TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wallmann-Sperlich, Birgit
A1  - Hoffmann, Sophie
A1  - Salditt, Anne
A1  - Bipp, Tanja
A1  - Froboese, Ingo
T1  - Moving to an “active” biophilic designed office workplace: a pilot study about the effects on sitting time and sitting habits of office-based workers
JF  - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
N2  - Promising initial insights show that offices designed to permit physical activity (PA) may reduce workplace sitting time. Biophilic approaches are intended to introduce natural surroundings into the workplace, and preliminary data show positive effects on stress reduction and elevated productivity within the workplace. The primary aim of this pilot study was to analyze changes in workplace sitting time and self-reported habit strength concerning uninterrupted sitting and PA during work, when relocating from a traditional office setting to “active” biophilic-designed surroundings. The secondary aim was to assess possible changes in work-associated factors such as satisfaction with the office environment, work engagement, and work performance, among office staff. In a pre-post designed field study, we collected data through an online survey on health behavior at work. Twelve participants completed the survey before (one-month pre-relocation, T1) and twice after the office relocation (three months (T2) and seven months post-relocation (T3)). Standing time per day during office hours increased from T1 to T3 by about 40 min per day (p < 0.01). Other outcomes remained unaltered. The results suggest that changing office surroundings to an active-permissive biophilic design increased standing time during working hours. Future larger-scale controlled studies are warranted to investigate the influence of office design on sitting time and work-associated factors during working hours in depth.
KW  - desk-based
KW  - office-workers
KW  - standing
KW  - online survey
KW  - walking
KW  - work engagement
KW  - habit strength
KW  - work performance
KW  - office environment
Y1  - 2019
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-197371
SN  - 1660-4601
VL  - 16
IS  - 9
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Murali, Supriya
A1  - Händel, Barbara
T1  - Motor restrictions impair divergent thinking during walking and during sitting
JF  - Psychological Research
N2  - Creativity, specifically divergent thinking, has been shown to benefit from unrestrained walking. Despite these findings, it is not clear if it is the lack of restriction that leads to the improvement. Our goal was to explore the effects of motor restrictions on divergent thinking for different movement states. In addition, we assessed whether spontaneous eye blinks, which are linked to motor execution, also predict performance. In experiment 1, we compared the performance in Guilford's alternate uses task (AUT) during walking vs. sitting, and analysed eye blink rates during both conditions. We found that AUT scores were higher during walking than sitting. Albeit eye blinks differed significantly between movement conditions (walking vs. sitting) and task phase (baseline vs. thinking vs. responding), they did not correlate with task performance. In experiment 2 and 3, participants either walked freely or in a restricted path, or sat freely or fixated on a screen. When the factor restriction was explicitly modulated, the effect of walking was reduced, while restriction showed a significant influence on the fluency scores. Importantly, we found a significant correlation between the rate of eye blinks and creativity scores between subjects, depending on the restriction condition. Our study shows a movement state-independent effect of restriction on divergent thinking. In other words, similar to unrestrained walking, unrestrained sitting also improves divergent thinking. Importantly, we discuss a mechanistic explanation of the effect of restriction on divergent thinking based on the increased size of the focus of attention and the consequent bias towards flexibility.
KW  - creativity
KW  - humans
KW  - sitting
KW  - walking
KW  - thinking
Y1  - 2022
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-267722
SN  - 1430-2772
VL  - 86
IS  - 7
ER  -