Experiencing other people's houses: a model of similarities and differences in environmental experience

Abstract This paper presents a model for the process underlying similarities and differences in environmental experience. According to the model, repeated exposure to regularities in the environment influences the development of internal knowledge structures. Discrepancies from the knowledge structures influence emotional appraisals. In Experiment 1, using measure of goodness of example and familiarity for knowledge structures, and measures of preferences and interest for emotional appraisals, we had first year architecture and students from other disciplines judge a set of single family houses-half of ‘high’ style, and half of ‘popular’ style. In a second experiment, two groups of the same architecture students at the end of their third year made judgements of goodness of example and preference for the same set of houses. In the first experiment, the two groups displayed similar knowledge structures for the homes, but they differed in the way their emotional appraisals related to discrepancies from the shared knowledge structure. In the second experiment, the goodness of example judgements indicated that little change had occurred in the students' knowledge structures but preference for ‘popular’ style houses had decreased significantly. These results are discussed in terms of the model of the processes that produce similarities and differences in experience.

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