Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: Locating

September 1 is an amazing day in the Boston-Cambridge area. On that day, lots and lots of leases expire. So, every September 1, there is a mad rush as people move from one rental into another. Streets are blocked and dangerous, since people who have no idea how to drive a U-Haul are out doing just that.

Move Day, as September 1 is known, really gets me thinking about the importance of location.

Where corporate offices are located matters a lot. Businesses need to live in the right neighborhoods for them, just like people do.

The area that a business chooses for its home sends a silent message. Is the firm based in a center for developing technologies and innovative thought? If it is, that allure rubs off on the company doing business there; it is linked to desired technology and ways of thinking, as well. Based in a suburban corporate center? Associations to that address are very different.

2015.0928.Article.Concurrents.LocatingThe location where companies decide to locate also determines, to a great extent, how their employees get to their desks every day. Do they drive? Ride a bicycle? Walk? Take a train or a bus?

How people commute has a big effect on their mood. I’ve talked regularly in this column about the favorable implications of a positive, relatively relaxed mood on our problem solving abilities, creativity, sociability and health (being in a good mood improves the functioning of our immune system).

Barreck found that “Commuting length, distance and means are stress factors that can lead to burnout…the bigger the city, the more stressful the commute, at least for people travelling by car…passengers are more likely to be stressed out than drivers. Carpooling reduces the passenger commuters’ sense of control, which causes them more stress before they’ve even arrived at work…for transit users in major urban areas, the variety of types and times of service means they’re less likely to have symptoms of burnout…Cyclists in the suburbs have a lesser sense of control than cyclists in the city. Cyclists and walkers in the city have access to safety features such as cycle paths and pedestrian crossings, which increases their sense of control over their commute…The risk of burnout increases significantly when a commute lasts more than 20 minutes…Above 35 minutes, all employees are at increased risk of cynicism toward their job.” [Quote from “You’re Driving Yourself to Burnout, Literally.” 2015. Press release, University of Montreal, http://www.nouvelles.umontreal.ca.]

Researchers have also learned that being stressed during a commute compromises our ability to tolerate frustration and perform professionally. After “wasting time” commuting, employees are more quickly exasperated by work tasks that similarly don’t seem like good uses of time. People who spend more time each day commuting by car are generally in poorer health than people with shorter commutes, which has direct implications for professional performance.

There are a lot of benefits to active commuting – walking, running, or biking to work. Walking, in particular, has been linked to more creative thinking, at least while walking and just afterwards.

A press release from the University of East Anglia reports that “Walking or cycling to work is better for people’s mental health than driving to work…people who stopped driving and started walking or cycling to work benefited from improved wellbeing [study participants changed their mode of travel to work]. In particular, active commuters felt better able to concentrate and were less under strain than if they travelled by car. These benefits come on top of the physical health benefits of walking and cycling…Experts also found that travelling on public transport is better for people’s psychological wellbeing than driving.” The researchers found a direct link between wellbeing and length of walk to work: the longer the walk, the better people felt. [From: Walking or Cycling to Work Improves Wellbeing, University of East Anglia Researchers Find.” 2014. Press release, University of East Anglia, http://www.uea.ac.uk.]

Logically, for people to be comfortable walking, running, or riding their bicycle to work, they need to find safe spaces, ideally on the ground floor, to store their bicycles once they arrive, and showers.

Commuting affects commuters’ relationships with others in more than the obvious ways. Huang, Dong, Dai and Wyer (2012) found that “Couples’ marital satisfaction can depend on whether they commute to work in the same or different directions…partners’ satisfaction with their relationship was greater when they traveled to work in the same direction than when they traveled in different directions. This was true regardless of whether the partners left for work at the same or different times.” A second round of research “eliminated alternative interpretations of the survey findings, showing that even randomly paired participants reported greater attraction to one another [i.e., determined by how positive/negative ratings were of others] when they walked to an experimental task in the same direction [even if they traveled by different routes] rather than in different directions.” So, reverse commute locations can wreck havoc in employees’ lives.

Locate businesses with care. Success is tied to address.

Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.