Abstract
“Environmental Psychology is a science that deals with behavior about the environment as will be demonstrated by this paper” (Mathew 2010). The idea about the environment and its visual alternatives being studied is so that they may be represented in/as maps. The atmosphere brings about different behavior levels and direct behavior is purposed by the setting it is in. People’s personalities are formed by the nature of their surroundings or habitats.
When animals are locked up in cages they tend to break down in their behavior as well as in an urban setting whereby there is a high population there will be increased levels of crime, mental disorders brought about by stress and other factors. According to Mathew (2010), “Applied Environmental Psychology tries to provide solutions and norms to better manage the environment so that people can have a better life and be able to develop their personality positively. It looks into ways of conserving the natural environment as well as better ways of designing a country’s local infrastructure that is the cities and buildings, all the while considering peoples preferences, needs, attitudes, and their responses.”
Define the Discipline of Environmental Psychology
Environmental psychology is a field of science inclusive of many things like environmental design, human behavior studies and environmental sociology amongst others. It can best be summarized as a science whose discipline concentrates on the relationship between man and his immediate environments both in small and large scale levels. “The science of environmental psychology encompasses several areas, including such disciplines as architectural and ecological psychology, environmental design and sociology, and social ecology.
To be effective, a practitioner of environmental psychology will commonly draw information from a number of other areas, such as anthropology, architecture, political science, psychology, and urban planning and design.” (Fisher) The main reason why people study environmental psychology is to enable different professionals in different fields related to the design world to implement and accomplish improvement projects that will improve the human environment. The fields’ importance has grown in the past year due to environmental degradation brought about by pollution, depletion of natural resources, human beings.
The study of environmental psychology brings about various factors of human psychology to explain the relations amongst the environment, behavior and experience. Thus theories that motivate the ideology of environmental psychology make use of other related fields like biology, psychology, architecture, and planning. Below are two theories that sponge from some principles to put across the relations between arousal/stimuli and performance.
“Arousal theories: States an inverted-U association exists amid arousal and performance thus as arousal goes up performance also increases but to a particular point” (Stoker 2010). As arousal continues to increase and gets to very high levels when doing any type of job, performance takes a negative turn and starts to decline. When it comes to environmental psychology the arousal theory expounds on the transitional peaks of arousal that are most favorable when it comes to noise levels, physiological response, neurological stimuli, and invasion of personal space. At times people develop tendencies’ that have intermediary situations hence the inverted-U relationship applies to individuals.
“Stimulus Load Theories: This theory stresses the set capabilities of information processing by humans. Since our capability to process information is limited we focus our stimuli on the important issues at that moment.”(Stoker 2010) By doing so our stimuli performance is increased and when we focus on the less important tasks performance falls. Thus the environmental factors that are present affect the way we apply our attention direction as needed on the importance of the stimulus job presently. When the capability of an organism to deal with the stimuli is exhausted even the smallest need to concentrate will be psychologically tiresome. The theory brings forth the theory on limitation of attention to show the relationship between stimuli and performance.
However both theories seem to indicate a link connecting the external environment, internal psychological feeling of the environment and how this substitution changes performance. Stimuli load theory brings out the attention direction is a hindrance on the capability of man to receive stimuli as the paramount analyst for the best possible performance while the arousal theory shows how transitional levels of arousal as the finite way for the increase in performance.
“Research methods presently available to researchers are within three categories: a) laboratory experimentation; b) field co-relational studies and; c) field experimentation” (Stoker 2010). By using reliant and non-reliant factors laboratory experimentation can sustain high levels of inner force, enabling reasonable credit of causation to individual factors. Field co-relational studies can foretell the relationship between events that occur naturally due to elevated levels of external forces although normally have low internal forces.
As for field experimentation, unrelated factors are used to proceed unhampered as fundamental factors are exploited to explain causation. Field experimentation is the best as it combines the scheming ability of laboratory experimentation as integrates the external forces of co-relational studies. Lastly the attention goes up on environmental stressors as they have psycho physiologic, health, and cognitive implications. People’s reactions in times of emergencies have given important insight to researchers such that emergency planning programs have been adopted and better designed in infrastructure to reduce injury if they occur (Evans).
In conclusion, the methods of research in environmental psychology stated above are the ways to collect data about the environment, combine the data into useful information for better understanding enabling humans to create a homeostatic balance with nature. The relationship between humans and nature brings about the best performance for both.
References
Evans, W. G. Current Trends in Environmental Psychology. Web.
Fisher, J. What is environmental psychology? Web.
Mathew, V. G. (2010). Environmental Psychology. Web.
Stoker, C. (2010). What is Environmental Psychology. Web.