Why people like high ceilings



View of the ceiling of San Sebastian Church, Manila. CC BY-SA 3.0. Uploaded by Marksy

High ceilings promote a mindset of "freedom, creativity, and abstraction," while low ceilings result in "confined thinking." That's what psychologists at University of Toronto-Scarborough concluded after running a series of tests on volunteers.

"On the one hand, [high-ceilings] promote visuospatial exploration, while at the same time they prompt us to think more freely," says psychologist Oshin Vartanian of the University of Toronto-Scarborough.

Fast Company: Why Our Brains Love High Ceilings