Sensitivity analysis of the effect of current mood states on the thermal sensation in educational buildings

Abstract

Adaptive thermal comfort is a model which considers behavioral and psychological adjustments apart from Fanger's Predicted Mean Vote (PMV)/Percentage of Dissatisfied (PPD) method. In the literature, the differences between the PMV/PPD method and adaptive thermal comfort were mainly considered in aspects of behavioral adjustments in an environment. Conversely, limited studies related to psychological adjustments were considered in detail for thermal comfort. This study purposes to investigate the effects of current mood state subscales on thermal sensation of the occupants for the first time in the literature. To this aim, the Profile of Mood States (POMS) questionnaire is used to determine the mood state of the occupants with six different subscales: Anger, Confusion, Vigor, Tension, Depression, and Fatigue. The experiments were conducted in a university study hall in Ankara, Turkey, which is in warm‐summer Mediterranean climate (Csb) according to Köppen–Geiger Climate Classification. The distributions of each subscale were examined via Anderson Darling and Shapiro–Wilk tests accordingly given responses from the occupants. The sensitivity analysis was applied to the six subscales of the POMS with Monte Carlo simulation method by considering the distributions of each subscale. The results revealed that the current mood state has a crucial effect on the thermal sensation of the occupants. The subscales of the Depression and Vigor were found as the most vital ones among the six subscales. Only the pure effects of the Vigor and Depression would change the thermal sensation of the occupants 0.31 and 0.30, respectively. The Confusion was determined as the least effective subscale to the thermal sensation of the occupants. Moreover, with the combination of all the six subscales, the thermal sensation might change up to 1.32. Findings in this study would help researchers to develop the personalized thermal comfort systems.

Predicting students’ thermal sensation votes in university libraries taking into account their mood states

“…This supports the results found by Ibrahim 29 that the negative feeling (‘anger’ in his case) could strengthen the warm feeling. Besides, the impact of ‘depression’ on thermal sensation was reported by Özbey et al 33 They revealed that depression could cause a difference in TSV as large as 0.3, which is similar to the finding of the current study that the average TSV of students who felt upset was 0.4 higher than the TSV of other students. According to psychosomatic studies, these negative moods could cause an increase in heart rate and metabolic rate, 60,61 which could further increase subjects’ TSV.…”

“…Yet, there have been very few studies on thermal sensation that considered mood states. According to the limited existing studies, [29][30][31][32][33][34] the impact of mood states on thermal sensation could be strong and hence should be considered together with other factors in TSV-related studies, as suggested in Figure 1. 29,32 Given the above-mentioned research gaps, this study aimed to investigate students' thermal sensation in a library indoor environment setting, considering environmental factors, personal factors and mood states at the same time.…”

Investigation of the Relationship between Tension Level and Thermal Sensation. A Case Study of University Study Hall

“…Nevertheless, limited research was conducted to investigate the significance of the psychological adjustments. [10,14,[19][20][21].…”

“…Moreover, shortened POMS surveys such as POMS -2Y (for young participants) [26] and POMS -2A (for adults) [28] exist in the literature as well. Full version of the POMS questionnaire can be seen in [21].…”

“…In a different study, Özbey et al [21] conducted a sensitivity analysis of the effect of current mood states on the thermal sensation. The response of 281 healthy students were collected via the POMS questionnaire and 13-point thermal sensation scale [30].…”