1
Psychological perspectives on
People and Environment
Lecturer:
Einar Strumse, psychologist, PhD
Guest lecturer/associate professor of psychology, Lillehammer
College, Norway
1
The course addresses four major
themes:
• What is environmental psychology?
• Environmental preference and design:
Psychological perspectives
• Restorative environments
• Environmental psychology and environmental
conservation
2
Schedule
• 7.11. 16.00-19.30 U43 Introduction to environmental psychology
• 8.11. 19.45-21.15 U32 Environmental preference and design:
Psychological perspectives
• 9.11. 19.45-21.15 U32 Environmental preference and design/
Restorative environments
• 10.11. 18.00-19.30 P22 Restorative environments
• 11.11. 10.00-13.30 U32 Environmental psychology and
environmental conservation
• 14.11. 18.00-19.30 AVC Environmental protection and
environmental conservation
• 15.11. 19.45-21.15 U32 Paper writing seminar
• 16.11. 19.45-21.15 U32 Concluding lecture
3
Readings
• Available electronically
• Consists of articles from peer reviewed
scientific journals, book chapters, working
papers and unpublished material.
4
Contents and purpose of the course
• Introduction to Environmental psychology
• Contribute to increased understanding and
improvement people – environment relations
and to a psychology with relevance for
everyday life
5
Env.psy: Both theoretical and applied
simultaneously!
• You will get basic insights into:
– Environmental perception and –cognition
– Personality and environment
– Crowding
– Housing issues
– Urban environmental psychology
– Therapeutic interventions and preventive
strategies
6
2
Film as basis for dicussion and reflections
• A survey among American viewers of the movie “The Day after
Tomorrow” (2004; dramatizing how, due to global warming, a new
ice-age emerges and New York is flooded by a giant tidal wave),
showed that the film led moviegoers to have higher levels of
concern and worry about global warming and to estimate various
impacts on the United States as more likely (Leiserowitz, 2004).
• Demonstrated that it might help to make risk communication part
of popular culture and to use its new media, like immersive video
and gaming (Leiserowitz, 2004)
• We could conduct a small experiment: test environmental
attitudes before and after seeing the flm
7
Films with Environmental Themes
• Home is a 2009 documentary by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. The film is
almost entirely composed of aerial shots of various places on Earth.
It shows the diversity of life on Earth and how humanity is
threatening the ecological balance of the planet.
• An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 documentary film about former
United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate citizens
about global warming via a comprehensive slide show
• The Day After Tomorrow: due to global warming, a new ice-age
emerges and New York is flooded by a giant tidal wave
8
Paper requirement
• In order to obtain credits for the course,
students are required to prepare a paper
individually or in pairs
• The paper must be submitted within
December 5, 2011
• The approved paper will be given a letter
grade according to the ETCS system.
9
Lecture 1: What is Environmental
Psychology?
10
We still do not know enough about:
• How to make responsible environmental
behaviour occur more frequently and
permantely at a sufficiently large scale
• How to make physical environments satisfy
fundamental human needs.
Why is psychology important?
• Virtually all environmental problems are
human- made
• Thus, it is both appropriate and necessary
that psychology, the science of human
behaviour and well being, contributes to
the solution of these problems
• Environmental psychology:
– a response to problems within the social and
behavioural sciences
– a result of historical-political circumstances
– a response to social problems
3
A couple of discussion topics
• How do most people perceive the human – nature
relation? Are there geographical differences for
example between the different regions in a country,
between urban and rural populations, levels of
education, rich and poor? If so, why?
• Reflect for a moment upon your daily physical
surroundings:
– Can you think of any favourite places?
• What are their most important characteristics?
• Why do you like them so much?
• Try to come up with of both outdoor and indoor places, places in
the built environment and in nature.
13
Psychosocial environmental research: Some
background
– The human-made world has taken the place of “nature” as
a setting for our daily lives
– The “Human Exemptionalism Paradigm”: Human beings as
rulers of the physical world, and as exempted from the laws
of nature
– Behavioural science is seldom utilised for the
understanding and solving of these problems
– Strong belief in natural science and technology, but:
– Short supply of knowledge permitting the understanding of
human activities leading to positive or negative
environmental change
14
Environment- behaviour research
addresses problems such as
• Increasing scarcity of global resources
• continued deterioration of the environment
• dramatic social changes
Environment and behavior studies:
A definition
• ”...the study of the mutual relations between the sociophysical
environment at all scales and human behavior at all levels of
analysis, and the utilization of knowledge thus gained in
improving the quality of life through better informed
environmental policy, planning, and design. It focuses on the
interdependence of physical environmental systems and explicitly
includes both environmental and human factors (Stokols &
Altman 1987,p.1360).
• Genuinely new feature: not only the social, but also the physical
environment should explicitly be taken into account
Env. Psy.: A part of the multidisciplinary field of
environment and behaviour research.
• Env.psy. shares the following characteristics with this
field (cf. Moore, 1987):
– the application of existing social theories and methodologies to
research on human-environment problems,
– the formulation of new concepts and methods, and
– the application of research findings to the amelioration of
environmental problems through environmental policy,
planning, and design.
17
EP - a result of:
• Application of existing psychological theories
• Formulation of new concepts and methods
18
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What is environmental psychology all
about?
• A psychological perspective on:
– Anthropogenic environmental change
– The effects of the physical environment on
humans
• The concept ”environmental psychology”: First
used by Egon Brunswik, an important
predecessor of environmental psychology
19
Perhaps the most important single contribution from
environmental psychology?
• Liberating the individual from the physical
isolation in which it has been studied:
– The individual is given a new role in relation to
the environment:
• No longer exclusively related to other humans
• New orientation towards other life forms
• Away from the psychological (over)occupation with the
self
20
Environmental psychology
• Focus on
• Human-made environmental problems
• Effects of the environment on people
• Person Environment
• +/-
21
Area of interest of e.p. in relation to the
characteristics of the environment considered
_________________________________________________
Degree of human influence
________________________________________________
Minimum Maximum
(natural environment) (built environment)
__________________________________________________
Small scale Tree Room
Large scale Park City
__________________________________________________
22
The basic information psychology can provide
for designing the environment
• People’s activity (what, where, how, change)
• Hierarchies of priorities among appraisals
• The behavior - environment relationship
23
Motivations for research and practice in
environmental psychology
1. Environmental problems (pollution, energy
shortage, substandard buildings):
• Assumptions built upon environmental
psychology constitute an important alternative
to narrow economic arguments
2. Curiosity: how people behave in and
experience their natural/daily suroundings
and how this may be explained
24
5
Definitions
• Various def. emphasize different aspects:
– phenomena or processes of overt (physical )
human behaviour, often labelled ”spatial
behaviour”, or
– phenomena or processes of implicit (cognitivesymbolic)
human behaviour, labelled
“environmental perception and -representation”
25
Selected definitions
• Stokols & Altman (1987): ”...the study of human behaviour and wellbeing
in relation to the sociophysical environment" (p.1)
• Bell et al., (1990) ”...the study of the interrelationship between
behaviour and experience and the built and natural
environment"(p.7).
• Bonnes & Secchiaroli (1995): ”... the area of psychology which is
concerned with the relationships between psychological processes
and processes of the socio-physical environment”
• Cassidy (1997): ”The study of the transactions between individuals
and their socio-physical environments”.
26
The transactional approach to
environmental psychology
• What is a transaction?
– “a communicative action or activity involving two parties or
things that reciprocally affect or influence each other”
(Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary”).
• A transactional approach is well suited to peopleenvironment
problems, as it represents a holistic
position, treating persons-in-environments as the
basic unit of analysis without any further dividing
into smaller entities.
27
Further transactional definitions of
psychology
• ”The study of the changing relations among
psychological and environmental aspects of holistic
unities.” (Altman & Rogoff, 1987)
• “Environmental psychology is the study of
transactions between individuals and their physical
settings. In these transactions, individuals change the
environment and their behaviour and experiences are
changed by the environment”. (Gifford, 2002)
28
The transactional paradigm in
envirnmental psychology
• some philosophical aspects
• the transactional world view
• the transactional approach to environmental
psychology
• research applications of the approach
29
Philosophical approaches to psychological phenomena (taken from Altman &
Rogoff, 1987)
Dewey &
Bentley
Pepper Altman &
Rogoff
Definition of psychology
Self-action Formism Trait Study of the individual, mind, or
mental and psychological
processes
Interaction Mechanism Interactional Study of the prediction and control
of behavior and psychological
processes
Organicism Organicism Study of dynamic and holistic
psychological systems in which person
and environment components exhibit
complex, reciprocal, and mutual
relationships and influences
Transaction Contextualism
and
Selectivism
Transactional Study of the changing relations
among psychological and
environmental aspects of holistic
systems
30
6
Aristotle’s fourfold classification of causation in
natural phenomena (Rychlak, 1977).
• Material causation
– psychological causes would be intrinsic qualities or material
essences of the phenomenon
• Efficient cause
– antecedent and consequent factors, typical of contemporary
interactionist world views.
• Final causation
– predetermined causes, teleological
• Formal causation
– patterns, form or organisation of a phenomenon under a
given set of conditions
31
General Comparison of Trait, Interactional, Organismic, and Transactional World Views
(adapted from Altman & Rogoff, 1987)
Philosophy of Science
Unit of
analysis
Time and Change Causation Observers
Trait Person,
psychological
qualities of p.
Assume stability,
change due to
preestablished
teleological mech.
Emphasises
material
causation
Observers are
separate, objective
and detached
Inter-
actional
Psych. qual. of
p. and soc. or
phys. env.,
treated as
separate
Change results from
interaction of sep. p.
and e. entities
Emphasises
efficient
causation
Observers are
separate, objective
and detached
Organ-
ismic
Holistic entities
composed of
separate p. and
e. components
Change results from
interaction of p. and e.
entities. Assumes
system stability as goal
Emphasises
final causes
(teleology)
Observers are
separate, objective
and detached
Trans-
actional
Holistic entities
composed of
”aspects”
Stability/change
intrinsic and defining
features
Emphasises
formal
causation
Relative: Observers
are aspects of
phenomena 32
The transactional approach: Philosophy of
science
• Aristotle’s formal causation:
– A pattern, shape, outline, or recognisable
organization in the flow of events or in the way
that objects are constituted… (Rychlak, 1977, p.6)
• Pragmatic, eclectic and relativistic
• The observer is inseparable from the
phenomenon, and must be seen as an aspect of
the event.
33
Examples of transactional approaches in psychology
and environmental psychology
• Gibson’s theory of perception
– Animal and environment are defined and changes in a thoroughly
mutual way
– The concept of affordances
• The psychological and behavioural utility of the environment for the
organism
• Kurt Lewin
– Psychological processes take place within physical and social situations which constitutes
a ”life space” or psychological ”field”
• Roger Barkers behaviour setting:
– ”A bounded, selfregulated and ordered system composed of
replaceable human and non-human components that interact in a
synchronized fashion to carry out an ordered sequence of events
called the setting program” (Wicker, 1979, p.12).
34
Roger Barker et al.s ecological psychology
• How the environment of the “real everyday world” influences the
environment of children and those who live with them.
• The behavior setting:
– Unit of analysis according to which both individual behaviours
and spatio-physical attributes appear to be ”naturally”
organised in the environment
– Definition: “...bounded standing patterns of human and
nonhuman activity with integrated systems of forces and control
that maintain their activities at semistable equilibria... ...entities
within the ecological environment.”
• Problem: absence of the phenomenological/subjective perspective
35
Shared qualities of transactional approaches to psychological
phenomena
• Holistic
• Persons, processes, and contexts define each other
mutually and function as aspects of the whole, not as
separate elements.
• Temporal factors are intrinsic aspects of phenomena
• Less emphasis on universal principles.
• Emphasis on formal causation
– explain, describe and understand the pattern of relations
among the three P’s - People, Places and Psychological
processes.
36
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An example of transactional research: Changing environmental
behaviours (Werner, 2000): strategies to change home owner’s use of
toxic chemicals
• Four basic assumptions:
– Unity between people and the physical environment of their homes:
toxic chemicals gives serves purpose of as tool to reach the goal of a well maintained
garden and a sign of modernity and prosperity.
– Attitudes of individuals are closely related to and influenced by their
social group: learning about neighbours positive experiences with non-toxic
alternatives
– Behaviour is connected with the physical environment: information about
behaviour, such as on how new behaviour may fit into existing behavioural patterns.
– Persuasive messages should emphasise positive experiences related to
actual performance of the behaviour … in this case related to use nontoxic
alternatives.
• Aim: Destabilise the total system, including the image of the
home, behaviour and products used to obtain this image, and
the social context of friends and neighbours.
37
A Norwegian example: Ecological, economical and social
consequences of resilient management of the agricultural landscape
(Project Application June 2004)
• Participants: Ann Norderhaug, Planteforsk (project manager); Ola Flaten,
Norsk institutt for landbruksøkonomisk Forskning, Einar Strumse
Høgskolen i Lillehammer, Inger Pehrson Holms gård, Sweden/SLU
• Aim: Document the effects of management changes on green
services, the profitability of the farm, and the well-being of
the farmer
• Psychological theme: “The farmers’ workload, well-being and
quality of life under the various management systems.”
• Transactional approach: farmers and their families, studied in
their natural social and physical environment, all elements
understood as one single unit of analysis
38
Expected results
• Phenomenological descriptions of the
farmers’ own experience of farm life, and in
particular facets of this experience such as the
relationship to the physical surroundings,
social relations and subjective well-being
39
A set of principles or stages for transactional
research (Werner et al. 2002)
1. Begin with a question that interests you
2. Think of the phenomenon as a whole identify the four
aspects of people, psychological processes, physical
environments and time
3. Explore the possible breadth of the project
4. Seek mutual definition between aspects
5. Collect data ”reflexively”
6. Draw on multiple perspectives and participants to gather
information
7. Apply formal cause on the phenomenon
8. Decide on the scope of the project.
40
•Trends in environmental planning and design
influencing the development of e.p.
• Late 1960s: Growing dissatisfaction with ’egocentric’ design:
personal monuments rather than buildings centred on the needs
of their users.
• Post war Britain: rebuilding not any longer guided exclusively by
functional criteria
• Users’ appraisals seen as a necessary in design, and psychologists
were called in to conduct them.
41
Important milestones
• 1964: The term “environmental psychology” introduced in New York by
William Ittelson.
• 1968: The Environmental Design Research Association(EDRA) was founded
in the US
• 1968: The first doctoral program in environmental psychology opended at
the City University of New York.
• 1969: The journal “Environment and Behavior” began publication in the US
• 1981: The European equivalent, the International Association for the Study
of People and their Physical surroundings (IAPS) was founded, name later
changed to the International Association for People - Environment Studies.
• 1981: The “Journal of Environmental Psychology” appeared in Britain.
• 1987: The “Handbook of Environmental Psychology” was published.
42
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History: Early research in environmental
psychology
• Kurt Lewin, one of the pioneers of environmental
psychology, established a research field labelled
psychological ecology
• Maslow et al (1950s): photographies of persons
evalued more positively in a beautiful room than in an
ugly one
• Three early directions
– "Architectural psychology"
– The interest from geographers
– The ecological-naturalistic approach
43
Important early research: ‘architectural
psychology’
• Humphrey Osmond (1957):‘sociofugal’ and ‘sociopetal’settings.
• Robert Sommer (1969): ‘human territoriality’ and ‘personal
space’.
• Paul Silvadon: the role of the design of the psychiatric hospital for
the improvement/healing of patients.
• Urban planning: Kevin Lynch (1960): “The Image of the City”
44
Broad research themes in environmental
psychology
• Fundamental psychological processes: How perception,
cognition, and personalit filters and structures the experience of
the environment
• The social management of space: territoriality, overpopulation,
private space, personlig space
• More complex behaviours: related to work, learning and
everyday life in cities and other types of communities
• Design issues: related to architecture, landscape architecture,
and physical planning
• General social issues: Psychological components of issues such
as resource management etc.
45
Basic principles of environmental
psychology
• Holistic orientation: Relations between environment and behaviour
studied as one unit
• Interactionist or person – in – context perspective: Environment –
behaviour relations are characterised by interdependence or
reciprocal relations
• Applied orientation:No sharp boundaries between applied and
basic research
• Multi-disciplinary perspective
• Multi-level analysis
• Research emerges from the field/from people’s natural
environments
• Application of many different research methods
• Humans are seen as active and relatively autonomous
• Systems oriented
46
•Characteristics of environmental psychology:
• Environment-behaviour relationships are studied as a
unit
• Environment-behaviour relationships are
interrelationships
• No sharp distinctions between applied and basic
research.
• A clear interdisciplinary appeal
47
•Environmental Psychology and Psychological
tradition
• Main problem: the development of adequate
theoretical instruments for environmentalpsychological
research with not only external
relevance, but also internal relevance for the
psychological tradition
48
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Challenges for environmental
psychology
• Application: The translation of research into
practice is still problematic
• Appropriate research methods: Existing methods
are still not matching the complexities of
contextualism.
• Building a more coherent theoretical core:
depending upon further theoretical integration
and development
49
Gifford’s (2007) organizing model
Reality Measures Plans Outcomes
in the
setting
Outcomes
later
The setting S1-n
Goals,
decisions,
Intentions
Behaviour Behaviour
The person P1-n Cognition
and
Emotion
Cognition
and
Emotion
The social-
cultural
script
SC1-n Well - Being Well - Being
50
A short sketch of types of theories
and approaches
• Theories postulating a central psychological behaviour-regualting
mechanism
• a) Stimulation theories
• Ex.:
– arousal theory (Berlyne, 1960; Mehrabian & Russell, 1974),
– overload- theory (Cohen, 1978; Milgram, 1970),
– Understimulation (Suedfeld, 1980),
– Stress theory (Stokols, 1979; Campbell, 1983):
• b) Theories focusing on (a lack of) control over environmental
stimulation
• Ex.:
– personal control (Barnes, 1981)
– psychological reactanse (Brehm, 1966): Theory assuming that we will also mke an
attempt at recovering our lost freedom
– Learned helplesness
51
Theories (continued)
• Theory based on the behavior –setting concept: Personenvironment
relations are explained primarily according to the
social and physical characteristics of the settting (cf Wicker,
1987).
• Holistic (integral) theory:
– Interactionism
– Transactionalism
– Organismic theories
• The operant approach (Geller, 1987): based on Skinner’s
principles and is applied on problems such as littering, energy
conservation og behavioural change
52
•The spatio-physical environment in the
tradition of the psychology of perception
• The theory of isomorphism: affirms the existence in all individuals
of innate neurological mechanisms which tend to ensure the
correspondence between the two types of environment.
• The New Look psychologists: a functionalist perspective - both
the physical-objective environment and the activities and actions
of the subject in the environment recover their full dignity as
objects of investigation
53
The spatio-physical environment in the
tradition of social psychology
• Kurt Lewin and psychological ecology
– a specific problematic area for psychological research,
primarily for understanding the situation or the psychological
field at a given time
– the physical environment is placed explicitly next to the social
environment as a component of psychological investigation
– phenomenological viewpoint: the pre-eminence of perceived
reality
54
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Related developments
• Behavioral geography: a conception of man-environment
relationships much more complex than that traditionally
employed by geographers.
• The ecological-naturalistic field, environmental problems and the
UNESCO MAB (Man and Biosphere) programme.
– recognized the need to assign to the human factor a central
role in the ecological-naturalistic approach.
55
Environmental perception
• Perception
– Experience of the world through the senses
• Object perception
– Experience of isolated stimulations or objects in a laboratory situation and their
characteristics; colour, form, depth and apparent movement
• Environmental perception
– The basic psychological process through which we collect information on the
environment
– Perception of large scale, “real-world” environments (landscapes, buildings, cities,
etc)
– A holistic approach to these environments and to the responses to them
– Connection to a situation via an aim or an intention is characteristic of
enviromental perception
56
Environmental perception:
Early theoretical positions
• Probabilistic functionalism (Egon Brunswik,
1956)
– Stimuli are assigned probabilities based on their
ecological validity, i.e. how useful they are in making
correct perception possible
– The perceiver and the environment are given equal
importance
– Perception understood as an attempt at extracting a
useful image of the environment is related to the
functionalistic aspect of the theory
57
Ecological perception (J.J. Gibson (1950, 1966,
1979)
• Environmental perception as based upon innate mechanisms
• Perception of environments is relatively direct: The senses are
systems directed towards a direct gathering of information (a
modern form of "naiv realism”)
• Perception is holistic: Vi respond to meaning already present in an
ecological structured environment
• Affordances: The invariant functional properties of an object (
”useful" properties that do not change)
58
Descriptions of aesthetic responses to various environments
(Berlyne (1960, 1972, 1974)
• Collative stimulus properties: triggers
exploratory responsers (ex: complexity,
novelty, incongruence, surprisingness)
– Diversive exploration
– Specific exploration
– Uncertainty - arousal
– Hedonic value
59
Environmental perception: Perception of whole
scenes, places, landscapes…
• General purposes:
• Describe how different scenes typically are
perceived
• Analyze: why scenes are perceived differently
• Landscapes
– Classic definition: ..."the totality of physiographic and
cultural (man-made) phenomena which meet the eye in a
single view…a selected, framed section of the
surroundings.
– examples
• Cultural landscapes: urban, rural
• Natural landscapes
11
Environmental perception: Some
important contributions
• Models emphasizing emotional responses to the
surroundings :
• Habitat theory (Orians, 1980)
• The usefulness of strong, spontaneous emotional responses to
useful and less useful habitats
• Tropical savannah as the optimal environment for early humans
• Prospect-refuge theory (Appleton,1975)
• Refuge: environmental attributes serving as shelter or hiding
places
• Prospects: view
• Ulrich's psychoevolutionary model (Ulrich, 1983;
Ulrich et al., 1991)
• Affective responses directly elicited by environmental attributes
• Use of physiological measures
Experimental aesthetics
• Substantial agreement among subjects on
aesthetical judgements
– de gustibus non est disputandum:NOT confirmed
by research
Landscape preferences: A psychologial perspective
If…
environmental preferences varied randomly from
individual to individual
Then….
Environmental aesthetics would become
trivial and of only passing importance:
– Generalisations would be difficult
– Preferences would not reflect basic human
needs, only habits, trends, and sociocultural
customs
Evolutionary psychology:
A metatheory for the field of
landscape aesthetics?
Is there a need for synthesis in the field of environmental
psychology in general and in landscape aesthetics in particular?
What should constitute the basis for this synthesis?
Modern evolutionary psychology
• Leaves room for cultural and individual
variations, because:
• Universal human preferences exist only in the
form of psychological mechanisms, not
(necessarily) as manifest (observable)
behaviour
Some general characteristics of evolutionary
psychology
• There is a universal human nature, to be
identified in the form of psychological
mechanisms, and not as manifest, cultural
behaviour
• These evolved psychological mechanisms are
the result of natural selection through
evolutionary time, thus, they are primarily
adapted to hunter/gatherer conditions, and
not necessarily to modern conditions.
12
The constructivist assumption
• Differences can be attributed to the
backgrounds of individuals or groups
• Expecting variability in landscape preferences
Functionalist-evolutionary assumption
• The existence of cross-cultural, universal
patterns
• Supported by visual preference differences
produced by the landscapes in question (in
the absence of individual or group
differences)
The fragmented state of the field
• Research is often guided by (false?) dichotomies:
– "nature versus nurture”
– "cultural versus biological”
– "innate versus learned”
• A metatheoretical perspective would have the potential of
– conceptual integration
– making existing evidence more useful
– increasing the chances of coming up with more interesting
questions for further research.
Evolved psychological mechanism
• Exists in the form it does because it solved a specific problem
of individual survival or reproduction recurrently over human
evolutionary history
• takes only certain classes of information or input
• transforms that information into output through a procedure
(e.g., decision rule) in which output (a) regulates physiological
activity, provides information to other psychological
mechanisms, or produces manifest action and (b) solves a
particular adaptive problem.
Landscape preferences qualify as evolved
psychological mechanisms because they:
• solved adaptive problems in human ancestral environments;
• are triggered only by a narrow range of information;
• are characterised by a particular set of procedures or decision
rules;
• they produce behavioural output that presumably solved the
adaptive problem in ancestral times
Processes and products of development as identified
by developmental and phenomenological methods
(after Bourassa, 1990)
• ____________________________________
• Process of Product of
• development development
• ____________________________________
• Phylogenesis-------------------> Umwelt
• Sociogenesis-------------------> Mitwelt
• Ontogenesis--------------------> Eigenwelt
• ____________________________________
13
Modes of existence and corresponding modes
of aesthetic experience
• Mode of existence | Mode of aesthetic exp.
• ________________________________
• Umwelt------------------------> Biological
• Mitwelt------------------------> Cultural
• Eigenwelt----------------------> Personal
• ________________________________
Modes of aesthetic experience and
their manifestation as aesthetic
constraints and opportunities
• Mode of aesthetic Constraints and
• experience opportunities
• _________________________________
• Biological------------------> Laws
• Cultural--------------------> Rules
• Personal--------------------> Strategies
• _________________________________
Bourassa’s (1990) tripartite paradigm for
landscape aesthetics
Biological mode
(phylogenesis)
Three modes of aesthetic behaviour
Cultural mode
(sociogenesis)
Personal mode
(ontogenesis)
Aesthetic laws
(biologically determined:
few group differences)
Perception of human-
influenced
landscapes
Perception of natural
landscapes
Aesthetic rules
(culturally defined:,
clear group differences)
Aesthetic strategies
(person-dependent:
Individual variation)
Perception of
favorite places etc
Effects of landscape exposure on visual
preference and environmental perception
• Landscape exposure and place of residence during
childhood has proved to influence
preferences
• Long time residency in a particular area
results in a more detailed perception of a
landscape compared to visitors
• But: residents in the same area often hold
different preferences
• Preference changes with age
Some assumptions for evolutionary
preference research
• Because children have less experiences, it is
easier to track their innate dispositions
• The importance of experience/learning
increases with increasing age.
Balling & Falk (1982):
• Findings lending some support to a hypothesis that
humans have innate preferences for savannah-like
environments:
– Innate preferences for savannah-like surroundings are
most clearly seen in children
– With increasing age and experience savannah
preferences decrease and at the same time preferences
for familiar surroundings will increase
– Preferences for savannah-like landscapes are never overshadowed
by preferences for the familiar
14
Elisabeth Lyons (1983):Follow-up of Balling and
Falk
• Familiar landscapes (temperate deciduous forest) were the
most preferred, but in children preferences for savannah-like
scenes were at a similar level (it is unclear whether
preference ratings for familiar landscapes were significantly
higher than the savannah ratings)
• Lyons chose to conclude that no evidence was found
supporting the hypotheses that landscape preferences are
shaped by innate or evolutionary factors
Similarities in landscape preference between
cultures
• Yang & Brown (1988) compared Coreans
with Western tourists:
– Both groups preferred japanese landscapes and
scenes with water
– The groups were also similar with respect to the
least preferred scenes
Bourassa’s (1990) tripartite paradigm for
landscape aesthetics
• Biological factors:Nature dominated
landscapes
• Cultural factors (learning, socialisation,
group membership): Human
influenced/built/urban landscapes
• Personal factors: Individual preferences
Empirical support
• Responses to landscapes may be seen as
independent from conscious processes
– Thus, there is the possible existence of separate
innate and learned responses to landscape
• Research on landscape preferences suggest
biologically based mechanisms
Environmental cognition
• Further processing – storage,
organising, recall of
environmental information
• Legibility (Lynch):how easy a
setting is recognised and
organised
– Influenced by edges, nodes
and transportation
channels
83
Legibility
• The ease with which people can understand
the layout of a place.
• Five elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes
and landmarks.
84
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Paths:
• familiar routes followed- "are the channels
along which the observer customarily,
occasionally, or potentially moves. They may
be streets, walkways, transit lines, canals,
railroads .."
85
Districts
• areas with perceived internal homogeneity:
"medium-to-large sections of the city,
conceived of as having two-dimensional
extent, which the observer mentally enters
‘inside of,’ and which are recognizable as
having some common identifying character"
86
Edges
• Dividing lines between districts:
– “the linear elements not used or considered as
paths by the observer. They are boundaries
between two phases, linear breaks in continuity:
shores, railroad cuts, edges of development, walls
...”
87
Landmarks
• point of reference
– "They are usually a rather simply defined physical
object: building, sign, store, or mountain".
88
Nodes
• - centres of attraction that you can enter –
– "points, the strategic spots in a city into which an observer can
enter, and which are intensive foci to and from which he is
travelling.
• primary junctions, places of a break in transportation, a crossing or
convergence of paths, moments of shift from one structure to
another
• concentrations, which gain their importance from being the
condensation of some use or physical character, as a street-corner
hangout or an enclosed square”
89
Influences on spatial cogniton
• Life stage
• Sex
• Spatial-cognitive biases
• Physical factors
90
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Theories
• Transactionalist constructivists: the individual
“creates” the world
• Hippocampus: A physiological perspective on
cognitive maps
91
Environmental cognition
• Further processing – storage, organising, recll
of environmental information
• Legibility (Lynch):how easy a setting is
recognised and organised
– Influenced by edges, nodes and transportation
channels
92
Influences on spatial cogniton
• Life stage
• Sex
• Spatial-cognitive biases
• Physical factors
93
Theories
• Transactionalist constructivists: the individual
“creates” the world
• Hippocampus: A physiological perspective on
cognitive maps
94
Norwegian research programme devoted to
studies of environmental quality of life (1993 –
98)
• A multidisciplinary environmental research programme based on
psychologi, social science and culture studies
• Basic premise: Environmental research is not only a challenge for
the naturaøl sciences
• Main purpose: Increase basic understanding of relations among
the envirnment and subjective well-being, health, quality of life,
attitudes and actions.
• Funding: approx. 20 mill. NOK.
95
Research programme on environmental
quality of life: Central themes
• Humans in nature
• The natural environment and quality of life
• Coping with environmental threats
• Environmental concern, environmental
behaviour and conservation
• Environmental interventions
96
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Results from the programme
• Early 90s: Only sporadic research activity, very little
Norwegian academic literature in the field with
outdoor recreation resarch as an exception
• 1993-98: Coordinated research efforts. More than
research projects were funded, and academic
networks were established.
• 1999: Considerable multidisciplinary competence
within behavioural, social and culture studies
97
Some applied areas
98
Central applied issues
• To what extent have practising environmental
psychologists contributed to positive change in
society?
• To what extent have environmental psychologists
contributed to lasting behavioral change in large
segments of the population ?
• To what extent have environmental psychology
influenced various practices in ways that have
improved daily life for many persons?
99
Environmental /participatory design
• Involve a broad range of residents in defining the
project from the start
• Design of neighbourhoods shold focuse upon the
creation of social public spaces, places that should be
accessible in many different ways
• Neighbourhoods should e involved from the very
beginning in planning and design, in change and in
generating a vision for the place
100
Applied behavioural analysis applied to recycling,
littering and energy waste in residences
• DORITE (Geller, 1992):
• D: Define target behavior
• O: Observe target behavior
• R: Record the frequency of the target behavior
• I: Intervene with a program that changes the
consequences of performing the behavior
• T: Test the effect of the program by comparing the
frequency of the behavior before and after the
program
• E: Evaluate the program.
101
Spatial cognition in everyday life
• Spatial cognition : cognitive maps – pictorial and semantic
representations of how places are built up an arranged
• May be used to improve quality of life:
– Use of color coding and well planned numbering systems in
complex buildings, such as hospitals.
– Design of undergground-and bus maps: remove unnecessary
details
– Clearly visible landmarks and clear passages imporves spatial
understanding in big cities
• Example: the design of Ciudad Guyana, a planned city in Venezuela
102
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The effects of commitment: The case
of energy saving
• Enterprises rndomly asignd to one of three groups:
– Mild commitment
– Strong commitment
– Control condition
• Results:
– Control condition resulted in the least amount of energy saving
– Strong commitment lead to less energy saving than mild
commitment: too strong pressure, feeling of coercion,
psychological reactance
103
Green design
• Holistic solution: building a green community
on the basis of a group of concerned persons
– Early example from Davis, California: Michael og
Judy Corbett’s project ”Village Homes”
• Interior design
– Recycling systems in the home or the office
facilitating ”automatic” recycling
104
Social design
• Systematic incorporating of people’s needs and ideas
into the building itself
• Promoting as many user-oriented design principles and
concerns as possible
• Participatory design
– Determining people’s preferences without asking them
implies regarding them as passive, incompetent and / or
unwilling to participate in the design process
• Cheaper than other methods
– Documented savings due to avoiding errors
105
Effects of residential environment on
persons with developmental disabilities
• Location: Belchertown State School,
Belchertown, Massachusetts, USA
• Participants:
– Designers: Fridmann & Rausch
– Researchers: Kent, Knight, Wheler, Weitzer,
Zimring
See Cherulnik (1993): Applications of environment – behavior research)
106
(
Effects on future design/planning and knowledge
• The results were often cited by environmental
psychologists and by some designers
• The results support a functional rather than a
morphological (i.e.concerning concrete physical
properties) conceptualisation of normalisation
through environmental design
107
Landscape perception research
• Possible findings
– consensus on the preferences for a given
landscape, or
– divergences
• indicate:
– the public’s wish to preserve certain landscapes,
– intrusions a landscape can "take" before quality is
seriously diminished
108
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Conflict manangement
• Consistent and permanent divergences among
individuals and groups
• High potential for conflicts when dealing with
landscapes high in historical, ecological,
symbolic or economic value
109
General purposes of landscape
perception research
• Describe how landscapes typically are
perceived
• Analyse: explanations for the observed
perceptual patterns
110
Specific applications
• Studying the "perceptual gap" between
experts and the general public
• Relations between preference and beneficial
effects of natural elements and settings:
– the Attention Restoration Theory
111
New social praxis supported by the
research described
– Norway: ”Green care” / ”Into the courtyard”
– Sweden: Green rehabilitation/ therapeutic
gardening
– English speaking countries: Horticultural therapy /
healing gardens
112
Application of psychology to the aesthetics of
the built environment (based on Stamps, 2000)
• Basic issues in design review
• New methods for addressing those issues
• An attempt to substitute vague terms with unambiguous, clear
terms
113