According to a team of food psychologists at the Cornell and Brand Lab, where you eat actually determines what you eat. Sound like a load of old hog swill? Well, apparently, people who eat farthest from the door in restaurants eat fewer salads and are 73% more likely to order pudding. People sitting close to the bar drink an average of three more beers than those on tables further away. And the closer your table is to a television, the more fried food you will order (I.e I'll take a stool at the bar, and what the hell, give me a basket of onion rings while I watch the boxing).
But while I'm as big a fan of barstool psychogeography as the next man (and the next man is Will Self, tucking into a taco) restaurants are only a tiny part of our life's landscape. The far greater influence on your mood, food and attitude is your home; and where you sleep in it. Step forward the ground floor raver and attic conversion dark horse. It's time to get scientific on your ass
The Box Room Blues
Opting for a single bed can seem a good idea when the box room halves the cost of your rent and means you can clean the whole thing from a foetal position on the floor. But be warned; a lack of space can not only increase frustration and shin bruises (from bumping into your bed frame every time you try to get a clean jumper out of the cupboard) but it may also make you sad, stressed and lonely. According to research from the University of Pittsburgh, sleeping next to someone has been shown to lower our level of cortisol (the so-called stress hormone) and boost ocytocin (the so-called love hormone).
So, much as I hate to give fuel to the fire of all those drips who insist that relationships make you happy, it might just be true that a single bed will stress you out.
The Kitchen Insomniac
Take a room by the kitchen and you can wave goodbye to early nights, silent reading and the smell of lavender. Which is, let's face it, probably what you want. It's all afterparties, late night toast and peanut butter straight from the jar for the Kitchen Insomniac. But be warned – according to research from Harvard chronic sleep problems affect 50% to 80% of patients in a typical psychiatric practice, compared with 10% to 18% of adults in the general U.S. Population. So, dick about with your ability to drop off at your own risk.
The Attic Enigma
Okay, okay, we've all read Jane Eyre here, but isn't there just something a little – I don't know -odd about those people who always sleep in attic rooms? A bit removed, a bit distant. In her study The Home from Attic to Cellar, Perla Korosec-Serfaty called that attic a 'hidden territory' and it's quite true that a flatmate is far less likely to rifle through your knicker drawer if it means going up three flights of stairs to do so.
But you're also more likely to 'migrate' bowls and snacks, get ready on your own, drink sherry in your room and not bother to come down and watch The Walking Dead with the rest of the schlubs.
The Boiler Room Invalid
Apart from the fun clunking of sleeping next to what is, essentially, a furnace in a box – having a boiler in your room will also mean that you sweat like a pig in polyester pyjamas every time the temperature goes above bone-numbing. Couple that with the very real risk of carbon monoxide poisoning if you don’t get your boiler serviced every year and, frankly, it’s no wonder you’re wimping around like wax-faced Colin in The Secret Garden.
READ MORE: The Definitive Guide To Stealing From Your Housemates
The Front Room Fascist
You know how there’s always one roommate who, wherever you move and however you pick, always ends up with the big, square room at the front of the house with all the windows and none of the mice? And they always claim that it’s because they’ve got “just got too much stuff for any of the other rooms”? Yeah. Stay away from those guys. According to the psychologist Tim Kasser, based at Knox College, there is an association between holding materialist values and being more selfish, and having poorer relationships. So you need a bigger cupboard? Then, my friend, you have a cold, dead heart.
The Weirdo In The Hall
Seriously, love, the party’s finished. Go home.
Follow Nell on Twitter @NellFrizzell
Picture: Ada Hamza
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.