Environmental Psychology

What Is Environmental Psychology?

Environmental psychology studies the relationship between human beings and their environment, and especially the issue of how the environment can influence human behaviors and mental states. It is important to recognize that “environment” in this context is understood very broadly. While environmental psychologists are undoubtedly interested in the natural environment, they also examine social and artificial environments as part of their discipline. So, for example, many environmental psychologists are interested in the psychology of architecture. The built environment is the context for a vast array of human behaviors in the modern age, and so it is important for psychologists to understand how people relate to that environment and how it can be designed in order to optimize people’s moods and behaviors. Many people in environmental psychology focus on the issue of how architecture can help people think, act, and work more effectively.

Environmental psychology has many practical applications in the real world, including in the areas of architecture, public policy, education, and parenting. In all of these areas, it is necessary to create an environment that is conducive to certain kinds of behaviors – for example, teachers need to know how to design a classroom environment that is conducive to learning. Environmental psychologists can help them to accomplish this by discovering what kinds of rooms, atmospheres, and contexts enable people to learn most effectively.

Who Should Study Environmental Psychology?

As one of the youngest and most dynamic fields of psychological study, environmental psychology is ideal for those who love the idea of doing research, teaching, and pushing the frontiers of human knowledge. Very little is known about the interaction between the human mind and its surroundings, and so there is a lot to learn and an enormous variety of research to be done in this area.

Although the natural environment is only one aspect of the “environment” studied by environmental psychology, it is nonetheless an important part, so environmental psychology is a good field for conservationists and those with green inclinations. If you’ve ever been outdoors and experienced the strange rush that comes from being in a beautiful natural location, then you’ve felt something that is of great interest to environmental psychologists. The relationship between people and nature, the human need for the outdoors, and the advantages people can gain from being out in pristine wilderness, are all major areas of inquiry in this field.

The History of Environmental Psychology

A few of the earliest psychologists were interested in environmental psychology, but for the most part the early history of psychology is dominated by those who were only interested in the behavior of isolated individuals or groups. Non-human surroundings rarely entered into the picture. Following World War II, psychology entered a new era in which social forces such as authority and conformity were the main focus of attention. This “sociological” orientation within psychology helped open people up to the idea that human behavior might not be solely, or even primarily, motivated by internal factors; social and environmental variables might actually be the main things determining how people act.

Environmental psychology is extremely difficult to study, because the usual laboratory methods of psychological research are not applicable. Once you put a person into a laboratory, you change the environment around them, and thus you lose your data. One of the major problems for environmental psychology today is the task of developing a rigorous and systematic methodology that is also reliable and produces meaningful information. Once this methodology is developed, environmental psychology will have a wealth of puzzles to solve, and the advance of knowledge in this area will surely help us to design cities, buildings, institutions, and even families in ways that maximize our potential as human beings.