Summary

Summary Environmental Psychology Lecture Notes 2021

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Course
Environmental Psychology

Institution
Universiteit Leiden (UL)

English lecture notes of all the 7 meetings of Environmental Psychology, given by Arianne van der Wal, and the guest lectures in 2020/2021. It is a transcript of everything she says during the lectures. This summary includes all literature and all notes. The lecture notes describe exactly what she ...

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Uploaded on January 19, 2021
Number of pages 70
Written in 2020/2021
Type Summary

environmental psychology
hoorcollege aantekeningen
english
lecture notes
samenvatting
summary

Institution
Universiteit Leiden (UL)
Education
Master Economic And Consumer Psychology
Course
Environmental Psychology

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Summary lecture 1

Article 1: Wohlwill, J. F. (1970). The emerging discipline of environmental psychology

Main issues of the article
• Environmental Psychology is a response to concerns about quality of the environment (‘We
should limit the growth of our population for environmental sakes’)
• Environmental Psychology is problem oriented, applied, inclined to cooperate in
multidisciplinary projects. To look at problems from different points of views.
• Environmental Psychology has unique potential to ask new questions. E.g. what does nature
do with people?

Three forms of relationship between person and physical environment
1.Environment guides and constrains behavior: barriers, compatibility, ‘fit’; environment is
instrumental. E.g. if you want to feel relaxed and go home, but your home is very dense and tiny, it is
not a good place to relax. So that environment does not fit with the need to feel more relaxed.
2.Long term exposure to general conditions may exert in generalized effects:
E.g., if you live in a dense urban environment, that is very crowded, it resulted in less trust (for
example less trusting your neighbors) than when you live in a more rural area. So living in a constant
feeling of crowdedness and density, makes people feel less trusty. This is a generalized effect.
Also, working day rhythm can be a result of the climate. For example, if you live in a warm climate
such as Spain, where in the mid hours of the day it is very warm, people start to take a different life
rhythm (working in mornings, take a siesta, and then work again). This is all an effect of the
environment.
3. Behavior can be oriented toward the environment. So we can start act carefully for our
environment (planting trees), but we can also deplete our resources. This means the environment
can be focal.

Environment as source of affect
The environment has a relation with affect. Different characteristics of the environment can evoke
different types of emotions. For example, important characteristics can be that it is diverse, complex,
novel, or category. Also, the environment can determine whether you want to approach or avoid the
environment. For example, if you go on a holiday, you’re going there because of the beautiful
beaches or the beautiful nature. That is when you want to approach it, by mentioning the positive
aspects. You can also avoid the environment, by thinking it’s too dense for example.
Wohlwill mentioned the following sentence in his article: ‘Man is at once a seeker and neutralizer of
stimulation’. This means that people seek for an optimal level of stimulation. If you are not
stimulated, you get bored. But on the other hand, people get used to the stimulation. So it will get
boring again. Environment can help there, especially nature.

Wohlwill also leave things unmentioned
• There are individual differences that influence the effect of the environment on people’s
emotions and behavior. E.g. some people are more sensation seeking than others, or are
more environmentally concerned.
• He doesn’t address attitude formation and attitude change regarding environmental
problems. If you want to influence people’s sustainable behavior, attitude change is really
important.
• He doesn’t address that some problems seem to be environmentally related, but are actually
caused by other aspects. Such as social, economic, educational aspects (slums, ghetto’s).

1

, Article 2: Goldberg, T. (1969). The automobile. A social institution for adolescents

Premises
The article has several premises:
• Designers like to think about the relation between physical form and social behaviour. They
like to think that they know what the environment does with human behaviour. But often
they are wrong, because they just follow their intuition.
• These insights are based on intuitions rather than on science
• These insights are often wrong, because:
o Intuition does hardly work
o The scientific approach is shallow, not really scientific (misses in depth
understanding of social processes)

The present study
Goldberg started to look on a specific environmental problem: youngsters/adolescents driving with
fast cars across the street, they were making a lot of noise and causing a lot of hinder for other
people. This was caused by a conflict of sociocultural forces. The youngsters had a motive to behave
like this, and there were other people who were hindered by this and had a different motive of how
these areas should be used. In his study, he demonstrates the relationships between sociocultural,
behavioral, and physical environment.
He looked at the problem of adolescents who have nowhere to go. These adolescents like cars. They
take the road for social gatherings (“cruising”, “dragging the main”, “making the strip”). But the
problem was, that they were blocking the roads, creating unsafety, noise and annoyance.

The issue more in depth
Goldberg looked deeper into this problem. “Why is this happening?”. He looked at the social
interaction of the adolescents. He found that there are important aspects for these adolescents: (1)
peer group influences (specifically at that age), (2) sexual activity, and (3) rivalry (e.g. having more
status makes you more attractive). The meeting place to match all these 3 aspects, should be a “full
blown social arena”. Furthermore, adolescents love cars. Cars are very suitable for competition (and
is more easily than sports or intellectual achievements) and have sexual symbolism. ‘You just need to
have a nice looking car and drive fast’.

Observations
But the cruising and driving of cars, often has strict codes:
Men:
- Often drive alone (sometimes in pairs)
- Aspire to have expensively altered and nice “hot” cars
- Go to places where they can best display their car
- Have windows rolled down (-> calling to girls)
Women:
- Often do not drive alone
- When in pairs are open to a date
- When with three or more, are not open to date (just there to tease)
- Have windows initially closed (so they are in control). Only when interested, they open their
windows.

Initial outcomes of study
What were the outcomes of the study?
• All activity that the adolescent did, took place in or near the car
• The cruisers tried to maximize visibility (driving and parking were they could be seen well)

2

, • Cruising is self-sustaining → no need for other amusement facilities (just needs road, parking
places, light)

Goldberg’s unfulfilled promise
After this study, Goldberg promised a lot of things. But he had unfulfilled premises. He promised he
was going to do a follow up study to help to solve the problems of the other people who had to
suffer from. But his publication never appeared.

Article 3: Kaplan, S. (1995). The restorative benefits of nature: Toward an integrative
framework

The article looks at the role of nature in human behavior. Nature can help restore people’s attention.
The author came up with the attention restoration theory. In this theory, there are three
components:
• Directed attention. Attention that you give to something you’re working with, so what you’re
focused on. This requires a cognitive capacity for inhibition of distraction ‘vermogen om
afleiding te remmen’ (inhibitory mechanism). When efforts to sustain directed attention are
prolonged, the inhibitory mechanism becomes exhausted. And when you are exhausted, you
become fatigue, which has consequences.
• Consequences of fatigue. When you are fatigue, you have a poor concentration, easily
irritated, inclined to make errors, and unwilling to help others. People feel that they have to
restore this: the need for restoration.
• Restoration. There are aspects in an environment that help you restore better. For example:
o Being away. Being away from your daily life activities.
o Fascination. The environment must be inspiring, attractive or interesting.
o Compatibility. The environment matches your goals, it also helps you to restore (e.g.
going for a run and your environment has a good running spot)
o Extent. Feeling of there’s enough time to stay in your environment. Needs to have an
impression of continuity.
Research shows that nature has more of these aspects than an urban environment. So nature
is more restorative than urban environments.

Hartig & Staats (2006)

In the lecture, she discusses an article of Hartig & Staats (2006). This article is not part of the
readings, but what she discusses in the lecture is important to know for the exam. This article gives
evidence to the theory of Kaplan.
They looked at what the effect of nature was when students were refreshed or 7
fatigue. There was a design with an urban condition and a nature condition, and
6
half of the students were refreshed (not attending a lecture) and the others were
fatigue (by attending a long lecture they had to pay attention to). Both students, 5
watched a series of 50 slides with either urban or nature elements. How much 4
was the environment preferred? Both the rested group and the fatigue group 3 Urban
preferred the nature environment more. However, the fatigue group preferred 2 Nature
the urban environment less, in comparison to the rested group.
1
They also asked the likelihood of attentional recovery. What did the participants 0
themselves though about an environment that could recover them from their
fatigueness. Nature is in both groups preferred, especially the fatigue condition.

3

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