Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: More Reasons to Get ‘Em Walking

by Sally Augustin, Ph.D. | January 21st, 2019

The idea of designing “functional inconveniences” into workplaces has been around for a long time. Some of the earliest inconveniences involved how people moved from place to place and circuitous paths were created to the cafeteria or from the parking lot or to the hub where most of the conference rooms were located. These meandering routes were supposed to result in all sorts of people learning about their peers in ways that enhanced collaboration – and there is evidence that people who have more contact with each other are more likely to do high quality work together. Travel-related inconveniences definitely resulted in employees walking further than they otherwise might have. A new era of research related to walking is underway – and this time research is tying walking at a comfortable, self-determined pace to all sorts of good things happening in our heads. Research has established, for example, that walking …