Environmental psychology

Environmental psychology is a branch of psychology that explores the relationship between humans and the external world. It examines the way in which the natural- and our built environments shape us as individuals. Environmental psychology investigates how humans change the environment and how the environment influences humans' experiences and behaviors. The field defines the term environment broadly, encompassing natural environments, social settings, built environments, learning environments, and informational environments. Another important research area within environmental psychology is the study of humans’ influences on the environment, that is, psychological factors influencing pro-environmental behavior and different ways it can be possible to encourage environmentally friendly behaviors, in order to mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss.
According to an article on APA Psychnet, environmental psychology is when a person thinks to a plan, travels to a certain place, and follows through with the plan throughout their behavior.
Environmental psychology was not fully recognized as its own field until the late 1960s when scientists began to question the tie between human behavior and our natural and built 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 aimed 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 respond well. This model can help design, manage, protect and/or restore environments that enhance reasonable behavior, predict the likely outcomes when these conditions are not met, and diagnose problem within the environment. 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. Lately, alongside the increased focus on climate change in society and the social sciences and the re-emergence of limits-to-growth concerns, there has been an increased focus on environmental sustainability issues within the field.
This multidisciplinary paradigm has not only characterized the dynamic for which environmental psychology is expected to develop, but it has also been the catalyst in attracting experts and scholars from other fields of study, aside from research psychologists. In environmental psychology, geographers, economists, landscape architects, 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, ecological psychology, ecopsychology, environment–behavior studies, and person–environment studies. Closely related fields include architectural psychology, socio-architecture, behavioral geography, environmental sociology, social ecology, and environmental design research.

History

The origins of the field can be traced to the Romantic poets, such as Wordsworth and Coleridge who drew attention to the power of nature intersecting with the significance of human interaction. Darwin pointed to the role of the environment in shaping evolution. This idea was quickly applied to human interactions with the surroundings. An extreme Victorian acceptance of this were 'environmental determinists' who insisted the physical environment and climate influenced the evolution of racial characteristics. Willy Hellpach 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 : From first birth to American transition''. "Medio Ambiente y Comportamiento Humano", 7. 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 demand for guidance on the urgent building programme after the destruction of war. To provide government planning requirements many countries set up research centered around the studies on how people used space. In the U.K. the Building Research Centre studied space use in houses leading to further study around noise levels, heating, and lighting requirements in a living space. Pilkingtons, a glassmaker company, set up a daylight research unit, led by Thomas Markus to provide information on the influence of natural lighting in buildings and guidelines on daylight requirements. In the 1960s, Peter Manning further developed the study at the Pilkington Research Unit at the University of Liverpool. He studied offices and employed Brian Wells, one of the first people to obtain a Ph.D in environmental psychology. Markus set up the Building Performance Research Unit at the University of Strathclyde in 1968, employing the psychologist David Canter, whom Wells and Manning had supervised for his Ph.D with the Pilkington Research Unit. Canter then went to the University of Surrey to set up an Environmental Psychology program in 1971 with the Department of Psychology. The head of the department was Terence Lee, who had conducted his PhD on the concept of the neighborhood under the supervision of Sir Frederick Bartlett at the University of Cambridge.
In parallel with these developments, people in the US had begun to consider the issues in environmental design. One of the first areas was the consideration of psychiatric hospitals. Psychiatrists worked with architects to take account of the experiences of patients who experience mental illness and discomfort. Robert Sommer wrote his book on 'Personal Space,' and Edward T Hall, an anthropologist, commented on how people relate to each other spatially. Amos Rapoport caused considerable interest amongst architects with his book 'House Form and Culture', showing that the form of buildings was not solely functional but had all sorts of cultural influences. The idea contributed to the emergence of 'post-modernism' architecture, which took the symbolic qualities of architecture very seriously. These early developments in the 1960s and 1970s were often seen as part of 'architectural psychology'.
When Harold Proshansky and William Ittelson set up the Environmental Psychology program at the City University of New York Graduate Center, the term Environmental Psychology replaces Architectural Psychology, the study of the ways in which people made sense of and interacted with their surroundings. When Canter established The Journal of Environmental Psychology in 1980 with Kenneth Craik a personality psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley, it became institutionalized to use the term environmental psychology. President Nixon's campaign to deal with depredations of the environment gave impetus to a change of direction in the field from aspects of buildings and making sense of cities to the broader issues of climate change and the impact of people in the global environment.

Environmental psychologists

Environmental psychologists are professionals trained to study the relationship between human behavior and the environment that surrounds them. These psychologists study any type of environment, even "built" environments, such as homes, schools, workplaces, neighbourhoods, parks, and event spaces. They study how we as humans behave and interact in the world. As of May 2020, the annual salary of an environmental psychologist is $82,180. The two sub-disciplines are conservation psychology and ecopsychology. Conservation Psychology is the study of the development of attitudes towards the environment and its preservation. Ecopsychology is similar to conservation psychology, but it focuses on the ties of environmental and societal degradation.

Orientations

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 the said problem, discovering a solution. Therefore, it is necessary for environmental psychology to be problem-oriented.
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. Panyang 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: they 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 . Environmental psychologists have theorized that density and crowding can also have an adverse effect on mood and may cause stress-related illness or behavior. 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 and provide access control
Room shape – square rooms feel less crowded than rectangular ones
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