THE STUDY OF LIVING SPACE AND ITS ROLE IN THE EMOTIONAL SELF-REGULATION OF PERSONALITY

Abstract

People devote much of their cognitive resources and time to selecting, modifying, and decorating their living spaces. We feel devastated and despair when their homes are destroyed or have to be sold. Yet the psychological literature says virtually very little about the roles that homes might play in people’s lives. We argue that homes provide an informative context for a wide variety of studies examining how social, developmental, cognitive, and other psychological processes that unroll in a living world of the personality. The topic of homes is also is actual within collaborations with a diverse array of sciences ranging from architecture and engineering to sociology and law. We illustrate the potential information that can be obtained from studying homes with an empirical study that represents the psychological modalities (e.g., romance, comfort, cosiness, togetherness) that people desire to obtain in their homes. We focused on idealistic homes in this survey. Inventory of Desired Ambiances in the Ideal Home questionnaire was used to obtain empirical data. Answers on the following question were analysed: "When you enter each of the following spaces, what are the most important emotions or feelings you would like to experience and evoke in others?" Overall, the results show that people want a wide range of very specific modalities in their ideal living spaces.

To determine how modalities obtained in the study are grouped, we processed participants' ratings using factor analysis. We identify six broad factors (recovery, relationship, kinship, storage, stimulation, intimacy, productivity) that show mean differences across rooms. These results provide only an initial foray into the problem of residential space, but they hint at the productive roles that homes and other spaces could play in psychological formation and life of the person.