Not long ago, two of my colleagues and I speculated that messiness, like tidiness, might serve a purpose. Since tidiness has been associated with upholding societal standards, we predicted that just being around tidiness would elicit a desire for convention. We also predicted the opposite: that being around messiness would lead people away from convention, in favor of new directions.

We conducted some experiments to test these intuitions, and as we reported in last month’s issue of the journal Psychological Science, our hunches were borne out.

For our first study, we arranged rooms in our laboratory to look either tidy, with books and papers stacked and orderly, or messy, with papers and books strewn around haphazardly. Then we invited 188 adults to visit our laboratory individually, ostensibly for a consumer-choice study. Each subject was assigned to either a messy or a tidy room, where he or she was shown a menu from a deli that made fruit smoothies. The smoothies were said to come with a “boost” (added ingredients) from which there were three options to choose — a health, wellness or vitamin boost.

We created two versions of the menu. Half of the subjects saw a menu that had the word “classic” highlighting the health boost option, whereas the other half saw the health boost highlighted by the word “new.” Then our subjects made their choices.

As predicted, when the subjects were in the tidy room they chose the health boost more often — almost twice as often — when it had the “classic” label: that is, when it was associated with convention. Also as predicted, when the subjects were in the messy room, they chose the health boost more often — more than twice as often — when it was said to be “new”: that is, when it was associated with novelty. Thus, people greatly preferred convention in the tidy room and novelty in the messy room.

I am so glad to hear messiness serves a purpose! I'm being creative!!!

Context matters. Environment matters.

http://pandawhale.com/post/27586/its-not-the-morphine-its-the-size-of-the-cage-rat-park-experiment-upturns-conventional-wisdom-about-addiction-garrys-subposthaven

Remember the old saying: If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, than an empty desk is the sign of ...

I've heard that attributed to Einstein.