Procedures for Investigating the Effect of Light on Impression

Abstract

This paper reports findings concerning the effect of environmental lighting as a medium that affects user impressions and judgments. Our previous work on this problem used both multidimensional scaling and semantic differential techniques to assess changes in impression as a function of variation in the lighting arrangements. This research was conducted in a lighting demonstration room at the General Electric Lighting Institute at Nela Park in Cleveland. Six different lighting arrangements were used. Results from both multidimensional scaling and ratings on semantic differential scales showed that user impression changed in orderly ways for different lighting arrangements. The present study assessed whether slides of the lighting arrangements could adequately simulate results from the real space. Comparable results would indicate that slides are a useful simulation tool, and would also be of general theoretical interest. The data indicated that in many important respects the results for the slides matched the results for the real space for ratings on semantic differential scales, but that less consistent results were obtained for multidimensional scaling.