Psychological Theories for Environmental Issues

Mirilia Bonnes, Terence Lee, Terence Lee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351907903
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Diritto
• Subtopic: Diritto ambientale

Environmental psychology is an increasingly important area of research, focusing on the individual and social factors responsible for many critical human responses to the physical environment. With such rapid and widespread growth, the main theoretical strands have often been left unclear and their scientific and practical implications have been underdeveloped. This essential and stimulating book contextualizes and critically analyzes the main theoretical ideas. It compares the different theories, assessing each one's possibilities and limitations, and demonstrates how each approach has been used for the development of knowledge of environmental psychology. The research area infiltrates a broad selection of disciplines, including psychology, architecture, planning, geography, sociology, environmental issues, economics and law. It also offers significant contributions to a wide range of policy evaluations. It will prove invaluable to academics and practitioners from across these disciplines, above all those in planning, environmental studies, human geography and psychology.

1Theory and Practice in Environmental Psychology – An Introduction

MIRILIA BONNES, TERENCE LEE AND MARINO BONAIUTO

Psychological Research, Theory and Applied Psychology

“There is nothing so practical as a good theory” declared K. Lewin in the 1940’s (1951, p.169) referring to the research being carried out by his group at the University of Iowa. At that time, they were addressing issues of considerable social relevance. The best known and most enduring was the distinction between autocratic and democratic leadership styles, evoked by Lewin’s experiences in Nazi Germany, from which he had fled in the thirties. Another related topic was the development of group involvement in decision making which was found to be so effective in changing in eating habits (the consumption of offal meats) at a time when food was scarce due to the war. Working on these types of issues and oriented by his conviction that they could be enlightened by theory and tested by experiment, Lewin was able to build the foundations of a new psychology, or as he more specifically proposed, “psychological ecology” (Lewin, 1951).

With regard to this type of psychology, or these “ecological ways” of approaching psychology, he saw his task as that of guiding the practice and the relationship between “theoretical social psychology” and “applied social psychology” (Lewin, 1951, pp. 168–169). More specifically, this concerned the relationship between research primarily guided by intentions of “internal relevance”, that is, aimed at increasing knowledge in the field of psychology and by research defined as “applied”, since it is primarily the interest of areas outside psychology, that is, with aims of “external relevance”. Applied psychology in general focuses on problems of clear social relevance. These are identified and defined outside the field of psychology itself and they are in general intended to more or less directly understand and influence the processes of social organization, management and policy.

It is surprising that the words Lewin adopted in those years to outline and discuss this relationship are still true today for scientific psychology in general – or experimental psychology, as Lewin called it – especially in these countries where this relationship has always been considered highly suspect (like Italy, or also UK until, say the seventies: see Canter and Lee, 1974).

It should be noted that Lewin referred simultaneously to experimental psychology and scientific psychology, identifying with these same terms all psychological research involved in acquiring psychologically relevant knowledge through the use of scientific methods. He considered the various empirical-experimental methods in this way, whether the more explorative-observational and thus descriptive type (ideographic) or the more specifically experimental type, that is, hypothetical-explicative and thus predictive (nomothetic).

“The scientist cannot be blind to the fact that the more important the group problems which he intends to study, the more likely it is that he will face not merely technical social problems. His objective is fact finding in regard to what is and what would be if certain measures were adopted. ….

“In other words the experimenter as such is not the policy determiner of the organization. However, he can investigate what ought to be done if certain social objectives are to be reached.

“In a particular way then are the methodological problems in this field of experimental social psychology interlocked with so called ‘applied’ problems” (Lewin, 1951, p. 168).

In this regard, Lewin underlined the relationship he defined as “peculiar ambivalence”, which according to him always existed between scientific psychology on one side – with both a theoretical and experimental orientation – and on the other side what he called “life” or “natural groups” problems, or as often defined today “real-world problems” (Proshansky, 1976; Altman, 1988; Bonnes and Bonaiuto, 2001). In any case, this ambivalence characterises the relationships psychology in general has with applied psychology which, by definition, is established and developed around this type of problem. The consequence of this “peculiar ambivalence” is the often divergent developmental path he saw and described as characterising these two psychologies over time.

“In its first steps as an experimental science, psychology was dominated by the desire of exactness and a feeling of insecurity. Experimentation was devoted mainly to problems of sensory perception and memory, partly because they could be investigated through setups where the experimental control and precision could be secured with the accepted tools of the physical laboratory. As the experimental procedure expanded to other sections of psychology and as psychological problems were accepted by the fellow scientist as proper objects for experimentation, the period of ‘brass instrument psychology’ slowly faded. Gradually experimental psychology became more psychological and came closer to life problems…” (p. 169).

However, he pointed out with preoccupation the divarication often produced between these two types of psychology.

“The term ‘applied psychology’ became – correctly or incorrectly – identified with a procedure that was scientifically blind even if it happened to be of practical value. As the result, ‘scientific’ psychology that was interested in theory tried increasingly to stay away from a too close relation to life.”

In fact he stressed that:

“It would be the most unfortunate if the trend towards theoretical psychology were weakened by the necessity of dealing with natural groups when studying certain problems of social psychology.”

At the same time he seemed very aware about the difficulties, but also about the opportunities, of this closer collaboration between theoretical and applied social psychology, when he noted:

“One should not be blind, however, to the fact that this developments offers great opportunities as well as threats to theoretical psychology.”

He then continued:

“The greatest handicap of applied psychology has been the fact that, without proper theoretical help, it had to follow the costly, inefficient, and limited method of trial and error. Many psychologists working today in an applied field are keenly aware of the need for close cooperation between theoretical and applied psychology. This can be accomplished in psychology, as it has been accomplished in physics, if the theorist does not look toward applied problems with highbrow aversion or with a fear of social problems, and if the applied psychology realizes that there is nothing so practical as a good theory.”

He then concluded by emphasizing the potential strength of psychological research focussed on socially relevant or ‘applied’ problems, because of its possible theoretical implications, beside its practical and political ones:

“In (this) field … more than in any other psychological field, are theory and practice linked methodologically in a way which, if properly handled, could provide answers to theoretical problems and at the same time strengthen the rational approach to our practical social problems which is one of the basic requirements for their solution” (Lewin, 1951, p. 169).

In this perspective, the proposal Lewin subsequently formulated around what he defined as psychological ecology figures as a “theoretical bridge proposal”. Based on his field theory, it outlined the general theoretical frame of reference that social psychological research should conform to. This required proceeding according the founding postulate of field theory, i.e., human behaviour (B) is a function of personal (P) and environmental (E) factors, according to the well known equation B = f(PE).

Further, it should maintain a dialogue with various scientific, technical and political domains, outside the field of psychology, with the aim of optimising the social processes of organisation, management and decision making.

Anyway we can remind that Lewin was not the first to formulate problems in terms of “social psychology”: McDougall had published his ‘Introduction to Social Psychology’ in 1908. Nor was he the first to design and carry out experiments on social psychological processes. This is generally attributed, in retrospect, to Triplett (1897). He had noticed that the competitors in cycle races could proceed 20% faster if ‘paced’ by a tandem bicycle which could proceed consistently ahead of them. However, in more traditional psychological mode, Triplett explored the effect, not with cyclists in races, but with schoolchildren who were required to wind fishing reels!

Lewin’s psychology, as well as developing a new field of ‘group processes’, saw no conflict between the use of theory and the study of a problem directly, without dubious simulation or excessive generalisation. His approach was ‘ecologically correct’. But environmental psychologists owe him a greater debt than most. This is because “ecological” implied not only ‘true to life’ – but also ‘conducted in space’. He played a major role in the cognitive revolution that sought to challenge the hegemony of behaviourism. In his vectoral diagrams of the ‘life space’, he made the first tentative attempts to show that space is also subjective, that it results from ‘life circumstances’ and most important, that it plays a considerable part in shaping decisions and behaviour. Past reinforcement is not a sufficient explanation: people form intentions and plans that take account of their life space and aim to change it. Even more important perhaps, Lewin went a step further to conceptualise ‘psychological space’ to equate the subjective representation of physical distance with the subjective representation of social distance. The work of Barker, one of his students, retains the label ‘ecological psychology’ and is a major thread in the tapestry of environmental psychology.

Environmental Psychology between “Molecular” and “Ecological Molar” Approach

It has been shown elsewhere (see Bonnes and Secchiaroli, 1995) that Lewin’s psychological ecology proposal can in many ways be considered to lie at the root of the developments in environmental psychology that subsequently occurred.

In fact, at the end of the 1940s one of Lewin’s students, Roger Barker, founded the school of “ecological psychology” at the University of Kansas (Barker, 1968, 1987). This is generally recognised as one of the most important and systematic pioneering contribution of the scientific psychology tradition to today’s environmental psychology (Barker, 1987; Bonnes and Secchiaroli, 1995; Bechtel, 1997).

In the 1950s and 1960s, ‘architectural psychology’ emerged first and then flowed into the broader area of environmental psychology first in Europe and then in the United States (see Bonnes and Secchiaroli, 1995). This area was defined more precisely in the United States at the beginning of the 1970s (Proshanky, Ittelson and Rivling, 1970; Craik, 1970, 1973; Wohlwill, 1970). It should be noted that due to the influence of the architectural and engineering fields, much of European environmental psychology initially developed as “architectural” and “engineering” psychology with specific interest in the problems of the “built environment” (see Bonnes and Secchiaroli, 1995).

Initially, it’s viewpoint was very close to the ergonomic area of so-called “human factors” (see Canter and Stringer, 1975) originally connoted by an explicit enviromental and architectural determinism (see Kuller, 1987; Canter and Donald, 1987). However, it was soon re-oriented by the same European environmental psychologists in a decisively more ecological or inter-actionist direction, as shown in the first half of the 1970s by T. Lee and D. Canter (Canter and Lee, 1974; Lee, 1976; Canter, 2000).

The first definitions aimed at identifying this emerging field of psychology pointed out the specific and, at the same time, “new” interest of psychology (see Bonnes and Secchiaroli, 1995; Bonnes and Bonaiuto, 2001). This interest focussed on the relationship between human behaviour and experience with the related physical environment, or “physical surrounding”, or even better the “physical setting” of the environment. In fact, “Man and his physical setting” is the programmatic title the historic group, formed by H. Proshansky, W. Ittelson and A. Rivlin at the City University of New York, chose, at the end of the 1960s, for the first volume published specifically to introduce this new disciplinary area of psychology.

Also, several years later, in outlining one of the first systematic introductions to the field (“Introduction to environmental psychology”), the same group proposed the following definition:

“Environmental psychology is an attempt to establish an empirical and theoretical relationship between behaviour and experience of the person and his built environment” (Ittelson, Proshansky, Rivlin and Winkel, 1974, p. 303).

Again, the first most important volumes published in Europe in the field by T. Lee and D. Canter were primarily focused on the built environment especially in an architectural sense: Psychology and the built environment (Canter and Lee, 1974), Psychology for architects (Canter, 1972), Psychology and environment (Lee, 1976).

From the beginning, it was emphasised that the physical environment must not be considered in “molecular” terms, according to the classical tradition of the psychology of perception and of related experimental laboratory studies, but in the “molar”, or ecological, perspective typical of the Lewinian social psychology and psychological ecology. That meant considering both the behaviour and the physical environment according to units primarily significant at the subjective-personal level (see Bonnes and Secchiaroli, 1995, pp. 68–72).

As Craik (1970, p. 15) specified, this involved considering the physical environment as “the physical setting of molar behaviour”. Proshansky also observed:

“For the environmental psychologist the physical environment of interest goes well beyond the stimuli and pattern of stimuli of interest to experimental and human-factor psychologists. Indeed he rejected these conceptions of the physical environment on the grounds that they represent analytical abstractions of the environment rather than a realistic description of it, as it related to the actual behaviour and experience of the individual” (Proshansky and O’Hanlon, 1977, p. 103).

As Russell and Ward (1982, p. 652) also specified, the intention of environmental psychology became that of

“…extending the boundaries of psychology beyond the study of an immediate stimulus to include a study of behaviour as organised over a larger span of time and in relation to the large-scale environment.”

In fact, they observed that

“A molar perspective on the organisation of behaviour thus refers an unde...