Environmental psychology
[3] Environmental psychology was not fully recognized as its own field until the late 1960s when scientists began to question the tie between human behavior and our natural and built environments.
[5] This multidisciplinary paradigm has not only characterized the dynamic for which environmental psychology is expected to develop, but it has also been the catalyst in attracting experts and scholars from other fields of study, aside from research psychologists.
In environmental psychology, geographers, economists, landscape architects, policy-makers, sociologists, anthropologists, educators, and product developers all have discovered and participated in this field.
The origins of the field can be traced to the Romantic poets, such as Wordsworth and Coleridge who drew attention to the power of nature intersect with the significance of human interaction.
One of his books, Geopsyche, discusses topics such as how the sun and the moon affect human activity, the impact of extreme environments, and the effects of color and form (Pol, E., 2006, Blueprints for a history of environmental psychology (I): From first birth to American transition.
Among the other major scholars at the roots of environmental psychology were Jakob von Uexküll, Kurt Lewin, Egon Brunswik, and later Gerhard Kaminski and Carl Friedrich Graumann.
The head of the department was Terence Lee, who had conducted his PhD on the concept of the neighborhood under the supervision of Sir Frederick Bartlett at the University of Cambridge.
Although it has been found that control and predictability are the greatest factors in stressful effects of noise; context, pitch, source and habituation are also important variables [3].
With parents failing to provide proper nests, thoughtlessly ditching their young and even attacking them, infant mortality rose as high as 96% in certain sections.
For instance, sociology provides insights into how social structures and cultural norms influence environmental behaviors, while economics helps analyze the financial incentives and barriers to sustainable practices.
[18] Additionally, insights from the field have contributed to the development of urban spaces that encourage pro-environmental behaviors, such as recycling and energy conservation.
Place identity has been traditionally defined as a 'sub-structure of the self-identity of the person consisting of broadly conceived cognitions about the physical world in which the individual lives'.
Through one's attitudes, feelings, ideas, memories, personal values and preferences toward the range and type of physical settings, they can then understand the environment they live in and their overall experience.
The individual is frequently unaware of the array of feelings, values or memories of a singular place and simply becomes more comfortable or uncomfortable with certain broad kinds of physical settings, or prefers specific spaces to others.
[36] Leanne Rivlin theorized that one way to examine an individual's environmental consciousness is to recognize how the physical place is significant, and look at the people/place relationship.
One area (probably the orbitofrontal cortex) may collate the various pieces of the informational puzzle in order to develop a long term strategy of engagement with the ever-changing "environment".
Moreover, the orbitofrontal cortex may show the greatest change in blood oxygenation (BOLD level) when an organism thinks of the broad, and amorphous category referred to as "the environment".
"The hybrid, eco-behavioral character of behavior settings appear to present Midwest's inhabitants with no difficulty; nouns that combine milieu and standing behavior are common, e.g. oyster supper, basketball game, turkey dinner, golden gavel ceremony, cake walk, back surgery, gift exchange, livestock auction, auto repair.
Some of the minute-by-minute observations of Kansan children from morning to night, jotted down by young and maternal graduate students, may be the most intimate and poignant documents in social science.
Barker spent his career expanding on what he called ecological psychology, identifying these behavior settings, and publishing accounts such as One Boy's Day (1952) and Midwest and Its Children (1955).
[full citation needed] Environmental psychology research has observed various concepts relating to humans' innate connection to natural environments which begins in early childhood.
[43] One study found that nurses who weren't exposed to any natural elements throughout their work day would obtain a significantly lower score on scales measuring mental health, job satisfaction, and overall well-being.
On a civic scale, efforts toward improving pedestrian landscapes have paid off, to some extent, from the involvement of figures like Jane Jacobs and Copenhagen's Jan Gehl.
His still-refreshing and perceptive "City", based on his accumulated observations of skilled Manhattan pedestrians, provides steps and patterns of use in urban plazas.
Environmental psychology has conquered the whole architectural genre which is concerned with retail stores and any other commercial venues that have the power to manipulate the mood and behavior of customers (e.g. 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.
[44] By increasing the focus on applying environmental psychology principles to urban planning and policy-making, we can create more livable and sustainable communities.
In many urban cities, technology was leveraged to promote sustainable behaviors, such as energy conservation and waste recycling, influencing individual daily habits.
[47] 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."
To be sure, it has increased in membership, in the number of journals devoted to it, and even in the amount of professional organizational support it enjoys, but not enough so that one could look at any major university and find it to be a field of specialization in a department of psychology, or, more importantly, in an interdisciplinary center or institute".
