What is Environmental Psychology? Discuss the emergence and growth of Environmental Psychology.

 In the present decade, when the environment is a concern for the human race, studying of environmental psychology is very relevant. The environment includes the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates. It is the natural world as a whole, or in particular geographical areas, as affected by human activity. The environment provides ideas, meanings, and affects behaviour just as the social settings, or age, or the developmental stage (Bell, Greeve, Fisher, and Baum, 2001).

Proshansky (1976) says that the person’s physical world in the form of rooms, buildings, study halls, streets, schoolrooms, bedrooms, hospital wards, day-care centres, subway trains, apartment houses, etc., influence their behaviour too. Environmental psychology, thus, is one of the important branches of psychology that has brought a new perspective to study and understand the complexities of human behaviour and social-physical environments.

Environmental Psychology deals with the environment at two different levels. It is concerned with the environment as well as the context of behaviour. At one level, environmental psychology studies how the environment determines which behaviour is possible and how it is possible. It is concerned with the properties of environment which act as determinants that affect human behaviour and mood. At the next level, environmental psychology is concerned with the consequences of behaviour on the environment or broadly with environmental problems such as pollution, recycling, and ecosystem issues. This is a very different focus, though it follows from a basic premise that behaviour and environment mutually affect each other. Environmental psychologists encompass both how the environment influences people and how people influence the environment. Thus, it is an interactive discipline (Bell, Greeve, Fisher, and Baum, 2001).

Moving further, environmental psychology is the study of people’s complicated interactions with their surroundings. It differs from other major areas of psychology in that it is focused on the everyday physical environment. According to Gifford,larger environmental factors, such as social, political, economic, and cultural pressures, are also included in this field. Environmental psychology’s biggest strength is its multidisciplinary approach and recognition of the interconnected nature of behaviour and environment. Environmental psychology does not simplify things in an artificial way. Instead, it offers a framework of perspectives, research, and theories to aid in our understanding of how humans and the environment interact. Though there are no black-and-white answers, we may use bits and pieces from the body of work to better design the physical space for human needs. “The fundamental significance of environmental psychology for the design professions lies in its potential capacity to provide a body of knowledge—conceptual and empirical—for understanding the relationships between human behaviour and experience in the built environment,”- Proshansky in his paper, The Role of Environmental Psychology for the Design Professions.

In the process of finding possible solutions for environmental problems, psychologists are using a practical approach by gaining information about the relationships between conceptual models of human behaviour. Environmental psychology is not only practically oriented but also incorporates the theoretical approach of traditional psychology. Environmental psychology is thus an applied field that involves research to improve our environmentalresource management.

THE EMERGENCE AND GROWTH OF ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

Environmental psychology is a relatively new field of psychology. Since the 1960s, four stages of its emergence have been established, in general—Seeds of Environmental Psychology; American transition; Architectural Psychology; and Environmental Psychology for its sustainability (Tiwari & Mathur, 2014). The origins of this field of psychology can be traced back to the German authors who put forth the word and spoke about this discipline of psychology. The American transition was a phase of time during which environmental psychology was seldom mentioned but its theoretical foundations were laid. Then it was the time of Architectural Psychology which later paved the way for environmental psychology focused upon sustainability.

The origin of environmental psychology can be traced back to Hellpach, one of the first scholars who introduced the term “environmental psychology” in the first half of the 20th century. He studied the effects of various stimuli such as colours, forms, etc. Hellpach (1911) studied how different environmental stimuli, such as form and colour, the moon and sun, and extreme conditions impact humans and their lives. Further, he went on to study the urban phenomenon, such as overstimulation, crowding, and differentiating between different types of environments in his work and studies, including natural, social, and historical-cultural environments (Pol, 2006). Researches in environmental psychology were first outlined by Craik (1968) based on the dominant strategy of personality measurement. In this era, the work of Proshansky was significant. The growth of environmental psychology, as well as its current approach, is documented in a series of reviews published in the Annual Reviews of Psychology (Sundstrom et. al, 1996).

When people became more aware of environmental problems in the late 1960s, the second period of rapid expansion in environmental psychology began. As a result, studies on sustainability issues, i.e., studies on explaining and modifying environmental behaviour to produce a healthy and sustainable environment, have been conducted. The early research in this field concentrated on air pollution (De Groot 1967; Lindvall 1970), urban noise (Griffiths and Langdon 1968), and environmental quality assessment (Griffiths and Langdon 1968). (Appleyard and Craik 1974; Craik and Mckechnie 1974). From the 1970s onwards, the scope of the research expanded to include concerns such as energy supply and demand (Zube et al. 1975), as well as risk perceptions and risk assessment in relation to (energy) technology (Fischhoff et al. 1978). The earliest studies on efforts to promote conservation behaviour, such as links between consumer attitudes and behaviour, were undertaken in the 1980s (Cone and Hayes 1980; Stern and Gardner 1981).

Next came Gestalt’s contribution, it was Koffka who differentiated between geographical and behavioural environments. The geographical environment refers to the perceived environment. This school mainly emphasized upon environmental perception and cognition. Brunswick and Lewin’s study on human and natural environment interactions are trendsetters for future research and are also regarded to be the ‘founding fathers’ of environmental psychology (Gifford, 2007). Even though both of them have not done significant empirical work that could be classified today as environmental psychology but, their ideas, such as the interaction between the physical environment and psychological processes and studying the human behaviours in the actual settings rather than artificial settings were pioneering and influential for many future studies that studied the interactions between humans and environment.

Park, Wirth, and Milgram studied the influence of physical environment on behaviours and it was labelled as ‘Architectural Psychology.’ The constructed physical environment (architecture, technology, and engineering) and how it affected human behaviour and well-being were given a lot of attention in the early days of environmental psychology (Bonnes and Bonaiuto, 2002). The political and social circumstances of the time influenced this attention on the built environment. The modern design attempted to answer post-war concerns such as adequate housing (Pol 2006). Most of the environmental psychological research looked at how to best design homes, offices, and hospitals for their intended users, as well as how environmental stresses (such as excessive temperatures, humidity, and crowding) affect human performance and wellbeing (Wohlwill 1970). Environmental psychology was established as a field of research to create structures that would promote behavioural functions.

The post-world war scenario emphasized the fact to build better homes, workplaces, schools, hospitals, etc. It also was a period that attempted to reduce environmental stressors and optimize performance and well-being. This period from the end of World War II to the early 1960s belonged to Chicago school whose works were more towards the amalgamation of experimental and academic American tradition. In the 1970s, environmental psychology was concerned with establishing empirical and theoretical relationships between the behaviour and experience of the individual and his built environment. The analysis was for understanding human behaviour and experiences in terms of social processes and social organizations concerning the physical settings that provide the context for such behaviour and experiences. (Proshansky, 1976).

By the 21st century, environmental psychology became concerned with addressing human problems, environmental psychology became more enriched, it included holistic sustainability, and also included ecological studies. Three journals disseminating knowledge in the field of environmental psychology are:

1. Journal of Environmental Psychology which represents the psychological perspective of research.

2. Environment andBehaviour which is an interdisciplinary journal.

3. Journal of Architectural and Planning research emphasizes architectural designing and its related fields.

The Handbook of Environmental Psychology was published under the editorship of Daniel Stokols and Irwin Altman. This is one of the pioneers and significant books on environmental psychology (1987). The Handbook of Environmental Psychology presents a balanced and complete introduction of this rapidly growing topic, including the latest research and concepts in the field straight from the world’s best scientists and practitioners. This revolutionary resource presents you with a pluralistic perspective to the area as an interdisciplinary effort with ties to other disciplines, bringing together contributions from an international team of leading academics representing a variety of fields. The Handbook of Environmental Psychology is structured into five organized and accessible parts to provide a full understanding of the ideas, research, and applications at the forefront of environmental psychology today. It addresses a variety of themes and practical contexts. Part I concentrates on refining ideas, while Part II connects the subject to other disciplines, Part III on methodologies, Part IV on applications, and Part V on the field’s future. The Handbook of Environmental Psychology is a must-read for anybody dealing directly with the attitudes, beliefs, and actions that are ruining our environment and putting our lives in peril. It defines the ongoing revolution in thinking about how the environment and psychology interact.

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