Personality and the room

The medical researcher Marvin Bundo took mood ratings four times a day from 906 participants of a Lausanne cohort study and matched them to ambient temperature. Overall, the probability of a bad mood for the whole day fell by 7.0% for every 5 °C more maximum temperature, at an odds ratio of 0.93. Stratified by trait and by diagnosis, the direction reverses in three groups. Among people scoring high on neuroticism the fall was 13%, at 0.87 with a confidence interval of 0.80 to 0.95. Among people with bipolar disorder it was 23%, at a confidence interval that crosses one. And it reversed for people with anxiety, at plus 20%, with depression, at plus 18, and with schizophrenia, at plus 193% and an odds ratio of 2.93 whose interval runs from 1.17 to 7.73. Only the overall figure, the neuroticism figure and the schizophrenia figure have intervals that exclude one.

The stress researcher Aram Seddigh tested office type against the Big Five on 1,205 participants from five organisations in the private and public sectors, looking for interactions rather than main effects. Distraction was where most of them appeared: more emotionally stable participants reported lower distraction, particularly in flex offices, and agreeableness and openness also interacted with office type. Job satisfaction produced one interaction and only one. Conscientious employees report higher job satisfaction in general, and that advantage was smaller among those working in open plan than among those in cell offices. Extraversion, agreeableness, openness and emotional stability produced no interaction with office type on job satisfaction at all.

An eye-tracking study by Mollajafari selected eleven environmental factors, had 58 participants take the MBTI personality index, and then recorded their gaze while they looked at images of architectural spaces. Correlations between the eye-tracking indicators and personality type ran from 0.64 to 0.91, with eta squared between 0.45 and 0.68, and the bipolar personality types showed distinct perceptual patterns.

The design researcher Seo-Young Lee built small living spaces in virtual reality and tested how different users respond to them, a question the popularity of small dwellings has outrun. The characteristics of the user changed the psychological response to the identical space. Extraversion changed how highly ceilings were rated, and sex changed how strongly the shape of the floor plan acted on the sense of place. The abstract available here reports no participant count.

The mental health researcher Ninette Simonian ran a randomised trial with 126 participants comparing two delivery formats, a reflective chamber and a 360-degree recording in a virtual reality headset, each with either a breathing exercise or rain sounds. Anxiety fell and cognitive performance rose in all four conditions, and both effects were significant after correction. Openness to experience was among the traits that determined for whom the breathing exercise worked best. On the group average the chamber and the headset were interchangeable.

Bundo’s 906 participants come from a population cohort and Seddigh’s 1,205 from five organisations, and those two are large enough to stratify. Simonian randomised 126 people. Mollajafari worked with 58. Lee worked in virtual reality without reporting a participant count in the abstract available here.