How Environmental Psychology Works

that much. Jerry's food is in the stinky as usual. Actually, it's funny you stayed in here when I want to go get a drink to come back. Its smells pretty pollock paneerie, like you can just think it is. I'm just used to it. It's a good smell. And like a restaurant or your dining room at your home or kitchen in the studio, it's a weird smell. You know what kind of food. Jerry hates American food? I know she hates American food. She does, man, she's always eaten

great food from all over the World's good job. Uh so, Chuck. Yes, we're talking today about psychology, but not the head shrinking more the head, expanding variety of psychology. Shrink that head, blow it up, because psychology over the years has really kind of increased its scope further and further out of

your noggin. Yeah. It kind of started out very focused on the noggin, very and then it was like, well, truth be told, your mom has a lot to do with this stuff too, and your friends going to come out and say it, and your dad, they really screwed you up. And then with this stuff with environmental psychology

has really expanded on a macro level. Yeah, because it's saying and not only are you all screwed up by yourself and your friends and family are screwing you up, the physical spaces that you exist in can screw you up, or the other side is great to make you happier, more relaxed, um less stressed out. And we environmental psychologists is what they started to call themselves, UM, are going to figure out exactly the how, what, who, why, when, where, the who's it, the any who, all of it to

explain how our environments affect us. And then while we're at it, let's just throw in the whole kitchen sink. We're gonna do it the other way to we're going to figure out how humans affect the environment and how we can make humans better stewards of the environment. But for now, we're going to go take a nap because

this is a lot. Yeah, but all of this through the lens of psychology, which, like I read this stuff, I think it's really cool and interesting, and I think you do too initially, but it seems to break down

a little bit scientifically. Uh and my whole jam. When I walked in, I was like, I think this is really neat, Like maybe they just shouldn't call it science and they should just say like, hey, let's uh, let's look at how a grocery store can best be planned out, um, and touch on some psychology, but like, don't ask me to prove it with studies that can be replicated. So there are a lot of studies about this stuff. They're legitimate, you know, um, peer reviewed studies, but they're they're real

disparate and not necessarily related. And I think what you're talking about is environmental psychology tries to kind of bring them all together and say this is our jam, and that that the thing. The pieces don't necessarily connect yet like you would think they would from you know, looking on the outside, seeing that there's a whole field of psychology dedicated to studying this is it. Hey, I want to be paid a lot of money to consult on

a new shopping mall. I I maybe so, but I honestly don't know what what the what the drive is? I don't know. It's interesting stuff though, oh yeah it's but it's famously interesting. Everybody loves environmental psychology, even if you don't know the name of it. And people have understood too that, like, our environments do affect us for

way longer than environmental psychology has been around. There's a like every history of environmental psychology that you'll read will give this example of Marco Polo reporting in the thirteenth century. He came across a ruler in China who was curious about why some neighboring state or kingdom was always like super hostile, not only with other kingdoms, but within the

kingdom themselves. So he ordered an experiment done where he had soil brought in from that kingdom placed under the chairs of some people, and all the people started arguing. So he concluded it must be in the soil, which is I guess an early scientific experiment. He never explained what was in the soil. Maybe ghosts. Yeah, right, should we talk about Churchill since we're talking about history, Yeah, we gotta kind of leap forward from the thirteenth century. Yeah.

Churchill very famously said we shape our buildings and later they shape us belch cigar toke Uh. And he very famously when World War two bombed out the Parliament building, he said, rebuild it just as it was, and everyone else like, hey, governor, shouldn't it be a bit bigger? No? Uh, they had the chance to give everyone a little more space, and no, do it exactly like it was. Uh. He wanted to create a sense of urgency, and he said at critical votes and moments it would be filled beyond capacity,

with members spilling out into the aisles. Sarn a little Sean Connery in there. I can't let it pass. In his view, a sustainable, I'm sorry, shootable sense of crowd and urgency. That's pretty good. Key do Roger Moore doing Winston Churchill. No, I've never tried Roger Moore. Yeah, I've never heard anybody do Roger Moore. That was pretty good. So um so. Yeah, there's been this awareness that like like Churchill says, we shape our buildings and later they shape us. But it wasn't a field a part of

psychology until the late fifties early sixties. Um. And actually you can trace it back to one group of people at City University, New York, YEP led by what are they the Fighting Manhattan Transfers. They have a great a capella group. Um, they were all they're a bunch of Cooney's. I'm not sure which one this was City Mary, New York, Like you know, they're all over town. Oh I didn't know that. Okay, well I'm not sure which one it

was either. But Harold Prashansky was the leader of this group from CUNEY and they were a group of social psychologists and some people at a hospital in New York. Uh, we'll just say hospital because it's probably only one, like there's only one QUNI. Um. They came to this group and said, hey, we're trying to figure out how to make our hospital rooms like way better for patients. He said, we're from hospital, right, he said, okay, we're from un UM.

And and Harold Persanski is like, we have no idea how to tell you how to do that? Yeah, So he's he went ahead and founded environmental psychology, which which seeks to do exactly that. Yeah, he wrote the book on it, the first one that is I'm sure they're a gazillion now, uh. In nineteen seventy environmental psychology Colon manned and his physical setting and by man he means person human. But it was nineteen seventy, so there were only men that mattered in nineteen seventy. So he is

the father of environmental psychology. He's the father of lies. You know what I think the deal is is so unwieldy, and they're trying to corral this unwieldy thing because it's nature and its design and its color, and it's fabrics and it's people's brains and all right, So we're just

gonna gripe about it sporadically throughout the whole episode. So the whole idea of prior to environmental psychology, um and still is the case in a lot of in a lot of cases, is if you're going to do an experiment, they would bring you to a very um just plain lab and their idea was like, let's strip away everything

so you're not influenced by anything. They would hose you off exactly, delouse you, and you would be just sitting in a white room with fluorescent bulbs buzzing above your head and Bill Murrays zapping you whenever you gave a wrong answer, and they're like, this is the way to do it. But there are a couple of psychologists Um Roger Barker and Kurt Lewin specifically, that said, um, you

know what, that's making things worse. Stripping the world away and putting people in the sterile environments like you're gonna be confounding results just from the outset. It doesn't make any sense in psychology psychologies. Other psychologists said, shut up, be quiet, you two and they said, no, we won't.

We're going to go found environmental psychology along with Harold Krushansky and the idea that you have to not only study people in their natural setting to really understand what's motivating their behavior, but also the idea that that natural setting itself is is creating part of their behavior. You can't you can't study that in the lab. So that's one of the things that makes um environmental psychology unusual is it's not meant to be conducted in the lab.

It's meant to be conducted in a real world study, a real world setting. And the other thing about it is it's multidiscipline area as well. Unwieldy. It is some would say inclusive, but unwieldy also works as well. Yeah, because what they're looking at is what they call uh molar units, which are very large scale. We're talking about communities, neighbor hoods. Maybe your house, house or or room is probably about the smallest thing you think, or or maybe

your personal space. They seem to have adopted that as well. Yeah, it's all over the place. Uh, and it covers every angle that you can think of in terms of how you interact with your environment. UM. Like we said, like um, spatial planning and lighting, economics, acoustics, color, empty space. Yeah, imagine that that's a brain buster right there. It is UM. And so when what they're studying, what environmental psychologists study, or what they call transactions, And this has been a

particular bone in my craw. I've never once seen someone concretely defined what a transaction is. I would guess that it's a transaction. It's just how you transact and interact with those things, right, but exactly how like a transaction And I'm totally pulling this out of my key. Start, Well, then you're an environmental problems. But a transaction might be like when you walk into a room and sit down in a chair, that's probably a transaction with that room, right,

maybe why not? But my question also is like, Okay, if you sit quietly in a room for an hour, is that a transaction itself? Or is that hour made up of much smaller transactions like you stirring in the room because the concrete floor is making your butt fall asleep, or you start to get scared because you hear a weird noise, and like, all of the things that happened over the hour, are those transactions or is the whole

thing a transaction. I've just never heard it concretely defined, and it kind of drove me crazy because I really looked for a solid definition of it. But just suffice to say that in the field of environmental psychology, will they study your transactions, which means your interaction with the environment, And hey, let's just go ahead and say it the environment's interaction with you in return. That's right. I'm sorry,

I'm glad you're crabby about one. And that's usually my role, you know, I'm happy to take it over this time. So where you first started seeing the impact of environmental psychology was an architecture, and this has been going on for decades basically, and it makes sense. This part makes

the most sense to me. Yeah, like when you transact with a building and a lobby or an elevator or a staircase, or an office or a or air wolf or air wolf or the concierge desk in a hotel, like all of this stuff has Oh, there's always been a lot of thought, probably before they even called it environmental psychology, like how do people interact with this when you walk in? You want people to be uh, feel good and understand where things are. Um, well, now there's

a balance that has to be struck. Though I don't know if that actually did exist before environment I think that may have been a contribution from the field. Yes, I mean, yes, I'm sure there was some design or something like that, but the the ideas what you just said to have really been helped along by the field

of environments. Like you might be right, because that's what's called bottom up, Like let's really think about how people interact with this environment and whereas before it was topped down, like, let's just build this beautiful building, and it turns out it's really confusing, Yeah, um, because they didn't think about people, know, and there were There are actually two big things that happened in the sixties, well one in the sixties, one in the early seventies that kind of said, oh wait,

our environments are physical spaces really do affect us and they can have really negative effects to um. The first one was the Kitty Genovase murder, which we covered, We did a whole episode on there that was Yeah, but the long story short, the popular conception is that, uh, an entire apartment block of people um watched Kitty Genovese be murdered publicly over the course of like an hour, and nobody did anything, even though it's not fully true.

But reason that they didn't do anything because they were all isolated from one another. They all figured that somebody else was going to call their architecture messed with their brains and made them less compassionate or um separate at least. Yeah, then they would have been maybe if they lived out in the country or something like that. That was the big first one. Yeah, that which I don't even know if we touched on that in the episode, did we? I think maybe? If not, we just did, all right,

consider that a falloup. Uh. The other one was this housing complex in St. Louis in two that was built called Pruitt I Go and it was built in ninety six hundred and seventy units in thirty three eleven story buildings. It was a very big deal because it was touted as being this progressive, really modern place for a housing project, and people are gonna be living in this modern space and it's gonna be amazing and that's going to make a big difference in their lives. Yeah, it was. Actually

there was. I looked all over for the what magazine it was, but some architectural magazine magazine named it the best high apartment of the year while it was being designed.

And the idea was like, here, we're going to give you this amazing place to live, low income, downtrodden St. Louis people, and you are going to be able to raise yourselves up out of poverty just by living in a nice new this gift from the gods of architecture basically, and the exact opposite happened that within sixteen years by two, the Prude I Go Complex, thirty three eleven story buildings, was raised to the ground and there became a really

really negative popular um idea about Prude I Go, and that was that no matter what you did for poor people and in this case read black people, they're going to drag it down to their level. Because within that sixteen years, Prude I Go became blighted by crime, vandalism, um, neglect, disrepair. Uh. The police were afraid to go out there into the complex. There was a sense of lawlessness, and so when it got torn down, everybody said, yep, see, can't do anything

for those people. And then later on academics, including environmental psychologist, said, wait a minute, I don't know that that's actually the case. What if it was the actual buildings that were the problem. Yeah, they came in and they called it, Uh, this is dysfunctional architecture. And they said that you did this top down thing. It built this beautiful building, but didn't think about the people, this bottom up approach. You never thought

about the residents. Uh. And research later on. This is where we get into a couple of other theories that we've talked about. I know, we talked about the broken windows theory, which basically is the idea that, um, you need to go after the vandal or the person who throws a brick through a window, even though that's low hanging fruit. Uh legally speaking as far as cops go. Yeah, so you need to go after those people because those small things that happen will basically lead to larger things.

And that's what happened at Prutago. They were they never changed out the burn light bulbs, they never fixed the broken windows, And if you believe in the broken windows theory, that's a pretty prime example of how something you can

get out of hand, right. Um. The other big theory that kind of evolved to explain what happened at prut Igo is called the defensible spaces theory, and that was basically that the designer of this complex had failed to delineate each unit from the other, so that really the only thing that separated units were the thin interior walls. Everything outside was just common public belonged to no one, so it was totally ripe for abuse and um and

lawlessness and criminality, criminal behavior. Part of the other problem with the design was at the common areas, the play areas, we're all um uh, we're kind of like around corners were out of view, so there was no way for the community keep an eye on their kids or one another, and so these became hotbeds for crime as well. And inside and out right, wasn't the idea that they were all identical, so there was no sense of individual ownership,

which can bring about pride. It was just here, you live here, now, stay here, and that doesn't work with people.

Um and so environmental psychologists had this idea um afterwards, as they were kind of thinking about all this stuff, that well, maybe there's some easy things we can do, like I don't know, asking residents what they want or need out of a building while you're designing the building right, or if something doesn't work out or is working out okay and people are moving out, interview them then and say, hey, what do you like about the place as you hate

and there's those are like you said, low hanging fruit. But that's the kind of thing that actually and help make a building successful and give people a sense of ownership. And if you feel ownership over a place, you're gonna tell somebody, hey, pick up that trash, that's my walkway, you know, just throw your trash there. If that's really kind of their walkway as much as it is yours, maybe you don't feel quite as moved to say something

in that case. So just like think taking that stuff into into account as far as environmental psychology is concerned, helps explain how you can prompt someone to take ownership of a place and therefore get more out of it, but also take care of the place as well, which is that bi directional reciprocal interaction with our physical environments. That is like the basis of environmental psychology. All right, let's take a break here, this is dense. Yeah, we'll

be back right after this. Well, now we're on the road driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh can chuck stuff you should know? All right, all right, so let's talk about some of these behaviors um as far as like fitting into a space that have kind of popped up over the years. There's one, two, three of these listed that make a lot of sense to me. Yeah. The first one is territoriality. And you just you put this together. You describe this

very plainly. Is like if you go into a coffee shop and you put your bag down on a table and then go over your coffee, or if you just dress up your cubicle with dumb stuff, that's that's you claiming your space, even if it's not your space, Like your cubicle you're like, this is my backpack on this table, don't sit there, Right, that's just territoriality. That's one way that we behave because most places, most spaces are social

spaces are used by more than one person. Right. The next one is crowding, which I think is super interesting because crowding, uh is a result of density. But you can have density without being crowded if you have smart design. Like thousands and tens of thousands of people go through a shopping mall every day, but you should never feel crowded in a shopping mall because of the way they have these things designed. Dude, it happens to me every time.

Do you feel crowded? It's just it's just a spectrum of how soon starts. Really, every time I go to a mall, you feel crowded. Yeah, And there's the opposite of out should be right, I know, but it's me Like I'm I mean, like really well designed malls, but it's still me, right, still feel crowded. There's a period where like the thing that you mean I would do in the wintertime would be to go walk around the mall because we were like a half a mile away from it. So you mean Momo and I would go

walk around the mall. Oh, I thought you meant the interior wall mall. Uh, mall walkers, not the mall. We that's basically what we were doing. But we were just killing time because I worked at the Gap for a month and I didn't know that was the thing before the before the stores opened, the mall was open, and that's where you'll find, uh, some really fantastic jumpsuits walking around and the exercise clothes. Yeah, and they'll have like clubs and coffee clutches and all sorts of stuff. Yeah,

it's mall walkings of things. Okay, but you were on the outside of the mall. No, No, we were inside. We have a bag that Momo comes. Um. But so we're walking around the inside just at night or whatever. You know, the youngest ones, they're kind of so um. But every time I'd just be like tense and just feel crowded and like edgy and stressed out before them all opened, Okay, I don't stop with the mall walking thing has nothing to do with that. Alright, malls open,

mall's open, you're shopping, maybe even nighttime. Emma was there and we're inside, okay, and there's no one wearing jump and you're not old. But that was well, now we've reached the end of the story. So you would just get anxious, uh, despite the fact that they were purposely designed to not feel crowded, right, And that's part of the challenge of mall design is to to make it so people like me can stand to stay there as long as possible, because the longer you're there, the more

shopping you're gonna do. And but you want a bunch of people. You don't want just one person at a time going through the mall because of crowding. You want a bunch of people, so you want to juggle how to get all those people in there shopping at the same time without making one another feel crowded. How are you at genuine crowd crowded things like sports games or concerts? And it's about the same, really, I think. I think because in the situation like that, I'm going into it

expecting it. Apparently it surprises me every time I'm at a mall. Will you leave a concert early or wait for people to file out a little bit before you, or you in the middle of that like elbow to elbow hit miss but to crutch scene. It changes from from It depends on how you know, relaxed on feeling and if like you know that they're gonna like play the big song in the last song. Oh yeah, yeah. Usually I don't like sitting around for the encore, but if it's the you know, the song that I came

to see, I'll do it right. You're so you're at the Who's the German Tech? No Group, Skinny Puppy, no the So you're at a craft work show. I've actually been to Seacraft, I know. And you're like, I really want to leave, but they haven't played Liver Worst yet? Which is the best song called liver Worst? I don't think so maybe yeah, otivon they definitely do. Uh. We saw them at the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. It was amazing. I never went there, or or maybe

I did us an opera there. It would be a good place for that. And we left early. Oh really, you didn't wait for the encore? We saw Skinny Puppy too. By the way, I think they're from Washington State, not Germany. But we had to wait for their encore to see like their big song Smothered. Hope they wait until the encore. I know that they do that every single night. Sure, even though it's Skinny Puppy and that's not really their thing, they still do it, all right. So that's crowding you

all right, there's three of us in here. How do you feel? I feel fine now. You guys make me feel very relaxed. That's nice. So privacy is the last one, um, and that's you know, people want a private space. Um. But there's a subset of that called personal space, which is not the same thing as privacy. Personal spaces what do they define it as? The one and a half to four ft around you in all directions? Right? There was an anthropologist actually named Edward Hall who came up

with that. I'm big on personal space. One of my big pet peeves is being an online for anything and feelingline online different online is what you say in New York, Uh, feeling someone like kicking my heel or breathing down my neck. I'm always just like, just like You're not going to get there any quicker by breathing on me. Dude, please back off. Where are they frauderists? Have you ever considered maybe you're being I'm not sure, subway creep, I don't know.

I had a situation a few weeks ago. Cheez, should I even talk about this? Oh boy? I like where this is going? All right, I'll go ahead. And I was in a grocery store and I was really motoring because I was just going to get a couple of things and I want to get out of there. And I went and I cut through the what usually is the sandwich line, of which there was none at the time the deli, Like yeah, but it's a little sort of narrow space where you stand in line. It's like

roped off. And I kind of cut through there because there was no one there. And this as this kid was ducking under the little rope and I just sort of shimmy by him and did one of those like whoa, I went by the kid, You did a rick flair?

Think No. I didn't say a word, but came come back five minutes later and this, uh, this kid's mother like starts yelling at me that I pushed shoved her kid, and I was like, first of all, I was like, I sort of looked around, was like me, and she was like, yes, she shoved my she shoved my kid, or you shoved my kid. I was like, no, said I didn't. I didn't shove your kid, and she starts she was like I saw it, and the kid was like, yeah,

you did. And I looked at him and I was like, I didn't say it out loud, but I was like, you liar, I did not touch you. And I started again to say no, I didn't. I swear I did not touch your kid. And she was really adamant, and people started looking and I knew the only way out of there was just too And I'm a I'm a big justice guy, so this really was hard for me. But just say, uh ma'am if I did, I'm really really sorry. I have a small child. I was not aware that I did, but I clearly did, and I'm

really sorry. And I was like, because I was waiting for a cell phone to come out, you know, so I was like, the only way out of here is just lie and say yeah, up your kid and I'm sorry. You're like, I I have a small child who mus shove all the time and she doesn't tatle like your little really upsetting because it was getting out of hand. I was like, very upset for the rest of the night. How are you feeling now recounting it. I didn't shove that kid. I believe you did touch him. I'll bet

every single person listening believes you. Oh man, al right, So where are we? Personal space? That's what I was talking about. Yeah, I shove kids when they get in my way, right exactly. So the upshot of all of this everything we've talked about, the idea that you need um space that is your own, that you can defend, and that you can consider um a place to have privacy and to put your stuff, and um the idea that high density of people in the wrong kind of

situation creates crowding. All this stuff contributes to the ultimate goal one of the big goals of environmental psychology busices to create put all this stuff together and create ideal environments that's right, which is a balance of things, not necessarily like just the biggest open place in the world. Because people have to shop and people you have to still have these other things that have to be accomplished.

But the quote here is where people feel self assured and competent, where they can familiarize themselves with the environment whilst being engaged with it. And there are four main factors here to that basically say it's ideal or not. Unity. Basically things work well together. Self explanatory, like like the dude saying that has rugg really tied the room together? Yeah, exactly. Um legibility that a person can navigate that space without

getting lost. Very important complexity, uh that it's just complex enough to like keep you interested. And then finally mystery, which I think is pretty interesting, which is like you never know what's around the next corner, right, could be a pot of chocolate melted, could be death. Who knows,

You won't know until you go. Look, that's right. So a lot of people who own businesses over the years since the you know, the sixties, win environmental psychology has started, has said, hey, you know what, a lot of this stuff about how people behave in spaces, I could use this to make people stay in my space longer, and maybe they'll be likelier to spend some money that I'll get to keep because they came to my space and stayed here and in fact, one of the pioneers of

environmental psychology, guy named Philip Cotler Um. He coined the term atmospherics, and atmospherics is exactly what you would think it is. But he he had this very famous quote famous in these circles. I should say that, Um, in some cases, the place, more specifically, the atmosphere of the place is more influential than the product itself in the purchase decision. In some cases, the atmosphere is the primary

a product. Yeah, I mean you brought up the Apple store, um, but there are other I don't go to these places, but I've been through and walked by some stores that feel like a nightclub with the way they're lit and the music and the Abercromie and Fitch, I think is what you have been in a republic, But yeah, it's uh. They're they're trying to create an experience. And Emily even does this with her store. But it's not a cheesy nightclub.

She tries to create an experience while people come in and they smell nice things and it's relaxing and there's plants. A yoga club, yeah, sort of exact night yoga club basically, but so so, yeah, what she's doing is engaging in atmospheric and it makes total sense. Of course, you want people that not want to like turn around and leave

your store, people mill around, just have the product. He was taking it to to the extreme, saying like, sometimes the actual place where you buy the product is even more important to the consumer than the product. I think that's pretty rare, but those are you know, two extremes on the on the spectrum, just the products and the place being more important than the products. Whereas you know

most stores fall within that spectrum, right. Yeah, we went to a store in Paris where both of us that just sold a bunch of different things and um, I mean from pottery to quilts to close the plants, and we were both like, I never want to leave this store. It was just so awesome on every level. So like the store is self, the atmosphere made you want to stay. Yeah, the design of it, the mystery I wanted because they had, you know, go of these stairs. What's up there? I

see a light shining around that corner. The heck is that bloody candlestick on the stairs? You're like, what's up there? I wish I could remember the name of this place, man, it was just like everything about it was perfect, okay for us, Well, we'll we'll buzz market at some time when you got it. That's right. But one of the one of the places that has really kind of is posed itself as a really great example, understandable example of atmospherics and how they can be used to kind of work.

It's mojo on our brains are casinos. Yeah, which we talked about in our episode on casinos. Uh, here's the deal. Humans have triggers and clues that the Germans call site cabs not psite burgers. I want to say, it's so bad right every time? Uh time giver is what that literally translates to our synchronizer, and um, this is like these triggers that we use are how we adjust our biological clocks. Things like where's the sun literally in the sky, or even looking out a window, does it look like

dusk or down? Things like that or even literal clocks can allow us to reset our biological clocks. Casinos don't like those things, no, no, because casinos want you to forget all about time and any pressing matters you have on the outside and instead spend your time and your money in the casino, so they remove any out windows to the outdoors far away from the casino floor, so there's no sense of what time of the day it is.

There's no clocks or anything like that. They're also very well aware that sound plays a huge role in the environment. So in any casino you will hear all sorts of

dinging and buzzing and fells and stuff like that. But it's a constant, it's a it's constantly going on, and then when somebody wins, it rises so much so that everyone in the casino knows somebody just want But the fact that the dinging and buzzing is always going on to some degree, makes your makes you think without thinking that winning is always going on because you've associated these sounds with winning and it's constant, so people must constantly

be winning here. Maybe I should play some of these slots. Yeah, you know, the one thing I noticed in Vegas is the the casino doors are never closed to the outside. So if you're walking around and it's add ten degrees in Nevada, which is could be the case in any given month, you walk by that casino and it's just

you get hit with a wave of air. Conditioned air like you've never felt before, and you're like, oh, maybe I should go in there for a little Oh totally, you want to go in there just a cool down, and like, well, I've got a five bucks in my pocket, might as well give it to the casino. And then you get a snoop full of like raw cigarette smoke and you're like, we'll go back outside. Awful, it's pretty bad.

What else though, mystery, that's a big one in casinos. Yeah, so we should talk about the actual layout of the casino floor. It's we talked about legibility and how you know, you should be able to find your way around. Casinos deliberately make make their casino floors illegible so that you just kind of wander around, like there's a general sense

of the direction you want to be going in. It's not like they want you to get lost, because once you get lost, yeah, you you're in trouble and you don't want to you don't want to do anything, You want to just get out of there. They want you to not to literally get lost, but figuratively get lost in the experience, like where you're okay with wandering and right, So they make it so you're you're just kind of meandering, like you said, Um, there's like little offshoots. They are like, oh,

what's around this corner? Oh, more slots, Maybe I'll play it. What a great little thing to find, um with For the venues and the restaurants, they're placed along the back of the casino floor, so that you if you're coming just to go to dinner there, you have to go through the casino and wander around and maybe play some slots and then um, Like I was saying that, they don't want you to get lost or feel lost, because environmental psychology is identified a condition called spatial anxiety, where

once you're like, wait, which way do I go? You don't want to party, you don't want to gamble, you don't want to shop, you don't want to do anything but get out of there. So they walk a really fine line here and deliberately confusing you with the layout without making you anxious. And they do this partially by unconscious subliminal cues. They will use literally on the floor that show the way that you don't realize you're following.

But if you stop and look down at like a casino a floor or an airport floor or something like that. You'll notice that there's probably a different color something is leading you in the passenger you're really supposed to be going on. Yeah, whether it's a different color carpet or maybe a runner in the center of a carpet that stands out, or a tile on the edge that feels

like it leads you in a different direction. And this is all to help you in wayfinding, which you think of in like nature, but like your wayfinding anytime you're in a big area like that for sure, like you're literally finding your way. There are signs, that's a that's a technique of wayfinding. Yeah, if you if you sign edge is a real thing. They do have signs and casinos, it's not like again, they don't want spatial anxiety, so they'll have a sign that says restaurant this way, just

walk through this maze to get there. But they're your steak is waiting on you for that's not the case anymore now. It used to be right, that's all you can eat. Um, So that one thing is signed. It's one thing is um like actually putting a lion on the floor. That you don't realize is they're like, you're not right, like i'm lost, let me look down at the floor and see which way to go. You're not even aware that you're picking up on that I'm following it.

They've also figured out that lighting can do the same thing too. Next time you're walking down a bright main corridor, look up and realize that you're following very bright light, and that along some of the corridors and hallways that you're not supposed to be down, the lighting is not nearly as bright, right, Or an information desk or a concierge or uh, something like that that's always got those like usually can lights pointing straight down saying come over here,

I'll help you out right. So, um, what's really really interesting to meet Chuck is UM, I didn't see anybody being like this is the next step. This is the next horizon for environmental psychology, although I'd be surprised if it isn't. But all of these findings, all this stuff that we just talked about way finding things like UM, cognitive maps, UM, spatial anxiety, all this stuff appears to

translate fully to virtual environments. So all this stuff that environmental psychology has found out about how to make a casino more UM palatable and make you want to like spend. Also works for online storefronts or um how you find your way around, also works for designing video games and that kind of so. So environmental psychology works in the virtual world too. So it's your home, it's your stores, it's your cars, and then it's also virtual the future,

the future. You want to take another break and then come back and talk about the whole green movement part, let's do it. Well, Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh can chuck stuff you should know? All right, so this is pretty dense. You're right. Why I are we back? Okay? Yeah, I didn't know if that was off, Mike, I'll stay in front of everybody. You didn't call me, Hey, Jerk, I figured it was on. Mike figured we're gonna leave

it in. Hey, Jerk, this is dense. You're right for once? Are we recording? Sorry? So yeah, this this is where it gets interesting to me, because finally I think it's all interesting. But the flip side that we mentioned a couple of times is how you affected your environment as well. And I'm all about affecting your environment, like peeing outside this environment, grow plant grow. Um, Like, everyone knows that green spaces are good for your psyche and looking out

a window is better. You know. I think I've said before I went to high school that didn't have windows. No, you didn't say that. Yeah, we didn't have windows in our school. What I know, it sounds crazy and it is now that I look back at. We had one common area that had these very high up windows, but none of the hallways, none of the classrooms had windows. My friend, your high school was in the experiment. It might have been. I mean it was built in nineteen

seventy nine, so I think I think it was the year. No, I think it very much might have been an experiment. Like kids get distracted with windows, like they'll do some real learning. It rita in high school because you can't see anything. And then they followed your class. We're like, oh god, no, tear it down. But everyone knows that green spaces and looking out a window or taking a

walk through a park or something can really be restorative. Um. They even there was one example of botanical gardens one of my our favorite things to do as a family. But they said in the study here it's like leave your family at home. If you really want the benefit, go by yourself. Each of you needs to split up and wander around by yourselves, which hey, I look forward to when we can do that. So that's I mean, that's pretty low hanging again, stuff like, yeah, hanging out

in a botanical garden is restorative. But the thing about environmental psychologists are like why, you know, why does that happen? And then also specifically, how can we use that to build ideal environments? And remember back at the very beginning, Harold Prashansky was asked to how to make hospital rooms better, more more conducive to patient well being. He said, put

him outside. Well, that eventually became, you know, kind of a a separate arm of environmental psychology that was led by Rachel and Stephen kaplan Um from the University of Michigan, which has a huge EP programs, I believe because of

these guys. But starting in the seventies through through the nineties to the end of the nineties, they studied the effects of the outdoors on humans to understand how to improve built outdoor settings to make it to just squeeze and extract every little bit that restorative juice from nature and let it drift down your face like so much naval orange juice, just get all sticky from it and

what it's going. It tastes so good and the smell is almost overwhelming, overpowering, but it's just so beautiful and natural that you eventually just faint. That's what their goal was. So they went that way by way of a couple

of times. A couple of kinds of attention that they talked about directed attention, which is how if you're in a real structured, human built environment, you're gonna narrow your focus, which can be good to a degree if you're at work or something, but it can lead to depletion and stress and anxiety over time. Uh. The other kind of attention is fascination, which I mean, should we even talk

about that? It just says it all. It makes me smile just saying that word fascination, which is expansive and the wilderness and nature is what brings that along. Yeah, they kind of mindset where you know, anything can happen, or you can just kind of trance out or zone out.

Your your intense is not being directed right, and they have done There have been plenty of studies where they found that people do recover from sickness and surgery a lot faster, need less meds, and have fewer complications, and just feel better about your recuperation. If your hospital has a green space. They found that not only just a real green space, but if you had a view of a window that was just a picture of an outdoor green space, I still recovered better. They didn't even give

you pictures of that stuff. They tried to beat out of you the memory of what the outdoors were like. So they've come up the ratio though of green spaces. Two structures within that green space, like you know, a plaza or a fountain or whatever, um of seventy to thirty. I guess seventy green space human built structures, right. I guess they just kind of worked out out over the average. Yeah, But as I think that's a cool thing to know

if you're planning a green spaces there's actual science behind it. Well. Yeah, and even if there's not necessarily science behind how restorative it is, which there is increasingly, the opposite is definitely well proven. Where sensory deprivation drives us nuts very quickly,

sensory overload does as well. There is this ninety two study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found that patients began to exhibit the symptoms of schizophrenia, especially disordered speech, after just a forty three minute movie that was highly intense in sound and color. Yes, sound is a big thing for me if I have if I have more than one different kinds of sound coming at me, Like I'm listening to the radio and like

my daughter will play something on a thing. Oh and maybe Emily is saying something to me. Forget it. It's like you're at the mall, dude, I lose it. I gotta get rid of a sound. I can just run and start pushing kids out of the work, shoving kids and put Emiley's mouth and I destroy Ruby's toy. You got mesophonia? Buddy? Is that what that is? Maybe? Usually it's more something like that. If it's one thing chewing, it doesn't bother me. Two people chewing might be a problem,

especially if they're hum chewing. Man like those people Matt m. Dylan and the Flamingo kid. Did he hump you? Yeah? It was like he went to his girlfriend's parents house for dinner. He's like, no, no, And I haven't seen that in a long time. I haven't either, but never forget that part. So um. One of the big challenges now that environmental psychology has taken on is this idea that they got to figure out how to make people want to take care of the planet more, And they're

figuring it out. But basically all they're doing is repurposing social psychology and its findings on consumerism and redirecting it toward more conservation minded stuff, which is interesting, like the finding like um, like, some people like new things. So if you present something is new and novel and nobody's adopted it yet, some people will say, oh, I want

to try that. Other people are more competitive, for if they find out Shelbyville is about to win a recycling award, they're going to redouble their efforts so their town wins it. Or if this celebrity endorses this product a sort of an obvious one, sure, Like James Spader wears sustainably sourced suits that are made of recycled tires. No. I read that, and I was like, good for you, James Spader, right, and made you want to wear a suit like that, didn't it? I wondered how you would make a rubber

suit it was comfortable and fashionable. The fraudst love it, um, But there there's a you know, there's a big debate over whether that is really part of environmental psychology or if it's taking too big of a bite. And in the nineties something called conservation psychology came along and it wants to do the same exact thing. And there's also ecological psychology that wants to do the same thing. So

there's a big leg leg wrestling match going on. And that guy Philip Cotler that you referenced earlier, earlier, the guy who was like, how can we better sell things to people? He is now um, kind of going the way of environmental psychology with making things greener, right, right, right, He's flipped. So even if they are right, he turned into a dirty rat. Even if they are trying to nudge us into that behavior, it's tough to fault him

for pro nudging people toward pro conservation behavior. So that's environmental psychology, everybody. That's what we've found out about it. If you want to find out more about it, just go start reading. You can spend years and years doing it. And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail. Uh, this is anonymous, but very interesting. Hey, guys, listen to four years of podcasts in a year's time. Today I saw, boy,

You've got a lot of years to go anonymous. Today I saw the new post on Guardian Angels and began to listen, and about the fifteen minute mark, Chuck says the guy gets a job at McDonald's in the Bronx, and says, the McDonald's late night scene in New York City is still nuts, but you're not getting murdered, but it is crazy town. I stopped immediately and replayed what you said because I couldn't believe it. My uncle was murdered last year at McDonald's in the Bronx. I couldn't

believe it. Did you read this one? The details are horrific and mostly sensationalized for the media, which of course makes me angry. But he was an amazing man and strong, loving force in my life. Could it be I'm just super sensitive to this week, given that this is a year from that, But imagine that though I imagine being an anonymous like this, What are the chances that you would even say that and the podcast would be published

almost exactly a year later? I remember listening to a podcast where he talked about when people see their numbers like eleven eleven, what's the name of that? The better mineff. That's where you see like something, you learn about something,

and then you see it. Everyone right, that's what she's talking about, UM or when people use old gimmicks to find out what sex or baby will be in it being because you're training yourself, allowing your subconscious through to make it seem like your number is appearing more often, or that you've got an answer. Thank you for always giving me something to think about besides my stressful job. Guys, and I will see you in Brooklyn. I'll be I'll be the one who's blacked out in the shadows with

the modulated voice. No no, no no, she'll she's she's pregnant and and maybe we'll be able to say miss Anonymous. Well, thanks a lot, Anonymous. I'm sorry about your uncle, UM and this uh, this time of year. It is very bizarre though, that that happened. We can attest for sure it was not planned. Email back, She's are excited that we're reading this. UM. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Anonymous did, you can go on to stuff you Should Know dot com and check

out our social links. You can also send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more podcasts for my heart radio because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,