
our environments are physical spaces really do affect us and
they can have really negative effects to um. The first
one was the Kitty Genovase murder, which we covered, We
(13:41):
did a whole episode on there that was Yeah, but
the long story short, the popular conception is that, uh,
an entire apartment block of people um watched Kitty Genovese
be murdered publicly over the course of like an hour,
and nobody did anything, even though it's not fully true.
But reason that they didn't do anything because they were
(14:01):
all isolated from one another. They all figured that somebody
else was going to call their architecture messed with their
brains and made them less compassionate or um separate at least. Yeah,
then they would have been maybe if they lived out
in the country or something like that. That was the
big first one. Yeah, that which I don't even know
if we touched on that in the episode, did we?
(14:23):
I think maybe? If not, we just did, all right,
consider that a falloup. Uh. The other one was this
housing complex in St. Louis in two that was built
called Pruitt I Go and it was built in ninety
six hundred and seventy units in thirty three eleven story buildings.
(14:46):
It was a very big deal because it was touted
as being this progressive, really modern place for a housing project,
and people are gonna be living in this modern space
and it's gonna be amazing and that's going to make
a big difference in their lives. Yeah, it was. Actually
there was. I looked all over for the what magazine
it was, but some architectural magazine magazine named it the
(15:08):
best high apartment of the year while it was being designed.
And the idea was like, here, we're going to give
you this amazing place to live, low income, downtrodden St.
Louis people, and you are going to be able to
raise yourselves up out of poverty just by living in
a nice new this gift from the gods of architecture basically,
(15:29):
and the exact opposite happened that within sixteen years by two,
the Prude I Go Complex, thirty three eleven story buildings,
was raised to the ground and there became a really
really negative popular um idea about Prude I Go, and
that was that no matter what you did for poor
(15:52):
people and in this case read black people, they're going
to drag it down to their level. Because within that
sixteen years, Prude I Go became blighted by crime, vandalism, um, neglect, disrepair. Uh.
The police were afraid to go out there into the complex.
(16:13):
There was a sense of lawlessness, and so when it
got torn down, everybody said, yep, see, can't do anything
for those people. And then later on academics, including environmental psychologist, said,
wait a minute, I don't know that that's actually the case.
What if it was the actual buildings that were the problem. Yeah,
they came in and they called it, Uh, this is
dysfunctional architecture. And they said that you did this top
(16:35):
down thing. It built this beautiful building, but didn't think
about the people, this bottom up approach. You never thought
about the residents. Uh. And research later on. This is
where we get into a couple of other theories that
we've talked about. I know, we talked about the broken
windows theory, which basically is the idea that, um, you
need to go after the vandal or the person who
(16:57):
throws a brick through a window, even though that's low
hanging fruit. Uh legally speaking as far as cops go. Yeah,
so you need to go after those people because those
small things that happen will basically lead to larger things.
And that's what happened at Prutago. They were they never
changed out the burn light bulbs, they never fixed the
(17:17):
broken windows, And if you believe in the broken windows theory,
that's a pretty prime example of how something you can
get out of hand, right. Um. The other big theory
that kind of evolved to explain what happened at prut
Igo is called the defensible spaces theory, and that was
basically that the designer of this complex had failed to
delineate each unit from the other, so that really the
(17:42):
only thing that separated units were the thin interior walls.
Everything outside was just common public belonged to no one,
so it was totally ripe for abuse and um and
lawlessness and criminality, criminal behavior. Part of the other problem
with the design was at the common areas, the play areas,
(18:03):
we're all um uh, we're kind of like around corners
were out of view, so there was no way for
the community keep an eye on their kids or one another,
and so these became hotbeds for crime as well. And
inside and out right, wasn't the idea that they were
all identical, so there was no sense of individual ownership,
which can bring about pride. It was just here, you
(18:24):
live here, now, stay here, and that doesn't work with people.
Um and so environmental psychologists had this idea um afterwards,
as they were kind of thinking about all this stuff,
that well, maybe there's some easy things we can do,
like I don't know, asking residents what they want or
need out of a building while you're designing the building right,
(18:46):
or if something doesn't work out or is working out
okay and people are moving out, interview them then and say, hey,
what do you like about the place as you hate
and there's those are like you said, low hanging fruit.
But that's the kind of thing that actually and help
make a building successful and give people a sense of ownership.
And if you feel ownership over a place, you're gonna
(19:07):
tell somebody, hey, pick up that trash, that's my walkway,
you know, just throw your trash there. If that's really
kind of their walkway as much as it is yours,
maybe you don't feel quite as moved to say something
in that case. So just like think taking that stuff
into into account as far as environmental psychology is concerned,
helps explain how you can prompt someone to take ownership
(19:30):
of a place and therefore get more out of it,
but also take care of the place as well, which
is that bi directional reciprocal interaction with our physical environments.
That is like the basis of environmental psychology. All right,
let's take a break here, this is dense. Yeah, we'll
be back right after this. Well, now we're on the
(20:08):
road driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing
or two from Josh can chuck stuff you should know?
All right, all right, so let's talk about some of
these behaviors um as far as like fitting into a
space that have kind of popped up over the years.
(20:31):
There's one, two, three of these listed that make a
lot of sense to me. Yeah. The first one is territoriality.
And you just you put this together. You describe this
very plainly. Is like if you go into a coffee
shop and you put your bag down on a table
and then go over your coffee, or if you just
dress up your cubicle with dumb stuff, that's that's you
(20:53):
claiming your space, even if it's not your space, Like
your cubicle you're like, this is my backpack on this table,
don't sit there, Right, that's just territoriality. That's one way
that we behave because most places, most spaces are social
spaces are used by more than one person. Right. The
next one is crowding, which I think is super interesting
because crowding, uh is a result of density. But you
(21:17):
can have density without being crowded if you have smart design.
Like thousands and tens of thousands of people go through
a shopping mall every day, but you should never feel
crowded in a shopping mall because of the way they
have these things designed. Dude, it happens to me every time.
Do you feel crowded? It's just it's just a spectrum
of how soon starts. Really, every time I go to
(21:40):
a mall, you feel crowded. Yeah, And there's the opposite
of out should be right, I know, but it's me
Like I'm I mean, like really well designed malls, but
it's still me, right, still feel crowded. There's a period
where like the thing that you mean I would do
in the wintertime would be to go walk around the
mall because we were like a half a mile away
from it. So you mean Momo and I would go
(22:01):
walk around the mall. Oh, I thought you meant the
interior wall mall. Uh, mall walkers, not the mall. We
that's basically what we were doing. But we were just
killing time because I worked at the Gap for a
month and I didn't know that was the thing before
the before the stores opened, the mall was open, and
that's where you'll find, uh, some really fantastic jumpsuits walking
(22:22):
around and the exercise clothes. Yeah, and they'll have like
clubs and coffee clutches and all sorts of stuff. Yeah,
it's mall walkings of things. Okay, but you were on
the outside of the mall. No, No, we were inside.
We have a bag that Momo comes. Um. But so
we're walking around the inside just at night or whatever.
You know, the youngest ones, they're kind of so um.
But every time I'd just be like tense and just
(22:45):
feel crowded and like edgy and stressed out before them
all opened, Okay, I don't stop with the mall walking
thing has nothing to do with that. Alright, malls open,
mall's open, you're shopping, maybe even nighttime. Emma was there
and we're inside, okay, and there's no one wearing jump
and you're not old. But that was well, now we've
(23:05):
reached the end of the story. So you would just
get anxious, uh, despite the fact that they were purposely
designed to not feel crowded, right, And that's part of
the challenge of mall design is to to make it
so people like me can stand to stay there as
long as possible, because the longer you're there, the more
shopping you're gonna do. And but you want a bunch
(23:26):
of people. You don't want just one person at a
time going through the mall because of crowding. You want
a bunch of people, so you want to juggle how
to get all those people in there shopping at the
same time without making one another feel crowded. How are
you at genuine crowd crowded things like sports games or concerts?
And it's about the same, really, I think. I think
(23:46):
because in the situation like that, I'm going into it
expecting it. Apparently it surprises me every time I'm at
a mall. Will you leave a concert early or wait
for people to file out a little bit before you,
or you in the middle of that like elbow to
elbow hit miss but to crutch scene. It changes from
from It depends on how you know, relaxed on feeling
and if like you know that they're gonna like play
(24:08):
the big song in the last song. Oh yeah, yeah.
Usually I don't like sitting around for the encore, but
if it's the you know, the song that I came
to see, I'll do it right. You're so you're at
the Who's the German Tech? No Group, Skinny Puppy, no
the So you're at a craft work show. I've actually
been to Seacraft, I know. And you're like, I really
want to leave, but they haven't played Liver Worst yet?
(24:31):
Which is the best song called liver Worst? I don't
think so maybe yeah, otivon they definitely do. Uh. We
saw them at the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
It was amazing. I never went there, or or maybe
I did us an opera there. It would be a
good place for that. And we left early. Oh really,
(24:52):
you didn't wait for the encore? We saw Skinny Puppy too.
By the way, I think they're from Washington State, not Germany.
But we had to wait for their encore to see
like their big song Smothered. Hope they wait until the encore.
I know that they do that every single night. Sure,
even though it's Skinny Puppy and that's not really their thing,
they still do it, all right. So that's crowding you
(25:16):
all right, there's three of us in here. How do
you feel? I feel fine now. You guys make me
feel very relaxed. That's nice. So privacy is the last one, um,
and that's you know, people want a private space. Um.
But there's a subset of that called personal space, which
is not the same thing as privacy. Personal spaces what
(25:36):
do they define it as? The one and a half
to four ft around you in all directions? Right? There
was an anthropologist actually named Edward Hall who came up
with that. I'm big on personal space. One of my
big pet peeves is being an online for anything and
feelingline online different online is what you say in New York, Uh,
(26:00):
feeling someone like kicking my heel or breathing down my neck.
I'm always just like, just like You're not going to
get there any quicker by breathing on me. Dude, please
back off. Where are they frauderists? Have you ever considered
maybe you're being I'm not sure, subway creep, I don't know.
(26:20):
I had a situation a few weeks ago. Cheez, should
I even talk about this? Oh boy? I like where
this is going? All right, I'll go ahead. And I
was in a grocery store and I was really motoring
because I was just going to get a couple of
things and I want to get out of there. And
I went and I cut through the what usually is
the sandwich line, of which there was none at the
time the deli, Like yeah, but it's a little sort
(26:42):
of narrow space where you stand in line. It's like
roped off. And I kind of cut through there because
there was no one there. And this as this kid
was ducking under the little rope and I just sort
of shimmy by him and did one of those like whoa,
I went by the kid, You did a rick flair?
Think No. I didn't say a word, but came come
back five minutes later and this, uh, this kid's mother
(27:03):
like starts yelling at me that I pushed shoved her kid,
and I was like, first of all, I was like,
I sort of looked around, was like me, and she
was like, yes, she shoved my she shoved my kid,
or you shoved my kid. I was like, no, said
I didn't. I didn't shove your kid, and she starts
she was like I saw it, and the kid was like, yeah,
you did. And I looked at him and I was like,
I didn't say it out loud, but I was like,
(27:24):
you liar, I did not touch you. And I started
again to say no, I didn't. I swear I did
not touch your kid. And she was really adamant, and
people started looking and I knew the only way out
of there was just too And I'm a I'm a
big justice guy, so this really was hard for me.
But just say, uh ma'am if I did, I'm really
(27:45):
really sorry. I have a small child. I was not
aware that I did, but I clearly did, and I'm
really sorry. And I was like, because I was waiting
for a cell phone to come out, you know, so
I was like, the only way out of here is
just lie and say yeah, up your kid and I'm sorry.
You're like, I I have a small child who mus
shove all the time and she doesn't tatle like your
(28:05):
little really upsetting because it was getting out of hand.
I was like, very upset for the rest of the night.
How are you feeling now recounting it. I didn't shove
that kid. I believe you did touch him. I'll bet
every single person listening believes you. Oh man, al right,
So where are we? Personal space? That's what I was
talking about. Yeah, I shove kids when they get in
my way, right exactly. So the upshot of all of
(28:27):
this everything we've talked about, the idea that you need
um space that is your own, that you can defend,
and that you can consider um a place to have
privacy and to put your stuff, and um the idea
that high density of people in the wrong kind of
situation creates crowding. All this stuff contributes to the ultimate
(28:49):
goal one of the big goals of environmental psychology busices
to create put all this stuff together and create ideal
environments that's right, which is a balance of things, not
necessarily like just the biggest open place in the world.
Because people have to shop and people you have to
still have these other things that have to be accomplished.
(29:09):
But the quote here is where people feel self assured
and competent, where they can familiarize themselves with the environment
whilst being engaged with it. And there are four main
factors here to that basically say it's ideal or not. Unity.
Basically things work well together. Self explanatory, like like the
dude saying that has rugg really tied the room together? Yeah, exactly.
(29:31):
Um legibility that a person can navigate that space without
getting lost. Very important complexity, uh that it's just complex
enough to like keep you interested. And then finally mystery,
which I think is pretty interesting, which is like you
never know what's around the next corner, right, could be
(29:54):
a pot of chocolate melted, could be death. Who knows,
You won't know until you go. Look, that's right. So
a lot of people who own businesses over the years
since the you know, the sixties, win environmental psychology has started,
has said, hey, you know what, a lot of this
stuff about how people behave in spaces, I could use
(30:16):
this to make people stay in my space longer, and
maybe they'll be likelier to spend some money that I'll
get to keep because they came to my space and
stayed here and in fact, one of the pioneers of
environmental psychology, guy named Philip Cotler Um. He coined the
term atmospherics, and atmospherics is exactly what you would think
(30:37):
it is. But he he had this very famous quote
famous in these circles. I should say that, Um, in
some cases, the place, more specifically, the atmosphere of the
place is more influential than the product itself in the
purchase decision. In some cases, the atmosphere is the primary
(31:00):
a product. Yeah, I mean you brought up the Apple store, um,
but there are other I don't go to these places,
but I've been through and walked by some stores that
feel like a nightclub with the way they're lit and
the music and the Abercromie and Fitch, I think is
what you have been in a republic, But yeah, it's uh.
(31:24):
They're they're trying to create an experience. And Emily even
does this with her store. But it's not a cheesy nightclub.
She tries to create an experience while people come in
and they smell nice things and it's relaxing and there's plants.
A yoga club, yeah, sort of exact night yoga club basically,
but so so, yeah, what she's doing is engaging in
(31:44):
atmospheric and it makes total sense. Of course, you want
people that not want to like turn around and leave
your store, people mill around, just have the product. He
was taking it to to the extreme, saying like, sometimes
the actual place where you buy the product is even
more important to the consumer than the product. I think
that's pretty rare, but those are you know, two extremes
on the on the spectrum, just the products and the
(32:06):
place being more important than the products. Whereas you know
most stores fall within that spectrum, right. Yeah, we went
to a store in Paris where both of us that
just sold a bunch of different things and um, I
mean from pottery to quilts to close the plants, and
we were both like, I never want to leave this store.
It was just so awesome on every level. So like
(32:30):
the store is self, the atmosphere made you want to stay. Yeah,
the design of it, the mystery I wanted because they had,
you know, go of these stairs. What's up there? I
see a light shining around that corner. The heck is
that bloody candlestick on the stairs? You're like, what's up there?
I wish I could remember the name of this place, man,
it was just like everything about it was perfect, okay
for us, Well, we'll we'll buzz market at some time
(32:52):
when you got it. That's right. But one of the
one of the places that has really kind of is
posed itself as a really great example, understandable example of
atmospherics and how they can be used to kind of work.
It's mojo on our brains are casinos. Yeah, which we
talked about in our episode on casinos. Uh, here's the deal.
(33:16):
Humans have triggers and clues that the Germans call site
cabs not psite burgers. I want to say, it's so
bad right every time? Uh time giver is what that
literally translates to our synchronizer, and um, this is like
these triggers that we use are how we adjust our
(33:37):
biological clocks. Things like where's the sun literally in the sky,
or even looking out a window, does it look like
dusk or down? Things like that or even literal clocks
can allow us to reset our biological clocks. Casinos don't
like those things, no, no, because casinos want you to
forget all about time and any pressing matters you have
on the outside and instead spend your time and your
(33:59):
money in the casino, so they remove any out windows
to the outdoors far away from the casino floor, so
there's no sense of what time of the day it is.
There's no clocks or anything like that. They're also very
well aware that sound plays a huge role in the environment.
So in any casino you will hear all sorts of
dinging and buzzing and fells and stuff like that. But
(34:20):
it's a constant, it's a it's constantly going on, and
then when somebody wins, it rises so much so that
everyone in the casino knows somebody just want But the
fact that the dinging and buzzing is always going on
to some degree, makes your makes you think without thinking
that winning is always going on because you've associated these
sounds with winning and it's constant, so people must constantly
(34:42):
be winning here. Maybe I should play some of these slots. Yeah,
you know, the one thing I noticed in Vegas is
the the casino doors are never closed to the outside.
So if you're walking around and it's add ten degrees
in Nevada, which is could be the case in any
given month, you walk by that casino and it's just
you get hit with a wave of air. Conditioned air
(35:04):
like you've never felt before, and you're like, oh, maybe
I should go in there for a little Oh totally,
you want to go in there just a cool down,
and like, well, I've got a five bucks in my pocket,
might as well give it to the casino. And then
you get a snoop full of like raw cigarette smoke
and you're like, we'll go back outside. Awful, it's pretty bad.
What else though, mystery, that's a big one in casinos. Yeah,
so we should talk about the actual layout of the
(35:25):
casino floor. It's we talked about legibility and how you know,
you should be able to find your way around. Casinos
deliberately make make their casino floors illegible so that you
just kind of wander around, like there's a general sense
of the direction you want to be going in. It's
not like they want you to get lost, because once
you get lost, yeah, you you're in trouble and you
(35:46):
don't want to you don't want to do anything, You
want to just get out of there. They want you
to not to literally get lost, but figuratively get lost
in the experience, like where you're okay with wandering and right,
So they make it so you're you're just kind of meandering,
like you said, Um, there's like little offshoots. They are like, oh,
what's around this corner? Oh, more slots, Maybe I'll play it.
What a great little thing to find, um with For
(36:07):
the venues and the restaurants, they're placed along the back
of the casino floor, so that you if you're coming
just to go to dinner there, you have to go
through the casino and wander around and maybe play some
slots and then um, Like I was saying that, they
don't want you to get lost or feel lost, because
environmental psychology is identified a condition called spatial anxiety, where
(36:29):
once you're like, wait, which way do I go? You
don't want to party, you don't want to gamble, you
don't want to shop, you don't want to do anything
but get out of there. So they walk a really
fine line here and deliberately confusing you with the layout
without making you anxious. And they do this partially by
(36:50):
unconscious subliminal cues. They will use literally on the floor
that show the way that you don't realize you're following.
But if you stop and look down at like a
casino a floor or an airport floor or something like that.
You'll notice that there's probably a different color something is
leading you in the passenger you're really supposed to be
going on. Yeah, whether it's a different color carpet or
(37:11):
maybe a runner in the center of a carpet that
stands out, or a tile on the edge that feels
like it leads you in a different direction. And this
is all to help you in wayfinding, which you think
of in like nature, but like your wayfinding anytime you're
in a big area like that for sure, like you're
literally finding your way. There are signs, that's a that's
(37:32):
a technique of wayfinding. Yeah, if you if you sign
edge is a real thing. They do have signs and casinos,
it's not like again, they don't want spatial anxiety, so
they'll have a sign that says restaurant this way, just
walk through this maze to get there. But they're your
steak is waiting on you for that's not the case
anymore now. It used to be right, that's all you
(37:56):
can eat. Um, So that one thing is signed. It's
one thing is um like actually putting a lion on
the floor. That you don't realize is they're like, you're
not right, like i'm lost, let me look down at
the floor and see which way to go. You're not
even aware that you're picking up on that I'm following it.
They've also figured out that lighting can do the same
(38:16):
thing too. Next time you're walking down a bright main corridor,
look up and realize that you're following very bright light,
and that along some of the corridors and hallways that
you're not supposed to be down, the lighting is not
nearly as bright, right, Or an information desk or a
concierge or uh, something like that that's always got those
(38:37):
like usually can lights pointing straight down saying come over here,
I'll help you out right. So, um, what's really really
interesting to meet Chuck is UM, I didn't see anybody
being like this is the next step. This is the
next horizon for environmental psychology, although I'd be surprised if
it isn't. But all of these findings, all this stuff
(38:58):
that we just talked about way finding things like UM,
cognitive maps, UM, spatial anxiety, all this stuff appears to
translate fully to virtual environments. So all this stuff that
environmental psychology has found out about how to make a
casino more UM palatable and make you want to like spend.
(39:18):
Also works for online storefronts or um how you find
your way around, also works for designing video games and
that kind of so. So environmental psychology works in the
virtual world too. So it's your home, it's your stores,
it's your cars, and then it's also virtual the future,
the future. You want to take another break and then
(39:41):
come back and talk about the whole green movement part,
let's do it. Well, Well, now we're on the road,
(40:02):
driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
two from Josh can chuck stuff you should know? All right,
so this is pretty dense. You're right. Why I are
we back? Okay? Yeah, I didn't know if that was off, Mike,
(40:25):
I'll stay in front of everybody. You didn't call me, Hey, Jerk,
I figured it was on. Mike figured we're gonna leave
it in. Hey, Jerk, this is dense. You're right for once?
Are we recording? Sorry? So yeah, this this is where
it gets interesting to me, because finally I think it's
all interesting. But the flip side that we mentioned a
(40:47):
couple of times is how you affected your environment as well.
And I'm all about affecting your environment, like peeing outside
this environment, grow plant grow. Um, Like, everyone knows that
green spaces are good for your psyche and looking out
(41:08):
a window is better. You know. I think I've said
before I went to high school that didn't have windows. No,
you didn't say that. Yeah, we didn't have windows in
our school. What I know, it sounds crazy and it
is now that I look back at. We had one
common area that had these very high up windows, but
none of the hallways, none of the classrooms had windows.
My friend, your high school was in the experiment. It
(41:29):
might have been. I mean it was built in nineteen
seventy nine, so I think I think it was the year. No,
I think it very much might have been an experiment.
Like kids get distracted with windows, like they'll do some
real learning. It rita in high school because you can't
see anything. And then they followed your class. We're like,
oh god, no, tear it down. But everyone knows that
(41:54):
green spaces and looking out a window or taking a
walk through a park or something can really be restorative. Um.
They even there was one example of botanical gardens one
of my our favorite things to do as a family.
But they said in the study here it's like leave
your family at home. If you really want the benefit,
go by yourself. Each of you needs to split up
(42:14):
and wander around by yourselves, which hey, I look forward
to when we can do that. So that's I mean,
that's pretty low hanging again, stuff like, yeah, hanging out
in a botanical garden is restorative. But the thing about
environmental psychologists are like why, you know, why does that happen?
And then also specifically, how can we use that to
build ideal environments? And remember back at the very beginning,
(42:38):
Harold Prashansky was asked to how to make hospital rooms better,
more more conducive to patient well being. He said, put
him outside. Well, that eventually became, you know, kind of
a a separate arm of environmental psychology that was led
by Rachel and Stephen kaplan Um from the University of Michigan,
(42:58):
which has a huge EP programs, I believe because of
these guys. But starting in the seventies through through the
nineties to the end of the nineties, they studied the
effects of the outdoors on humans to understand how to
improve built outdoor settings to make it to just squeeze
and extract every little bit that restorative juice from nature
(43:22):
and let it drift down your face like so much
naval orange juice, just get all sticky from it and
what it's going. It tastes so good and the smell
is almost overwhelming, overpowering, but it's just so beautiful and
natural that you eventually just faint. That's what their goal was.
So they went that way by way of a couple
(43:43):
of times. A couple of kinds of attention that they
talked about directed attention, which is how if you're in
a real structured, human built environment, you're gonna narrow your focus,
which can be good to a degree if you're at
work or something, but it can lead to depletion and
stress and anxiety over time. Uh. The other kind of
attention is fascination, which I mean, should we even talk
(44:06):
about that? It just says it all. It makes me
smile just saying that word fascination, which is expansive and
the wilderness and nature is what brings that along. Yeah,
they kind of mindset where you know, anything can happen,
or you can just kind of trance out or zone out.
Your your intense is not being directed right, and they
have done There have been plenty of studies where they
(44:26):
found that people do recover from sickness and surgery a
lot faster, need less meds, and have fewer complications, and
just feel better about your recuperation. If your hospital has
a green space. They found that not only just a
real green space, but if you had a view of
a window that was just a picture of an outdoor
(44:49):
green space, I still recovered better. They didn't even give
you pictures of that stuff. They tried to beat out
of you the memory of what the outdoors were like.
So they've come up the ratio though of green spaces.
Two structures within that green space, like you know, a
plaza or a fountain or whatever, um of seventy to thirty.
(45:10):
I guess seventy green space human built structures, right. I
guess they just kind of worked out out over the average. Yeah,
But as I think that's a cool thing to know
if you're planning a green spaces there's actual science behind it. Well. Yeah,
and even if there's not necessarily science behind how restorative
(45:32):
it is, which there is increasingly, the opposite is definitely
well proven. Where sensory deprivation drives us nuts very quickly,
sensory overload does as well. There is this ninety two
study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
that found that patients began to exhibit the symptoms of schizophrenia,
(45:53):
especially disordered speech, after just a forty three minute movie
that was highly intense in sound and color. Yes, sound
is a big thing for me if I have if
I have more than one different kinds of sound coming
at me, Like I'm listening to the radio and like
my daughter will play something on a thing. Oh and
(46:15):
maybe Emily is saying something to me. Forget it. It's
like you're at the mall, dude, I lose it. I
gotta get rid of a sound. I can just run
and start pushing kids out of the work, shoving kids
and put Emiley's mouth and I destroy Ruby's toy. You
got mesophonia? Buddy? Is that what that is? Maybe? Usually
(46:36):
it's more something like that. If it's one thing chewing,
it doesn't bother me. Two people chewing might be a problem,
especially if they're hum chewing. Man like those people Matt m.
Dylan and the Flamingo kid. Did he hump you? Yeah?
It was like he went to his girlfriend's parents house
(46:57):
for dinner. He's like, no, no, And I haven't seen
that in a long time. I haven't either, but never
forget that part. So um. One of the big challenges
now that environmental psychology has taken on is this idea
that they got to figure out how to make people
want to take care of the planet more, And they're
figuring it out. But basically all they're doing is repurposing
(47:17):
social psychology and its findings on consumerism and redirecting it
toward more conservation minded stuff, which is interesting, like the
finding like um, like, some people like new things. So
if you present something is new and novel and nobody's
adopted it yet, some people will say, oh, I want
to try that. Other people are more competitive, for if
(47:38):
they find out Shelbyville is about to win a recycling award,
they're going to redouble their efforts so their town wins it.
Or if this celebrity endorses this product a sort of
an obvious one, sure, Like James Spader wears sustainably sourced
suits that are made of recycled tires. No. I read that,
and I was like, good for you, James Spader, right,
(48:00):
and made you want to wear a suit like that,
didn't it? I wondered how you would make a rubber
suit it was comfortable and fashionable. The fraudst love it, um,
But there there's a you know, there's a big debate
over whether that is really part of environmental psychology or
if it's taking too big of a bite. And in
the nineties something called conservation psychology came along and it
wants to do the same exact thing. And there's also
(48:22):
ecological psychology that wants to do the same thing. So
there's a big leg leg wrestling match going on. And
that guy Philip Cotler that you referenced earlier, earlier, the
guy who was like, how can we better sell things
to people? He is now um, kind of going the
way of environmental psychology with making things greener, right, right, right,
(48:43):
He's flipped. So even if they are right, he turned
into a dirty rat. Even if they are trying to
nudge us into that behavior, it's tough to fault him
for pro nudging people toward pro conservation behavior. So that's
environmental psychology, everybody. That's what we've found out about it.
If you want to find out more about it, just
go start reading. You can spend years and years doing it.
(49:06):
And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail. Uh,
this is anonymous, but very interesting. Hey, guys, listen to
four years of podcasts in a year's time. Today I saw, boy,
You've got a lot of years to go anonymous. Today
I saw the new post on Guardian Angels and began
to listen, and about the fifteen minute mark, Chuck says
(49:28):
the guy gets a job at McDonald's in the Bronx,
and says, the McDonald's late night scene in New York
City is still nuts, but you're not getting murdered, but
it is crazy town. I stopped immediately and replayed what
you said because I couldn't believe it. My uncle was
murdered last year at McDonald's in the Bronx. I couldn't
believe it. Did you read this one? The details are
(49:50):
horrific and mostly sensationalized for the media, which of course
makes me angry. But he was an amazing man and strong,
loving force in my life. Could it be I'm just
super sensitive to this week, given that this is a
year from that, But imagine that though I imagine being
an anonymous like this, What are the chances that you
would even say that and the podcast would be published
(50:10):
almost exactly a year later? I remember listening to a
podcast where he talked about when people see their numbers
like eleven eleven, what's the name of that? The better mineff.
That's where you see like something, you learn about something,
and then you see it. Everyone right, that's what she's
talking about, UM or when people use old gimmicks to
(50:30):
find out what sex or baby will be in it
being because you're training yourself, allowing your subconscious through to
make it seem like your number is appearing more often,
or that you've got an answer. Thank you for always
giving me something to think about besides my stressful job. Guys,
and I will see you in Brooklyn. I'll be I'll
(50:51):
be the one who's blacked out in the shadows with
the modulated voice. No no, no no, she'll she's she's pregnant
and and maybe we'll be able to say miss Anonymous. Well,
thanks a lot, Anonymous. I'm sorry about your uncle, UM
and this uh, this time of year. It is very
bizarre though, that that happened. We can attest for sure
it was not planned. Email back, She's are excited that
(51:13):
we're reading this. UM. Well, if you want to get
in touch with us, like Anonymous did, you can go
on to stuff you Should Know dot com and check
out our social links. You can also send us an
email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How
stuff works for more podcasts for my heart radio because
(51:33):
at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows,
Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuco Bryant, and
there's a Jerry over there. Stuff you should know. Actually
(00:22):
had to program that was real, because a real real frog.
So we're in our nice quiet room here. It's so
nice to feel. The walls are dark and padded, ensconced
in love, and our chairs are comfy. It doesn't smell
that much. Jerry's food is in the stinky as usual. Actually,
it's funny you stayed in here when I want to
go get a drink to come back. Its smells pretty
(00:45):
pollock paneerie, like you can just think it is. I'm
just used to it. It's a good smell. And like
a restaurant or your dining room at your home or
kitchen in the studio, it's a weird smell. You know
what kind of food. Jerry hates American food? I know
she hates American food. She does, man, she's always eaten
(01:07):
great food from all over the World's good job. Uh so, Chuck. Yes,
we're talking today about psychology, but not the head shrinking
more the head, expanding variety of psychology. Shrink that head,
blow it up, because psychology over the years has really
kind of increased its scope further and further out of
(01:30):
your noggin. Yeah. It kind of started out very focused
on the noggin, very and then it was like, well,
truth be told, your mom has a lot to do
with this stuff too, and your friends going to come
out and say it, and your dad, they really screwed
you up. And then with this stuff with environmental psychology
has really expanded on a macro level. Yeah, because it's
(01:52):
saying and not only are you all screwed up by
yourself and your friends and family are screwing you up,
the physical spaces that you exist in can screw you up,
or the other side is great to make you happier,
more relaxed, um less stressed out. And we environmental psychologists
(02:14):
is what they started to call themselves, UM, are going
to figure out exactly the how, what, who, why, when, where,
the who's it, the any who, all of it to
explain how our environments affect us. And then while we're
at it, let's just throw in the whole kitchen sink.
We're gonna do it the other way to we're going
(02:34):
to figure out how humans affect the environment and how
we can make humans better stewards of the environment. But
for now, we're going to go take a nap because
this is a lot. Yeah, but all of this through
the lens of psychology, which, like I read this stuff,
I think it's really cool and interesting, and I think
you do too initially, but it seems to break down
(02:57):
a little bit scientifically. Uh and my whole jam. When
I walked in, I was like, I think this is
really neat, Like maybe they just shouldn't call it science
and they should just say like, hey, let's uh, let's
look at how a grocery store can best be planned out, um,
and touch on some psychology, but like, don't ask me
to prove it with studies that can be replicated. So
(03:20):
there are a lot of studies about this stuff. They're legitimate,
you know, um, peer reviewed studies, but they're they're real
disparate and not necessarily related. And I think what you're
talking about is environmental psychology tries to kind of bring
them all together and say this is our jam, and
that that the thing. The pieces don't necessarily connect yet
(03:44):
like you would think they would from you know, looking
on the outside, seeing that there's a whole field of
psychology dedicated to studying this is it. Hey, I want
to be paid a lot of money to consult on
a new shopping mall. I I maybe so, but I
honestly don't know what what the what the drive is?
I don't know. It's interesting stuff though, oh yeah it's
but it's famously interesting. Everybody loves environmental psychology, even if
(04:08):
you don't know the name of it. And people have
understood too that, like, our environments do affect us for
way longer than environmental psychology has been around. There's a
like every history of environmental psychology that you'll read will
give this example of Marco Polo reporting in the thirteenth century.
He came across a ruler in China who was curious
(04:31):
about why some neighboring state or kingdom was always like
super hostile, not only with other kingdoms, but within the
kingdom themselves. So he ordered an experiment done where he
had soil brought in from that kingdom placed under the
chairs of some people, and all the people started arguing.
So he concluded it must be in the soil, which
is I guess an early scientific experiment. He never explained
(04:55):
what was in the soil. Maybe ghosts. Yeah, right, should
we talk about Churchill since we're talking about history, Yeah,
we gotta kind of leap forward from the thirteenth century. Yeah.
Churchill very famously said we shape our buildings and later
they shape us belch cigar toke Uh. And he very
(05:16):
famously when World War two bombed out the Parliament building,
he said, rebuild it just as it was, and everyone
else like, hey, governor, shouldn't it be a bit bigger? No? Uh,
they had the chance to give everyone a little more space,
and no, do it exactly like it was. Uh. He
(05:37):
wanted to create a sense of urgency, and he said
at critical votes and moments it would be filled beyond capacity,
with members spilling out into the aisles. Sarn a little
Sean Connery in there. I can't let it pass. In
his view, a sustainable, I'm sorry, shootable sense of crowd
and urgency. That's pretty good. Key do Roger Moore doing
Winston Churchill. No, I've never tried Roger Moore. Yeah, I've
(06:02):
never heard anybody do Roger Moore. That was pretty good.
So um so. Yeah, there's been this awareness that like
like Churchill says, we shape our buildings and later they
shape us. But it wasn't a field a part of
psychology until the late fifties early sixties. Um. And actually
you can trace it back to one group of people
(06:24):
at City University, New York, YEP led by what are
they the Fighting Manhattan Transfers. They have a great a
capella group. Um, they were all they're a bunch of Cooney's.
I'm not sure which one this was City Mary, New York,
Like you know, they're all over town. Oh I didn't
know that. Okay, well I'm not sure which one it
(06:47):
was either. But Harold Prashansky was the leader of this
group from CUNEY and they were a group of social
psychologists and some people at a hospital in New York. Uh,
we'll just say hospital because it's probably only one, like
there's only one QUNI. Um. They came to this group
and said, hey, we're trying to figure out how to
make our hospital rooms like way better for patients. He said,
(07:09):
we're from hospital, right, he said, okay, we're from un UM.
And and Harold Persanski is like, we have no idea
how to tell you how to do that? Yeah, So
he's he went ahead and founded environmental psychology, which which
seeks to do exactly that. Yeah, he wrote the book
on it, the first one that is I'm sure they're
a gazillion now, uh. In nineteen seventy environmental psychology Colon
(07:34):
manned and his physical setting and by man he means
person human. But it was nineteen seventy, so there were
only men that mattered in nineteen seventy. So he is
the father of environmental psychology. He's the father of lies.
You know what I think the deal is is so unwieldy,
(07:56):
and they're trying to corral this unwieldy thing because it's
nature and its design and its color, and it's fabrics
and it's people's brains and all right, So we're just
gonna gripe about it sporadically throughout the whole episode. So
the whole idea of prior to environmental psychology, um and
still is the case in a lot of in a
(08:18):
lot of cases, is if you're going to do an experiment,
they would bring you to a very um just plain
lab and their idea was like, let's strip away everything
so you're not influenced by anything. They would hose you
off exactly, delouse you, and you would be just sitting
in a white room with fluorescent bulbs buzzing above your
(08:39):
head and Bill Murrays zapping you whenever you gave a
wrong answer, and they're like, this is the way to
do it. But there are a couple of psychologists Um
Roger Barker and Kurt Lewin specifically, that said, um, you
know what, that's making things worse. Stripping the world away
and putting people in the sterile environments like you're gonna
(08:59):
be confounding results just from the outset. It doesn't make
any sense in psychology psychologies. Other psychologists said, shut up,
be quiet, you two and they said, no, we won't.
We're going to go found environmental psychology along with Harold
Krushansky and the idea that you have to not only
study people in their natural setting to really understand what's
(09:20):
motivating their behavior, but also the idea that that natural
setting itself is is creating part of their behavior. You
can't you can't study that in the lab. So that's
one of the things that makes um environmental psychology unusual
is it's not meant to be conducted in the lab.
It's meant to be conducted in a real world study,
a real world setting. And the other thing about it
(09:41):
is it's multidiscipline area as well. Unwieldy. It is some
would say inclusive, but unwieldy also works as well. Yeah,
because what they're looking at is what they call uh
molar units, which are very large scale. We're talking about communities,
neighbor hoods. Maybe your house, house or or room is
(10:02):
probably about the smallest thing you think, or or maybe
your personal space. They seem to have adopted that as well. Yeah,
it's all over the place. Uh, and it covers every
angle that you can think of in terms of how
you interact with your environment. UM. Like we said, like um,
spatial planning and lighting, economics, acoustics, color, empty space. Yeah,
(10:28):
imagine that that's a brain buster right there. It is UM.
And so when what they're studying, what environmental psychologists study,
or what they call transactions, And this has been a
particular bone in my craw. I've never once seen someone
concretely defined what a transaction is. I would guess that
(10:49):
it's a transaction. It's just how you transact and interact
with those things, right, but exactly how like a transaction
And I'm totally pulling this out of my key. Start, Well,
then you're an environmental problems. But a transaction might be
like when you walk into a room and sit down
in a chair, that's probably a transaction with that room, right,
(11:09):
maybe why not? But my question also is like, Okay,
if you sit quietly in a room for an hour,
is that a transaction itself? Or is that hour made
up of much smaller transactions like you stirring in the
room because the concrete floor is making your butt fall asleep,
or you start to get scared because you hear a
(11:31):
weird noise, and like, all of the things that happened
over the hour, are those transactions or is the whole
thing a transaction. I've just never heard it concretely defined,
and it kind of drove me crazy because I really
looked for a solid definition of it. But just suffice
to say that in the field of environmental psychology, will
they study your transactions, which means your interaction with the environment,
(11:53):
And hey, let's just go ahead and say it the
environment's interaction with you in return. That's right. I'm sorry,
I'm glad you're crabby about one. And that's usually my role,
you know, I'm happy to take it over this time.
So where you first started seeing the impact of environmental
psychology was an architecture, and this has been going on
(12:16):
for decades basically, and it makes sense. This part makes
the most sense to me. Yeah, like when you transact
with a building and a lobby or an elevator or
a staircase, or an office or a or air wolf
or air wolf or the concierge desk in a hotel,
like all of this stuff has Oh, there's always been
(12:38):
a lot of thought, probably before they even called it
environmental psychology, like how do people interact with this when
you walk in? You want people to be uh, feel
good and understand where things are. Um, well, now there's
a balance that has to be struck. Though I don't
know if that actually did exist before environment I think
that may have been a contribution from the field. Yes,
(12:59):
I mean, yes, I'm sure there was some design or
something like that, but the the ideas what you just
said to have really been helped along by the field
of environments. Like you might be right, because that's what's
called bottom up, Like let's really think about how people
interact with this environment and whereas before it was topped down, like,
let's just build this beautiful building, and it turns out
(13:20):
it's really confusing, Yeah, um, because they didn't think about people, know,
and there were There are actually two big things that
happened in the sixties, well one in the sixties, one
in the early seventies that kind of said, oh wait,
our environments are physical spaces really do affect us and
they can have really negative effects to um. The first
one was the Kitty Genovase murder, which we covered, We
(13:41):
did a whole episode on there that was Yeah, but
the long story short, the popular conception is that, uh,
an entire apartment block of people um watched Kitty Genovese
be murdered publicly over the course of like an hour,
and nobody did anything, even though it's not fully true.
But reason that they didn't do anything because they were
(14:01):
all isolated from one another. They all figured that somebody
else was going to call their architecture messed with their
brains and made them less compassionate or um separate at least. Yeah,
then they would have been maybe if they lived out
in the country or something like that. That was the
big first one. Yeah, that which I don't even know
if we touched on that in the episode, did we?
(14:23):
I think maybe? If not, we just did, all right,
consider that a falloup. Uh. The other one was this
housing complex in St. Louis in two that was built
called Pruitt I Go and it was built in ninety
six hundred and seventy units in thirty three eleven story buildings.
(14:46):
It was a very big deal because it was touted
as being this progressive, really modern place for a housing project,
and people are gonna be living in this modern space
and it's gonna be amazing and that's going to make
a big difference in their lives. Yeah, it was. Actually
there was. I looked all over for the what magazine
it was, but some architectural magazine magazine named it the
(15:08):
best high apartment of the year while it was being designed.
And the idea was like, here, we're going to give
you this amazing place to live, low income, downtrodden St.
Louis people, and you are going to be able to
raise yourselves up out of poverty just by living in
a nice new this gift from the gods of architecture basically,
(15:29):
and the exact opposite happened that within sixteen years by two,
the Prude I Go Complex, thirty three eleven story buildings,
was raised to the ground and there became a really
really negative popular um idea about Prude I Go, and
that was that no matter what you did for poor
(15:52):
people and in this case read black people, they're going
to drag it down to their level. Because within that
sixteen years, Prude I Go became blighted by crime, vandalism, um, neglect, disrepair. Uh.
The police were afraid to go out there into the complex.
(16:13):
There was a sense of lawlessness, and so when it
got torn down, everybody said, yep, see, can't do anything
for those people. And then later on academics, including environmental psychologist, said,
wait a minute, I don't know that that's actually the case.
What if it was the actual buildings that were the problem. Yeah,
they came in and they called it, Uh, this is
dysfunctional architecture. And they said that you did this top
(16:35):
down thing. It built this beautiful building, but didn't think
about the people, this bottom up approach. You never thought
about the residents. Uh. And research later on. This is
where we get into a couple of other theories that
we've talked about. I know, we talked about the broken
windows theory, which basically is the idea that, um, you
need to go after the vandal or the person who
(16:57):
throws a brick through a window, even though that's low
hanging fruit. Uh legally speaking as far as cops go. Yeah,
so you need to go after those people because those
small things that happen will basically lead to larger things.
And that's what happened at Prutago. They were they never
changed out the burn light bulbs, they never fixed the
(17:17):
broken windows, And if you believe in the broken windows theory,
that's a pretty prime example of how something you can
get out of hand, right. Um. The other big theory
that kind of evolved to explain what happened at prut
Igo is called the defensible spaces theory, and that was
basically that the designer of this complex had failed to
delineate each unit from the other, so that really the
(17:42):
only thing that separated units were the thin interior walls.
Everything outside was just common public belonged to no one,
so it was totally ripe for abuse and um and
lawlessness and criminality, criminal behavior. Part of the other problem
with the design was at the common areas, the play areas,
(18:03):
we're all um uh, we're kind of like around corners
were out of view, so there was no way for
the community keep an eye on their kids or one another,
and so these became hotbeds for crime as well. And
inside and out right, wasn't the idea that they were
all identical, so there was no sense of individual ownership,
which can bring about pride. It was just here, you
(18:24):
live here, now, stay here, and that doesn't work with people.
Um and so environmental psychologists had this idea um afterwards,
as they were kind of thinking about all this stuff,
that well, maybe there's some easy things we can do,
like I don't know, asking residents what they want or
need out of a building while you're designing the building right,
(18:46):
or if something doesn't work out or is working out
okay and people are moving out, interview them then and say, hey,
what do you like about the place as you hate
and there's those are like you said, low hanging fruit.
But that's the kind of thing that actually and help
make a building successful and give people a sense of ownership.
And if you feel ownership over a place, you're gonna
(19:07):
tell somebody, hey, pick up that trash, that's my walkway,
you know, just throw your trash there. If that's really
kind of their walkway as much as it is yours,
maybe you don't feel quite as moved to say something
in that case. So just like think taking that stuff
into into account as far as environmental psychology is concerned,
helps explain how you can prompt someone to take ownership
(19:30):
of a place and therefore get more out of it,
but also take care of the place as well, which
is that bi directional reciprocal interaction with our physical environments.
That is like the basis of environmental psychology. All right,
let's take a break here, this is dense. Yeah, we'll
be back right after this. Well, now we're on the
(20:08):
road driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing
or two from Josh can chuck stuff you should know?
All right, all right, so let's talk about some of
these behaviors um as far as like fitting into a
space that have kind of popped up over the years.
(20:31):
There's one, two, three of these listed that make a
lot of sense to me. Yeah. The first one is territoriality.
And you just you put this together. You describe this
very plainly. Is like if you go into a coffee
shop and you put your bag down on a table
and then go over your coffee, or if you just
dress up your cubicle with dumb stuff, that's that's you
(20:53):
claiming your space, even if it's not your space, Like
your cubicle you're like, this is my backpack on this table,
don't sit there, Right, that's just territoriality. That's one way
that we behave because most places, most spaces are social
spaces are used by more than one person. Right. The
next one is crowding, which I think is super interesting
because crowding, uh is a result of density. But you
(21:17):
can have density without being crowded if you have smart design.
Like thousands and tens of thousands of people go through
a shopping mall every day, but you should never feel
crowded in a shopping mall because of the way they
have these things designed. Dude, it happens to me every time.
Do you feel crowded? It's just it's just a spectrum
of how soon starts. Really, every time I go to
(21:40):
a mall, you feel crowded. Yeah, And there's the opposite
of out should be right, I know, but it's me
Like I'm I mean, like really well designed malls, but
it's still me, right, still feel crowded. There's a period
where like the thing that you mean I would do
in the wintertime would be to go walk around the
mall because we were like a half a mile away
from it. So you mean Momo and I would go
(22:01):
walk around the mall. Oh, I thought you meant the
interior wall mall. Uh, mall walkers, not the mall. We
that's basically what we were doing. But we were just
killing time because I worked at the Gap for a
month and I didn't know that was the thing before
the before the stores opened, the mall was open, and
that's where you'll find, uh, some really fantastic jumpsuits walking
(22:22):
around and the exercise clothes. Yeah, and they'll have like
clubs and coffee clutches and all sorts of stuff. Yeah,
it's mall walkings of things. Okay, but you were on
the outside of the mall. No, No, we were inside.
We have a bag that Momo comes. Um. But so
we're walking around the inside just at night or whatever.
You know, the youngest ones, they're kind of so um.
But every time I'd just be like tense and just
(22:45):
feel crowded and like edgy and stressed out before them
all opened, Okay, I don't stop with the mall walking
thing has nothing to do with that. Alright, malls open,
mall's open, you're shopping, maybe even nighttime. Emma was there
and we're inside, okay, and there's no one wearing jump
and you're not old. But that was well, now we've
(23:05):
reached the end of the story. So you would just
get anxious, uh, despite the fact that they were purposely
designed to not feel crowded, right, And that's part of
the challenge of mall design is to to make it
so people like me can stand to stay there as
long as possible, because the longer you're there, the more
shopping you're gonna do. And but you want a bunch
(23:26):
of people. You don't want just one person at a
time going through the mall because of crowding. You want
a bunch of people, so you want to juggle how
to get all those people in there shopping at the
same time without making one another feel crowded. How are
you at genuine crowd crowded things like sports games or concerts?
And it's about the same, really, I think. I think
(23:46):
because in the situation like that, I'm going into it
expecting it. Apparently it surprises me every time I'm at
a mall. Will you leave a concert early or wait
for people to file out a little bit before you,
or you in the middle of that like elbow to
elbow hit miss but to crutch scene. It changes from
from It depends on how you know, relaxed on feeling
and if like you know that they're gonna like play
(24:08):
the big song in the last song. Oh yeah, yeah.
Usually I don't like sitting around for the encore, but
if it's the you know, the song that I came
to see, I'll do it right. You're so you're at
the Who's the German Tech? No Group, Skinny Puppy, no
the So you're at a craft work show. I've actually
been to Seacraft, I know. And you're like, I really
want to leave, but they haven't played Liver Worst yet?
(24:31):
Which is the best song called liver Worst? I don't
think so maybe yeah, otivon they definitely do. Uh. We
saw them at the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
It was amazing. I never went there, or or maybe
I did us an opera there. It would be a
good place for that. And we left early. Oh really,
(24:52):
you didn't wait for the encore? We saw Skinny Puppy too.
By the way, I think they're from Washington State, not Germany.
But we had to wait for their encore to see
like their big song Smothered. Hope they wait until the encore.
I know that they do that every single night. Sure,
even though it's Skinny Puppy and that's not really their thing,
they still do it, all right. So that's crowding you
(25:16):
all right, there's three of us in here. How do
you feel? I feel fine now. You guys make me
feel very relaxed. That's nice. So privacy is the last one, um,
and that's you know, people want a private space. Um.
But there's a subset of that called personal space, which
is not the same thing as privacy. Personal spaces what
(25:36):
do they define it as? The one and a half
to four ft around you in all directions? Right? There
was an anthropologist actually named Edward Hall who came up
with that. I'm big on personal space. One of my
big pet peeves is being an online for anything and
feelingline online different online is what you say in New York, Uh,
(26:00):
feeling someone like kicking my heel or breathing down my neck.
I'm always just like, just like You're not going to
get there any quicker by breathing on me. Dude, please
back off. Where are they frauderists? Have you ever considered
maybe you're being I'm not sure, subway creep, I don't know.
(26:20):
I had a situation a few weeks ago. Cheez, should
I even talk about this? Oh boy? I like where
this is going? All right, I'll go ahead. And I
was in a grocery store and I was really motoring
because I was just going to get a couple of
things and I want to get out of there. And
I went and I cut through the what usually is
the sandwich line, of which there was none at the
time the deli, Like yeah, but it's a little sort
(26:42):
of narrow space where you stand in line. It's like
roped off. And I kind of cut through there because
there was no one there. And this as this kid
was ducking under the little rope and I just sort
of shimmy by him and did one of those like whoa,
I went by the kid, You did a rick flair?
Think No. I didn't say a word, but came come
back five minutes later and this, uh, this kid's mother
(27:03):
like starts yelling at me that I pushed shoved her kid,
and I was like, first of all, I was like,
I sort of looked around, was like me, and she
was like, yes, she shoved my she shoved my kid,
or you shoved my kid. I was like, no, said
I didn't. I didn't shove your kid, and she starts
she was like I saw it, and the kid was like, yeah,
you did. And I looked at him and I was like,
I didn't say it out loud, but I was like,
(27:24):
you liar, I did not touch you. And I started
again to say no, I didn't. I swear I did
not touch your kid. And she was really adamant, and
people started looking and I knew the only way out
of there was just too And I'm a I'm a
big justice guy, so this really was hard for me.
But just say, uh ma'am if I did, I'm really
(27:45):
really sorry. I have a small child. I was not
aware that I did, but I clearly did, and I'm
really sorry. And I was like, because I was waiting
for a cell phone to come out, you know, so
I was like, the only way out of here is
just lie and say yeah, up your kid and I'm sorry.
You're like, I I have a small child who mus
shove all the time and she doesn't tatle like your
(28:05):
little really upsetting because it was getting out of hand.
I was like, very upset for the rest of the night.
How are you feeling now recounting it. I didn't shove
that kid. I believe you did touch him. I'll bet
every single person listening believes you. Oh man, al right,
So where are we? Personal space? That's what I was
talking about. Yeah, I shove kids when they get in
my way, right exactly. So the upshot of all of
(28:27):
this everything we've talked about, the idea that you need
um space that is your own, that you can defend,
and that you can consider um a place to have
privacy and to put your stuff, and um the idea
that high density of people in the wrong kind of
situation creates crowding. All this stuff contributes to the ultimate
(28:49):
goal one of the big goals of environmental psychology busices
to create put all this stuff together and create ideal
environments that's right, which is a balance of things, not
necessarily like just the biggest open place in the world.
Because people have to shop and people you have to
still have these other things that have to be accomplished.
(29:09):
But the quote here is where people feel self assured
and competent, where they can familiarize themselves with the environment
whilst being engaged with it. And there are four main
factors here to that basically say it's ideal or not. Unity.
Basically things work well together. Self explanatory, like like the
dude saying that has rugg really tied the room together? Yeah, exactly.
(29:31):
Um legibility that a person can navigate that space without
getting lost. Very important complexity, uh that it's just complex
enough to like keep you interested. And then finally mystery,
which I think is pretty interesting, which is like you
never know what's around the next corner, right, could be
(29:54):
a pot of chocolate melted, could be death. Who knows,
You won't know until you go. Look, that's right. So
a lot of people who own businesses over the years
since the you know, the sixties, win environmental psychology has started,
has said, hey, you know what, a lot of this
stuff about how people behave in spaces, I could use
(30:16):
this to make people stay in my space longer, and
maybe they'll be likelier to spend some money that I'll
get to keep because they came to my space and
stayed here and in fact, one of the pioneers of
environmental psychology, guy named Philip Cotler Um. He coined the
term atmospherics, and atmospherics is exactly what you would think
(30:37):
it is. But he he had this very famous quote
famous in these circles. I should say that, Um, in
some cases, the place, more specifically, the atmosphere of the
place is more influential than the product itself in the
purchase decision. In some cases, the atmosphere is the primary
(31:00):
a product. Yeah, I mean you brought up the Apple store, um,
but there are other I don't go to these places,
but I've been through and walked by some stores that
feel like a nightclub with the way they're lit and
the music and the Abercromie and Fitch, I think is
what you have been in a republic, But yeah, it's uh.
(31:24):
They're they're trying to create an experience. And Emily even
does this with her store. But it's not a cheesy nightclub.
She tries to create an experience while people come in
and they smell nice things and it's relaxing and there's plants.
A yoga club, yeah, sort of exact night yoga club basically,
but so so, yeah, what she's doing is engaging in
(31:44):
atmospheric and it makes total sense. Of course, you want
people that not want to like turn around and leave
your store, people mill around, just have the product. He
was taking it to to the extreme, saying like, sometimes
the actual place where you buy the product is even
more important to the consumer than the product. I think
that's pretty rare, but those are you know, two extremes
on the on the spectrum, just the products and the
(32:06):
place being more important than the products. Whereas you know
most stores fall within that spectrum, right. Yeah, we went
to a store in Paris where both of us that
just sold a bunch of different things and um, I
mean from pottery to quilts to close the plants, and
we were both like, I never want to leave this store.
It was just so awesome on every level. So like
(32:30):
the store is self, the atmosphere made you want to stay. Yeah,
the design of it, the mystery I wanted because they had,
you know, go of these stairs. What's up there? I
see a light shining around that corner. The heck is
that bloody candlestick on the stairs? You're like, what's up there?
I wish I could remember the name of this place, man,
it was just like everything about it was perfect, okay
for us, Well, we'll we'll buzz market at some time
(32:52):
when you got it. That's right. But one of the
one of the places that has really kind of is
posed itself as a really great example, understandable example of
atmospherics and how they can be used to kind of work.
It's mojo on our brains are casinos. Yeah, which we
talked about in our episode on casinos. Uh, here's the deal.
(33:16):
Humans have triggers and clues that the Germans call site
cabs not psite burgers. I want to say, it's so
bad right every time? Uh time giver is what that
literally translates to our synchronizer, and um, this is like
these triggers that we use are how we adjust our
(33:37):
biological clocks. Things like where's the sun literally in the sky,
or even looking out a window, does it look like
dusk or down? Things like that or even literal clocks
can allow us to reset our biological clocks. Casinos don't
like those things, no, no, because casinos want you to
forget all about time and any pressing matters you have
on the outside and instead spend your time and your
(33:59):
money in the casino, so they remove any out windows
to the outdoors far away from the casino floor, so
there's no sense of what time of the day it is.
There's no clocks or anything like that. They're also very
well aware that sound plays a huge role in the environment.
So in any casino you will hear all sorts of
dinging and buzzing and fells and stuff like that. But
(34:20):
it's a constant, it's a it's constantly going on, and
then when somebody wins, it rises so much so that
everyone in the casino knows somebody just want But the
fact that the dinging and buzzing is always going on
to some degree, makes your makes you think without thinking
that winning is always going on because you've associated these
sounds with winning and it's constant, so people must constantly
(34:42):
be winning here. Maybe I should play some of these slots. Yeah,
you know, the one thing I noticed in Vegas is
the the casino doors are never closed to the outside.
So if you're walking around and it's add ten degrees
in Nevada, which is could be the case in any
given month, you walk by that casino and it's just
you get hit with a wave of air. Conditioned air
(35:04):
like you've never felt before, and you're like, oh, maybe
I should go in there for a little Oh totally,
you want to go in there just a cool down,
and like, well, I've got a five bucks in my pocket,
might as well give it to the casino. And then
you get a snoop full of like raw cigarette smoke
and you're like, we'll go back outside. Awful, it's pretty bad.
What else though, mystery, that's a big one in casinos. Yeah,
so we should talk about the actual layout of the
(35:25):
casino floor. It's we talked about legibility and how you know,
you should be able to find your way around. Casinos
deliberately make make their casino floors illegible so that you
just kind of wander around, like there's a general sense
of the direction you want to be going in. It's
not like they want you to get lost, because once
you get lost, yeah, you you're in trouble and you
(35:46):
don't want to you don't want to do anything, You
want to just get out of there. They want you
to not to literally get lost, but figuratively get lost
in the experience, like where you're okay with wandering and right,
So they make it so you're you're just kind of meandering,
like you said, Um, there's like little offshoots. They are like, oh,
what's around this corner? Oh, more slots, Maybe I'll play it.
What a great little thing to find, um with For
(36:07):
the venues and the restaurants, they're placed along the back
of the casino floor, so that you if you're coming
just to go to dinner there, you have to go
through the casino and wander around and maybe play some
slots and then um, Like I was saying that, they
don't want you to get lost or feel lost, because
environmental psychology is identified a condition called spatial anxiety, where
(36:29):
once you're like, wait, which way do I go? You
don't want to party, you don't want to gamble, you
don't want to shop, you don't want to do anything
but get out of there. So they walk a really
fine line here and deliberately confusing you with the layout
without making you anxious. And they do this partially by
(36:50):
unconscious subliminal cues. They will use literally on the floor
that show the way that you don't realize you're following.
But if you stop and look down at like a
casino a floor or an airport floor or something like that.
You'll notice that there's probably a different color something is
leading you in the passenger you're really supposed to be
going on. Yeah, whether it's a different color carpet or
(37:11):
maybe a runner in the center of a carpet that
stands out, or a tile on the edge that feels
like it leads you in a different direction. And this
is all to help you in wayfinding, which you think
of in like nature, but like your wayfinding anytime you're
in a big area like that for sure, like you're
literally finding your way. There are signs, that's a that's
(37:32):
a technique of wayfinding. Yeah, if you if you sign
edge is a real thing. They do have signs and casinos,
it's not like again, they don't want spatial anxiety, so
they'll have a sign that says restaurant this way, just
walk through this maze to get there. But they're your
steak is waiting on you for that's not the case
anymore now. It used to be right, that's all you
(37:56):
can eat. Um, So that one thing is signed. It's
one thing is um like actually putting a lion on
the floor. That you don't realize is they're like, you're
not right, like i'm lost, let me look down at
the floor and see which way to go. You're not
even aware that you're picking up on that I'm following it.
They've also figured out that lighting can do the same
(38:16):
thing too. Next time you're walking down a bright main corridor,
look up and realize that you're following very bright light,
and that along some of the corridors and hallways that
you're not supposed to be down, the lighting is not
nearly as bright, right, Or an information desk or a
concierge or uh, something like that that's always got those
(38:37):
like usually can lights pointing straight down saying come over here,
I'll help you out right. So, um, what's really really
interesting to meet Chuck is UM, I didn't see anybody
being like this is the next step. This is the
next horizon for environmental psychology, although I'd be surprised if
it isn't. But all of these findings, all this stuff
(38:58):
that we just talked about way finding things like UM,
cognitive maps, UM, spatial anxiety, all this stuff appears to
translate fully to virtual environments. So all this stuff that
environmental psychology has found out about how to make a
casino more UM palatable and make you want to like spend.
(39:18):
Also works for online storefronts or um how you find
your way around, also works for designing video games and
that kind of so. So environmental psychology works in the
virtual world too. So it's your home, it's your stores,
it's your cars, and then it's also virtual the future,
the future. You want to take another break and then
(39:41):
come back and talk about the whole green movement part,
let's do it. Well, Well, now we're on the road,
(40:02):
driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
two from Josh can chuck stuff you should know? All right,
so this is pretty dense. You're right. Why I are
we back? Okay? Yeah, I didn't know if that was off, Mike,
(40:25):
I'll stay in front of everybody. You didn't call me, Hey, Jerk,
I figured it was on. Mike figured we're gonna leave
it in. Hey, Jerk, this is dense. You're right for once?
Are we recording? Sorry? So yeah, this this is where
it gets interesting to me, because finally I think it's
all interesting. But the flip side that we mentioned a
(40:47):
couple of times is how you affected your environment as well.
And I'm all about affecting your environment, like peeing outside
this environment, grow plant grow. Um, Like, everyone knows that
green spaces are good for your psyche and looking out
(41:08):
a window is better. You know. I think I've said
before I went to high school that didn't have windows. No,
you didn't say that. Yeah, we didn't have windows in
our school. What I know, it sounds crazy and it
is now that I look back at. We had one
common area that had these very high up windows, but
none of the hallways, none of the classrooms had windows.
My friend, your high school was in the experiment. It
(41:29):
might have been. I mean it was built in nineteen
seventy nine, so I think I think it was the year. No,
I think it very much might have been an experiment.
Like kids get distracted with windows, like they'll do some
real learning. It rita in high school because you can't
see anything. And then they followed your class. We're like,
oh god, no, tear it down. But everyone knows that
(41:54):
green spaces and looking out a window or taking a
walk through a park or something can really be restorative. Um.
They even there was one example of botanical gardens one
of my our favorite things to do as a family.
But they said in the study here it's like leave
your family at home. If you really want the benefit,
go by yourself. Each of you needs to split up
(42:14):
and wander around by yourselves, which hey, I look forward
to when we can do that. So that's I mean,
that's pretty low hanging again, stuff like, yeah, hanging out
in a botanical garden is restorative. But the thing about
environmental psychologists are like why, you know, why does that happen?
And then also specifically, how can we use that to
build ideal environments? And remember back at the very beginning,
(42:38):
Harold Prashansky was asked to how to make hospital rooms better,
more more conducive to patient well being. He said, put
him outside. Well, that eventually became, you know, kind of
a a separate arm of environmental psychology that was led
by Rachel and Stephen kaplan Um from the University of Michigan,
(42:58):
which has a huge EP programs, I believe because of
these guys. But starting in the seventies through through the
nineties to the end of the nineties, they studied the
effects of the outdoors on humans to understand how to
improve built outdoor settings to make it to just squeeze
and extract every little bit that restorative juice from nature
(43:22):
and let it drift down your face like so much
naval orange juice, just get all sticky from it and
what it's going. It tastes so good and the smell
is almost overwhelming, overpowering, but it's just so beautiful and
natural that you eventually just faint. That's what their goal was.
So they went that way by way of a couple
(43:43):
of times. A couple of kinds of attention that they
talked about directed attention, which is how if you're in
a real structured, human built environment, you're gonna narrow your focus,
which can be good to a degree if you're at
work or something, but it can lead to depletion and
stress and anxiety over time. Uh. The other kind of
attention is fascination, which I mean, should we even talk
(44:06):
about that? It just says it all. It makes me
smile just saying that word fascination, which is expansive and
the wilderness and nature is what brings that along. Yeah,
they kind of mindset where you know, anything can happen,
or you can just kind of trance out or zone out.
Your your intense is not being directed right, and they
have done There have been plenty of studies where they
(44:26):
found that people do recover from sickness and surgery a
lot faster, need less meds, and have fewer complications, and
just feel better about your recuperation. If your hospital has
a green space. They found that not only just a
real green space, but if you had a view of
a window that was just a picture of an outdoor
(44:49):
green space, I still recovered better. They didn't even give
you pictures of that stuff. They tried to beat out
of you the memory of what the outdoors were like.
So they've come up the ratio though of green spaces.
Two structures within that green space, like you know, a
plaza or a fountain or whatever, um of seventy to thirty.
(45:10):
I guess seventy green space human built structures, right. I
guess they just kind of worked out out over the average. Yeah,
But as I think that's a cool thing to know
if you're planning a green spaces there's actual science behind it. Well. Yeah,
and even if there's not necessarily science behind how restorative
(45:32):
it is, which there is increasingly, the opposite is definitely
well proven. Where sensory deprivation drives us nuts very quickly,
sensory overload does as well. There is this ninety two
study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
that found that patients began to exhibit the symptoms of schizophrenia,
(45:53):
especially disordered speech, after just a forty three minute movie
that was highly intense in sound and color. Yes, sound
is a big thing for me if I have if
I have more than one different kinds of sound coming
at me, Like I'm listening to the radio and like
my daughter will play something on a thing. Oh and
(46:15):
maybe Emily is saying something to me. Forget it. It's
like you're at the mall, dude, I lose it. I
gotta get rid of a sound. I can just run
and start pushing kids out of the work, shoving kids
and put Emiley's mouth and I destroy Ruby's toy. You
got mesophonia? Buddy? Is that what that is? Maybe? Usually
(46:36):
it's more something like that. If it's one thing chewing,
it doesn't bother me. Two people chewing might be a problem,
especially if they're hum chewing. Man like those people Matt m.
Dylan and the Flamingo kid. Did he hump you? Yeah?
It was like he went to his girlfriend's parents house
(46:57):
for dinner. He's like, no, no, And I haven't seen
that in a long time. I haven't either, but never
forget that part. So um. One of the big challenges
now that environmental psychology has taken on is this idea
that they got to figure out how to make people
want to take care of the planet more, And they're
figuring it out. But basically all they're doing is repurposing
(47:17):
social psychology and its findings on consumerism and redirecting it
toward more conservation minded stuff, which is interesting, like the
finding like um, like, some people like new things. So
if you present something is new and novel and nobody's
adopted it yet, some people will say, oh, I want
to try that. Other people are more competitive, for if
(47:38):
they find out Shelbyville is about to win a recycling award,
they're going to redouble their efforts so their town wins it.
Or if this celebrity endorses this product a sort of
an obvious one, sure, Like James Spader wears sustainably sourced
suits that are made of recycled tires. No. I read that,
and I was like, good for you, James Spader, right,
(48:00):
and made you want to wear a suit like that,
didn't it? I wondered how you would make a rubber
suit it was comfortable and fashionable. The fraudst love it, um,
But there there's a you know, there's a big debate
over whether that is really part of environmental psychology or
if it's taking too big of a bite. And in
the nineties something called conservation psychology came along and it
wants to do the same exact thing. And there's also
(48:22):
ecological psychology that wants to do the same thing. So
there's a big leg leg wrestling match going on. And
that guy Philip Cotler that you referenced earlier, earlier, the
guy who was like, how can we better sell things
to people? He is now um, kind of going the
way of environmental psychology with making things greener, right, right, right,
(48:43):
He's flipped. So even if they are right, he turned
into a dirty rat. Even if they are trying to
nudge us into that behavior, it's tough to fault him
for pro nudging people toward pro conservation behavior. So that's
environmental psychology, everybody. That's what we've found out about it.
If you want to find out more about it, just
go start reading. You can spend years and years doing it.
(49:06):
And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail. Uh,
this is anonymous, but very interesting. Hey, guys, listen to
four years of podcasts in a year's time. Today I saw, boy,
You've got a lot of years to go anonymous. Today
I saw the new post on Guardian Angels and began
to listen, and about the fifteen minute mark, Chuck says
(49:28):
the guy gets a job at McDonald's in the Bronx,
and says, the McDonald's late night scene in New York
City is still nuts, but you're not getting murdered, but
it is crazy town. I stopped immediately and replayed what
you said because I couldn't believe it. My uncle was
murdered last year at McDonald's in the Bronx. I couldn't
believe it. Did you read this one? The details are
(49:50):
horrific and mostly sensationalized for the media, which of course
makes me angry. But he was an amazing man and strong,
loving force in my life. Could it be I'm just
super sensitive to this week, given that this is a
year from that, But imagine that though I imagine being
an anonymous like this, What are the chances that you
would even say that and the podcast would be published
(50:10):
almost exactly a year later? I remember listening to a
podcast where he talked about when people see their numbers
like eleven eleven, what's the name of that? The better mineff.
That's where you see like something, you learn about something,
and then you see it. Everyone right, that's what she's
talking about, UM or when people use old gimmicks to
(50:30):
find out what sex or baby will be in it
being because you're training yourself, allowing your subconscious through to
make it seem like your number is appearing more often,
or that you've got an answer. Thank you for always
giving me something to think about besides my stressful job. Guys,
and I will see you in Brooklyn. I'll be I'll
(50:51):
be the one who's blacked out in the shadows with
the modulated voice. No no, no no, she'll she's she's pregnant
and and maybe we'll be able to say miss Anonymous. Well,
thanks a lot, Anonymous. I'm sorry about your uncle, UM
and this uh, this time of year. It is very
bizarre though, that that happened. We can attest for sure
it was not planned. Email back, She's are excited that
(51:13):
we're reading this. UM. Well, if you want to get
in touch with us, like Anonymous did, you can go
on to stuff you Should Know dot com and check
out our social links. You can also send us an
email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How
stuff works for more podcasts for my heart radio because
(51:33):
at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows,
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!