Can Lighting Influence Self-Disclosure?

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Environmental Psychology
• Social Psychology

Background:

• Social networks facilitate public information sharing.
• Previous research on lighting and self-disclosure in counseling yielded mixed results.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effect of environmental lighting on willingness and actual self-disclosure.
• To clarify conflicting findings in existing literature regarding lighting and personal information sharing.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted to assess self-disclosure.
• Experiment 1 measured willingness to disclose personal information.
• Experiment 2 measured actual self-disclosure on topics including social issues, body, money, work, and personality.

Main Results:

• No significant effect of ambient room lighting conditions was found on self-disclosure in either experiment.
• Subtle environmental lighting manipulations did not influence reported willingness or actual disclosure.

Conclusions:

• Results suggest caution against over-interpreting subtle environmental effects on behavior.
• Generalization of perceptual metaphors to actual self-disclosure behavior may be unwarranted.