Can Posters on Your Office Walls Reduce Stress and Anger?

My first office as a Board Agent at the National Labor Relations Board was big.  I wondered why a new employee fresh from college merited so much space but I didn’t complain.

Spending some time at my metal desk surrounded by my metal walls the view was not inspiring.  The lone decoration was a metal shelf filled with procedural manuals.  The corner office at the beginning of a hallway was the perfect place to hear everything going on.  I still remember the correct spelling of my next door neighbor’s last name.  He repeatedly recited it letter by letter to avoid confusion over the phone. 

My large office was located right across the hall from one of the conference rooms.  I often returned from the rest room, lunch or a conversation with my boss to find a group of men caucusing in my space.  In downtown Newark, New Jersey, this meant that I interrupted 2-4 burly Teamster Representatives in a heated conversation who would pause to say, “Don’t worry sweetie we’ll be finished in a couple of minutes.”

I decided to spruce up my environment with a poster I found of a window.  It turns out I was on to something and should have added additional posters that included nature scenes and abstract art. 

A University of Michigan researcher, Byoung-Suk Kweon found that art posters on office walls, especially nature scenes, lower stress and anger levels in men.  In her study Kweon placed men and women in offices to perform frustrating tasks surrounded by blank walls, abstract posters and nature posters or just nature scenes.  The men who worked in the poster free offices reported the highest anger and stress levels.  Offices adorned with a combination of abstract and nature posters produced the lowest stress levels.  The different decorations didn’t have any significant affect on women.  Tom Jacobs describes study details in his article “Workplace Serenity is Just a Poster Away.”

An investment in mountain and beach scenes with some exhibit posters from your local modern art museum could help the tone of your workplace and the stress and anger level of both male employees and visitors.  A nice scene of waves crashing at the Jersey shore might have shortened those conversations in my NLRB office.  The reduction in stress and anger would have certainly made my job easier.