Does knowing you're underground affect your perception of the space?

Many previous studies of subjective feelings about underground workspaces suggest that workers find them inhospitable. Frequently reported findings include perceived problems with the physical environment, lighting and air quality. These negative attitudes appear even in objectively "pleasant" underground spaces. Experience plays a role in this, and people who are naive to underground work tend to be more negative than those who are experienced. One possible reason for these negative attitudes could be the priming of negative concepts related to underground. This priming could occur through semantic activation of words (e.g. hearing words like "basement" or "underground" could activate similar words such as "tomb") or through visual imagery (getting to an entrance by going down a series of indoor stairs could indicate a location is more difficult to evacuate than walking down a shallow slope outside). We took naive users and manipulated their expectations of an office by a description (mentioning or not mentioning underground-related words) or by visual imagery (using a route that went downstairs or had a flat entryway). The office (and therefore the physical characteristics of the space) was identical in all conditions. We then asked a series of questions about attitudes to the office and perception of evacuation from a similar environment. No effects of route or description were found for subjective ratings of the physical aspects of the space. However, a flat entrance reduced the perception of the office as an underground space. Response to an evacuation scenario was also affected with participants expecting more difficulty in evacuating when primed with the underground entrance. Participants also showed greater willingness to pay for a prestigious object, indicating that priming of underground concepts reduced their perceived social status. We will discuss the results of this study in the context of the design and construction of future underground workspaces.