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An experimental investigation of the effect of cubicles on perseverance

Conference Paper · April 2018

DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/53EBH

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Adam Charles Roberts George Christopoulos

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Poster
TITLE
An experimental investigation of the effect of cubicles on perseverance

SHORTENED TITLE
Working in cubicles affects perseverance

AUTHORS
Adam C Roberts, George I Christopoulos, Chee-Kiong Soh

ABSTRACT

Previous studies have examined the effect of cubicles on task performance in open plan offices.
However, it is unclear to what extent the observed effects are due to the presence of others or to
the design itself. We present two experiments that show that when a worker is alone in a large
room, a cubicle partition can increase perseverance in difficult tasks.

PRESS PARAGRAPH
Do we really want large offices? In many countries, a large, private office is associated with
increased status. However, working in a large office by yourself could increase distractibility and
reduce concentration on a task. In large open plan offices, cubicles are often used to reduce
distraction from colleagues and improve task performance. This study shows that the addition of
a cubicle partition around a desk in a large private office can increase perseverance even though
the worker is alone. This means that the positive effects of cubicles could be elicited by
architectural (and not social) parameters.

WORD COUNT
2317

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This material is based on research/work supported by the Land and Liveability National
Innovation Challenge under L2 NIC Award No. L2NICCFP1-2013-2. Any opinions, findings,
and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do
not necessarily reflect the views of the L2 NIC.

1
 In environments where multiple workers share an open plan office, there is the tradeoff

between the cost-saving benefits to the employer, such as reduced construction and reconfiguring

costs and the reduction of privacy of the workers (Vischer, 2008). Open plan offices are often

reported as causing decreased job satisfaction, reduced motivation and lower perceived privacy

(Oldham & Brass, 1979; Young & Berry, 1979; Zalesny & Farace, 1987) and have even been

linked to health complaints (Hedge, 1984; Klitzman & Stellman, 1989). Visual privacy in open

plan settings can be improved by the addition of cubicles around a workers desk (Sundstrom &

Sundstrom, 1986), and privacy has been shown to be positively related to the number of enclosed

sides of a workspace (Sundstrom, 1980) and the height of these partitions (Brill et al, 1984).

These cubicle partitions can help workers by reducing unwanted visual and acoustic stimuli,

which have been shown in some studies to affect perceived workload and performance (Smith-

Jackson & Klein, 2009; Kupritz, 1998). Additionally, this improvement in perceived

performance may be closely related to feelings of territoriality over a worker’s personal space.

Territoriality can be affected by privacy, status, and control over the environment (Vischer,

2008). Lee & Brand (2005) found that giving a worker the ability to control their workspace

increased job satisfaction, whereas workplace distractions did not affect task performance. Fich

et al (2014) found that adding potential escape routes to a virtual room in a simulated interview

increased feelings of control and reduced physiological markers of stress.

Relatively few studies examine the effect of partitioning a room on an individual worker.

Larger individual offices tend to be associated with feelings of increased prestige and utility

(Becker, 2005), and it has been suggested that for programming tasks, which require periods of

intense concentration and solitude, a minimum of 80 square feet of private space per person

should be afforded (Jones, 1995). Cubicle partitions can reduce the amount of visual stimulation

2
a worker receives. This could be problematic, as visual stimulation in the workplace is associated

with improved comfort and wellbeing (Aries, Veitch & Newsham, 2010). Alternatively, this

reduction in visual stimulation could reduce negative distractions and stress (Ulrich, Simons &

Miles, 2003).

The current study examines whether a cubicle partition could affect an isolated worker’s

task performance, in the absence of other workers sharing the space. We examine this using two

experiments that measure perseverance by alternating between difficult possible tasks and

similar impossible tasks.

Experiment 1

Environment

Participants were tested one at a time in a large windowless room. Participants sat at a

desk in the centre of the room, facing away from the door. Half of all participants sat at a desk

surrounded on three sides by a wooden partition. This partition extended 50cm from the surface

of the desk (partition “UP” condition), preventing them from seeing the room in front of them

(figure 1a). For the other participants, the partition was collapsed, so that it extended only 12cm

from the surface of the desk (partition “DOWN” condition), giving the participants an

unobstructed view of the room in front of them (figure 1b).

Participants

65 participants were recruited for the study. All participants had normal or corrected to

normal vision. No neurological impairments were reported.

Procedure

Participants began the experiment by completing a demographics questionnaire and were

asked to estimate the distance to the wall in front of them to ensure that all participants directed

3
some attention to their physical environment. Participants completed questionnaires on a 13”

laptop placed in the centre of the desk. After an unrelated decision making task, participants

completed the frustration tolerance task (Feather, 1961) on paper (figure 2). Participants were

given four stacks of puzzle papers in the sequence UNSOLVABLE > SOLVABLE >

UNSOLVABLE > SOLVABLE. For each puzzle, the participants had to trace over the printed

lines, without repeating over a line and without removing the pen from the paper. Participants

were instructed that if they made a mistake they should start again on a fresh sheet of paper, and

if they were unable to solve one puzzle, they should move on to the next. Once a participant had

abandoned a puzzle, they were not allowed to retry it. Participants were instructed to spend as

much time on each puzzle as they wished, but all puzzles should be attempted within a ten

minute duration. The experimenter was not present in the room during the task, to avoid possible

effects of privacy and crowding.

Analysis

The exact Wilcoxon Rank Sum test was used to compare the number of attempts at each

puzzle between the two cubicle conditions UP and DOWN. Exact p-values were computed using

the shift algorithm (Streitberg & Rohmel, 1986) for tied samples. Effect sizes were calculated

using Cohen’s (1988) criteria of 0.1 = small effect, 0.3 = medium effect and 0.5 = large effect.

Results

Nine participants were excluded from the analysis for failing to attempt the critical

puzzles (1 and 3) correctly. Statistical analyses were performed on the data for fifty-six

participants, examining the number of attempts at each puzzle when the cubicle partition was UP

vs. when the cubicle was DOWN (see table 1 for a summary).

4
Figure 3 shows box plots for each of the four puzzles. When the puzzles were possible to

complete (2 and 4), there were no significant differences in the number of attempts between the

two groups of participants (puzzle 2: W = 384, p = .890, r = .02; puzzle 4: W = 150, p = .730, r =

.05). However, when examining responses in the impossible condition (puzzles 1 and 3)

participants who had the cubicle partition around their desk (cubicle UP group) made more

attempts on the impossible puzzles than those who did not have the cubicle. For puzzle 1, there

was a significant effect of cubicle with a medium effect size, W=230, p = .007, r = .36. Puzzle 3

also showed a significant effect of cubicle with a medium effect size, W = 199, p = .001, r = .43.

Discussion

Experiment 1 suggests that the addition of a cubicle partition to a desk can increase

perseverance in a difficult task. Do notice that the effect is not due to social effects– there were

no other people in the room. This experiment was a variation on the design of the original

frustration tolerance task by Feather (1961), who ensured that participants made as many

attempts as possible by prompting each person to move on or repeat each puzzle at fixed

intervals. We made the participant control the pacing of the task and did not monitor or prompt

the participant so that we could limit confounding effects of being watched. These variations

could have introduced systematic errors, with participants not following the instructions

correctly. However, it seems unlikely that these errors would have caused the effects seen in both

puzzle 1 and 3.

Experiment 2

In Experiment 2 we examine the robustness of the cubicle effect by introducing a

different, computerized, task. A computer based change detection task was used which allowed

5
control over presentation rate and duration of the task. Again, the experimenter waited outside of

the room to avoid effects of being watched.

Participants

A new sample of sixty participants was recruited for the study. All were fluent English

speakers and had normal / corrected to normal vision. No neurological impairments were

reported.

Procedure

Again, participants began with a demographics questionnaire, the distance estimation task

and an unrelated decision making task. The main task was a modified version of theFlicker

Change Detection paradigm (Rensink et al, 1997), a task that has been extensively used in

cognitive psychology. A series of fifteen paired images were presented in a random order. Each

image pair was a natural scene, where one image had been digitally altered to modify, add or

remove one element from the scene. Images were presented in the centre of the laptop screen,

surrounded by a grey background and were flashed sequentially with a grey mask separating the

images. Ten of the pairs of images contained changes either in the foreground or background,

and five of the pairs contained no change.

Oral and written instructions were given at the start of the experiment, accompanying a

practice trial. Participants were instructed to attempt to find changes between every image pair.

Once the participant identified a change, they stopped the flicker by pressing the spacebar which

allowed them to choose a grid square that contained the change. If the participant was unable to

detect the change, they were allowed to quit the pair and move on by responding with a zero.

Each trial lasted a maximum of 120 seconds and participants were not informed that some trials

would not include changes. Each trial began with a fixation cross in the centre of the screen,

6
presented for 2000ms. After fixation, the paired images were presented in a loop of 500ms each,

separated by a mask of 90ms.

Analysis

Responses were separated into impossible and possible trials. “Impossible” trials did not

contain changes between the paired photos, so the only possible responses were to quit early

(GIVE UP response) or to keep searching until the end of the trial (TIMEOUT response).

“Possible” trials contained a change somewhere in either the foreground or background of the

image. For the possible trials, participants could end the trial with GIVE UP, TIMEOUT or a

third response, CORRECT, where they correctly identified the change location.

Proportions of the two response types for impossible trials, and three response types in

the possible trials were analysed using loglinear models. For the possible trials, post-hoc chi-

squared analyses were performed within the three types of responses. Odds ratios were

calculated for the impossible trials and in the posthoc comparisons for the possible trials.

Reaction times were calculated for GIVE UP and CORRECT responses. As the

TIMEOUT responses were always 120 seconds duration, these were excluded from reaction time

analyses. The remaining two response types were analysed across the two cubicle conditions

using Exact Wilcoxon Rank-Sum tests.

Results

Two participants were excluded from the analysis for not completing the task correctly.

Statistical analyses were performed on the data for fifty-eight participants, examining the

reaction times and proportion of responses when the cubicle partition was UP vs when the

cubicle was DOWN (see tables 2 and 3 for summaries).

7
 For the impossible change detection trials, participants were 2.53 times more likely to

search the image until the timeout rather than giving up when they had a cubicle partition around

their desk, χ2 (1) = 7.68, p = .006. A similar effect was seen in the possible trials, with a

significant effect of cubicle on response type, χ2 (2) = 6.86, p = .032. Post-hoc chi-squared

analysis showed no significant association with correct responses, but a significant association

between the cubicle position and whether participants would search until the timeout or give up

early, χ2 (1) = 5.58, FDR adjusted p = .044. When participants failed to correctly identify a

change in an image, the odds of them searching until the timeout rather than giving up were 2.2

times higher if there was a cubicle around their desk.

Figure 4 illustrates the distribution of reaction times. There was no effect of cubicle on

reaction times in impossible trials, W = 8133, p = .179, r = .09, with participants taking a similar

amount of time to give up if they did not wait until the trial timed out. Reaction times in the

possible trials were separated into correct responses and give up responses. While there was no

effect of cubicle in the correct trials, W = 7259, p = .949, r = .004, there was a significant effect

in the time to give up, W = 12620, p = .001, r = .19. Participants took less time to decide to give

up when the cubicle partition was around their desk.

Discussion

The proportion of responses in both the impossible and possible change detection trials

show that participants are more likely to persevere until the end of the trial if their desk is

surrounded by a cubicle partition. However, this increase in perseverance is not seen as a general

increase in response times. The reaction time analysis from the possible trials indicates that the

addition of a cubicle partition around the desk is associated with a reduction in the time taken for

8
a participant to give up and move onto a new trial. This may indicate that participants are making

strategic choices early in the trial to either persevere until the end or to quit early.

General Discussion

Across two experiments, we measured the effect of a cubicle partition on perseverance on

possible and impossible tasks. The results from both experiment 1 and 2 indicate that the

addition of a cubicle partition around a worker’s desk can increase perseverance - even in the

absence of other employees sharing the space. This increased perseverance may be a result of

reduced visual distraction (Ulrich et al, 2003), or possibly an increase in territoriality over the

worker’s personal space (Vischer, 2008). While the worker does not benefit from an increase in

privacy with the addition of the cubicle partition, the reduction in their personal space may

increase their perceived control over the environment. Experiment 2 showed that while

perseverance was increased in both possible and impossible tasks, this did not result in

improvements in task performance in the possible trials. The addition of a cubicle partition did

not increase the number of correct responses or allow for faster response times in correct trials.

Overall, the present study suggests that the physical properties of cubicles are sufficient

to generate (positive or negative) effects on human behavior. The effects in our studies appeared

without the presence of other co-workers, so social influences were minimised. Therefore, future

studies should aim to disentangle social and pure design effects of cubicles – and architecture

overall.

9
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 Table 1: Summary of statistics for attempted puzzles in Experiment 1
Median
Puzzle Cubicle Wilcoxon Rank Sum test
attempts
W p r

1 UP 7
230 .007* .36
(impossible) DOWN 4

2 UP 1
384 .890 .02
(possible) DOWN 1

3 UP 6
199 .001* .43
(impossible) DOWN 4

4 UP 3
150 .730 .05
(possible) DOWN 2

Table 2: Summary of statistics for proportions of responses in Experiment 2.

Change
Detection Cubicle Proportion of responses Loglinear analysis
Task
Give up Timeout Correct χ2 p Odds ratio (CI)

Impossible UP 78% 22% 2.53

7.68 .006*
pairs DOWN 90% 10% (1.24, 5.39)

UP 45.7% 11.3% 43%

Possible pairs 6.86 .032*
DOWN 53.9% 6.1% 40%
Possible (give UP 80.2% 19.8% .044*
up vs timeout 5.58 2.20 (1.14, 4.40)
DOWN 89.8% 10.2% (adjusted p)
post-hoc)

12
 Table 3: Summary of statistics for reaction times in Experiment 2
Change Median
Detection Cubicle reaction time Wilcoxon Rank Sum
Task (s)
W p r

Impossible UP 52.27
8133 .179 .09
(give up trials) DOWN 57.30

Possible (give UP 47.15

12620 .001* .19
up trials) DOWN 52.95

Possible UP 12.67
7259 .949 .004
(correct trials) DOWN 13.18

13
 (a) (b)
Figure 1: Participant’s view at desk with (a) cubicle partition up, (b) cubicle partition down.

(a)
(b)
Figure 2: Examples of (a) an impossible puzzle, (b) a possible puzzle for Experiment 1.

14
 Figure 3: Boxplots representing the number of attempts at each of the four puzzles in the two
cubicle conditions in Experiment 1.

Figure 4: Boxplots representing the reaction times in the possible and impossible change
detection trials in the two cubicle conditions in Experiment 2.

15

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