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Environmental Psychology 1/2/2022Summary:
Introduction to Environmental Psychology
1 History, Scope and Methods
Environmental psychology is the discipline that studies the interplay between individuals and
their built and natural environment; how the environment influences behavior as well as how
behavior results in changes in the environment.
Environmental psychology as a field of psychology since the late 1960’s.
In the early period of the field of environmental psychology (1940s/1950s), much
attention was given to the built physical environment and how it affected human
behavior and well-being.
The second period started during the late 1960s when people became aware of
environmental problems.
o Resulted in studies on sustainability issues
o Changing behavior to create healthy and sustainable environments
Current scope and characteristics of the field
A continuing and growing concern of environmental psychology is to find ways to change
people’s behavior to reverse environmental problems, while at the same time preserving
human well-being and quality of life. The broad concept of sustainability has increasingly
become a central guiding and unifying principle for research in environmental psychology
Sustainability: Using, developing and protecting resources at a rate and in a manner
that enables people to meet their current needs and also ensures that future
generations can meet their own needs; achieving an optimal balance between
environmental, social, and economic qualities.
Four key features of environmental psycholog: a focus on human–environment
interactions, an interdisciplinary approach, an applied focus, and a diversity of
methods.
Many environmental psychologists work in interdisciplinary settings, and closely collaborate
with scholars from other disciplines.
Environmental psychologists do not conduct studies merely out of scientific curiosity about
some phenomenon, but also try to contribute toward solving real-life problems = problem
focused approach.
Environmental psychology largely uses the same quantitative and qualitative methods as
other psychological disciplines. Environmental psychology is characterized by the use of a
wide diversity of methods.
Choosing a method involves a trade-off between internal and external validity.
o Internal validity: Extent to which cause-effect relationships can be established
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,Environmental Psychology 1/2/2022
o External validity: Extent to which results of the study can be generalized
2 Environmental risk perception
How people perceive risks is important because the perception prompts or opposes actions
that address the particular risk.
What are environmental risks?
Refers to the possibilities that a situation, event or activity leads to an adverse
outcome, affecting something that humans value.
Two essential components of risk:
the severity and uncertainty of the adverse outcome.
Environmental risk differ from other risks in a number of ways:
characterized by high complexity and uncertainty, entailing intricate causal
relationships an multiple consequences. Often encompass both risks for and risks
from the environment
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,Environmental Psychology 1/2/2022
often emerge from the aggregated behaviors of many individuals rather than from a
single activity.
consequences are often temporally delayed and geographically distant (future
generations, developing countries).
Subjective risk judgments
Risk perception: refers to people’s subjective judgment about the risk that is associated with
some activity, event, or technology.
Measures: Rank risks according to riskiness or concern, how much money they would
pay to mitigate risk or estimate probability of given outcome
Heuristics and biases in risk judgments
People often employ heuristics when making judgments, that is, intuitive rules-of-thumb.
Though heuristics often yield valid results, they can also lead to biased risk assessments.
Two prominent heuristics are the availability heuristic and the anchoring-and-adjustment
heuristic.
1. According to the availability heuristic, people often rely on the ‘ease’ with which
relevant instances of an event can be retrieved from memory. The easier to bring
something to mind, the more likely the occurrence is overestimated.
2. The anchoring-and-adjustment-heuristic, refers to the fact that, when making
estimates, people often start from an initial value (the anchor) and then adjust this
first estimate to arrive at a final judgment.
Another finding is the unrealistic optimism/optimism bias: People’s tendency to believe that
they are more likely to experience positive and less likely to experience negative events than
similar others.
A factor that powerfully shapes evaluations is the framing of a problem. Framing effects refer
to the finding that different descriptions of otherwise identical problems can alter people’s
decisions (describing changes in terms of losses versus gains can lead to different
preferences). One common explanation for framing effects, called loss aversion, is that a loss
is subjectively experiences as more devastating than the equivalent gain is gratifying.
The affect heuristic proposes that affective states serve as important informational inputs for
risk judgments. If individuals feel positive about an activity, they tend to judge the risk as low
and the benefit as high; conversely, if they feel negative about an activity, they tend to judge
the risk as high and the benefit as low.
Temporal discounting refers to the psychological phenomenon that outcomes in the far future
are subjectively less significant than immediate outcomes.
A well-established approach to studying risk perception is the psychometric paradigm: its
aim is to identify the psychological dimensions underlying risk judgments. Two dimensions
constitutes the basic dimensions of the cognitive map of perceived risk:
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, Environmental Psychology 1/2/2022
- Dread risk: describes the extent to which a risk is experiences as dreadful, having
severe, catastrophic consequences or being uncontrollable and involuntary.
- Unknown risk: refers to the extent to which the risk is experiences as new,
unfamiliar, unobservable or having delayed effects.
Risks, values and morality
Risk perception may also be driven by values and ethical or moral positions. Low in
traditional values and high in altruistic values perceive greater global environmental risks.
Environmental ethics:
- Protected or sacred values: Values that are seen as absolute and not tradable (not
to be traded off for anything else)
- Consequentialist principles: Perspective in moral philosophy, whereby the
morality of an action is dependent on the consequences.
- Deontological principles: Perspective in moral philosophy, whereby the focus is
on the inherent rightness or wrongness of an action (moral duties).
Emotional reactions to environmental risks
Emotions influence risk perceptions. Different specific emotions can have differential impact
on perceived risks even if they share the same valence. Fear increases and anger reduces risk
perception, even though both are negative.
Fear and anger however are associated with different tendencies to evaluate events
(appraisals). Fear: uncertain, uncontrollable = perceive events as more risky
Anger: highly certain and controllable = perceive events as less risky.
Emotional reactions to natural hazards are generally weaker than those to hazards that are
caused by humans.
3 Climate Change as a Unique Environmental Problem
Anthropogenic climate change (human-caused)
- Destabilization of ecological and human systems, and the rate of change outpacing
humans’ and other species’ ability to adapt, creating displacement, disease, death,
and extinction
- Climate change has uniquely multifaceted consequences with interlinking
geophysical, biological, and human consequences that differ dependent upon
location on the globe and vulnerability of the targets.
- Complexity of problem: Physical environment, economic and political systems,
individual decisions
Public understanding of climate change
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