Environmental Psychology
Introduction
▪ Environmental psychology = the study of the relationships between people and the
environment from the perspective of the individual mind (so not groups of people)
▪ Histories
o History of the sciences:
▪ Until 17th century: philosophy was all inclusive → invention of experimental
methods made philosophy and natural sciences fall apart
▪ 18th century: social sciences took off → first branch economy, later sociology
▪ 19th century: psychology was founded (EP recognized as sub-discipline in
1960s)
o History of psychology:
▪ Initial phase (explorative, ‘everything goes’)
▪ Behaviourism paradigm (the mind cannot be directly observed, so only
behaviour should be addressed) | stimulus – response
▪ Cognitive paradigm (turning back to mind, computer as metaphor) | stimulus
– rule based processing – response
▪ Now (more attention to meaning and emotion) | stimulus – meaning/emotion
– rule-based processing – response
▪ Psychology
o Psychology is different from psychiatry:
▪ Psychiatry is a brand of medicine that aims to cure mental diseases;
psychology is the scientific study of the working of the mind and behaviour
o Distinctive features of psychology:
▪ Individual mind as the unit of analysis (unlike economy and sociology, where
the unit of analysis is groups / communities / societies)
▪ Distinctive set of theories (e.g. the theory of system 1 & system 2 thinking)
▪ Psychometrics as methods (procedures designed to tap into individual
thought, emotion, and behaviour)
▪ Environmental psychology (EP)
o The emergence of EP was driven by practical questions in different domains:
▪ Architecture: how to provide decent housing to the public?
▪ Geography: how to achieve landscape quality?
▪ Sustainability: how to increase environmentally significant behaviour?
o Characteristics of EP:
▪ Relatively young discipline
▪ Orientation towards real world problems
▪ Interdisciplinary (probably because practical questions dealing with reality
are leading, and reality does not mind about disciplines)
• Dominated by psychologists, but geographers and architects have
made important contributions
• Focused on the level of the individual, but often taking group
phenomena (e.g. social norms and community pressure) into account
▪ Uses a variety of methods
• Case study // correlational study // experiment
, o Case study: comprehensiveness, but not/hardly generalizable
o Correlational study (questionnaire amongst a large number of
people): generalizable, but no cause-effect relationships
o Experiment: confidence about cause-effect relationships, but
validity outside of experimental setting is questionable
▪ Studies human-environment interactions, in two directions:
• 1) What the environment does with people (e.g. wellbeing,
behaviours, preferences)
• 2) What people do with the environment (e.g. conservation behaviour,
support for policy and management)
o Fields of relevance: landscape planning and environmental policymaking
▪ Theory: dual-processing thinking
o System 1 / experiential learning: implicit, automatic, subconscious processing
▪ Advantages: operates quick, great for routine, can do multiple things at the
same time
▪ Disadvantages: cannot handle abstract or complex problems, it is prone to
undetected biases and errors
o System 2 / formal learning: explicit, effortful, conscious processing
▪ Advantages: allows for reflection, can weigh pros and cons, can handle logic
reasoning
▪ Disadvantages: operates slowly, requires lots of energy and attention, system
two is lazy
