Developing a methodological tool to study density and its effects on human emotions

As much of the world progresses towards the trend of urbanisation, it is inevitable that physical density will increase, with the number of people within fixed areas increasing. More and more people have been moving their homes, businesses, and lives towards hubs and city centres, and Singapore remains no exception, with its population swelling from 3.047 million in 1990 to 5.183 million in 2011 (SingStat, 2012). The advent of globalisation and the rising number of educated people around the world also results in copious amounts of information being interchanged rapidly. This bombardment of data results in an intangible form of density that is inescapable today. How exactly the increase in physical density impacts humans, however, remains largely a mystery, with no clear links drawn between density and human emotions. With the above premise, this study aims to uncover the underlying effects of these recent trends of increasing density, on human psychology and behaviour. We found evidence that high-density stimuli have an impact on stimulating emotions, as compared to low-density stimuli. On certain emotional dimensions like Arousal, high-density stimuli had a significant link to emotional stimulation, but not so for the Pleasure or Dominance-submissiveness (emotional dimensions derived from the PAD emotional state model). These results demonstrate that there is indeed a link between physical density and human emotions and behaviour, most significantly in creating arousal in humans as density increases. We anticipate this study to be one that can possibly lead to a more in-depth global study that can explore the effects of density on emotions on more dimensions. For example, as social behaviour is a field that is so closely linked to social marketing, it is anticipated that more conclusive findings on how density affects human behaviour can help the corporate world, governments and organizations better use density to benefit themselves and society.BUSINES