14 DAY TRIAL // Do you feel like in a narrow den or like in a civilized spacious room at you working place?
Well, this seems to influence your mental abilities.
A team at the University of Minnesota has found that the height of the ceiling tunes your problem-solving skills and behavior by favoring certain types of brain actions. "Priming means a concept gets activated in a person's head," co-author and marketing professor Joan Meyers-Levy explained LiveScience. "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. The concept of freedom promotes information processing that encourages greater variation in the kinds of thoughts one has," said Meyers-Levy.
The feeling of confinement boosts more detail-oriented brain activities. The researchers employed three tests, from anagram puzzles to product evaluation. The subjects located in a 10-foot (3 m) ceiling room displayed "freer, more abstract thinking," while those in an 8-foot (2.4 m) room were more predisposed to give attention to details.
In one of the test, subjects were more critical to design flaws of a product, fact that could be important for retailers. But by now, the theory is not supported by neuroscience or psychology proofs.
A 2002 research discovered that priming subjects with either the concept of "self" or with that of "other" increases their processing linked to subjects of isolation or unity, respectively. The labels of "freedom" and "confinement" were taken by the researchers from a speculative paper on how lofty cathedral ceilings induce quite a different religious feeling compared to that stirred by the low ceilings of a modest chapel.
The research could have wider applications than on the marketplace. "Managers should want noticeably higher ceilings for thinking of bold initiatives. The technicians and accountants might want low ceilings. There could be consequences in the world of health care as well. If you're having surgery done, you would want the operating room to encourage item-specific processing." explained Meyers-Levy.