Wellbeing: A Complete Reference Guide, Wellbeing and the Environment

Rachel Cooper, Elizabeth Burton, Cary Cooper, Rachel Cooper, Elizabeth Burton, Cary Cooper

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781118608371
• eBook ISBN: 9781118716250
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Part of the six-volume Wellbeing: A Complete Reference Guide, this volume examines the ways in which the built environment can affect and enhance the wellbeing of society.

• Explores the effects of environment on wellbeing and provides insight and guidance for designing, creating, or providing environments that improve wellbeing
• Looks at the social and health issues surrounding sustainable energy and sustainable communities, and how those connect to concepts of wellbeing
• Brings the evidence base for environmental wellbeing into one volume from across disciplines including urban planning, psychology, sociology, healthcare, architecture, and more
• Part of the six-volume set Wellbeing: A Complete Reference Guide, which brings together leading research on wellbeing from across the social sciences

1

Wellbeing and the Environment

An Overview

Rachel Cooper

Lancaster University, U.K.

The environment is everything that isn't me.

Albert Einstein

The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.

Mark Caine

The two central dimensions of wellbeing and the environment are people and places. To understand this relationship, it is important to understand (a) how humans engage sensorally with their environment, (b) the type and quality of environment, and (c) its impact on people throughout their life course.

Quite simply, people are affected by their environment through their senses. This results in both psychological and physical effects, whereas people are also the agents that create, modify, and maintain much of the material world in which we live and work; a simple description of a very complex system of cause and effect. The more we know about this process and the intervening variables the more we may be able to design better places, moderate effects, and influence behavior.

The main factors in the environment that contribute to wellbeing relate to our sensory stimulation; that is, what we see, smell, touch, taste, and feel. Both the physical and the ambient environment have an effect on our senses.

Noise is cited by many scholars as a negative ambient property in physical environments. For example, noise from apartment neighbors is seen as a major cause of annoyance and reduction in individuals' quality of life (Evans & Cohen, 1987; Goldstein, 1990). Although there are positive aspects of noise in the physical environment, often the sound of birds, running water, and certain types of music are used as soothing effects and for the reduction of stress (Ulrich, 2000), and of course music is used as a buffer to general noise (Winter, Paskin, & Baker, 1994).

In contrast, what we see and the notions of aesthetics and beauty have been identified as contributing most often to restorative benefits and a higher sense of wellbeing. So, for instance, exposure and access to views of nature from a variety of physical environments can improve individuals' health and wellbeing by providing restoration from stress and mental fatigue (Kaplan, 2001; Van den Berg, Koole, & Van Der Wulp, 2003). Conversely, an inability to spend time in natural areas may be associated with poor psychological wellbeing (Wells & Evans, 2003). Art as a feature of the physical environment has been identified as a positive contributory factor to wellbeing according to Philipp (2002). The arts can help mitigate mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem, as well as improve social integration and isolation.

Other visual aspects of the physical environment have been investigated. Namazi (1993) and Zeisel et al. (2003) examined several environmental design features simultaneously (e.g., lighting, acoustics, color) and found positive and negative impacts on aggression, agitation, social withdrawal, depression, psychotic problems, incontinence, distractibility, self-sufficiency, and continuity.

Like noise, other ambient properties of physical environments exert a negative impact on wellbeing through our tactile, olfactory, and taste senses. For example, those living in damp dwellings experienced more emotional distress (Martin, Platt, & Hunt, 1987) and poorer mental health in general (Hopton & Hunt, 1996, as cited in Krieger and Higgins, 2002) than those not living in damp conditions. Excessive indoor temperatures have been linked with irritability and social intolerance (Collins, 1993, as cited by Krieger and Higgins, 2002). Also, high levels of air pollution predict levels of psychological distress, particularly among people experiencing a recent adverse life event (Evans, Jacobs, Dooley, & Catalano, 1987).

Two additional ambient properties that appear mostly to have an impact (often negative) on our wellbeing are crowding and density. Crowding is believed to have substantial negative effects on social relations (Baum and Paulus, 1987) and psychological health (Edwards, Fuller, Sermsri, & Vorakitphokatorn, 1990; Evans, Palsane, Lepore, & Martin, 1989; Gove and Hughes, 1983; Lepore, Evans, & Palsane, 1991).

However it is clearly not that easy to unpack each influence on individual senses. The way in which we perceive the environment, and its impact upon our senses and psyche is multifactorial, and in many ways it is important to consider the effects through the lens of our life course (Table 1.1). Environmental stimulants combine to have multisensory effects, both positive and negative, on us across our life course. By looking at it from this perspective we see the nuanced effect of the way in which we design, develop, and engage with the physical environment has on our wellbeing.

Table 1.1 An Illustration of some of the Relationships between the Environment and Wellbeing over the Life Course.

Birth and Childhood

As Gilbert and Galea illustrate in Chapter 2 of this volume the environment has a negative effect on unborn children; for example, the increased risk of infection with a greater population density in the mother can have an effect on fetal brain development. In addition, exposure of pollutants such as lead to pregnant women can affect the child's cognition throughout life. Maternal stress too has been seen to affect the offspring and neighborhood factors contribute to stress in everyone.

Noise has been seen to have negative effects on children. Evans, Hygge, and Bullinger (1995) found that a general pattern of adverse psychological stress reactions occurs among young children exposed to chronic noise in their neighborhoods. Childhood noise has also been identified as having a negative effect on children's reading skills (Cohen, Glass, & Singer, 1973).

Dampness, mould, and cold indoor conditions are significantly associated with anxiety and depression (Hyndman, 1990). For children, high-density living will be more tolerated if: they live in smaller, detached dwellings; they have designated play space or a room of their own (Wachs and Gruen, 1982); the dwelling is designed to minimize controllable social interactions (Baum and Valins, 1977, 1979); and floor-plan layouts provide good room separation (Evans, Lepore, & Schroeder, 1996).

Children are also at risk with regard to safety and fear of crime. Huttenmoser (1995) suggested that 4-year-olds who could not play independently outdoors, primarily because of traffic-related safety, had more strained relations with their parents, fewer playmates, and poorer socioemotional development than children who could play outdoors. However, the presence of nearby nature or restorative characteristics in the home protect children from the impacts of life stress, especially those most at risk from high levels of stress (Wells & Evans, 2003). As Martin and Wood (Chapter 7) and Maxwell and Evans (Chapter 11) illustrate there is a great deal to consider when designing neighborhoods for children and adolescents to ensure access to nature, and to better learning and social environments.

In a child's life schools (Jones and Harrison, Chapter 12) are obviously the physical environment in which they spend a significant amount of time, and as such they too have been studied in relation to wellbeing. Duker and Rasing (1989) discovered that classroom redesign had a positive impact on decreasing self-stimulation and inactivity and increased on-task behavior (although, they noted that no changes were observed on inappropriate behavior). Marx, Fuhrer, and Hartig (2000) found that children in a semicircle layout in their school classroom asked more questions than in the traditional row-and-column arrangement. Of course, comfort is important and Knight and Noyes (1999) observed improved on-task behavior with the use of new chair design.

Classrooms are usually decorated with pictures, images, and other displays of student work; teachers have always known this to be a valuable activity. Jago and Tanner (1999) indeed found that the visual environment affects an individual's ability to perceive visual stimuli, therefore affecting mental attitude, performance, and learning. The use of color and light is important here; the impact of light and lighting on learning varies according to the color and quality of light, from natural to artificial and from warm to cool. For instance, Knez (2001) found that individuals had better cognitive task performance in warm lighting, rather than in cool and artificial-daylight white lighting.

Noise impacts highly on learning. Addison, Dancer, Montague, and Davis (1999) explained how ambient noise levels in a classroom can interfere with teaching and learning. For example, noise that was higher than the recommended levels in primary schools in London had a negative impact on students' abilities to learn in the classroom (Shield & Dockrell, 2003, 2004).

Adulthood

As adults the pattern of influence and effect is repeated. Noise has again been studied a great deal: Belojevic, Jakovljevic, and Slepcevic (2003) found that noise has a negative impact on mental performance, anxiety, and stress. Similarly, Stansfeld and Matheson (2003) observed that noise impacts negatively on learning and blood pressure. Chronic exposure to noise can lead to long-term negative impacts, such as long-term memory (Knez and Hygge, 2002). Additionally, Lercher, Evans, and Meis (2003) found that noise impacted on intentional and incidental memory as well as recognition memory.

Our homes and our workplaces have a significant effect on our wellbeing. For instance, dwellings in direct contact with natural elements as well as views of nature have an enhanced restorative effect on individuals (Evans & McCoy, 1998; Hartig & Evans, 1993; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989). A perceived lack of privacy in the home due to crowding is also significantly associated with psychological distress (Fuller, Edwards, Sernsri & Vorakitphokatorn, 1993). Not surprisingly perhaps, women aged 25–45 in London were found to suffer more psychological distress in crowded dwellings than any other demographic group (Gabe & Williams, 1987). And Evans, Lepore, Shejwal, and Palsane (1998) found that tension increases between adults and children with residential crowding, which can lead to a greater sense of helplessness among children (Evans et al., 1998). The design of dwellings comes into play here; Evans et al. (1996) found those in more crowded homes suffer less psychological distress when the dwelling unit has more “depth” (i.e., there are more interconnected spaces).

The workplace has been the site of considerable research in terms of its impact on our wellbeing, often in terms of the social, behavioral, and managerial activities, but so too has the physical environment. Noise in the workplace that can have a significant negative impact on wellbeing: In general, a noisy work environment is associated with stress, anxiety (Ahasan, Mohiuddin, Vayrynen, Ironkannas, & Quddus, 1999; Akerstert and Landstrom, 1998; Cohen, 1969; Kahn, 1981; Kryter, 1972; Menaghan and Merves, 1984; Norbeck, 1985), emotional exhaustion or burnout (Topf and Dillon, 1988), unhappiness (Loscocco and Spitze, 1990) and, in some cases, workplace violence (Verdugo and Vere, 2003). Higher noise levels in the workplace also can lead to nervousness, distress, and social conflicts at home and at work (Cohen, 1969; Granati et al., 1959, as cited in Halpe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Wellbeing: A Complete Reference Guide
• Title Page
• Copyright
• About the Editors
• Contributors
• Full Contents of Wellbeing: A Complete Reference Guide
• Introduction to Wellbeing: A Complete Reference Guide
• 1: Wellbeing and the Environment
• Part 1: Wellbeing and the Neighborhood
• Part 2: Wellbeing and Buildings
• Part 3: Wellbeing and Green Spaces
• Part 4: Wellbeing and the Environment: Other Factors and the Future
• Index