Measuring reactions to architecture
I’ve always wondered why it is that some people like certain things, when others don’t. What happens in the brain to make one person like a certain colour, and another dislike it? Can we measure this, and if yes, can we use this information to influence mood and behaviour? How can we use this in our architectural design process to make the best building for the intended use? I found a research article that might answer some of these questions. I did my best to condense and summarise, but I do encourage you to read the whole thing if you’re interested. Let's get to it!
Psychological and neural responses to architectural interiors
Source: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.01.009
Introduction
Nowadays, people spend most of their lives inside buildings, and the design of these buildings can have a big impact on how these people feel and behave. There has been a lot of interest in recent years in understanding how the brain responds to architecture, but there isn’t a lot of research yet on the specific psychological effects of different architectural designs.
There are three main hypotheses for the study. The first is that people's responses to architectural interiors can be explained by a few underlying psychological constructs. The second is that certain design features (like curvature, ceiling height, and enclosure) can affect these psychological constructs. The third is that these psychological constructs correspond to specific patterns of neural activity in the brain.
Aesthetic response measures
The researchers propose a neuroscientific model of architectural experience called the aesthetic triad model. This model suggests that aesthetic experiences in the built environment are mediated by three large-scale neural systems: knowledge-meaning, emotion-valuation, and sensorimotor systems. These neural systems align with three important domains of psychological processing: cognition, emotion, and behaviour.
Based on this model, the researchers propose that architectural encounters produce three general classes of psychological experiences: cognitive judgments associated with knowledge-meaning systems, emotional responses derived from emotion-valuation systems, and behavioural-motivational responses linked to sensorimotor activation.
To test this model, the researchers used 16 aesthetic rating scales that capture important aspects of architectural experience. These rating scales have been used in previous research on environmental psychology and empirical aesthetics.
Cognitive judgements of architecture
People make cognitive judgments when viewing architectural spaces. These judgments are based on the prior knowledge and experiences that people bring to their evaluations of the external qualities of their surroundings. There are five key measures of cognitive judgment in the built environment: complexity, organization, modernity, naturalness, and beauty.
Complexity refers to the amount of information present in a space and the informational richness of a scene. Studies have shown that people tend to have a clear preference for spaces with high levels of complexity.
Organization is also important, as it implies an absence of randomness and the presence of predictable patterns such as symmetry and structural redundancy.
Modernity is also a measure of cognitive judgment, which captures people's perceptions of the age, condition, and architectural style of a building.
Naturalness is another one that is important, as interacting with natural environments enhances many aspects of psychological functioning.
Lastly, beauty is a measure of cognitive judgment that captures whether people find a space to be aesthetically pleasing or not. Studies in environmental psychology and architectural research have shown that attractiveness of a space can affect people's wellbeing and it plays a primary role in people's desire to live in a certain place.
Emotional responses to architecture
Architectural spaces not only affect our external judgments, but also our inner emotions and states of being. It's important to not just look at a building's appearance, but also how it makes us feel on a personal level. Many experts have talked about the introspective dimension of experiencing architecture. There are eight key emotional responses that people have to buildings: personalness, feeling at home, relaxation, comfort, stimulation, uplift, vitality, and overall positive or negative feelings.
For example, personal spaces tend to make us feel warm and intimate, while impersonal spaces can feel cold and boring. Similarly, the degree to which a space makes us feel cozy or "at home" is a key measure of emotional response. Stress and relaxation are also big factors in how we experience a building. Comfort is another important one, and researchers are interested in understanding how design affects our physiological stimulation. Additionally, the extent to which a place makes us feel uplifted or depressed is important for our overall wellbeing. Vitality is also a key measure of emotional response and is related to physical and mental health. The overall positive or negative feelings we have towards a space are also a commonly studied factor.
It's important to note that these emotional responses are not just based on emotions alone, but also on cognitive and sensory processes. For example, our feelings of "hominess" can be affected by our cultural background, memories, and experiences. Our pleasure response to a building can also be affected by our education and expertise, depending on which values we find important.
Behavioural-motivational responses to architecture
Visualisation of the aesthetic network. Image from original article.
The final class of aesthetic response measures is all about how architecture affects our behaviour, movement, and motivation. These are linked to how our brains process sensory information. There are three main behavioural measures we'll talk about: interest, approachability, and explorability.
Interest is important when it comes to how we perceive and respond to our surroundings. It's closely tied to both our senses and our motivation. Basically, if something catches our attention and holds our interest, we're more likely to approach it and explore it. Environmental psychologists have even said that certain features of the environment are more likely to grab our attention if they're important for our survival as a species.
Approachability and explorability are also important. They measure how likely we are to want to explore and get closer to a certain architectural space. These measures are heavily influenced by our senses, but they also depend on our emotions and thoughts. For example, even if something looks interesting, if it gives us a bad feeling, we're less likely to want to explore it.
Architectural variables
Ceiling height
The height of the ceiling impacts how people feel about a space. Generally, people tend to prefer ceilings around 3 metres (10 feet) high for different types of spaces. Studies have found that people tend to think that rooms with high ceilings are more beautiful than those with low ceilings. Additionally, when researchers used fMRI brain scans to look at how people respond to different ceiling heights, they found that high ceilings activate certain brain areas involved in paying attention and exploring a space. This is in line with other research that suggests that high ceilings make people feel like they have more room and make them think of freedom, while low ceilings can make people feel cramped and confined.
Enclosure
Research suggests that how enclosed a space is can affect our feelings and perceptions of it. According to Appleton's prospect-refuge theory, humans have a natural preference for places that allow us to see without being seen. This is because these types of spaces have historically helped us stay safe. Studies have found that people generally feel safer in open spaces and prefer interiors that have a lot of visual connection to the outside. In one study, researchers looked at how open and enclosed spaces affected people's feelings and brain activity. They found that people wanted to explore open spaces more and thought they were more beautiful than enclosed spaces. The fMRIs showed that open spaces activated areas associated with visual motion, while enclosed spaces activated areas linked to fear. This is consistent with other research that found enclosed spaces can make people feel more stressed.
Curvature
The shape of buildings can affect how people feel about them. Curved buildings are generally considered more attractive than straight ones and people tend to prefer curved shapes over straight shapes. Studies have shown that curved buildings are rated as more beautiful than rectilinear spaces and that curved buildings activate key areas of the visual cortex when people make approach-avoidance decisions. It's thought that people prefer curved shapes in buildings because they are more common in nature and therefore feel more natural. Curvature is considered as a "living" structural pattern in architecture. These findings are not exhaustive, but they give a good starting point for understanding how people respond to the shape of buildings.
Research question
Image from original article
The researchers conducted experiments to investigate how people respond to different architectural scenes, and whether certain designs affect these responses. They also looked at whether there are specific neural activation patterns linked to these responses. They had three main research questions:
1) Can people's aesthetic responses to architectural scenes be explained by a few key psychological dimensions?
2) Are these dimensions affected by certain design features?
3) Are there specific neural activation patterns linked to these psychological dimensions?
They believed that a few key psychological dimensions would explain most of the variation in people's responses, and that these dimensions would be affected by design features such as ceiling height, enclosure and curvature. They also believed that each psychological dimension would be linked to a specific neural activation pattern.
Conclusions
In this research, the authors conducted three experiments to identify the key psychological dimensions that are important aspects of architectural experience. They found that three psychological constructs - coherence, fascination, and hominess - collectively explained most of the variance across a range of aesthetic response measures. These dimensions align closely with the psychological dimensions outlined in the Kaplans’ "preference matrix" of landscape aesthetics and have been previously established in the assessment of natural scenes and visual art. Hominess, however, emerged as a new dimension in relation to architectural interiors that has received little attention in previous research.
In the third experiment, the authors found that variations in these three psychological constructs were associated with brain activation in separate regions within the visual cortex. This suggests that the visual cortex is sensitive to specific psychological valuations in our encounters with architectural interiors.
The researchers suggest that these findings have several practical implications for architectural design. For example, architects could use these dimensions as a framework to incorporate behavioural feedback into design iterations before a building is constructed. Additionally, architects and researchers could use these dimensions to conduct post-occupancy evaluations of buildings and use the results to guide future decisions related to interior design and construction. Finally, architects might weigh these components differently depending on the kind of building being designed, as the optimal balance of these components might vary depending on the type of building. Overall, the identification of these three psychological components and their neural signatures advances our understanding of how people experience interior spaces, with far-reaching implications for architectural design and research.
So what have we learned? How people respond to architectural buildings depends on many factors. Some of these are about the building itself (how does it look, how are the spaces organised, etc), and some are about the person him- or herself (cultural background, experiences, etc). I think I’ll have to look into some of this more specifically, a bunch of questions have come up. If people generally prefer interesting, detailed scenes, why was minimalism so popular for the past few years? How do different cultures organise their spaces? How can we use this information in space architecture? What part does environmental psychology play in architecture, and on a larger scale, in city planning? Stay tuned for the next update, and let me know if you have questions or if you want me to look into something specific!
