June 2003
Volume 16, Number 6
Staffan Hygge is an associate professor of psychology and head of the Laboratory of Applied Psychology at the University of Gävle, Gävle, Sweden. He received his PhD in 1976 from the University of Gävle. His research focuses on issues of noise and cognition, including the effects of noise in schools.
In the mid 1970s, before the oil crisis and the economic recession that followed, the National Swedish Institute for Building Research relocated from Stockholm, Sweden, 180 km north to the countryside in Gävle. The move was part of a well-intentioned plan to decentralize state agencies. Part of the unintended fallout from the plan was the loss of almost half of the staff, which refused to move from Stockholm, to what even in Sweden might have then been considered the "boonies." This set of circumstances was a boon for me, a fresh PhD from Uppsala University. I was badly in need for a job as an experimental psychologist.
As in many organizations that undergo rapid seemingly tumultuous change, the chance to rebuild, restructure and lay the foundation for a more adaptive and responsive organization presented itself. The institute director, Nils Antoni, took the bold step of courting and then engaging freshly minted PhDs from all academic disciplines related to the science of creating buildings. This was a very different vision - the institute was going to use scientists to perfect buildings rather than the traditional approach of attempting to turn builders into scientists.
The Building Research Institute was a marvelous place to perform research when I started there in 1977. There were no teaching obligations, no rule to publish or vanish, and there was a state research budget that covered most of the research costs. Some of us, young PhDs all, took real advantage of these benefits by digging deeper into and devoting time to the new research areas we developed around our interests and views regarding important aspects of the interaction between places and faces (i.e., people and their man-made environments).
The theme of my PhD thesis, vicarious classical conditioning, was not really something I could pursue in my new position, but noise research looked fine. In Uppsala I had picked up a little about noise, mainly as an instigator of aggression and a means to study orienting and defensive electrodermal reactions and habituation.
As I look back on it now, a talk by Jerome E. Singer I attended in the early 70s pushed me slowly, inexorably towards this interest area. I had heard of Singer and his work on noise and task performance. When I later settled in at the institute, I wrote to ask him whether it would be possible to exchange research ideas about noise and noise aftereffects, drawing on his by now classical studies.
His reply was more than kind. Two years later I was a post-doctoral researcher in his new department of medical psychology with the just established Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.
That year as a post-doc remains the most important period in my professional and private life. I made friends with a bunch of bright and insightful people, whose professional skills and open minds taught me a lot.
Since then, I've known without a hint of doubt or hesitation that I can always turn to my friends and colleagues in the United States -Jerry Singer, Nancy Ostrove, Paul J. Brounstein, David S. Krantz and Andy Baum - to get enlightened and constructive remarks concerning research ideas. These people have such a strong commitment to good research and objective science that they are willing to share their ideas with anyone who is willing to take on some hard work.
My lesson from that year is valid for any young scientist: It is important to move to a new research environment and expose yourself to new persons and ideas as soon as you have finished your PhD exam. The American post-doc system is a very good way to achieve just that.
It is a delicate balance between having a secure research position with lots of freedom at the well-funded Building Research Institute versus having to look outside the organization to find significant professional peers. Managing this balance was severely tested while working with Gary W. Evans, Cornell University, on an aircraft noise study on children in Oslo, Norway, when the Norway Parliament decided not to relocate the airport.
We were given a Swedish grant to start the planning process for the study with the clause that we find another airport. With the help of Monika Bullinger, University of Hamburg, Germany,we did find another airport for the study. She told us about the upcoming relocation of the Munich airport in 1992. At once we realized this was an unprecedented opportunity to do the best airport noise impact study on children ever. Because of the time frame, applying for the regular research funds was too slow, but the within-house resources from the Building Research Institute and its director gave the Munich project a flying start. Ten magnificent years followed together with Gary and Monika. (One of the papers on airport noise, "A Prospective Study of Some Effects of Aircraft Noise on Cognitive Performance in School Children," appeared in the September 2002 issue of Psychological Science, Vol. 13, No. 5.)
It's a pity that there is too little understanding among politicians and decision-makers concerning how good research comes about, especially regarding access to start-up resources on one hand and the need for creating viable networks among researchers with similar interests and complementary expertise on the other. Neither of these key opportunities is addressed regularly in most conventional departments of psychology. It is a pity that funding for several Swedish research institutes was cut down and others even closed during the 1990s. There were ways to pick out the raisins out of the cake, had there only been a chef in the kitchen.
From my personal point of view, I'm happy I learned how to create and manage the twin needs of balancing resources and building extended peer networks, outside of the institute, outside of the country, and even outside the continent.
