U of M News Wire: April 26, 2007

 
 
University of Minnesota researchers find that ceiling height can affect how a person thinks, feels and acts
 
By Mark Cassutt
U of M News Wire

For years contractors, real estate agents and event planners have said that whether building, buying or planning an event, a higher or vaulted ceiling is always better. Are they right? Until now there has been no real evidence that ceiling height has any influence or advantage with consumers. But recent research by Joan Meyers-Levy, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management, suggests that the way people think and act is affected by ceiling height.

Meyers-Levy and co-author Rui (Juliet) Zhu, assistant professor of marketing at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia and a Carlson doctoral alum, found that, depending on the situation, ceiling height will benefit or impair consumer responses. The paper “The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing People Use,” will be published in the August issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.

“When a person is in a space with a 10-foot ceiling, they will tend to think more freely, more abstractly,” said Meyers-Levy. “They might process more abstract connections between objects in a room, whereas a person in a room with an 8-foot ceiling will be more likely to focus on specifics.”

The research demonstrates that variations in ceiling height can evoke concepts that, in turn, affect how consumers process information. The authors theorized that when reasonably salient, a higher versus a lower ceiling could stimulate the concepts of freedom versus confinement, respectively. This causes people to engage in either more free-form, abstract thinking or more detail-specific thought. Thus, depending on what the task at hand requires, the consequences of the ceiling could be positive or negative.

“Depending on the activity or the desired outcome, ceiling height can make a big difference in how the consumer processes the information presented,” says Meyers-Levy.

This work has important implications for retailers of all types who are faced with consumers whose thought processes might influence what products they buy, how they process point-of-purchase information and even sales persuasion strategies. Careful attention to this important design aspect of retail spaces can pay off for those with one eye on the ceiling and the other on the bottom line.


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U of M posts online archive of documents on prisoners of the war on terror
Files document medical personnel remaining silent about abuses

By Patty Mattern
U of M News Wire

Hearing about prisoners held in prisons in places such as Iraq and Guantanamo Bay is one thing, but now the public can get a first hand look at materials documenting happenings in those prisons.

The University of Minnesota’s Center for Bioethics and the university’s Human Rights Center have created a comprehensive archive of government documents describing medical operations in U.S. prisoner of war facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The archive can be accessed from the home page of the Human Rights Library (http://www.umn.edu/humanrts) or directly at www.umn.edu/humanrts/OathBetrayed/index.html.

The archive is designed to enable scholars, journalists, policymakers and interested citizens to study and understand the medical operations in these prisons. It contains more than 60,000 pages of indexed White House and U.S. Defense Department policies, prison medical records, autopsy reports, criminal investigations, sworn witness statements and e-mails involving the U.S. armed forces and the FBI.

Physician-ethicist, Dr. Steven Miles, professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota’s Medical School and professor of bioethics at the university’s Center organized this project for Bioethics. In articles and a book, Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror (Random House, 2006), he has tried to answer the question, “Where were the doctors and nurses at Abu Ghraib while the notorious abuses were taking place?”

Web archivist Leah Marks, of the Human Rights Library, built the archive.

The archive is eye opening. Examples of documents available to the public include:

• White House and Defense Department policies and memoranda showing how medical and behavioral clinicians were organized to exploit prisoners’ emotional and physical vulnerabilities for interrogation.

• Death files describing 148 prisoner deaths, including that of a child who died after having untreated tuberculosis.

• Interrogation documents showing how medical personnel cleared prisoners, even with signs of abuse, for interrogations; how the behavioral science consultation teams operated; and, how the FBI objected to harsh Army interrogation techniques. One interrogation document tells how a pregnant prisoner’s baby was delivered and sent away to an orphanage or her family so that she could be interrogated.

• Silence files documenting medical personnel who remained silent about abuses, failed to record injuries or “lost” records of prisoners who made allegations of abuse.

• Health documents describing the physical, sanitation and mental care in the prisons.

The comprehensive nature of this archive will facilitate historical research of this prison system. For example, the thousands of pages of medical records are available, and easily searchable, for researchers who want to study prison health care.

The construction of this special archive was supported by a grant from the University of Minnesota’s Office of Public Engagement. The Human Rights Center and its Human Rights Library are supported by private gifts and foundation grants. Most, but not all, of these documents were obtained and posted by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The mission of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Bioethics is to advance and disseminate knowledge concerning ethical issues in health care and the life sciences. The center carries out this mission by conducting original interdisciplinary research, offering educational programs and courses, fostering public discussion and debate through community outreach activities, and assisting in the formulation of public policy

The Human Rights Library (http://www.umn.edu/humanrts) houses more than 25,000 human rights documents and several hundred human rights treaties and instruments and is available in eight different languages. It has more than 4,000 links and a unique search engine for human rights sites. Some 200,000 scholars, educators, and human rights advocates from more than 150 countries access this resource every month. The Human Rights Library is a major initiative of the University of Minnesota Human Rights Center located in the Law School.


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Growing Concerns
A parenting question-and-answer column with Dr. Martha Erickson of the University of Minnesota
 
Question: My ex-husband recently remarried and he and his new wife are scheduled to take our 8-year-old daughter on a 10-day vacation to Florida at the beginning of the summer. I’m not happy about it, but it’s my ex’s right under the custody agreement and I do know that he and his wife will treat our daughter very well. However, now my daughter cries and says she doesn’t want to go. In all honesty, I’m afraid she may have picked up my negative feelings and I’m not sure how to undo that and make this whole thing easier. Where do I start?

Answer: It’s a good start to recognize that your own negative feelings may have rubbed off on your daughter. Now it’s time to try to understand more about what she’s feeling about the trip at this point. Is she worried about being away from you? Is she afraid she won’t be safe or uneasy about how her new stepmother will take care of her? Is she sad because she thinks you will be sad when she’s away?

Ask her what she’s concerned about and listen carefully to what she tells you. Acknowledge her feelings, but then, in a clear and up-beat manner, assure her of the steps that you, her father and stepmother will take to make sure she’s safe and cared for during the trip. Help her turn her attention to the good times she’ll have, enjoying the beautiful Florida weather, visiting exciting new places, and being with her dad, who loves her very much. Children of divorce sometimes feel guilty about having fun – or admitting to one parent that they have fun with the other. So you need to show your daughter, with your smile and your tone of voice, that you want her to have a good time and that you are confident the trip will be a good experience.

This will work best if you can focus on being a co-parent with your daughter’s father, even though that may be uncomfortable. If you haven’t already done so, it would be wise to talk with him and his new wife about the details of the trip and ask about specific ways you can be supportive so that they and your daughter can enjoy this time together.

For example, you might take your daughter shopping for a new swimsuit for the trip. Or maybe you could give her a disposable camera so she can take pictures on the trip to show you when she returns. You could show her on the map where she’ll be traveling or check out a Web site for the attractions she’ll see. If you can work it out with her dad and step-mom, you also might want to arrange a designated time during the trip when your daughter can call to check in with you. She may need reassurance that you are doing fine while she’s away.

Before, during and after the trip, you will have opportunities to affirm the importance of your daughter’s relationship with her father and her stepmother. Your words and actions will show your daughter that her love is big enough to encompass all of the parents who care for her—and that her relationship with you is not diminished in any way by the good times she has with those other caring adults.