Environmental psychology
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Environmental psychology is an interdisciplinary field focused on the interplay between humans and their surroundings.
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[edit] Scope
"Environmental psychology" is arguably the best-known and more comprehensive description of the field.
The field is known by the following names, advanced by different researchers, sometimes used interchangeably, sometimes with recognized gaps and overlaps between the terms: 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. This field draws on work in a number of disciplines including anthropology, geography, ekistics, sociology, psychology, history, political science, engineering, planning, architecture, and urban design.
The varied names for the field accurately reflect an ongoing debate about its proper scope, for example, whether or not it includes study of human interaction with the natural environment. "Environmental design" is generally understood to describe design activities focused on sustainability, a different matter. Only a small portion of the built environment is attributable to architects, so a focus on "architectural psychology" is seen as too narrow.
[edit] Challenges
Since the late 1940s, the field has seen significant research findings and a fair surge of interest in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but has 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.
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."
[edit] Behavior settings
The first significant findings in environmental psychology can be traced back to researcher Roger Barker, who founded his research station in the tiny Kansas town of Oskaloosa (renamed "Midwest" for publication) in 1947, and ran it for several decades.
From detailed field observations he developed the theory that social settings influence behavior. In a store, people assume their roles as customers; in school and church, proper behavior somehow already resides coded in the place. Barker spent his career expanding on what he called ecological psychology, identifying these behavior settings, and publishing accounts like "One Boy's Day" (1951). Some of the minute-by-minute observations of Kansan children from morning to night, jotted down by young and maternal gradate students, may be the most intimate and poignant documents in social science. The "behavior setting" remains a valid principle which receives serious attention.
Barker argued that the psychologist should use T-Methods (psychologist as 'transducer': i.e. methods which study Man in his 'natural environment') rather than O-Methods (psychologist as "operator" i.e. experimental methods). In other words, he preferred field work and direct observation.
[edit] Proxemics
In the mid 1950s anthropologist E. T. Hall wrote "The Hidden Dimension" which developed and popularized the concepts of personal space and his more general name for this field, proxemics. He defined proxemics as, ". . . the study of how man unconsciously structures microspace - the distance between men in the conduct of daily transactions, the organization of space in his houses and buildings, and ultimately the layout of his towns."
Hall defined and measured four interpersonal "zones":
- intimate (0 to 18 inches)
- personal (18 inches to 4 feet)
- social (4 feet to 12 feet)
- public (12 feet and beyond)
In "The Hidden Dimension" he famously observed that the precise distance we feel 'comfortable' with other being people being near us is culturally determined: Saudis, Norwegians, Milanese and Japanese will have differing notions of 'close'. In one of his best known empirical studies, Hall carried out an analysis of employee reactions to Eero Saarinen's last work, the John Deere World Headquarters Building.
[edit] University of Strathclyde
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.
[edit] Impact on the Built Environment
Ultimately, 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, involving figures like Jane Jacobs and Copenhagen's Jan Gehl. One prime figure here is the late writer and researcher William H. Whyte and his still-refreshing and perceptive "City", based on his accumulated observations of skilled Manhattan pedestrians, steps, and patterns of use in urban plazas.
No equivalent organized knowledge of environmental psychology has developed out of architecture. Most prominent American architects, led until recently by Philip Johnson who was very strong on this point, view their job as an art form. They see little or no responsibility for the social or functional impact of their designs, which was highlighted with failure of public high-rise housing like Pruitt Igoe.
Environmental psychology has conquered one whole architectural genre, although it's a bitter victory: retail stores, and any other commercial venue where the power to manipulate the mood and behavior of customers, places like 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 most-advanced research remains a trade secret and proprietary.
[edit] Other contributors
Other significant researchers and writers in this field include:
- Irwin Altman
- Jay Appleton, British geographer who proposed 'habitat theory' and advanced the notion of 'prospect and refuge'
- David Chapin
- Alain De Botton
- Karen Franck
- Robert Gifford
- J.J. Gibson, best known for coining the word affordance, a description of what the environment offers the animal in terms of action
- Roger Hart
- Bill Hillier and space syntax
- C. Ray Jeffery coined the phrase Crime Prevention Through Urban Design or CPTED
- Rachel Kaplan
- Stephen Kaplan
- Cindi Katz
- Setha Low
- Kevin A. Lynch and his research into the formation of mental maps
- Harold Proshansky
- Amos Rapoport
- Leanne Rivlin
- Susan Saegert, director of the Center for Human Environments at the City University of New York
- Roger Ulrich
- Gary Winkel
[edit] See also
- Aesthetics
- Behavioural sciences
- Ecopsychology
- Environmental design
- Environmental design and planning
- Environmental metaphysics
- Ergonomics
- Feng Shui
- Human factors
- Psychology
- Social sciences
- Dark city
[edit] References
- Bell P., Greene T., Fisher, J., & Baum, A. (1996). Environmental Psychology. Ft Worth: Harcourt Brace.
- Ittelson, W. H., Proshansky, H., Rivlin, L., & Winkel, G. (1974). An Introduction to Environmental Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Translated into German and Japanese.
- Stokols, D. and I. Altman [Eds.] (1987). Handbook of Environmental Psychology. New York: Wiley.
- Fritsch, Albert J. (2006) Eco-spirituality Through The Seasons, January 2006 - present. http://www.earthhealing.info/ecospirit.html
[edit] External links
- PhD Program in Environmental Psychology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York
- Environmental design resources and websites
- Human environment programs from Daniel Stokols at UC Irvine
- Human environment programs from Gary Evans at Cornell
- MSc/PhD Programs in Environmental Psychology at the University of Surrey
