Environmental psychology
Encyclopedia
Environmental psychology is an interdisciplinary
field focused on the interplay between humans and their surroundings. The field defines the term environment broadly, encompassing natural environments
, social settings
, built environments
, learning environments, and informational environments. Since its conception, the field has been committed to the development of a discipline that is both value oriented and problem oriented, prioritizing research aiming at solving complex environmental problems
in the pursuit of individual well-being within a larger society
. When solving problems involving human-environment interactions, whether global or local, one must have a model of human nature that predicts the environmental conditions under which humans will behave
in a decent and creative manner. With such a model one can design, manage, protect and/or restore environments that enhance reasonable behavior, predict what the likely outcome will be when these conditions are not met, and diagnose problem situations. The field develops such a model of human nature while retaining a broad and inherently multidisciplinary focus. It explores such dissimilar issues as common property resource management
, wayfinding
in complex settings, the effect of environmental stress on human performance, the characteristics of restorative environments, human information processing, and the promotion of durable conservation behavior. This multidisciplinary paradigm has not only characterized the dynamic for which environmental psychology is expected to develop, but it has been the catalyst in attracting other schools of knowledge in its pursuit as well aside from research psychologists. Geographers
, economists
, policy-makers
, sociologists, anthropologists, educators, and product developers all have discovered and participated in this field. Although "environmental psychology" is arguably the best-known and most comprehensive description of the field, it is also known as human factors science, cognitive ergonomics, environmental social sciences, architectural psychology, socio-architecture, ecological psychology, ecopsychology, behavioral geography, environment-behavior studies, person-environment studies, environmental sociology
, social ecology, and environmental design research.
is said to be the first to mention “Environmental Psychology”. One of his books, Geopsyche discusses topics such as how the sun and the moon affect human activity, the impact of extreme environments, and the effects of color and form. Among the other major scholars at the roots of environmental psychology were Jakob von Uexküll
, Kurt Lewin
, Egon Brunswik
, and later Gerhard Kaminski and Carl Friedrich Graumann.
The end of World War II brought about a higher demand for developments in the field of social psychology particularly in the areas of attitude change, small-group processes, and intergroup conflict. This demand caused psychologists to begin applying social psychology theories to a number of social issues such as prejudice, war, and peace. It was thought that if these problems were addressed, underlying notions and principles would surface.
Although this time period was crucial to the development of the field, the methodologies used to carry out the studies were questionable. At the time, studies were being conducted in a laboratory setting
, which caused some doubt as to their validity in the real world. Consequently, environmental psychologists began to conduct studies outside of the laboratory
, enabling the field to continue to progress. Today environmental psychology is being applied to many different areas such as architecture and design, TV programs, and advertisements.
was the first institution that offered an architectural psychology course in the UK starting in 1973. Since then, there have been over 250 graduates from over 25 countries. The Environmental Psychology Research Group (EPRG) within the University of Surrey, of which students on the MSc in Environmental Psychology are automatically members, has been undertaking research for more than thirty years. EPRG’s mission is to gain a better understanding of the environmental and psychological effects of space, no matter the size, with help from social sciences, psychology, and methodologies. There are four categories under which the research projects fall: sustainable development, environmental risk, architectural assessment and environmental design, and environmental education and interpretation. Other universities in the UK now offer courses on the subject, which is an expanding field.
The University of Michigan
offers a Master of Sciences degree in Natural Resources and Environment, with one concentration called "Behavior, Education, and Communication". The focus is on how people form their relationships with the natural world, including how they make environmentally-related consumer decisions, as well as a focus on how "nearby nature" affects people's mental and physical health.
Arizona State University
offers a Masters in Environmental Resources, which takes more of a planning approach to the field. Antoich New England Graduate School also offers graduate programs involving environmental education through a planning approach. With environmental psychology being such a diverse field with many different approaches, students have a variety of programs to choose from.
University of California, Irvine
offers a doctoral specialization in Design & Behavior Research within the Department of Planning, Policy, and Design in the School of Social Ecology, and undergraduate coursework in Environmental Psychology offered jointly by the Departments of Psychology and Social Behavior, Planning, Policy, and Design, and the Program in Public Health. https://eee.uci.edu/11s/54150/index.html
Prescott College
offers a Masters program that incorporates a number of the foundations of environmental psychology as well. The sub-fields in which the program provides includes environmental education, environmental studies, ecology, botany, resource policy, and planning. Another description about the program is as follows: “(The program) Includes instruction in contextual theory; statistics; physiological, social, and psychological responses to natural and technological hazards and disease; environmental perception and cognition; loneliness and stress; and psychological aspects of environmental design and planning.”
The Environmental Psychology PhD program at The Graduate Center takes a multidisciplinary approach to examining and changing "the serious problems associated with the urban environment with a view towards affecting public policy" using social science theory and research methods. The GC-CUNY was the first academic institution in the U.S. to grant a PhD in Environmental Psychology. As discussed in detail on the program website, "recent research has addressed the experiences of recently housed homeless people, the privatization of public space, socio-spatial conflicts, children's safety in the public environment, relocation, community based approaches to housing, the design of specialized environments such as museums, zoos, gardens and hospitals, the changing relationships between home, family and work, the environmental experiences of gay men and lesbians, and access to parks and other urban "green spaces". See also The Center for Human Environments.
Another strain of environmental psychology developed out of ergonomics
in the 1960s. The beginning of this movement can be traced back to David Canter's work and the founding of the "Performance Research Unit" at the University of Strathclyde
in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1966, which expanded traditional ergonomics to study broader issues relating to the environment and the extent to which human beings were "situated" within it (cf situated cognition). Canter led the field in the UK for years and was the editor of the Journal of Environmental Psychology for over 20 years, but has recently turned his attention to criminology.
to the architectural design of public schools and extend from the public arena into the individual household.
One important aspect of a problem-oriented field is that by identifying problems, solutions arise from the research acquired. The solutions can aid in making society function better as a whole and create a wealth of knowledge about the inner workings of societies. Environmental psychologist Harold Proshansky discusses how the field is also “value oriented” because of the field’s commitment to bettering society through problem identification. Proshansky discusses the importance of not only understanding the problem but also the necessity of a solution. Proshansky also points out some of the problems of a problem-oriented approach for environmental psychology. First the problems being identified must be studied under certain specifications: it must be ongoing and occurring in real life, not in a laboratory. Second, the notions about the problems must derive directly from the source - meaning they must come directly from the specific environment where the problem is occurring. The solutions and understanding of the problems cannot come from an environment that has been constructed and modeled to look like real life. Environmental psychology needs to reflect the actual society not a society built in a laboratory setting. The difficult task of the environmental psychologist is to study problems as they are occurring in everyday life. It is hard to reject all laboratory research because laboratory experiments are where theories may be tested without damaging the actual environment or can serve as models when testing solutions. Proshansky makes this point as well, discussing the difficulty in the overall problem oriented approach. He states that it is important, however, for the environmental psychologist to utilize all aspects of research and analysis of the findings and to take into account both the general and individualized aspects of the problems.
Environmental psychology addresses environmental problems such as density and crowding, noise pollution
, sub-standard living
, and urban decay
. Noise increases environmental stress. Although it has been found that control and predictability are the greatest factors in stressful effects of noise; context, pitch, source and habituation are also important variables [3]. Environmental psychologists have theorized that density and crowding can also have an adverse effect on mood and may cause stress-related illness. To understand and solve environmental problems, environmental psychologists believe concepts and principles should come directly from the physical settings and problems being looked at. For example, factors that reduce feelings of crowding within buildings include:
in 1947, is the result of multiple environmental experiments conducted on rats. Originally beginning as an experiment to measure how many rats could be accommodated in a given space, it expanded into determining how rats, given the proper food, shelter and bedding would behave under a confined environment.
Under these circumstances, the males became aggressive, some exclusively homosexual. Others became pansexual and hypersexual, seeking every chance to mount any rat they encountered. As a result, mating behaviors were upset with an increase in infant mortalities. With parents failing to provide proper nests, thoughtlessly ditching their young and even attacking them, infant mortality rose as high as 96% in certain sections. Calhoun published the results as "Population Density and Social Pathology" in a 1962 edition of Scientific American
.
Creating barriers and customizing the space are ways of creating personal space, e.g. using pictures of one's family in an office setting. This increases cognitive control as one sees oneself as having control over the competitors to the personal space and therefore able to control the level of density and crowding in the space.
There are a variety of tests that can be administered to children in order to determine their temperament. Temperament is split up into three types: “easy”, “difficult”, and “slow-to-warm-up”. Alexander Thomas, Stella Chess, Herbert G. Birch, Margaret Hertzig and Sam Korn created an infant temperament test in the 1950s and rated them using nine temperament criteria. By finding out a child’s temperament at birth, it enables us to know what to expect as the child progresses into adulthood.
As a person interacts with various places and spaces, he/she is able to evaluate which properties in different environments fulfill his/her various needs. When a place contains components that satisfy a person biologically, socially, psychologically and/or culturally, it creates the environmental past of a person. Through ‘good’ or ‘bad’ experiences with a place, a person is then able to reflect and define their personal values, attitudes, feelings and beliefs about the physical world.
Place identity has been described as the individual's incorporation of place into the larger concept of self; a "potpourri of memories, conceptions, interpretations, ideas, and related feelings about specific physical settings, as well as types of settings".
Other theorists have been instrumental in the creation of the idea of place identity. Three humanistic geographers, Tuan (1980), Relph (1976) and Buttimer (1980), share a couple of basic assumptions. As a person lives and creates memories within a place, attachment is built and it is through one’s personal connection to a place, that he/she gains a sense of belonging and purpose, which then gives significance and meaning to their life.
Five central functions of place-identity have been depicted: recognition, meaning, expressive-requirement, mediating change, and anxiety and defense function. Place identity becomes a cognitive "database" against which every physical setting is experienced. The activities of a person often overlap with physical settings, which then create a background for the rest of life’s interactions and events. The individual is frequently unaware of the array of feelings, values or memories of a singular place and simply becomes more comfortable or uncomfortable with certain broad kinds of physical settings, or prefers specific spaces to others. In the time since the term "place identity" was introduced, the theory has been the model for identity that has dominated environmental psychology.
Place attachment, is defined as one’s emotional or affective ties to a place, and is generally thought to be the result of a long-term connection with a certain environment. This is different from a simple aesthetic response such as saying a certain place is special because it is beautiful. For example, one can have an emotional response to a beautiful (or ugly) landscape or place, but this response may sometimes be shallow and fleeting. This distinction is one that Schroeder (1991) labeled “meaning versus preference”. According to Schroeder (1991) the definition of “meaning” is “the thoughts, feelings, memories and interpretations evoked by a landscape”; where as “preference” is “the degree of liking for one landscape compared to another”. For a deeper and lasting emotional attachment to develop (Or in Schroeder’s terms, for it to have meaning) an enduring relationship with a place is usually a critical factor.
Place attachment happens to many people of all ages and seems to occur after a person remains in a place for a certain amount of time and becomes accustomed to all the things around them. There are many ways to characterize a person who has place attachment. Some of these things are easy to recognize, while others are not. Like every disorder, it is a combined involvement of certain characteristics. The number of characteristics possessed and the degree to which these characteristics are present will determine the extent to which an individual has this problem.
References
Smaldone, D. (2006). The role of time in place attachment. Proceedings of the 2006 Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium, P-14. Newtown Square, PA: Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station
theorized that one way to examine an individual’s environmental consciousness is to recognize how the physical place is significant, and look at the people/place relationship.
Environmental cognition (involved in human cognition) plays a crucial role in environmental perception.
Environmental judgment is made by the orbitofrontal cortex in the brain.
Because of the recent concern with the environment environmental consciousness or awareness has come to be related to the growth and development of understanding and consciousness toward the biophysical environment and its problems.
who created the field of ecological psychology. Founding his research station in Oskaloosa, Kansas in 1947, his field observations expanded into the theory that social settings influence behavior. Empirical data gathered in Oskaloosa from 1947 to 1972 helped him develop the concept of the “behavior setting” to help explain the relationship between the individual and the immediate environment. This was further explored in his work with Paul Gump in the book Big School, Small School: High School Size and Student Behavior. One of the first insightful explanations on why groups tend to be less satisfying for their members as they increase in size, their studies illustrated that large schools had a similar number of behavior settings to that of small schools. This resulted in the students’ ability to presume many different roles in small schools (e.g. be in the school band and the school football team) but in larger schools there was a propensity to deliberate over their social choices.
In his book Ecological Psychology Barker stresses the importance of the town’s behavior and environment as the residents’ most ordinary instrument of describing their environment. “The hybrid, eco-behavioral character of behavior settings appear to present Midwest’s inhabitants with no difficulty; nouns that combine milieu and standing behavior are common, e.g. oyster supper, basketball game, turkey dinner, golden gavel ceremony, cake walk, back surgery, gift exchange, livestock auction, auto repair.”
Barker argued that his students should implement T-methods (psychologist as 'transducer': i.e. methods in which they studied man in his 'natural environment') rather than O-methods (psychologist as "operators" i.e. experimental methods). Basically, Barker preferred fieldwork and direct observation rather than controlled experiments. Some of the minute-by-minute observations of Kansan children from morning to night, jotted down by young and maternal graduate students, may be the most intimate and poignant documents in social science. Barker spent his career expanding on what he called ecological psychology, identifying these behavior settings, and publishing accounts such as One Boy's Day (1952) and Midwest and Its Children (1955.)
Environmental psychology is oriented towards influencing the work of design professionals (architects, engineers, interior designers, urban planners, etc.) and thereby improving the human environment.
On a civic scale, efforts towards improving pedestrian landscapes have paid off, to some extent,from the involvement of figures like Jane Jacobs
and Copenhagen
's Jan Gehl
. One prime figure here is the late writer and researcher William H. Whyte
. His still-refreshing and perceptive "City", based on his accumulated observations of skilled Manhattan pedestrians, provides steps and patterns of use in urban plazas.
The role and impact of architecture on human behavior is debated within the architectural profession. Views range from: supposing that people will adapt to new architectures and city forms; believing that architects cannot predict the impact of buildings on humans and therefore should base decisions on other factors; to those who undertake detailed precedent studies of local building types and how they are used by that society.
Environmental psychology has conquered the whole architectural genre which is concerned with retail stores and any other commercial venues that have the power to manipulate the mood and behavior of customers (e.g. stadiums, casinos, malls, and now airports). From Philip Kotler
's landmark paper on Atmospherics and Alan Hirsch
's "Effects of Ambient Odors on Slot-Machine Usage in a Las Vegas Casino", through the creation and management of the Gruen transfer
, retail relies heavily on psychology, original research, focus groups, and direct observation. One of William Whyte's students, Paco Underhill
, makes a living as a "shopping anthropologist". Most of this advanced research remains a trade secret and proprietary.
) is a nonprofit organization that works to improve public spaces, particularly parks, civic centers, public markets, downtowns, and campuses. The staff of PPS is made up of individuals trained in environmental design, architecture, urban planning, urban geography, urban design, environmental psychology, landscape architecture, arts administration and information management. The organization has collaborated with many major institutions to improve the appearance and functionality of public spaces throughout the United States. In 2005, PPS co-founded The New York City Streets Renaissance, a campaign that worked to develop a new campaign model for transportation reform. This initiative implemented the transformation of excess sidewalk space in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan into public space. Also, by 2008, New York City reclaimed 49 acres (198,296.1 m²) of traffic lanes and parking spots away from cars and gave it back to the public as bike lanes and public plazas.
The City University of New York Graduate Center is home to Center for Human Environments which is a research center that serves to address the relationship between people and their physical settings. CHE is made up of five subgroups that specialize in aiding specific populations: The Children's Environments Research Group, the Health and Society Research Group, the Housing Environments Research Group, the Public Space Research Group, and the Youth Studies Research Group.
The most relevant scientific group is the International Association of People-Environment Studies
(IAPS).
Environmental psychology has not received nearly enough supporters to be considered an interdisciplinary field within psychology. Harold M. Proshanksy was one of the founders of environmental psychology and was quoted as saying “As I look at the field of environmental psychology today, I am concerned about its future. It has not, since its emergence in the early 1960s grown to the point where it can match the fields of social, personality, learning or cognitive psychology. To be sure, it has increased in membership, in the number of journals devoted to it, and even in the amount of professional organizational support it enjoys, but not enough so that one could look at any major university and find it to be a field of specialization in a department of psychology, or, more importantly, in an interdisciplinary center or institute”.
Stokols, D. (1995). The paradox of environmental psychology. American Psychologist, 50 821-837.
Interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinarity involves the combining of two or more academic fields into one single discipline. An interdisciplinary field crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions have emerged....
field focused on the interplay between humans and their surroundings. The field defines the term environment broadly, encompassing natural environments
Natural environment
The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....
, social settings
Social environment
The social environment of an individual, also called social context or milieu, is the culture that s/he was educated or lives in, and the people and institutions with whom the person interacts....
, built environments
Built environment
The term built environment refers to the human-made surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, ranging in scale from personal shelter and buildings to neighborhoods and cities that can often include their supporting infrastructure, such as water supply or energy networks.The built...
, learning environments, and informational environments. Since its conception, the field has been committed to the development of a discipline that is both value oriented and problem oriented, prioritizing research aiming at solving complex environmental problems
Environmental issue
Environmental issues are negative aspects of human activity on the biophysical environment. Environmentalism, a social and environmental movement that started in the 1960s, addresses environmental issues through advocacy, education and activism.-Types:...
in the pursuit of individual well-being within a larger society
Quality of life
The term quality of life is used to evaluate the general well-being of individuals and societies. The term is used in a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, and politics. Quality of life should not be confused with the concept of standard of...
. When solving problems involving human-environment interactions, whether global or local, one must have a model of human nature that predicts the environmental conditions under which humans will behave
Human behavior
Human behavior refers to the range of behaviors exhibited by humans and which are influenced by culture, attitudes, emotions, values, ethics, authority, rapport, hypnosis, persuasion, coercion and/or genetics....
in a decent and creative manner. With such a model one can design, manage, protect and/or restore environments that enhance reasonable behavior, predict what the likely outcome will be when these conditions are not met, and diagnose problem situations. The field develops such a model of human nature while retaining a broad and inherently multidisciplinary focus. It explores such dissimilar issues as common property resource management
Common-pool resource
In economics, a common-pool resource , also called a common property resource, is a type of good consisting of a natural or human-made resource system , whose size or characteristics makes it costly, but not impossible, to exclude potential beneficiaries from obtaining benefits from its use...
, wayfinding
Wayfinding
Wayfinding encompasses all of the ways in which people and animals orient themselves in physical space and navigate from place to place.-Historical:...
in complex settings, the effect of environmental stress on human performance, the characteristics of restorative environments, human information processing, and the promotion of durable conservation behavior. This multidisciplinary paradigm has not only characterized the dynamic for which environmental psychology is expected to develop, but it has been the catalyst in attracting other schools of knowledge in its pursuit as well aside from research psychologists. Geographers
Geographer
A geographer is a scholar whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society.Although geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, a subset of geography...
, economists
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...
, policy-makers
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
, sociologists, anthropologists, educators, and product developers all have discovered and participated in this field. Although "environmental psychology" is arguably the best-known and most comprehensive description of the field, it is also known as human factors science, cognitive ergonomics, environmental social sciences, architectural psychology, socio-architecture, ecological psychology, ecopsychology, behavioral geography, environment-behavior studies, person-environment studies, environmental sociology
Environmental sociology
Environmental sociology is typically defined as the sociological study of societal-environmental interactions, although this definition immediately presents the perhaps insolvable problem of separating human cultures from the rest of the environment...
, social ecology, and environmental design research.
History
The origins of this field of study are unknown, however, Willy HellpachWilly Hellpach
Willy Hellpach was the sixth State President of Baden. He was a member of the German Democratic Party . He was also a physician and psychologist....
is said to be the first to mention “Environmental Psychology”. One of his books, Geopsyche discusses topics such as how the sun and the moon affect human activity, the impact of extreme environments, and the effects of color and form. Among the other major scholars at the roots of environmental psychology were Jakob von Uexküll
Jakob von Uexküll
Jakob Johann von Uexküll was a Estonian biologist who worked in the fields of muscular physiology, animal behaviour studies, and the cybernetics of life. However, his most notable contribution is the notion of umwelt, used by semiotician Thomas Sebeok...
, Kurt Lewin
Kurt Lewin
Kurt Zadek Lewin was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology....
, Egon Brunswik
Egon Brunswik
Egon Brunswik was a psychologist who made contributions to functionalism and the history of psychology.-Early life and career:...
, and later Gerhard Kaminski and Carl Friedrich Graumann.
The end of World War II brought about a higher demand for developments in the field of social psychology particularly in the areas of attitude change, small-group processes, and intergroup conflict. This demand caused psychologists to begin applying social psychology theories to a number of social issues such as prejudice, war, and peace. It was thought that if these problems were addressed, underlying notions and principles would surface.
Although this time period was crucial to the development of the field, the methodologies used to carry out the studies were questionable. At the time, studies were being conducted in a laboratory setting
Laboratory
A laboratory is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. The title of laboratory is also used for certain other facilities where the processes or equipment used are similar to those in scientific laboratories...
, which caused some doubt as to their validity in the real world. Consequently, environmental psychologists began to conduct studies outside of the laboratory
Field experiment
A field experiment applies the scientific method to experimentally examine an intervention in the real world rather than in the laboratory...
, enabling the field to continue to progress. Today environmental psychology is being applied to many different areas such as architecture and design, TV programs, and advertisements.
Universities offering environmental psychology related courses of study
The University of SurreyUniversity of Surrey
The University of Surrey is a university located within the county town of Guildford, Surrey in the South East of England. It received its charter on 9 September 1966, and was previously situated near Battersea Park in south-west London. The institution was known as Battersea College of Technology...
was the first institution that offered an architectural psychology course in the UK starting in 1973. Since then, there have been over 250 graduates from over 25 countries. The Environmental Psychology Research Group (EPRG) within the University of Surrey, of which students on the MSc in Environmental Psychology are automatically members, has been undertaking research for more than thirty years. EPRG’s mission is to gain a better understanding of the environmental and psychological effects of space, no matter the size, with help from social sciences, psychology, and methodologies. There are four categories under which the research projects fall: sustainable development, environmental risk, architectural assessment and environmental design, and environmental education and interpretation. Other universities in the UK now offer courses on the subject, which is an expanding field.
The University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
offers a Master of Sciences degree in Natural Resources and Environment, with one concentration called "Behavior, Education, and Communication". The focus is on how people form their relationships with the natural world, including how they make environmentally-related consumer decisions, as well as a focus on how "nearby nature" affects people's mental and physical health.
Arizona State University
Arizona State University
Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...
offers a Masters in Environmental Resources, which takes more of a planning approach to the field. Antoich New England Graduate School also offers graduate programs involving environmental education through a planning approach. With environmental psychology being such a diverse field with many different approaches, students have a variety of programs to choose from.
University of California, Irvine
University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
offers a doctoral specialization in Design & Behavior Research within the Department of Planning, Policy, and Design in the School of Social Ecology, and undergraduate coursework in Environmental Psychology offered jointly by the Departments of Psychology and Social Behavior, Planning, Policy, and Design, and the Program in Public Health. https://eee.uci.edu/11s/54150/index.html
Prescott College
Prescott College
Prescott College is a private liberal arts college in Prescott, Arizona, founded in 1966. It is a non-profit organization which has an undergraduate body of roughly 800 students, and an average student to faculty ratio of 7:1 in on-campus classrooms...
offers a Masters program that incorporates a number of the foundations of environmental psychology as well. The sub-fields in which the program provides includes environmental education, environmental studies, ecology, botany, resource policy, and planning. Another description about the program is as follows: “(The program) Includes instruction in contextual theory; statistics; physiological, social, and psychological responses to natural and technological hazards and disease; environmental perception and cognition; loneliness and stress; and psychological aspects of environmental design and planning.”
The Environmental Psychology PhD program at The Graduate Center takes a multidisciplinary approach to examining and changing "the serious problems associated with the urban environment with a view towards affecting public policy" using social science theory and research methods. The GC-CUNY was the first academic institution in the U.S. to grant a PhD in Environmental Psychology. As discussed in detail on the program website, "recent research has addressed the experiences of recently housed homeless people, the privatization of public space, socio-spatial conflicts, children's safety in the public environment, relocation, community based approaches to housing, the design of specialized environments such as museums, zoos, gardens and hospitals, the changing relationships between home, family and work, the environmental experiences of gay men and lesbians, and access to parks and other urban "green spaces". See also The Center for Human Environments.
Another strain of environmental psychology developed out of ergonomics
Ergonomics
Ergonomics is the study of designing equipment and devices that fit the human body, its movements, and its cognitive abilities.The International Ergonomics Association defines ergonomics as follows:...
in the 1960s. The beginning of this movement can be traced back to David Canter's work and the founding of the "Performance Research Unit" at the University of Strathclyde
University of Strathclyde
The University of Strathclyde , Glasgow, Scotland, is Glasgow's second university by age, founded in 1796, and receiving its Royal Charter in 1964 as the UK's first technological university...
in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1966, which expanded traditional ergonomics to study broader issues relating to the environment and the extent to which human beings were "situated" within it (cf situated cognition). Canter led the field in the UK for years and was the editor of the Journal of Environmental Psychology for over 20 years, but has recently turned his attention to criminology.
Problem oriented
Environmental psychology is a direct study of the relationship between an environment and how that environment affects its inhabitants. Specific aspects of this field work by identifying a problem and through the identification of said problem, discovering a solution. Therefore it is necessary for environmental psychology to be problem oriented. The problems identified by environmental psychologists affect all members of society. These problems can be anything from the psychological effects of urban crowdingPopulation density
Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume. It is frequently applied to living organisms, and particularly to humans...
to the architectural design of public schools and extend from the public arena into the individual household.
One important aspect of a problem-oriented field is that by identifying problems, solutions arise from the research acquired. The solutions can aid in making society function better as a whole and create a wealth of knowledge about the inner workings of societies. Environmental psychologist Harold Proshansky discusses how the field is also “value oriented” because of the field’s commitment to bettering society through problem identification. Proshansky discusses the importance of not only understanding the problem but also the necessity of a solution. Proshansky also points out some of the problems of a problem-oriented approach for environmental psychology. First the problems being identified must be studied under certain specifications: it must be ongoing and occurring in real life, not in a laboratory. Second, the notions about the problems must derive directly from the source - meaning they must come directly from the specific environment where the problem is occurring. The solutions and understanding of the problems cannot come from an environment that has been constructed and modeled to look like real life. Environmental psychology needs to reflect the actual society not a society built in a laboratory setting. The difficult task of the environmental psychologist is to study problems as they are occurring in everyday life. It is hard to reject all laboratory research because laboratory experiments are where theories may be tested without damaging the actual environment or can serve as models when testing solutions. Proshansky makes this point as well, discussing the difficulty in the overall problem oriented approach. He states that it is important, however, for the environmental psychologist to utilize all aspects of research and analysis of the findings and to take into account both the general and individualized aspects of the problems.
Environmental psychology addresses environmental problems such as density and crowding, noise pollution
Noise pollution
Noise pollution is excessive, displeasing human, animal or machine-created environmental noise that disrupts the activity or balance of human or animal life...
, sub-standard living
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
, and urban decay
Urban decay
Urban decay is the process whereby a previously functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude...
. Noise increases environmental stress. Although it has been found that control and predictability are the greatest factors in stressful effects of noise; context, pitch, source and habituation are also important variables [3]. Environmental psychologists have theorized that density and crowding can also have an adverse effect on mood and may cause stress-related illness. To understand and solve environmental problems, environmental psychologists believe concepts and principles should come directly from the physical settings and problems being looked at. For example, factors that reduce feelings of crowding within buildings include:
- Windows - particularly ones that can be opened and ones that provide a view as well as light
- High ceilings
- Doors to divide spaces (Baum and Davies) and provide access control
- Room shape - square rooms feel less crowded than rectangular ones (Dresor)
- Using partitions to create smaller, personalized spaces within an open plan office or larger work space.
- Providing increases in cognitive control over aspects of the internal environment, such as ventilation, light, privacy, etc.
- Conducting a cognitive appraisal of an environment and feelings of crowding in different settings. For example, one might be comfortable with crowding at a concert but not in school corridors.
- Creating a defensible space (Calhoun)
Personal space and territory
Having an area of personal territory in a public space, e.g. at the office, is a key feature of many architectural designs. Having such a 'defensible space' can reduce the negative effects of crowding in urban environments. The term, coined by John B. CalhounJohn B. Calhoun
John B. Calhoun was an American ecologist and research psychologist noted for his studies of population density and its effects on behavior. He claimed that the bleak effects of overpopulation on rodents were a grim model for the future of the human race...
in 1947, is the result of multiple environmental experiments conducted on rats. Originally beginning as an experiment to measure how many rats could be accommodated in a given space, it expanded into determining how rats, given the proper food, shelter and bedding would behave under a confined environment.
Under these circumstances, the males became aggressive, some exclusively homosexual. Others became pansexual and hypersexual, seeking every chance to mount any rat they encountered. As a result, mating behaviors were upset with an increase in infant mortalities. With parents failing to provide proper nests, thoughtlessly ditching their young and even attacking them, infant mortality rose as high as 96% in certain sections. Calhoun published the results as "Population Density and Social Pathology" in a 1962 edition of Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
.
Creating barriers and customizing the space are ways of creating personal space, e.g. using pictures of one's family in an office setting. This increases cognitive control as one sees oneself as having control over the competitors to the personal space and therefore able to control the level of density and crowding in the space.
Systems oriented
The systems oriented approach to experimenting is applied to individuals or people that are a part of communities, groups, and organizations. This approach particularly examines group interaction, as opposed to an individual’s interaction and it emphasizes on factors of social integration. In the laboratory, experiments focus on cause and effect processes within human nature.Interdisciplinary oriented
Environmental psychology relies on interaction with other disciplines in order to approach problems with multiple perspectives. The first discipline is the category of behavioral sciences, which include: sociology, political science, anthropology, and economics. Environmental psychology also interacts with the interspecializations of the field of psychology, which include: developmental psychology, cognitive science, organization theory, psychobiology, and social neuroscience. In addition to the more scientific fields of study, environmental psychology also works with the design field which includes: the studies of architecture, interior design, urban planning, industrial and object design, landscape architecture, and preservation.Space-over-time orientation
Space over time orientation highlights the importance of the past. Examining problems with the past in mind creates a better understanding of how past forces, such as social, political, and economic forces, may be of relevance to present and future problems. Time and place are also important to consider. It’s important to look at time over extended periods. Physical settings change over time; they change with respect to physical properties and they change because individuals using the space change over time. Looking at these spaces over time will help monitor the changes and possibly predict future problems.There are a variety of tests that can be administered to children in order to determine their temperament. Temperament is split up into three types: “easy”, “difficult”, and “slow-to-warm-up”. Alexander Thomas, Stella Chess, Herbert G. Birch, Margaret Hertzig and Sam Korn created an infant temperament test in the 1950s and rated them using nine temperament criteria. By finding out a child’s temperament at birth, it enables us to know what to expect as the child progresses into adulthood.
Place identity
For many years Harold Proshansky and his colleagues at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, explored the concept of place identity. Place identity has been traditionally defined as a ‘sub-structure of the self-identity of the person consisting of broadly conceived cognitions about the physical world in which the individual lives’. These cognitions define the daily experiences of every human being. Through one’s attitudes, feelings, ideas, memories, personal values and preferences toward the range and type of physical settings, he/she can then understand the environment they live in and their overall experience.As a person interacts with various places and spaces, he/she is able to evaluate which properties in different environments fulfill his/her various needs. When a place contains components that satisfy a person biologically, socially, psychologically and/or culturally, it creates the environmental past of a person. Through ‘good’ or ‘bad’ experiences with a place, a person is then able to reflect and define their personal values, attitudes, feelings and beliefs about the physical world.
Place identity has been described as the individual's incorporation of place into the larger concept of self; a "potpourri of memories, conceptions, interpretations, ideas, and related feelings about specific physical settings, as well as types of settings".
Other theorists have been instrumental in the creation of the idea of place identity. Three humanistic geographers, Tuan (1980), Relph (1976) and Buttimer (1980), share a couple of basic assumptions. As a person lives and creates memories within a place, attachment is built and it is through one’s personal connection to a place, that he/she gains a sense of belonging and purpose, which then gives significance and meaning to their life.
Five central functions of place-identity have been depicted: recognition, meaning, expressive-requirement, mediating change, and anxiety and defense function. Place identity becomes a cognitive "database" against which every physical setting is experienced. The activities of a person often overlap with physical settings, which then create a background for the rest of life’s interactions and events. The individual is frequently unaware of the array of feelings, values or memories of a singular place and simply becomes more comfortable or uncomfortable with certain broad kinds of physical settings, or prefers specific spaces to others. In the time since the term "place identity" was introduced, the theory has been the model for identity that has dominated environmental psychology.
Place attachment
Many different perceptions of the bond between people and places have been hypothesized and studied. The most widespread terms include place attachment and sense of place or SOP. One consistent thread woven throughout most recent research on place attachment deals with the importance of the amount of time spent at a certain place (the length of association with a place). While both researchers and writers have made the case that time and experience in a place are important for deepening the meanings and emotional ties central to the person-place relationship, little in-depth research has studied these factors and their role in forging this connection.Place attachment, is defined as one’s emotional or affective ties to a place, and is generally thought to be the result of a long-term connection with a certain environment. This is different from a simple aesthetic response such as saying a certain place is special because it is beautiful. For example, one can have an emotional response to a beautiful (or ugly) landscape or place, but this response may sometimes be shallow and fleeting. This distinction is one that Schroeder (1991) labeled “meaning versus preference”. According to Schroeder (1991) the definition of “meaning” is “the thoughts, feelings, memories and interpretations evoked by a landscape”; where as “preference” is “the degree of liking for one landscape compared to another”. For a deeper and lasting emotional attachment to develop (Or in Schroeder’s terms, for it to have meaning) an enduring relationship with a place is usually a critical factor.
Place attachment happens to many people of all ages and seems to occur after a person remains in a place for a certain amount of time and becomes accustomed to all the things around them. There are many ways to characterize a person who has place attachment. Some of these things are easy to recognize, while others are not. Like every disorder, it is a combined involvement of certain characteristics. The number of characteristics possessed and the degree to which these characteristics are present will determine the extent to which an individual has this problem.
References
Smaldone, D. (2006). The role of time in place attachment. Proceedings of the 2006 Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium, P-14. Newtown Square, PA: Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station
Environmental consciousness
Leanne RivlinLeanne Rivlin
Leanne Rivlin is an originator of the Environmental Psychology Doctoral Program at the CUNY Graduate Center in the late 1960s.-Education:*Ph.D., M.A. Teachers College, Columbia University *B.A. Brooklyn College, Psychology & English...
theorized that one way to examine an individual’s environmental consciousness is to recognize how the physical place is significant, and look at the people/place relationship.
Environmental cognition (involved in human cognition) plays a crucial role in environmental perception.
Environmental judgment is made by the orbitofrontal cortex in the brain.
Because of the recent concern with the environment environmental consciousness or awareness has come to be related to the growth and development of understanding and consciousness toward the biophysical environment and its problems.
Behavior settings
The earliest noteworthy discoveries in the field of environmental psychology can be dated back to Roger BarkerRoger Barker
Roger Garlock Barker was a social scientist, a founder of environmental psychology and a leading figure in the field for decades, perhaps best known for his development of the concept of behavior settings....
who created the field of ecological psychology. Founding his research station in Oskaloosa, Kansas in 1947, his field observations expanded into the theory that social settings influence behavior. Empirical data gathered in Oskaloosa from 1947 to 1972 helped him develop the concept of the “behavior setting” to help explain the relationship between the individual and the immediate environment. This was further explored in his work with Paul Gump in the book Big School, Small School: High School Size and Student Behavior. One of the first insightful explanations on why groups tend to be less satisfying for their members as they increase in size, their studies illustrated that large schools had a similar number of behavior settings to that of small schools. This resulted in the students’ ability to presume many different roles in small schools (e.g. be in the school band and the school football team) but in larger schools there was a propensity to deliberate over their social choices.
In his book Ecological Psychology Barker stresses the importance of the town’s behavior and environment as the residents’ most ordinary instrument of describing their environment. “The hybrid, eco-behavioral character of behavior settings appear to present Midwest’s inhabitants with no difficulty; nouns that combine milieu and standing behavior are common, e.g. oyster supper, basketball game, turkey dinner, golden gavel ceremony, cake walk, back surgery, gift exchange, livestock auction, auto repair.”
Barker argued that his students should implement T-methods (psychologist as 'transducer': i.e. methods in which they studied man in his 'natural environment') rather than O-methods (psychologist as "operators" i.e. experimental methods). Basically, Barker preferred fieldwork and direct observation rather than controlled experiments. Some of the minute-by-minute observations of Kansan children from morning to night, jotted down by young and maternal graduate students, may be the most intimate and poignant documents in social science. Barker spent his career expanding on what he called ecological psychology, identifying these behavior settings, and publishing accounts such as One Boy's Day (1952) and Midwest and Its Children (1955.)
Impact on the built environment
Environmental psychologists rejected the laboratory-experimental paradigm because it of its simplification and skewed view of the cause-and-effect relationships of human's behaviors and experiences. Environmental psychologists examine how one or more parameters produce an effect while other measures are controlled. It is impossible to manipulate real-world settings in a laboratory. (Proshansky, 1987)Environmental psychology is oriented towards influencing the work of design professionals (architects, engineers, interior designers, urban planners, etc.) and thereby improving the human environment.
On a civic scale, efforts towards improving pedestrian landscapes have paid off, to some extent,from the involvement of figures like Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs, was an American-Canadian writer and activist with primary interest in communities and urban planning and decay. She is best known for The Death and Life of Great American Cities , a powerful critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s in the United States...
and Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
's Jan Gehl
Jan Gehl
Jan Gehl is a Danish architect and urban design consultant based in Copenhagen and whose career has focused on improving the quality of urban life by re-orienting city design towards the pedestrian and cyclist.-Biography:...
. One prime figure here is the late writer and researcher William H. Whyte
William H. Whyte
William Hollingsworth "Holly" Whyte was an American urbanist, organizational analyst, journalist and people-watcher.Whyte was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania in 1917 and died in New York City in 1999. An early graduate of St. Andrew's School in Middletown, Delaware, he graduated from Princeton...
. His still-refreshing and perceptive "City", based on his accumulated observations of skilled Manhattan pedestrians, provides steps and patterns of use in urban plazas.
The role and impact of architecture on human behavior is debated within the architectural profession. Views range from: supposing that people will adapt to new architectures and city forms; believing that architects cannot predict the impact of buildings on humans and therefore should base decisions on other factors; to those who undertake detailed precedent studies of local building types and how they are used by that society.
Environmental psychology has conquered the whole architectural genre which is concerned with retail stores and any other commercial venues that have the power to manipulate the mood and behavior of customers (e.g. stadiums, casinos, malls, and now airports). From Philip Kotler
Philip Kotler
Philip Kotler is the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.-Early life:He received his master's degree at the University of Chicago...
's landmark paper on Atmospherics and Alan Hirsch
Alan Hirsch
Alan Hirsch is a South African-born missiologist and a leading voice in the missional movement of the Christian West. He is an internationally recognized author of five books on missional living. Additionally, Hirsch founded one and co-founded two organizations devoted to equipping people for...
's "Effects of Ambient Odors on Slot-Machine Usage in a Las Vegas Casino", through the creation and management of the Gruen transfer
Gruen transfer
In shopping mall design, the Gruen transfer is the moment when a consumer enters a shopping mall and, surrounded by an intentionally confusing layout, loses track of their original intentions...
, retail relies heavily on psychology, original research, focus groups, and direct observation. One of William Whyte's students, Paco Underhill
Paco Underhill
Paco Underhill is an environmental psychologist, the author of the books Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, Call of the Mall: The Geography of Shopping and What Women Want: The Global Marketplace Turns Female Friendly, and the founder of a market research and consulting company called Envirosell...
, makes a living as a "shopping anthropologist". Most of this advanced research remains a trade secret and proprietary.
Organizations
PPS (Project for Public SpacesProject for Public Spaces
Project for Public Spaces is a nonprofit organization based in New York dedicated to creating and sustaining public places that build communities. Planning and design rooted in the community form the cornerstone of PPS’s work. Building on the techniques of William H...
) is a nonprofit organization that works to improve public spaces, particularly parks, civic centers, public markets, downtowns, and campuses. The staff of PPS is made up of individuals trained in environmental design, architecture, urban planning, urban geography, urban design, environmental psychology, landscape architecture, arts administration and information management. The organization has collaborated with many major institutions to improve the appearance and functionality of public spaces throughout the United States. In 2005, PPS co-founded The New York City Streets Renaissance, a campaign that worked to develop a new campaign model for transportation reform. This initiative implemented the transformation of excess sidewalk space in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan into public space. Also, by 2008, New York City reclaimed 49 acres (198,296.1 m²) of traffic lanes and parking spots away from cars and gave it back to the public as bike lanes and public plazas.
The City University of New York Graduate Center is home to Center for Human Environments which is a research center that serves to address the relationship between people and their physical settings. CHE is made up of five subgroups that specialize in aiding specific populations: The Children's Environments Research Group, the Health and Society Research Group, the Housing Environments Research Group, the Public Space Research Group, and the Youth Studies Research Group.
The most relevant scientific group is the International Association of People-Environment Studies
International Association of People-Environment Studies
The International Association of People-Environment Studies , has been promoting the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas between planning and social scientists for 35 years – above all between spatial planning, architecture, psychology, and sociology...
(IAPS).
Challenges
The field saw significant research findings and a fair surge of interest in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but has seen challenges of nomenclature, obtaining objective and repeatable results, scope, and the fact that some research rests on underlying assumptions about human perception, which is not fully understood. Being an interdisciplinary field is difficult because it lacks a solid definition and purpose. It is hard for the field to fit into organizational structures. In the words of Guido Francescato, speaking in 2000, environmental psychology encompasses a "somewhat bewildering array of disparate methodologies, conceptual orientations, and interpretations... making it difficult to delineate, with any degree of precision, just what the field is all about and what might it contribute to the construction of society and the unfolding of history."Environmental psychology has not received nearly enough supporters to be considered an interdisciplinary field within psychology. Harold M. Proshanksy was one of the founders of environmental psychology and was quoted as saying “As I look at the field of environmental psychology today, I am concerned about its future. It has not, since its emergence in the early 1960s grown to the point where it can match the fields of social, personality, learning or cognitive psychology. To be sure, it has increased in membership, in the number of journals devoted to it, and even in the amount of professional organizational support it enjoys, but not enough so that one could look at any major university and find it to be a field of specialization in a department of psychology, or, more importantly, in an interdisciplinary center or institute”.
Stokols, D. (1995). The paradox of environmental psychology. American Psychologist, 50 821-837.
Other contributors
Other significant researchers and writers in this field include:- Irwin AltmanIrwin AltmanIrwin Altman, also known as Irv Altman, was born on July 16, 1930 in New York City, New York. Altman is a social psychologist who earned his B.A. degree from New York University in 1951, his M.A. degree from the University of Maryland in 1954 and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1957...
Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Utah - Jay AppletonJay AppletonJay Appleton is a British geographer who proposed 'habitat theory' and advanced the notion of 'prospect-refuge'.- Biography :Jay was born in Yorkshire in December 1919. He moved to Stibbard, near Fakenham in Norfolk, at the age of eighteen months...
, British geographer who proposed 'habitat theory' and advanced the notion of 'prospect-refuge' - David Chapin Professor of Environmental Psychology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
- Anita Blanchard, Department of Psychology, Claremont Graduate UniversityClaremont Graduate UniversityClaremont Graduate University is a private, all-graduate research university located in Claremont, California, a city east of downtown Los Angeles...
, Claremont, CA. Applied behavior setting theory to "Virtual Behavior Settings", expanding Wicker's work into computer-mediated environments. - Karen Franck PhD is a professor in the New Jersey School of Architecture and the Department of Humanities at New Jersey Institute of Science and Technology
- Robert GiffordRobert GiffordRobert Gifford is professor of Psychology and Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria . His main research interests are environmental psychology, social psychology, and personality psychology. He has worked on nonverbal behavior and on climate change behavior barriers...
, Ph.D. Department of Psychology University of Victoria. Current Editor of the Journal of Environmental Psychology and author of Environmental Psychology: Principles and Practice (4th edition, 2007). - James J. Gibson, Best known for coining the word affordanceAffordanceAn affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, which allows an individual to perform an action. For example, a knob affords twisting, and perhaps pushing, while a cord affords pulling...
, a description of what the environment offers the animal in terms of action - Paul Gump, Continued Barker's work in Oskaloosa and did the seminal "Boy's Camp" and "Big School, Small School" studies (with Barker)
- Roger HartRoger HartRoger A. Hart is a Professor in the Environmental Psychology Ph.D. Program of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the co-director of the Children’s Environments Research Group.-Biography:...
Professor of Environmental Psychology, Center for Human Environments and the Environmental Psychology Program, The Graduate Center, City University of New York - Daniel Henry, Applied classic theories of behavior settings to online built environments, and coined the term "Computer-Mediated Behavior Settings".
- Bill Hillier, coined the term space syntaxSpace syntaxThe term space syntax encompasses a set of theories and techniques for the analysis of spatial configurations. Originally it was conceived by Bill Hillier, Julienne Hanson and colleagues at The Bartlett, University College London in the late 1970s to early 1980s as a tool to help architects...
- C. Ray Jeffery coined the phrase Crime Prevention Through Urban Design or CPTED
- Rachel and Stephen KaplanRachel and Stephen KaplanRachel and Stephen Kaplan are renowned in the field of environmental psychology. Professors of psychology at the University of Michigan, the Kaplans are known for their research on the effect of nature on people’s relationships and health...
Professors of psychology at the University of Michigan, the Kaplans are known for their research on the effect of nature on people’s relationships and health, including Attention Restoration TheoryAttention Restoration TheoryAttention Restoration Theory asserts that people can concentrate better after spending time in nature, or even looking at scenes of nature. Natural environments abound with "soft fascinations" which a person can reflect upon in "effortless attention", such as clouds moving across the sky, leaves...
and are renowned in the field of environmental psychology - Cindi KatzCindi KatzCindi Katz , a geographer, is a Professor in Environmental Psychology, Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Women's Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center...
Professor of Environmental Psychology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York - Setha LowSetha Low- External links :*...
Professor of Environmental Psychology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York - Kevin A. LynchKevin A. LynchKevin Andrew Lynch was an American urban planner and author.Lynch studied at Yale University, Taliesin under Frank Lloyd Wright, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and received a Bachelor's degree in city planning from MIT in 1947...
and his research into the formation of mental maps - Francis McAndrew: Cornelia H. Dudley Professor of Psychology at Knox College; wrote an influential Environmental Psychology textbook
- Bill MollisonBill MollisonBruce Charles 'Bill' Mollison is a researcher, author, scientist, teacher and naturalist. He is considered to be the 'father of permaculture', an integrated system of design, co-developed with David Holmgren, that encompasses not only agriculture, horticulture, architecture and ecology, but also...
developed the Environmental Psychology Unit at the University of TasmaniaUniversity of TasmaniaThe University of Tasmania is a medium-sized public Australian university based in Tasmania, Australia. Officially founded on 1 January 1890, it was the fourth university to be established in nineteenth-century Australia...
and also PermaculturePermaculturePermaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that is modeled on the relationships found in nature. It is based on the ecology of how things interrelate rather than on the strictly biological concerns that form the foundation of modern agriculture...
with David HolmgrenDavid HolmgrenDavid Holmgren is an ecologist, ecological design engineer and writer. He is known as one of the co-originators of the permaculture concept with Bill Mollison.- Life and work :Holmgren was born in the state of Western Australia... - Harold Proshansky An environmental psychologist and the president of the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York
- Amos RapoportAmos RapoportAmos Rapoport is the author of the book House, Form & Culture - which talks about how culture, human behavior, and the environment affect house form....
Distinguished Professor Emeritus Department of Architecture - Leanne RivlinLeanne RivlinLeanne Rivlin is an originator of the Environmental Psychology Doctoral Program at the CUNY Graduate Center in the late 1960s.-Education:*Ph.D., M.A. Teachers College, Columbia University *B.A. Brooklyn College, Psychology & English...
Professor of Environmental Psychology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York - Edward Sadalla Professor, Department of Psychology (Social), College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, ASU
- Susan SaegertSusan SaegertSusan Saegert is Professor of Human and Organizational Development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.Prior to her current appointment in 2008, Dr...
, director of the Center for Human Environments at the City University of New YorkCity University of New YorkThe City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E... - Phil Schoggen, who worked with Barker and Wright in Oskaloosa and published the seminal book "Behavior Settings" which summarizes and expands the theory.
- Myrtle Scott, who applied behavior setting theory to special education and industrial settings, and who taught eco-environmental psychology at Indiana University.
- Robert SommerRobert SommerRobert Sommer is Distinguished Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of California, Davis. An Environmental Psychologist who has written 14 books and over 600 journal articles, he may be best known for his book Personal Space: The Behavioral Basis of Design , which discusses the...
, a pioneer of the field who first studied personal space in the 1950s and is perhaps best known for his 1969 book Personal Space: The Behavioral Basis of Design, but is also the author of numerous other books, including Design Awareness, and hundreds of articles. - Daniel StokolsDaniel StokolsDaniel Stokols is Chancellor's Professor of Social Ecology in the Departments of Psychology and Social Behavior and Planning, Policy, and Design, and Dean Emeritus of the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Stokols received his B.A. degree at the University of...
, Chancellor's Professor, School of Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine; edited Handbook of Environmental Psychology with Irwin Altman; author, Persepctives on Environment and Behavior; co-author, Health, Behavior, and Environmental Stress with Sheldon Cohen, Gary Evans, and David Krantz - James A. Swan, Research Adjunct Professor, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Made early contributions to study of perception of environmental problems, and then later, to understanding the concept of sacred places in nature, which was developed through the five-year Spirit of Place symposium series, 1988-1993 in the US and Japan.
- Roger Ulrich professor both in the Department of Architecture and the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, and serves as Director of the Center for Health Systems and Design
- Allan WickerAllan Wicker-Academic career:Allan W. Wicker studied with the founders of ecological psychology, Roger G. Barker and Herbert F. Wright, in the social psychology program at the University of Kansas, where he earned the Ph. D. in 1967...
, who expanded behavior setting theories to include other areas of study, including qualitative research, and social psychology. - Gary WinkelGary WinkelGary Winkel is a Professor of Environmental Psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York He received his Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Washington with a minor in quantitative methods....
Professor of Environmental Psychology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
See also
- AestheticsAestheticsAesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
- ArchitectureArchitectureArchitecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
- Behavioural sciencesBehavioural sciencesThe term behavioural sciences encompasses all the disciplines that explore the activities of and interactions among organisms in the natural world. It involves the systematic analysis and investigation of human and animal behaviour through controlled and naturalistic observation, and disciplined...
- ClimatotherapyClimatotherapyClimatotherapy refers to temporary or permanent relocation of a patient to a region with a climate more favourable to recovery from or management of a condition...
- Connectedness to nature scaleConnectedness to nature scaleThe connectedness to nature scale is a measure of individuals' trait levels of feeling emotionally connected to the natural world in the realm of social and environmental psychology...
- Conservation psychologyConservation PsychologyConservation psychology is the scientific study of the mutual relationships, and the connections between humans and the rest of nature, with a particular focus on how to encourage conservation of the natural world...
- Disciplinary architectureDisciplinary architectureArchitectures of control have been considered to direct and/or prohibit certain types of behaviours within a given space. The idea of shaping user behavior is widely evident throughout the built environment....
- EcopsychologyEcopsychologyEcopsychology connects psychology and ecology. Its political and practical goals are to show humans ways of healing alienation and to build a "sane" society and a sustainable culture. Theodore Roszak is credited with coining the term in his 1992 book, The Voice of the Earth...
- Environmental dependence syndromeEnvironmental dependence syndromeEnvironmental dependency syndrome is a syndrome where the affected individual relies on environmental cues in order to accomplish goals or tasks. It is a disorder in personal autonomy that is influenced by individual psychological traits and can be helped through the intervention of other people...
- Environmental designEnvironmental designEnvironmental design is the process of addressing surrounding environmental parameters when devising plans, programs, policies, buildings, or products...
- Environmental design and planningEnvironmental design and planningEnvironmental design and planning is the moniker used by several Ph.D. programs that take a multidisciplinary approach to the built environment. Typically environmental design and planning programs address architectural history or design , city or regional planning, landscape architecture history...
- ErgonomicsErgonomicsErgonomics is the study of designing equipment and devices that fit the human body, its movements, and its cognitive abilities.The International Ergonomics Association defines ergonomics as follows:...
- Evolutionary psychologyEvolutionary psychologyEvolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
- Feng ShuiFeng shuiFeng shui ' is a Chinese system of geomancy believed to use the laws of both Heaven and Earth to help one improve life by receiving positive qi. The original designation for the discipline is Kan Yu ....
- Healing environmentsHealing environmentsHealing environment, for healthcare buildings describes a physical setting and organizational culture that supports patients and families through the stresses imposed by illness, hospitalization, medical visits, the process of healing, and sometimes, bereavement.The philosophy that guides this...
- Interior design psychologyInterior design psychologyInterior design psychology is a field within environmental psychology, which concerns the environmental conditions of the interior. It is a direct study of the relationship between an environment and how that environment affects the behaviour of its inhabitants, with the aim of maximising the...
- Human factorsHuman factorsHuman factors science or human factors technologies is a multidisciplinary field incorporating contributions from psychology, engineering, industrial design, statistics, operations research and anthropometry...
- Journal of Environmental PsychologyJournal of Environmental PsychologyThe Journal of Environmental Psychology is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Elsevier since 1980. Since 2002, its editor in chief is Robert Gifford . The journal reports scientific research on human interactions with the built and natural environment, with an emphasis on the individual...
- Neighborhood WatchNeighborhood WatchA neighborhood watch or neighbourhood watch , also called a crime watch or neighborhood crime watch, is an organized group of citizens devoted to crime and vandalism prevention within a neighborhood...
- NidotherapyNidotherapyNidotherapy, after nidus is the name of 'a collaborative treatment involving the systematic assessment and modification of the environment to minimise the impact of any form of mental disorder on the individual or on society' 1...
- PsychologyPsychologyPsychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
- Situational StrengthSituational strengthSituational strength is defined as cues provided by environmental forces regarding the desirability of potential behaviors. Situational strength is said to result in psychological pressure on the individual to engage in and/or refrain from particular behaviors...
- Social sciencesSocial sciencesSocial science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...
- Urban designUrban designUrban design concerns the arrangement, appearance and functionality of towns and cities, and in particular the shaping and uses of urban public space. It has traditionally been regarded as a disciplinary subset of urban planning, landscape architecture, or architecture and in more recent times has...
- Children Youth and Environments JournalChildren Youth and Environments JournalChildren, Youth and Environments is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes research articles, in-depth analyses, cutting-edge field reports, and critical book reviews on research, policy, and practice concerning inclusive and sustainable environments for children and youth worldwide.From...