College is messy. It’s the period where you learn how to manage your personal, social and work life, juggling everything from midterm exams to last week’s laundry. While our priority is often keeping up with these responsibilities, we usually neglect the spaces they’re grounded in.
You probably have a room with books or clothes scattered across the floor. We all do at one point. And while cleaning up or rearranging your room may seem like an arbitrary task, your environment can influence how you feel, focus and function.
Humans naturally gravitate to spaces with specific features, and several psychological theories explain why. From prospect-refuge to cognitive load, understanding the psychology behind our environments can help you make small adjustments to your environment to maximize the time you spend at home.
Prospect-Refuge Theory
When walking through a town square or plaza, you might notice that people gravitate toward its edges rather than the middle of an open space. Why? From an evolutionary standpoint, humans have favored areas with broad vistas and scattered trees because they enabled people to scan their environments from a safe structure. Originally noted in the Savannah Hypothesis, this concept of evolutionary spatial preference later influenced the Prospect-Refuge Theory, a less ecologically-oriented concept compared to the former. The Prospect-Refuge Theory, outlined by geographer Jay Appleton, explains that humans have an evolutionary preference for spaces with prospect, a view of their surroundings, and refuge, elements that provide protection.
You may be asking what savannas and plazas have to do with your room. The principles of prospect-refuge go beyond just outdoor spaces. Designers use the theory to create interiors that feel safer and more pleasurable, which may help reduce stress and improve focus. In practice, this can look like putting your chair with your back against the wall or spacing your furniture so that it sits along the edges of a room.
Biophilia and Attention Restoration Theory
Related to the Savannah Hypothesis is Biophilia, the idea that humans are naturally attracted to nature and life. Plants in particular make spaces livelier and softer, and may help to reduce stress.
The idea of biophilia also extends into Attention Restoration Theory. This theory, developed by Kaplan and Kaplan, suggests that studying and working require sustained attention , which can lead to mental fatigue. When a person immerses themselves in nature, their directed attention may be restored.
Adding one or two houseplants to your room, or even just going for a walk, can allow you to reap the benefits of biophilia and attention restoration. Just a short amount of time in nature has the power to boost the effectiveness of your study sessions.
Somatic Cues and Cognitive Load
Your somatic nervous system is the part of your nervous system that translates your surroundings into information for your central nervous system, the part of your body that regulates coordination and maintains homeostasis. Without you realizing, your body is constantly sensing stimuli from your environment that influence things like your heart rate, body temperature, and blood pressure.
Rooms contain many of these signals including lights, sound, objects and scents. Changing these components can help your body maintain homeostasis therefore aiding concentration and physical wellbeing. For example, cool-toned lighting elicits concentration, and warmer lighting for winding down.
Stimuli can also be a hindrance. Spaces with lots of clutter can cause too much visual stimulation. Your memory is only capable of processing four to seven things at a time, so removing unnecessary objects from your space reduces overall cognitive load and filtering.
Collectively, these theories help point to why our spaces can help or hurt the way we operate. But improving your spaces doesn’t need to be expensive or fancy, it just needs a little reorganizing.