When someone says "darkness", what is the first thing that comes to mind? And what image is in your head right now? For me, the pictures that surface first are gloom, fear and guilt — though that may just be because I'm a bit of a coward, ha. I wonder whether anyone reading this thinks of the word "psychology"? As it turns out, psychologists over the years have studied the relationship between light and dark in our surroundings and our psychology and behaviour, and they have found that light really can shape how we think and act. This article shares some of the research that psychologists have done, and explores, in simple terms, how light and shadow in our environment connect to psychology.
A Closer Look in the Dark — How Does a Place Shape the Way We See Others?
As I just mentioned, darkness leaves me with an impression of fear and guilt. Back in 1996, the researcher Kate Painter pointed out that, in the dark, our vision becomes blurred and our ability to perceive and recognise things drops, which can leave us feeling uneasy or even frightened. This is because darkness in the real environment draws out our inner fears through hidden, latent or merely imagined dangers, reviving anxieties about our personal safety — so a place that is pleasant or seems harmless by day can become unsettling and frightening in the dark. Separately, the 2010 experiment by Zhong, Bohns and Gino also showed that a dimly lit environment gives people an illusory sense of anonymity and concealment, which in turn drives more dishonest behaviour.
In 2011, three psychologists — Steidle, Werth & Hanke — conducted another study on dark environments and our psychological behaviour. They found that darkness, more than a bright environment, promotes or strengthens a global perceptual and conceptual processing style. Perceptual processing means organising sensory input into meaningful patterns, while conceptual processing means activating concepts and semantic associations in memory. Because our vision and the information we take in become blurred in the dark, stripped of colour, our ability to perceive and recognise others declines, and our concrete understanding of things weakens. In that situation, people shift to relying more on global information or stereotyped notions to form impressions of others, or to predict their behaviour.
A Dim Restaurant Increases the Sense of Distance — Yet Makes Us Want to Be Close to the Other Person
To explore the relationship between darkness and social behaviour, Steidle, Werth & Hanke ran another study in 2012. Their research found that a dark environment encourages people to cooperate with others. The reason behind this is that people generally hope to maintain intimate or social relationships with others, especially in situations that risk social distance and social isolation. In the dark, the incompleteness of the information available increases our perceived psychological distance from the surrounding environment. In that situation we are more likely to feel isolated, so our need for intimacy with the people around us naturally rises, and we become more willing to cooperate with strangers, because we believe this is a way to close the social distance. But cooperation can only happen if both sides want to cooperate and are capable of doing so, because we don't like to grow close to people who aren't cooperative — that wouldn't make us feel satisfied or happy, and the social distance wouldn't close either.
When it comes to how darkness affects our psychological behaviour, the different studies all bring us something interesting. Next time you find yourself in a dark environment, I hope you might remember the theories these researchers have put forward — and in that very moment, take the chance to notice and observe your own behaviour, and perhaps that of others too. For reasons of space, this article has introduced only some of the research on darkness and psychology. If you'd like to know more, we'd suggest taking a look at the references too.
References
Painter, K. (1996). The influence of street lighting improvements on crime, fear and pedestrian street use, after dark. Landscape and Urban Planning, 35, 193-201.
Steidle, A., Werth, L., & Hanke, E.-V. (2011). You Can’t See Much in the Dark: Darkness Affects Construal Level and Psychological Distance. Social Psychology, 42(3), 174-184.
Werth, L., Steidle, A., & Hanke, E.-V. (2012). Getting Close in the Dark: Darkness Increases Cooperation. Proceedings of experiencing light 2012 : international conference on the effects of light on wellbeing (pp. 4-8). Eindhoven: Technische Universiteit Eindhoven.
Zhong, C. B., Bohns , V. K., & Gino , F. (2010). Good Lamps Are the Best Police: Darkness Increases Dishonesty and Self-Interested Behavior. Psychological Science, 21(3), 311-314.
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