Stuff You Should Know - How Environmental Psychology Works

Episode Date: October 8, 2019

In the 60s, psychology expanded from exploring inside the mind to exploring the inside of buildings. Environmental psychology looks at how our spaces affect us – from how a busy mall can create a panic attack to how looking at nature can speed recovery from surgery. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radios, How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. This is Stuff You Should Know. I actually had to frog him up. Oh, that was real. It was a real frog. So we're in our nice quiet room here. It's so nice to feel.

The walls are dark and padded. And scanced in love. And our chairs are comfy. It doesn't smell that much. Jerry's food is in the stinky as usual. Actually, it's funny. You stayed in here when I went to go get a drink to come back.

It smells pretty Pollock Panieri. Like you can distinctly. Pollock Panieri is a good smell, though. It is. Maybe I'm just used to it. It's a good smell in 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. Good job. So, Chuck, we're talking today about psychology,

but not the head shrinking, more the head expanding variety of psychology. Don't 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. We're just going to come out and say it. And your dad. They really screwed you up. And then with this stuff, with environmental psychology,

it has really expanded on a macro level. Yeah, because it's saying, not only are you all screwed up by yourself and that your friends and family are screwing you up, the physical spaces that you exist in can screw you up, or the other side of the coin. To make you happier, more relaxed, less stressed out. And we, environmental psychologists,

this is what they started to call themselves, are going to figure out exactly how, what, who, why, when, where, the who's it, the any who, all of it. The why? 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 going to do it the other way, too.

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. I think you do, too, initially. But it seems to break down a little bit scientifically. 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 look at how a grocery store can best be planned out and touch on some psychology. But don't ask me to prove it with studies that can be replicated. So there are a lot of studies about this stuff. And they're legitimate peer-reviewed studies.

But they're real disparate and not necessarily related. And I think what you're talking about is environmental psychology tries to bring them all together and say, this is our jam. And that the pieces don't necessarily connect yet, like you would think they would from 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 may be so. But I honestly don't know what the drive is. I don't know. It's interesting stuff, though. Oh, yeah, to be sure. It's famously interesting.

Everybody loves environmental psychology, even if you don't know the name of it. And people have understood, too, that our environments do affect us for way longer than environmental psychology's 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 13th 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 on 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, it was ghost soil. Right. Should we talk about Churchill since we're talking about history? Yeah, we got to kind of leap forward from the 13th to the 20th century.

Yeah, Churchill very famously said, we shape our buildings and later they shape us, belch, cigar, toke. And he, very famously, when World War II bombed out the parliament building, he said, rebuild it just as it was. And everyone else was like, hey, governor, shouldn't it be a bit bigger?

And he would, no, they had the chance to give everyone a little more space. Yeah, desks. No, do it exactly like it was. 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.

I'd heard 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. Can you do Roger Moore doing Winston Churchill? No, I've never tried Roger Moore. Yeah, I've never heard anybody do Roger Moore.

Karate chop. That was pretty good. So yeah, there's been this awareness that 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 50s, early 60s. And actually you can trace it back

to one group of people at City University, New York. Cooney. Yep, led by, what are they, the fighting Manhattan transfers? Well, they have a great acapella group. There were a bunch of Coonies. I'm not sure which one this was. City University of New York, they're all over town. Oh, I didn't know that.

OK, well, I'm not sure which one it was either. But Harold Proshansky was the leader of this group from Cooney. And they were a group of social psychologists. And some people at a hospital in New York, we'll just say hospital because there's probably only one, there's only one Cooney. 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. They said, we're from hospital. Right, they said, oh, OK, we're from Cooney. And Harold Proshansky's like, we have no idea how to tell you how to do that. So he went ahead and founded environmental psychology, 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. In 1970, environmental psychology, colon, manned, and his physical setting. And by man, he means person. Hugh manned. But it was 1970. So there were only men that mattered in 1970. So he is the father of environmental psychology.

He's the father of lies. You know what I think the deal is, he's so unwieldy. And they're trying to corral this unwieldy thing, because it's nature, and it's design, and it's color, and it's fabrics, and it's people's brains. I'm with you. All right, so. We're just going to grife about it all sporadically

throughout the whole episode. So the whole idea of prior to environmental psychology, and still is the case in a lot of cases, is if you're going to do an experiment, they would bring you to a very 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.

Yeah, exactly, delouse you. And you would be just sitting in a white room with fluorescent bulbs buzzing above your head, and Bill Murray zapping you whenever you gave a wrong answer. And they were like, this is the way to do it. But there were a couple of psychologists, Roger Barker and Kurt Lewin specifically, that said, you know what? That's making things worse, stripping the world away,

and putting people in sterile environments, like you're going to be confounding the results. Yeah, just from the outset. It doesn't make any sense. And 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 Proshansky. 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 creating part of their behavior. You can't study that in the lab. So that's one of the things that makes

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 multi-disciplinary 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 molar units, which are very large scale. We're talking about communities, neighborhoods, maybe your house or room is probably about the smallest thing, what do you think? Yes. Or maybe your personal space. They seem to have adopted that as well.

Yeah, it's all over the place. And it covers every angle that you can think of in terms of how you interact with your environment, like we said, like spatial planning and lighting, ergonomics, acoustics, color, empty space. Yeah, imagine that. That's a brain buster right there.

It is. And so what they're studying, what environmental psychologists study, are what they call transactions. And this has been a particular bone in my craw. I've never once seen someone concretely define what a transaction is. I would guess that it's a transaction is 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 keyster. Well, then you're an environmental psychologist. 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, sure.

Why not? But my question also is like, OK, 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're stirring in the room because the concrete floor is making your butt fall asleep. Maybe it is a bunch of transactions.

Or you start to get scared because you hear a weird noise. And all of the things that happen over the hour, are those transactions or is the whole thing a transaction? I've just never heard it concretely define. 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, whether you 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. That's usually my role.

I'm happy to take it over this time. So where you first started seeing the impact of environmental psychology was in 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 in a lobby, or an elevator, or a staircase, or an office, or a.

Or airwolf. Or airwolf, or the concierge desk in a hotel. Like all of this stuff has always been a lot of thought, probably before they even called it environmental psychology. How do people interact with this? When you walk in, you want people to feel good and understand where things are. Well, now I know.

But there's a balance that has to be struck, though. I don't know if that actually did exist before environmental. Oh, really? 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 ideas, what you just said,

seems to have really been helped along by the field of environmental psychology. You might be right. Because that's what's called bottom up. Let's really think about how people interact with this environment. And whereas before it was top down, like let's just build this beautiful building.

Right. And it turns out it's really confusing. Yeah. Because we didn't think about people. No, and there were actually two big things that happened in the 60s. Well, one in the 60s, one in the early 70s, that kind of said, oh, wait, our environments,

our physical spaces really do affect us. And they can have really negative effects, too. The first one was the Kitty Genovese murder. Yeah, which we covered. We did a whole episode on that. That was a, yeah. But the long story short, the popular conception, is that an entire apartment block of people

watched Kitty Genovese be murdered publicly over the course of like an hour. And nobody did anything, even though that's not fully true. But the reason that they didn't do anything is 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...

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, which I don't even know if we touched on that in the episode, did we? I think maybe. If not, we just did.

Consider that a follow. The other one was this housing complex in St. Louis in 1972 that was built called Pruitt Igo. And it was built in 1956, 2,870 units in 33 11-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 gonna make a big difference in their lives. Yeah, it was actually, I looked all over for what magazine it was, but some architectural 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 high rise. This gift from the gods of architecture, basically. And the exact opposite happened.

That's right. In 16 years, by 1972, the Pruitt-Igo complex, 33 11-story buildings was raised to the ground. And there became a really, really negative, popular idea about Pruitt-Igo. 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 16 years, Pruitt-Igo became blighted by crime, vandalism, neglect, disrepair. 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 psychologists said, wait a minute,

I don't know if that's actually the case. What if it was the actual buildings that were the problem? Yeah, they came in and they called it, 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. And research later on, this is where we get into a couple of other theories that we've talked about. I know we've talked about the broken windows theory, which basically is the idea that you need to go after the vandal or the person who throws a brick through a window, even though that's low-hanging fruit, legally speaking, as far as cops go.

Or fines. 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 Pruitt-Igo. 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 can get out of hand. Right, the other big theory that kind of evolved to explain what happened at Pruitt-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 lawlessness and criminality, criminal behavior. Part of the other problem with the design was that the common areas, the play areas, were all, were kind of like around corners, were out of view, so there was no way for the community

to 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.

And so environmental psychologists had this idea 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's your luck about the place? Right. What did you hate? And those are, like you said, low-hanging fruit, but that's the kind of thing that actually can 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. Right. You don't 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 taking that stuff 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. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references

to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, HeyDude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, now, when you're on the road, driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. It's stuff you should know. All right. All right, so let's talk about some of these behaviors

as far as 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. The first one is territoriality, and you put this together. You describe this very plainly as like, if you go into a coffee shop

and you put your bag down on a table and then go out of your coffee, or if you just dress up your cubicle with dumb stuff, 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. They're used by more than one person. Right, the next one is crowding, which I think is super interesting, because crowding 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. Oh dude, it happens to me every time. Do you feel crowded? It's just a spectrum of how soon it starts. Really?

Every time I go to a mall. You feel crowded? Yeah, and that's the opposite of how it should be. Right, I know. But it's me, I'm in really well-designed malls, but it's still me, where I still feel crowded. There's a period where the thing that you mean I would do in the winter time 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 mall walkers. Not the mall, 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 store was open, the mall was open. Right. And that's where you'll find some really fantastic jumpsuits. Dude. Walking around in the exercise clothes. Yeah, and they'll have like clubs and coffee, clutches and all sorts of stuff, yeah.

You know, it's mall walkings, I think. Okay, but you were on the outside of the mall. No, no, we were inside. We have a bag that Momo comes with. Oh, okay, gotcha. But so we were walking around the inside just at night or whatever, you know? The youngest ones there.

Kind of, so, but every time I'd just be like tense and then just feel crowded and like edgy and stressed out. And this is before the mall opened? No. Okay. I don't stop with the mall walking thing. It has nothing to do with that. All right, mall's open.

Mall's open. You're shopping. Maybe even nighttime, Momo's there. Okay. And we're inside. Okay. And there's no one wearing a jumpsuit. And you're not 75 years old.

No. Okay. But that was, well, now we've reached the end of the story. Oh, so you would just get anxious 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 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 a genuine crowd crowded things like sports games or concerts and... It's about the same. Oh, really? Interesting. I think because in the situation like that,

I'm going into it expecting it. I 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 are you in the middle of that like elbow to elbow? It's hit or miss. But to crotch scene. It changes from, it depends on how relaxed I'm feeling.

Okay. I think you know that they're going to like play the big song and the last song. Oh yeah. Yeah. Usually I don't like sitting around for the encore, but if it's the song that I came to see, I'll do it. Right.

So you're at the, who's the German techno group? Skinny puppy? No. So you're at a craft work show. I've actually been to see craft work. I know. And you're like, I really want to leave, but they haven't played liverwurst yet,

which is their best song. I don't think they have a song called liverwurst. No. I don't think so. Maybe. Audubon. Yeah, Audubon, they definitely do. We saw them at the Disney concert hall in Los Angeles.

It was amazing. I never went there. Or when, or maybe I did a song opera there. It'd be a good place for that. We left early. Oh really? You didn't wait for the encore? No.

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 waited until the encore. I know that they do that every single night, 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.

And that's, you know, people want a private space, but there's a subset of that called personal space, which is not the same thing as privacy. Personal space is, what do they define it as the one and a half to four feet 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 online for anything. And feeling. Online, online's different. Online is what you say in New York. Okay. Feeling someone like kicking my heel or breathing down my neck.

I'm always just like, just like, it's when you're not going to get there any quicker by breathing on me, dude. Please back off. Are they fraudurists? Have you ever considered maybe you're being in the victim of a fraudurist? I'm not sure.

Subway creep. I don't know. I had a situation a few weeks ago. Geez, should I even talk about this? Oh boy. I like where this is going. All right, I'll go ahead. I was in a grocery store and I was really motoring

because I was just going to get a couple of things. I don't want to get out of there. And I went and I cut through what usually is the sandwich line of which there was none at the time. And the deli like. Yeah, but it's a little sort of narrow space where you stand in line. It's like roped off.

Yeah. 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 shimmied by him and did one of those like, woo, went by the kid. You did a Ric Flair thing? No, I didn't say a word.

But I came, come back five minutes later and 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, I was like, me? And then did you say she knew who I am? She shoved my kid or you shoved my kid. I was like, no, I said, I didn't shove your kid.

And she started, 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 to, and I'm a big justice guy, so this really was hard for me. But just say, 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, I shoved your kid and I'm sorry. You're like, I have a small child who I shove all the time and she doesn't tattle like your little kid. It was 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? Okay, now. Recounting it.

I didn't shove that kid. I believe you didn't touch him. I'll bet every single person listening believes you. Oh man. All 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 space that is your own, that you can defend and that you can consider a place to have privacy and to put your stuff and the idea that high density of people in the wrong kind of situation creates crowding. All of this stuff contributes to the ultimate goal.

One of the big goals of environmental psychology is to create, put all this stuff together and create ideal environments. That's right, which is a balance of things. It's 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.

Right. 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 that basically say it's ideal or not. Like unity, basically things work well together, self-explanatory.

Like the dude saying that his rug really tied the room together. Yeah, exactly. Legibility, that a person can navigate that space without getting lost, very important. Right. Complexity, that it's just complex enough to 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 60s when environmental psychology was 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 Kotler, he coined the term atmospherics. And atmospherics is exactly what you would think it is. But he had this very famous quote, famous in these circles, I should say, that 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 product.

Yeah, I mean, you brought up the Apple store, 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. Right. And they're lit and the music and the... Yeah, like Abercrombie and Fitch, I think is what you're referencing.

Yeah, Banana Republic. But yeah, they're trying to create an experience. And Emily even does this with her store, but it's not a cheesy nightclub. Sure. She tries to create an experience where people come in and they smell nice things and it's relaxing and there's plants.

A yoga club. Yeah, sort of, exactly. A night yoga club. Basically. So yeah, what she's doing is engaging in atmospherics and it makes total sense. Of course, you want people to not want to like turn around and leave your store.

You want people to mill around. Just have the product. He was taking it 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 two extremes on the spectrum, just the products and the place being more important

than the products, whereas 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 I mean, from pottery to quilts to clothes to 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 itself,

the atmosphere made you want to stay? Yeah, the design of it, the mystery. I wanted it because they had, you know, go up these stairs, what's up there? I see a light shining around that corner. Like what 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 for us. Well, we'll buzz market it sometime when you got it. No, that's right. But one of the places that has really kind of has posed itself as a really great example, an understandable example of atmospherics and how they can be used to kind of work its mojo

on our brains are casinos. Yeah, which we talked about in our episode on... Casinos? Here's the deal. Humans have triggers and clues that the Germans call Zeitgebers, not Zeitburgers. I want to say it so bad every time. Time giver is what that literally translates to

or synchronizer. And 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 dawn, things like that. Or even literal clocks can allow us to reset our biological clocks.

Casinos don't like those things. No, 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 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 bells and stuff like that. But it's a constant, it's constantly going on. And then when somebody wins, it rises so much so that everyone in the casino knows somebody just won.

But the fact that the dinging and buzzing is always going on to some degree makes you think without thinking that the 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, the one thing I noticed in Vegas

is the casino doors are never closed to the outside. So if you're walking around and it's 110 degrees in Nevada, which 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 while.

Oh, totally. You want to go in there just to cool down and like, well, I've got five bucks in my pocket. Might as well give it to the casino. Right. And then you get a snoot full of like raw cigarette smoke and you're like, oh, I think I'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. We talked about legibility and how you should be able to find your way around. Casinos deliberately make their casino floors illegible

so that you just kind of wander around. 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, you're in trouble and 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 meandering. Right, so they make it so you're just kind of meandering like you said. There's like little offshoots that are like, oh, what's around this corner? Oh, more slots. Maybe I'll play it.

What a great little thing to find. For the venues and the restaurants, they're placed along the back of the casino floor so that 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 like I was saying though, they don't want you to get lost or feel lost

because environmental psychology has 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 floor or an airport floor or something like that, you'll notice that there's probably a different color something that is leading you

in the path that 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 what you think of in like nature. But like you're 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 technique of wayfinding. Yeah, if you signage is a real thing, they do have signs in 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 your steak is waiting on you. For $3.99. That's not the case anymore. No, it used to be though, right? Yeah, back in my days. $3.99 prime rib. That's right. All you can eat.

So one thing is signage. One thing is like actually putting a line on the floor that you don't realize is there. It's not like an arrow. 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 and 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 then along some of the corridors and hallways that you're not supposed to be down, the lighting's not nearly as bright. Right, or an information desk or a concierge

or something like that. That's always got those usually can lights pointing straight down saying, come over here. I'll help you out. Right. So what's really, really interesting to me, Chuck, is 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've just talked about, wayfinding, things like cognitive maps, 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 palatable

and make you wanna like spend, also works for online storefronts or how you find your way around. Also works for designing video games and that kind of thing too. 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 wanna take another break and then come back and talk about the whole green movement part? Let's do it. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days

of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references

to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called

on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well now, when you're on the road, driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. Stuff you should know! All right.

So this is Pretty Dense, you're right. FYI. Are we back? Okay, yeah. I didn't know if that was off, Mike. No, no, I was saying in front of everybody. You didn't call me, hey jerk. So I figured it was on, Mike.

You figured we were gonna leave it in. Hey jerk, this is dense. You're right for once. Are we recording? Sorry. So yeah, 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 affect your environment as well. And I'm all about... Affecting your environment, like peeing outside? I do love peeing outside. Like, should you take this environment? Grow, plant, grow.

Like everyone knows that green spaces are good for your psyche and looking out a window is better. 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 it. 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 an experiment. It might've been. It sounds like it was. I mean, it was built in 1979.

So I think it... It doesn't ring a bell. 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 at Redan High School. Cause you can't see anything. And then they followed your class and they'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. They even, there was one example of botanical gardens. One of my, our favorite things to do as a family. But they said in this 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 yourself. 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 Proshansky was asked to how to make hospital rooms better, more conducive to patient well-being. He said, put them outside. Well, that eventually became, you know, kind of a separate arm of environmental psychology. That was led by Rachel and Stephen Kaplan

from the University of Michigan, which has a huge EP program. Oh, really? I believe because of these guys. But starting in the 70s through the 90s, to the end of the 90s, 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 of that restorative juice from nature and let it drip down your face like so much naval orange juice. Just get all sticky from it. What is going on? 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. 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 in nature is what brings that along. Yeah, that kind of mindset where anything can happen or you can just kind of trance out or zone out, your attention's 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, you still recovered better. They didn't even give you pictures of that stuff. They did.

They tried to beat out of you the memory of what the outdoors were like. So they've come up with a ratio, though, of green spaces to structures within that green space, like a plaza or a fountain or whatever, of 70 to 30, I guess 70% green space, 30% human-built structures. Right, right, which is 70, 30.

I guess they just kind of worked out over the average. Yeah, but I think that's a cool thing to know if you're planning a green space, is 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 was a 1972 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 43-minute movie that was highly intense in sound and color. Yes, sound is a big thing for me.

If I have more than one different kinds of sound coming at me, like I'm listening to the radio, and my daughter will play something on a thing, 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. You just run and start pushing kids out of the way?

I start shoving kids and I put duct tape over Emily's mouth and I destroy Ruby's toy. You got misophonia, buddy. Is that what that is? Maybe, usually it's more with like chewing sounds or 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 Dylan and the flamingo kid. Did he hum chew? Yeah, it was like he went to his girlfriend's parents' house for dinner and he's like nom nom nom. Man, I haven't seen that in a long time. I haven't either, but I'll never forget that part. It's a good movie.

So one of the big challenges now that environmental psychology has taken on is this idea that they gotta figure out how to make people wanna take care of the planet more. And they're figuring it out, but basically all they're doing is repurposing social psychology and it's findings on consumerism

and redirecting it toward more conservation minded stuff. Yeah, which is interesting. Like the finding like some people like new things. So if you present something as new and novel and nobody's adopted it yet, some people will say, ooh, I wanna try that. Other people are more competitive or if they find out Shelby Vills

about to win a recycling award, they're going to redouble their effort so their town wins it. Or if this celebrity endorses this product, that's sort of an obvious one. Sure, like James Spader wears sustainably sourced suits that are made of recycled tires. Does he really?

No. Okay. I read that and I was like, good for you, James Spader. Right. It made you wanna wear a suit like that, didn't it? I wondered how you would make a rubber suit that was comfortable and fashionable. The fraudists love it. But 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 90s, 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 wrestling match going on. And that guy, Philip Kotler,

that you referenced earlier, the guy who was like, how can we better sell things to people? He is now kind of going the way of environmental psychology with making things greener, right? Right, right. He's flipped. So even if they are trying to, right, he turned into a dirty rat.

Even if they are trying to nudge us into that behavior, it's tough to fault them for pro-nudging people toward pro-conservation behavior. Yeah. So that's environmental psychology, everybody. It's what we found out about it. If you wanna 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 Listener Mail. This is anonymous, but very interesting. Hey guys, we listened to four years of podcasts in a year's time. Today I saw, boy, you got a lot of years to go, anonymous. Today I saw the new post on Guardian Angels and began to listen.

And about the 15 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? Yeah. 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 know. Imagine being anonymous like this. What are the chances that you would even say that in the podcast would be published almost exactly a year later? I remember listening to a podcast where you talked about

when people see their numbers, like 11, 11. What's the name of that? The... 2023. Bader Meinhof? Oh yeah. That's where you see like something, you learn about something and then you see it everywhere.

Right, that's what she's talking about. Yeah. Or when people use old gimmicks to find out what sex or baby will be and 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 on the 24th. I'll be the one. I'll be the one who's blacked out in the shadows with the modulated voice. No, no, no. She's pregnant and maybe we'll be able to say hi

to Miss Anonymous. Well, thanks a lot Anonymous. I'm sorry about your uncle. And this time of year. Yeah. It is very bizarre though that that happened. We can attest. For sure.

It was not planned. She emailed back, she was very excited that we were reading this. That's cool. Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Anonymous did, you can go on to stuffyshouldknow.com and check out our social links. You can also send us an email to stuffpodcast

at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called,

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it.

And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.