Environmental Psychology
Week 1 – Setting the Scene
The course focusses on:
1. The person in environment: what does the person do with the environment, what does the
environment do with the person? Attention for theories, methods and research designs that take the
psychical environment into account. Explicit attention to the way thoughts, feelings and (social)
behavior are caused, influenced, or moderated by characteristics (e.g. forest vs. city) of the psychical
environment. Also the other way around; how does a person influences its environment? E.g. a
person’s room.
2. The reciprocal relations between persons and environments: the person influences its
environment, but the environment also influences the its behavior and its feelings. E.g. what does big
buildings, such as the Zuidas, do with people? How future-oriented people become when they are in
the forest vs. when they are at the Zuidas?
3. The social origin and meaning of man-environment interactions: what do environments such as
home, school, neighborhood, work, prison etc. do with us? How environments are designed,
influences our behaviors (such as stress level). All describe physically defined environments with a
clearly social character. E.g. better well-being of children and less bullying when the schoolyard is
more green.
4. Opportunities for ‘change for the better’: increased well-being, improved environmental quality,
by behavioral interventions. What drives people to not act sustainably, what are interventions that
can be used? Protesting against environmental injustice requires: courage (to do it on your own),
organization (if you want to have a big impact), communication (you must know what you want to
communicate), altruism (you care for collective sake).
Environmental problems: an extremely complex and far reaching problem
- CO2 in the atmosphere is to some extent important, because the heat (warmth of the sun) stays in
so we’re not freezing. Too much is heating up the temperature. This is a global problem → difficult to
come up with interventions that help this problem.
- Air pollution (high concentrations of particulate matter) is also a big problem in the Netherlands.
- Increasing numbers of hurricanes and storms.
When an event is coming closer and you experience it by yourself, people are way more aware that
something need to be changed. It helps when celebrities also feel the consequences and make
statements, since they are seen as ‘’leaders’’.
The seven lectures
Lecture 1: introduction of the course and discussion of 7 papers that give an impression of the
history, wide range of topics, and ‘’feel’’ of environmental psychology.
Lecture 2: classic and current papers on urban psychology. Information overload, stress, criminality
and social safety, well-being.
Lecture 3: restoration effect of nature, preference for nature, biophilia and altruism.
Lecture 4: what effect does spatial planning and design have on our behavior and well-being?
Lecture 5: can we understand environmental behavior with our psychological theories?
Lecture 6: how can psychology help to develop interventions for pro-environmental change?
Lecture 7: understanding possibilities, motives and barriers of firms to strive for sustainability.
, The seven papers
1. Wohlwill (1970): philosophical introductory paper about the role of environmental psychology.
- Environmental psychology is a response to concerns about quality of the environment.
- Environmental psychology is problem orientated, applied, inclined to cooperate in multidisciplinary
projects.
- Environmental psychology has unique potential to ask new questions. People looked at what nature
does to us, at crowded cities etc.
There are 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, but your home is very tiny → not a good fit to feel
more relaxed.
2. Long term exposure to general conditions may exert generalized effects: e.g., urban life style as a
function of crowding, working day rhythm as function of climate. Living in a crowded city → less trust
in neighbors. If you life in a warm climate (Spain) → siesta.
3. Behavior is oriented toward environment; environment is focal.
The environment as a source of affect (different characteristics of environment can evoke different
types of emotions):
1. Affect evoked by stimulus characteristics (e.g., complexity, diversity, novelty, category)
2. Environment determines approach and avoidance reactions (moving, migrating, holiday
destinations). E.g. when you go on holiday, you’re talking about the beach and other nice aspects
(approach).
3. Adaption (‘’man is at once a seeker and neutralizer of stimulation’’). People seek for an optimal
level of stimulation, but also people get used to the stimulation so they get bored. Environment can
help: if you like hiking, you start with a small hill, but in the long-term you seek for more steeper hills.
Not mentioned but important:
- Individual differences in e.g., sensation seeking, environmental concern, etc. that influences the
effect of environment on people’s emotions and behaviors.
- Attitude formation and attitude change regarding environmental problems. If you want to influence
people’s sustainable behavior, attitude change is necessary.
- Problems that seem environmental bur are primarily social, economic, educational (slums,
ghetto’s).
2. Goldberg (1969): observational study of specific urban phenomenon.
Premises:
- Designers like to think about the relation between physical form and social behavior.
- These insights are based on intuitions rather than on science
- These insight are wrong, because
Intuition does hardly work
The scientific approach is shallow (misses in depth understanding of social processes)
He started to look on a specific environmental problem: the problem of youngsters driving with fast
cars across the streets, making a lot of noise and causing a lot of hinder for others. This
environmental problem was caused by conflicting sociocultural forces: youngsters had a motive to
behave like that, and people that were hindered by that had a different motive how these streets
should be used. In the study, Goldberg demonstrates the relationships between sociocultural,
