Research Design Connection: Thermal Pleasure

by Sally Augustin, Ph.D. | March 19th, 2018

  Parkinson and de Dear studied links between temperature and positive environmental experiences. They report that “the experiments presented in this paper and the prequels in this series point to the importance of context, in the indoor setting and also the bodily state of the occupant, in determining whether a given thermal environmental variation will be” felt to be pleasurable or unpleasant. Parkinson and de Dear share that “A pragmatic design solution to the…individual differences inherent in…thermal preferences is to provide PEC [personal environmental control] options to occupants…variables such as the target area, rate of cooling and temporal profile of peripheral heat should be controllable by the individual. By embedding PEC systems in workstations, occupants can create bespoke micro-environments that are capable of eliciting positive hedonic [pleasurable] tones…PEC permits this without the individual’s thermal preferences impinging upon the environment of others…not everyone experiences the same quality or intensity of thermal …