Principles of lean office management increasingly call for space to be stripped of extraneous decorations so that it can flexibly accommodate changing numbers of people and different office functions within the same area. Yet this practice is at odds with evidence that office workers' quality of life can be enriched by office landscaping that involves the use of plants that have no formal work-related function. To examine the impact of these competing approaches, 3 field experiments were conducted in large commercial offices in The Netherlands and the U.K. These examined the impact of lean and "green" offices on subjective perceptions of air quality, concentration, and workplace satisfaction as well as objective measures of productivity. Two studies were longitudinal, examining effects of interventions over subsequent weeks and months. In all 3 experiments enhanced outcomes were observed when offices were enriched by plants. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

In a country that works for everyone it doesn't matter where you were born, or how much your parents earn. If you work hard and do the right thing, you will be able to go as far as you can.

Western societies stress the potential for anyone, irrespective of social background, to improve their position within society. However, disadvantaged students face barriers in gaining a good education. Two studies in secondary schools show how perceptions of identity compatibility and anticipated fit influence students' university choices. It was found that relatively disadvantaged students scored lower on identity compatibility, and that low scores on identity compatibility were associated with lower anticipated fit at a local selective (Study 1) or highly selective (Study 2) university. Anticipated fit, in turn, predicted the type of university to which participants wanted to apply; those who anticipated fitting in more at selective universities were more likely to apply to higher status universities. These relations were significant while controlling for academic achievement. Together, these studies suggest that social identity factors play a relevant role in explaining higher education choices among low status group members. Running head: ACCOUNTING FOR UNEQUAL ACCESS TO HIGHER EDUCATION 2 Accounting for unequal access to higher education: The role of social identity factors Western societies promote the meritocracy principle whereby social positions are based on merit. According to this principle "the association between individuals' social origins and their attainment must increasingly reflect only their level of abilityas other factors that might prevent the full expression of this ability are removed or offset" (Goldthorpe & Jackson, 2008, p. 4). Educational systems provide a context in which individual differences in ability can be estimated and certified, relying on assessment methods rather than differences in social background (Carson, 2007). As a result, a person's level of education has become a key determinant of the social status they are awarded and is a strong predictor of many important life outcomes. Educational attainment is not only economically beneficial for individuals (Day & Newburger, 2002), but has also been linked to happiness (Chen, 2011; Cuñado & Gracia, 2011; Diener, 2000), health (Marmot, Ryff & Bumpass, 1997) and social trust (Huang, Maassen van den Brink, & Groot, 2009) and this 'education effect' has been shown to be stable over time (Easterbrook, Kuppens, & Manstead, 2015). However, research has long shown that purely meritocratic selection based on individuals' achievements and potential is an illusion: The reality is that socioeconomic status (SES) is still related to educational outcomes (OECD, 2010). Indeed, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds remain underrepresented in higher education, particularly within high-status institutions (Boliver, 2011). In the current research we examine the impact of SES on higher education choices in the UK, focusing on the psychological barriers that low SES students face to applying to high status universities. We argue that SES influences university choice partly through its impact on perceptions of the compatibility between curre...

Background. Studies in the United States show that school students from some ethnic backgrounds are susceptible to stereotype threat, that this undermines their academic performance, and that a series of virtually zero-cost self-affirmation writing exercises can reduce these adverse effects. In England, however, socioeconomic status (SES) is a much stronger predictor of academic success than is ethnic background.Aims. This study investigates whether self-affirmation writing exercises can help close the SES attainment gap in England by increasing the academic performance of low-SES (but not higher-SES) school students.Sample. Our sample consisted of students aged 11-14 in a secondary school in southern England (N = 562); of these, 128 were eligible for free school meals, a proxy for low SES.Methods. Students completed three short writing exercises throughout one academic year: those randomly assigned to an affirmed condition wrote about values that were important to them, and those assigned to a control condition wrote about a neutral topic.Results. On average, the low-SES students had lower academic performance and reported experiencing more stereotype threat than their higher-SES peers. The selfaffirmation raised the academic performance of the low-SES students by 0.38 standard deviations but did not significantly affect the performance of the higher-SES students, thus reducing the SES performance gap by 62%. The self-affirmation also reduced the level of stress reported by the low-SES students.Conclusions. The benefits of this virtually zero-cost intervention compare favourably with those of other interventions targeting the SES academic attainment gap. Stereotype threatAlthough definitions vary (Shapiro & Neuberg, 2007), in broad terms stereotype threat is the sense of threat that people feel in a given context when they believe that they risk 1 Details and limitations of these and the other calculations in this section are available in Appendix S1. 2 In England, 'Asian' refers to students mainly of Bangladeshi, Indian, and Pakistani backgrounds.518 Ian Robert Hadden et al.

Background. School students who are eligible for reduced or free school meals (FSM)an indicator of economic disadvantagehave lower academic attainment than their peers.Aims. We investigated whether identity compatibilitythe perceived compatibility between one's social identities and the stereotype of a high-achieving studentcontributes to this socioeconomic attainment gap, and whether the association between socioeconomic status and identity compatibility is moderated by school context. Sample. Our sample was 4,629 students aged 15-16 years old across 29 schools in England.Method. We assessed students' perceptions of identity compatibility via self-report questionnaires 8 months prior to them taking national, standardized exams.