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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."
Obviously, they're doing it wrong.
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
It may affects grammar skills too.
I blame the extra-short ceiling on my floor for less-than-perfect grades freshman year!
Wealthier individuals with the larger home... does the environment itself produce children who are less restricted in their thinking?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I can buy the idea that the ceiling tends to stifle my creativity, but I think the chain attaching me to my desk and the guy who comes around every 15 minutes with the whip probably don't help either. And if all that weren't bad enough, they haven't changed the variety of snacks in the snack machine in like 3 years. There has to be something in the Geneva Conventions about that.
I think you made a mistake in the title.
From the title "Ceiling Height May Affects Problem-Solving Skills"
Should be "Ceiling Height May Affects Grammar Skills"
h
Valkyrie is about to die! Wizard needs food -- badly!
Telecommuting from the lawn chair is why wifi was invented.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
"professor of marketing"
Is marketing a Science now?
-Peter
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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)
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Umm, we just read a report that ceiling height affects detail-oriented thinking. Mmmkay? So, I'm gonna have to ask you to mount this sheet of plywood across the top of your cubicle. If you could just take care of that, that'd be really great.
Interesting, and not altogether surprising when you think about it, but I suspect the researchers are being a little to narrow minded about this (maybe they need higher ceilings). I think it's pretty reasonable to suspect (although I obviously don't have the data to prove it) that a wide variety of environments influence human thinking in non-subtle ways. I can imagine people being more or less optimistic depending on how white (color, not race just to head that one off...) their surroundings are, or more ecofriendly depending on how urban their surroundings are. I can at least speak from personal experience that I find myself less likely to speak my mind when I am in rooms where the walls are nearly all glass, where perhaps the underlying mechanism is one of being overly watched or scrutinized. Either way, I always appreciate studies that show a link between quality of work environment and quality of performance (which is what this essentially is). Here's to the death of stuffy and suffocating rooms!
Relax I just want some peanuts.
But the ceiling is closing in on me!!!
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
...if they move my desk again I'm going to burn the building down.
The next question is - since ceiling height really is relative to how tall the person in the room is, (a 6.5 foot high ceiling would brush some people's heads and feel cramped, while others I know in the industry would not be able to reach it while standing on their desks and jumping.) does this mean that very short people are generally more prone to activating the idea of "freedom", while ludicrously tall people are more prone to thinking in constrained, confined concepts, when both are placed in an identical office environment?
This, while news to me, doesn't actually surprise me at all.
I've encountered this effect personally - working on cars, the thought and problem-solving processes I go through when lying on the driveway under the car are notably different than those when I shimmy out and stand up next to it. Case in point: the starter/solenoid assembly on a 1977 Caprice is practically a topological brain teaser if you're trying to put it in or take it out without removing significant sections of the frame. There's literally one correct ordered set of rotations and translations that must be performed to do so.
Standing next to the car with the starter, I had an incredibly hard time solving this problem. Once under the car, however, it was a matter of a few minutes before I could "see" the solution. Before everyone points out the obvious, no, it wasn't a matter of being able to literally see the solution; given the available vantage point due to the right front tire, the jack, and a frame member, you really couldn't see any more of the problem than the first opening.
That's the most specific example I've got, but a similar thing has happened to me multiple times. At this point, I spend most of my planning time under the car with rust falling in my eyes, because I think better that way.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Keeping in mind that there is a difference between restrictive thinking and the ability to think in the first place.
Perhaps one could say that her self discretion has been less restrictive from such an environment.
but it seems that everywhere, the ceiling makes you.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
You get wet when it rains.
Rhapsody in Numbers
...kind of. :)
I went to a school that was built in the early 1800s and had some really high ceilings on the top floor... about 15 feet high. The doors were made of massive wood and 8 feet high. This prompted some creativity in the students and there was a teacher that was usually a bit late so they unhinged the inwards opening door, put it back so that it was just held by the handle lock. Teacher enters and door falls down with a really really major bang as it went down. Teaching staff was not amused by students apparent creativty.
From the headline. When people are in a room with a high ceiling, they activate the idea of freedom and The concept of freedom promotes information processing that encourages greater variation in the kinds of thoughts one has, said Meyers-Levy...
"When people are in a room with a high ceiling, they activate the idea of freedom."
"Wonder Twin powers activate!"
"Shape of an idea of freedom!"
"Form of an ice-- wait, what? Can Gleek carry that in a bucket?"
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
be careful not to have too high ceilings, as you might be thinking out-of-the box and returning back might be a problem (or tiresome?)
But it does give you a damn good idea of where to start looking. Correlation doesn't PROVE causation, but it sure as hell implies it.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
--Chag
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.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
Makes me wish I was a woman and could work under that limitless glass ceiling they're always talking about!
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
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
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Ahh, yes. In fact, in large doses, approx. 400 micrograms and higher, you may find yourself solving many problems. Not the least of which would be "How the hell do I get out of this chair?"
I see that maxim quoted a lot these days. I see the point it's making, of course; but I can't help wondering: what does prove causation, then?
If a phenomenon is observed only when something is present but never when it is not, a causal relationship can reasonably be construed. The other point is, at least in science, nothing is ever proven!P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
Did they consider whether, for a fixed ceiling height, shorter people exhibited less constrained thinking?
Have gnu, will travel.