6 Health Benefits Of Natural Light

1. Employees working in natural light recorded higher levels of energy and productivity than
those working under artificial light.

2. 2. Natural light can lower the risk of nearsightedness in children and young adults by
helping the eye produce dopamine, which aids in healthy eye development.
3. 3. Exposure to sunlight, especially early in the morning for at least half an hour,
increases your chances of a good night’s sleep.
4. 4. Sunlight helps the body produce the “happy” hormone serotonin which combats a
type of depression called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).
5. 5. Rooms with ample sunlight have been shown to help hospital patients heal
faster after surgical procedures
6. 6. Sunlight in the classroom has been shown to have a positive impact on student test
scores.

As we’ve mentioned, SAD is a type of clinical depression, but instead of being triggered by events in
your life, SAD waxes and wanes with the seasons. “Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a type of
depression that’s related to changes in seasons — SAD begins and ends at about the same times
every year,” explains the Mayo Clinic. “If you’re like most people with SAD, your symptoms start in
the fall and continue into the winter months, sapping your energy and making you feel moody.”

Natural light boosts your body’s vitamin D storage

Vitamin D is important for absorbing calcium and promoting bone growth, as well as helping
prevent certain types of cancers, heart disease, depression and weight gain. Yet, many
Americans have a vitamin D deficiency due to a lack of outdoor sun exposure. So get outside
since scientists suggest that Vitamin D may be helpful in treating many different disorders
and diseases, such as autism, cancer, diabetes, chronic pain and depression.

Natural light leads to higher productivity

A study by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology found that employees working in
natural light recorded higher levels of energy than those working under artificial
light. Another study showed 40 percent higher sales at checkout counters located beneath
skylights. This data confirms what many studies have shown: natural light leads to enhanced
productivity.

Natural light benefits vision

Computer screens, smart phones and florescent light can cause eye strain that can lead to
permanent eye damage. Natural light has been shown to lower the risk of nearsightedness in
children and young adults by helping the eye produce dopamine, which aids in healthy eye
development.

Natural light helps you sleep

Research shows that the amount of sunlight you receive during the day has a direct impact on
how much sleep you get at night. Direct sunlight, especially early in the morning for at least
half an hour, produces the most benefit for a good night’s sleep while artificial lighting has
little to no effect. In fact, artificial light before bed and at night can increase the risk of type 2
diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer if you’re unable to consistently obtain quality sleep.

Natural light improves your mood

Did you know that there is a type of depression called Seasonal Affective Disorder, which
affects many people in the winter when they do not receive enough sunlight? Scientists
believe that the “happy” hormone called serotonin increases when nights are short and days
are long. In fact, many psychiatrists recommend that people get out in the sunlight for at least
30 minutes a day to help prevent or treat depression.

New Research Shows That a Person's Home and Office Environment Can Reveal Certain Personality
Traits

Depending on what character traits you desire in a mate, you may want to look at his or her office or
bedroom. If you're looking for someone who's extroverted and agreeable, you'd probably do better
meeting him or her. But if it's conscientiousness and openness you want, take a look in their
bedroom. In fact, according to new research by University of Texas, Austin psychologist Samuel
Gosling, Ph.D., and his colleagues, personal spaces such as bedrooms and offices are an incredibly
rich source of information about people's personalities. This study will appear in the March issue of
the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological
Association (APA).

Gosling and Sei Jin Ko, of the University of Texas at Austin, Thomas Mannerelli, Ph.D., of the
international business school INSEAD and Margaret Morris, Ph.D., of Sapient, a consulting firm in San
Francisco found that people are remarkably accurate at guessing some aspects of others'
personalities--in particular whether they tend to be open and conscientious--based only on a look at
either their offices or their bedrooms.

In two separate studies, Gosling asked people to rate others' personalities--using the standard and
quite broad "Big Five" traits of openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and
emotional stability--after looking through either their offices or their bedrooms. He then compared
how well these personality-raters agreed with each other as well as how accurate their assessments
seemed when compared to self- and peer-ratings of the office and bedroom inhabitants.

The 94 offices examined in the study belonged to employees of five businesses: a bank, a real estate
firm, a business school, an architecture firm and an advertising agency. The 83 bedrooms belonged
to college students or recent college graduates living on or near a college campus. The researchers
used several methods to ensure that the occupants did not make changes to their offices or
bedrooms prior to the inspections. For example, one of the incentives for participating in the study
was to receive an evaluation of how others perceive them based on their personal space.

Other researchers have done similar studies using photographs of people, video clips, evaluations of
people's reputations and the like. But Gosling is the first to try it without providing any direct visual
or biographical information about the person whose personality is being assessed. Instead, they had
to rely on cues such as personal items (though all photos and references to the occupants' names
were covered up), decorating style, neatness and level of organization.

Not only did Gosling find that personality raters--eight in the study looking at offices and seven in the
study looking at bedrooms--agreed among themselves, but he also found that they were relatively
accurate in their assessments. At least for certain traits. While earlier studies found that people could
accurately assess extroversion and agreeableness by viewing photos and video clips but had a harder
time assessing conscientiousness and openness, Gosling found the opposite is true for viewing
people's personal environments.

"Should you decide to date someone by looking at their bedroom?" says Gosling. "If openness is
important to you, sure. But if extroversion is important, you might want to meet them first. It seems
to depend on what information you want."

By evaluating the cues in the offices and bedrooms that people use to assess personality traits, the
authors found many cues that people could use to judge openness and conscientiousness--such as
distinctive decorating for openness and neatness for conscientiousness--but few for judging the
other traits. Gosling and his colleagues then determined which of these cues were "valid." In other
words, if a bedroom was neat, they looked to see whether the room's occupant tended to be
conscientious. If so, neatness was considered a valid cue for that room.

Based on their list of valid cues, the researchers found that people seemed to use valid cues to assess
openness and conscientiousness but were less likely to do so to assess the other traits. The
researchers also found that people relied on gender and racial stereotypes--based on their guesses of
occupants' gender and race--when few cues were available. So, for example, they tended to use
stereotypes to assess emotional stability but not to assess conscientiousness.

"Even though the observers in both studies used stereotypes to form impressions," said the
researchers, "they did not base their judgments solely on stereotypes but may have drawn more
heavily on the physical cues in the rooms."

The researchers' next step will be to better understand the process by which people make their
personality evaluations. For example, in one study they're manipulating people's assessment of a
person's race to see if that affects their personality judgments.

Article: "A Room With a Cue: Personality Judgments Based on Offices and Bedrooms," Samuel D.
Gosling, Ph.D., and Sei Jin Ko, M.A., University of Texas at Austin; Thomas Mannarelli, Ph.D., INSEAD;
and Margaret E. Morris, Ph.D., Sapient; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 82, No. 3.

Samuel Gosling, PhD can be reached by telephone at 512-471-1628