Historical contributions
Hellpach (1911) |
first to introduce the term 'envi psych', studied impact of diff envi stimuli (colour, form, sun etc) on human activities, famous phenomenons: crowding, overstimulation |
Egon Bruswik (1903-1955) |
first to emphasis the importance of organisms's envi on its growth |
Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) |
social action research - attempt to solve social problem by researching on what causes it |
Brunswik and Lewin are regarded as the ‘founding fathers’ of envi psych |
James J Gibson |
ecological theory of perception- perceptual phenomenon should be considered as the direct result of 'ecological characteristics of envi stimuli |
Ulric Neisser |
attempting to integrate the Gibsonian ecological approach into the cognitive viewpoint |
Dewey and Bentley |
developed a modality to understand relationship between subject and object of perception |
Pro environment behavior
goal oriented vs non-goal oriented |
goal oriented def - 'behaviour that consciously seeks to minimize the negative impact of one’s actions on the natural and built world’ (Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002); ppl have explicit goal of doing something beneficial for the envi |
non-goal directed def - 'behaviour that harms the envi as little as possible, or even benefits it'; here, pro envi behav can be habitual or motivated by other goals |
Climate change
Global phenomenon |
1970s - physical scientists raised alarms about anthropogenic (human‐caused) climate change and its impacts |
impacts envi, animals, humans- 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 (IPCC 2013)
depends on location and vulnerability |
more responsiblility is on industrialized countries emitting more heat trapping gases, but impact is more on non-industrialised countries and poorer population |
also the cause of many other envi problems like water, noise polllution |
Particularly difficult for economic and political systems that rely on growth and consumption, + individual lifestyles, due to the emission of greenhouse gases.
To address the problem, significant changes are required in economics, politics, and personal behavior. |
But it's difficult to understand how individual actions contribute to climate change, which makes it challenging to reduce environmental impact. |
Psychologists have long been concerned with individuals’ behaviour that contributes to climate change |
pro envi and pro social behavior improves overall well-being of indiv |
Direct effects: |
120 studies published over the past 20 years that investigated extreme weather events |
concluded that the possible consequences may include: psychological distress, worsened mental health, increased psychiatric hospitalizations and heightened rates of suicide |
Indirect effects: |
poverty, unemployment, and homelessness |
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Approaches
Interactive approach |
humans impact and influence envi and vice-versa in a reciprocal, dynamic way |
Interdisciplinary approach |
close collab with other disciplines - of psych, architecture, geography, evs. helps implement behavior oriented envi design |
Problem focused approach |
aims to identify most effective soln to real life problems. 3 levels- local, regional and national, global |
Environmental risk perception (ERP)
direct feelings related to envi (from past experiences) + subjective judgement of risks (can be manipulated by cog heuristics) + limited/uncertain info or misinfo = ERP |
high ERP = higher risk response, more govt policy making, driving force for action and engagement in safety and health behaviors |
Subjective Risk Perception - judgement that people make about the characteristics and severity of a risk; Includes: Value, Judgements and Morality |
ERP is affected by 4 factors: affective (emotion, mood), cognitive (gravity of events, media coverage), contextual (framing of risk information, availability of alternative information sources), individual (personality traits, previous experience, age) |
Public debate = morally-principled vs technically oriented; Evaluations of consequences vs evaluation of moral considerations |
Emotional reactions to natural risks are weaker than those to human caused risks. |
Ethics-based self-directed emotions (focus on moral rightness) are strong for behaviour. |
envi behav > impact
behaviour measures often rely on self‐reports - may not reliably reflect actual behaviour, cannot accurately reflect environmental impact |
when scholars develop lists of behaviours to measure their constructs they rarely consider environmental impact |
A person conducting 7 out of 10 behaviours is therefore labelled to be more environmentally friendly than a person adopting only three of these behaviours. But this may not be a valid conclusion if those three behaviours have a more significant environmental impact. |
Internet and envi psych
1980s - inc in tech, www (internet), computers |
established high speed digital comm networks, easing constraints of physical dist and time |
plays a vital role in climate change mitigation |
internet of things (IoT) sheds light onto this dilemma - monitor behavior with real time feedback |
Role of envi psych wrt internet: |
Psychological factors |
how factors like color schemes, visual elements, and user interface design impact emotions, user engagement, and task performance |
Online comm |
study its effects, impact on self and social exns |
Cognitive factors (info overload) |
nvestigates the cognitive consequences of excessive online information, such as reduced attention span, decision-making challenges, and the ability to filter and process information effectively |
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Validity
Internal validity |
extent of establishing cause and effect rxn, proving the hypothesis, used in theory building. |
External validity |
extent to which the study can be generalized, used in problem solving, applied psych. |
Research methods
Questionnaire studies |
describe behaviours and to gather people’s perception and beliefs abt issues, high EV, low IV (can show correlation, not causality) |
Laboratory exp |
conducted in a controlled, mostly artificial envi created for research; low EV, high IV (can prove causality -through manipulation of variables + random asg) |
Stimulation studies |
realistic visualization that replicate real-life envi, useful for futuristic studies and complex envi systems (landslide, etc), good IV and EV |
Field studies |
observe, interact and understand people while they are in a natural envi, can manipulate variables (placing a bin on road), high EV, good IV, diff to contol extraneous vvariables |
Case studies |
in-depth study of a particular indiv, grp of indiv, situation etc. exploratory qualitative study, high IV, low EV, no objective truth |
Role of psychologist in climate change
designing mitigation strategies |
Understanding what people currently believe and know about climate change
focus on dec personal and collective carbon emissions
identifying barriers of behav change
emphasis on why and how of actions, rather than just facilitating 'what'. |
role in adaptation measures |
required for the levels of climate change which are already projected as inevitable |
resolving so-called ‘environmental conflicts’ where groups and states compete |
downstream interventions – may not be sufficient to generate sustained behaviour change |
only psych theory |
engage in upstream interventions (i.e. structural changes) - social organisation (e.g. community groups), the political and economic environment (e.g. legislation and taxes), physical infrastructure (e.g. new bus routes or protected cycle routes)
helping to make low-carbon technologies more attractive and user-friendly |
psychological theory on internal constraints on the indiv + economic theory about external constraints |
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