At the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) conference in Austin, Sam Gosling of the University of Texas-Austin described how the link between our emotions and spaces is is inseparable. As such, our spaces say a lot about us. In new work, Gosling and colleagues identified the emotions and traits that people systemically invoke to create their home spaces. Restoration, kinship, stimulation, productivity , storage, and intimacy are the six organizing constructs their found. Each of those words has many sub-traits that describe how people want to evoke a particular ambiance in a particular space.
In his study of about 200 people, for example, 60% of participants chose one of the following words to describe the ambiance they most wanted for their kitchens: organization, family, productivity, abundance, and togetherness. And they found that 62% of participants wanted their bedrooms to evoke a sense of romance, comfort, relaxation, love, and privacy.
