Abstract:   Physical order refers to the overall perception of orderliness of things around us. Spatial physical order is one of its dimensions, indicating the relative position of objects within this space as determined by certain patterns or rules. Spatial physical order influences human psychology and behavior, such as stereotypes and decision-making as well as on ethical behavior, illegal behavior and routine behavior. This paper summarizes the theories of spatial physical order on human cognition and behavior, and reviews some empirical studies. A promising direction for the future research would be to enrich the related theories and improve reliability of experiments. In the end, we discuss the effect of physical order in practice.

Key words: spatial physical order, goal-framing theory, personal-need-for-structure, World-is-random Model, embodied cognition