Light as a positive situational cue at work: Satisfaction with light relates to judgements of other's warmth and competence

Abstract

Workplace illumination is known to impact mood, performance and decision-making. Based on the idea that positive feelings associated with light might influence social judgements in workplaces, we propose that satisfaction with light as a specific affective response to light would lead to positive judgements of other individuals. In a laboratory experiment (N = 164), participants assessed their satisfaction with light and rated other person’s faces on warmth and competence. Results showed that satisfaction with light positively influenced judgement of others. We replicated the positive relation between satisfaction with light and social judgements in a field study with employees (N = 176). These findings highlight the importance of satisfaction with light for social judgement in workplaces. We discuss theoretical contributions and practical implications concerning the design of settings involving the evaluation of other individuals.

Practitioner Summary: The design of work settings where the evaluation of others takes place is an important topic. A laboratory experiment and a field study demonstrate that satisfaction with workplace illumination influences judgements of others. The results provide interesting possibilities for the design of work settings that involve the evaluation of others.

Abbreviations: ANOVA: Analysis of Variance; ANSI: American National Standards Institute; C: celsius; CI: confidence interval; Cm: centimeter; EN 12464 Lighting of indoor workplaces, English version; IESNA-RP: illuminating engineering society of North America, Recommended Practice; ISO: International Organization for Standardization; K: kelvin; Lx: lux; Min: minutes; PANAS: positive affect and negative affect scale; Ra: colour rendering index; SD: standard deviation; SE: standard error; WMA: World Medical Association

Keywords:

• Light
• satisfaction with light
• social judgement
• warmth
• competence

Acknowledgements

This paper is partially based on the first author’s doctoral thesis (Kombeiz 2016). The authors would like to express their gratitude to Anna Steidle for her contribution to the design of the laboratory study and for insightful comments on a previous draft of this paper. We also thank Konrad Senf for proofreading an earlier version of this paper and we thank Anne Jülicher, Hanna Wikström, and Nicole Wieland for their help in collecting data for the laboratory study.

Notes

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 A colour rendering index refers to faithful colour appearance of an object in a test light compared to the standard light source.

2 The data presented in the study 1 were part of a broader data collection effort. However, we confirm that only one of the substantive variables in this research report (the variation in the lighting conditions) partly overlaps with our other research project in the context of this data collection. However, that study addresses a different research question using a different theoretical framework than the present study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by ‘Gips-Schüle-Stiftung’ (https://www.gips-schuele-stiftung.de).