Ceiling Height May Affect Problem-Solving Skills

An anonymous reader writes to mention that a recent University of Minnesota study suggests that ceiling height may affect problem-solving skills. "'When people are in a room with a high ceiling, they activate the idea of freedom. In a low-ceilinged room, they activate more constrained, confined concepts.' Either can be good. The concept of freedom promotes information processing that encourages greater variation in the kinds of thoughts one has, said Meyers-Levy, professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota. The concept of confinement promotes more detail-oriented processing."

Comments

Interesting Thought

[MyLongNickName]

Wealthier individuals with the larger home... does the environment itself produce children who are less restricted in their thinking?

Ah, modern psychology research

[idontgno]

I wasn't aware that cognitive psychology was a branch of marketing.

That's like saying that automotive engineering is an offshoot of ricer tuning. (To coin a car analogy)

What About Tall People?

[Chagatai]

I'm nearly 7 feet tall, so how does this affect my ideas? Can I call in a "ceiling bias" at work when a short coworker comes up with a great, broad idea and I tend to develop something more constrained and compact? How about when I run into a doorjamb? How does that affect my ideas?

General Observations

[RockoTDF]

As a psychology student/researcher, I must say our worst enemy is the media. The way these stories are reported sometimes distorts the research or the conclusions drawn from it. If you were to read the actual journal article when it is published, it will likely be far less B.S. like "activating inner creativity" and more like "participants in the higher ceiling room demonstrated more creativity as measured by (variable)." Although the article may have used BS terms since its a marketing journal and not a proper psych journal. The publication standards in education, communication, and marketing journals are generally less demanding and so sometimes crap gets through and makes all scientific research outside of bio/chem/physics look bad. Also, since correlation does not imply causation it is possible that as previously mentioned certain jobs will intentionally create different environments for whatever reason...ie graphic designers may care more about an open aesthetically pleasing office than engineers who sit in cubicles and just want to do their work. In addition this article fails to give any actual statistics, which limits how much we can critique it...so if it has a correlation of .9 there is probably a good connection between ceiling height and creativity, but if its only .3 it could just be coincidental or due to many outside factors.

Ceiling Height Variety

[bmajik]

More people discovering what Christopher Alexander discovered, and what thousands of years of humans knew before he re-discovered it.

Pattern #190: Ceiling Height Variety

http://www.ahartman.com/apl/patterns/apl190.htm

Re:Just work outside

[simm1701]

Yes..

Until you start to sky dive

No I'm not being sarcastic I'm serious.

After sky diving regularly (to the point of being licensed and in control of yourself in the air) you start to look at the sky differently. It ceases to be just something that is there, instead its a medium that is yours, you can move with it in, you feel as though you have an extra degree of freedom - its changes your perspective.

I'm told many pilots and other aerial sports people feel the same way - ditto for divers and the water.