Judgements of People and Their Rooms

It is hypothesized that inference rules operate which assume similarity between people and their physical surroundings. The first experiment described used line-drawings of rooms containing seated figures. Ratings of the rooms and separate ratings of the people who it was assumed used those rooms were made. The second experiment used colour slides of actual rooms and ratings were made both by architecture and by non-architecture students. The third experiment used head and shoulder photographs of people superimposed upon a variety of room backgrounds. In all three experiments significant relationships were found between rooms and judgements of the people associated with them, thus supporting the general hypothesis.