Looks Do Matter, Particularly When It Comes to Neighborhoods

ScienceDaily (Apr. 27, 2011) — It's an unfamiliar neighborhood and you find yourself in the middle of a bunch of streets and buildings you've never seen before. Giving the environment a quick once-over, you make a snap decision about whether you're safe or not. And chances are, that first 'gut' call is the right one, say Binghamton University researchers Dan O'Brien and David Sloan Wilson in an article published in the current issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

 

In a recent series of studies conducted in Binghamton, New York, evolutionary biologists, O'Brien and Wilson, set out to test whether we do indeed have the capacity to judge urban neighborhood safety just by looking at physical structures. It turns out that we do.

 

More here http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110426111417.htm.