Topic 5: Human Relationships with the Environment PDF

 Topic 5: Human Relationships with the Environment After completing this topic, you should: Despite its name, Environmental Psychology is understand the origins and basic an interdisciplinary field, studying the purpose of Envir...

 Topic 5: Human Relationships with the Environment After completing this topic, you should: Despite its name, Environmental Psychology is understand the origins and basic an interdisciplinary field, studying the purpose of Environmental Psychology. relationships between people and their physical, social, and virtual environments. “Environment” know a few ways that environmental cues can influence people’s behaviour. is used here in a very broad sense—this can include natural environments like lakes and understand how personal space is bushland, built environments like parks and constructed and how this tends to vary apartment complexes, work environments like across different cultures. universities and restaurants, and online know some of the benefits that are linked environments like online stores, Twitter, and to spending time in nature. Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGS). Environmental psychologists often In this fifth topic, we will examine the work with people from other disciplines, like relationships that humans have with their public health, geography, history, international environments, be they natural or human-made. relations, architecture, agriculture, and food Just like human-animal relationships, human- science. In this subject, we’ll focus on human environment relationships vary greatly by interactions with natural and crafted culture, location, and time. You may adore environments, but will also consider other areas. bushwalking and do it every chance you get, but might live with someone whose idea of a good day out is shopping for upmarket home goods at the Fountain Gate Shopping Centre. You might be living in the same town where you were born and have a deep attachment to the area, or you have lived in several different countries, each of which in some way feels like home. The ability to fly around the world would have been nearly unthinkable for most of our ancestors, given that the first airplane was invented in the early 1900s, but for many people (outside of the COVID-19 pandemic), The term “environmental psychology” first this is common experience. appears in a paper by Egon Brunswik (1943), These differences, and ways of understanding and Kurt Lewin (1943) also emphasized the them, fall under the umbrella of the (relatively importance of environmental influences on young) discipline of Environmental Psychology. people’s behaviour. As the idea of Although there are many overlaps between this “environmental psychology” started to firm up, discipline and Anthrozoology, this and the early work focused on things like public follow topic will focus more on the environment attitudes toward air pollution (Groot, 1967) and and the human animals that live in it with us. possible links between noise pollution and health (Cameron et al., 1972), and later Introduction to Environmental Psychology expanding to topics like attitudes toward recycling (Guagnano et al., 1995), the effects of online store layouts on consumer behaviour alcohol, so it is worth pointing out that similar (Manganari et al., 2011), and the benefits of effects have been demonstrated with many spending time in nature (Bratman et al., 2015). other products and behaviours. For example, Jacob et al. (2009) showed that when a French Environmental Influences on Behaviour flower shop played love songs, customers spent Although our behaviours are to a large extent significantly more money than when the store guided by our explicit beliefs, attitudes, and was playing pop songs or no music at all, and intentions, our environments can often shape Jacob et al. (2010) found that when a French our behaviour in ways that we don’t notice. One restaurant played pro-social songs, customers way this happens is via environmental cues, were significantly more likely to tip their server, “elements in the environment that convey and the average tip size was larger. Nearby in information that triggers affective responses” Belgium, Doucé et al. (2013) found that (Kassin et al., 2019, p. 505). releasing the scent of chocolate into a bookstore led customers to buy more books, These cues can be especially powerful if we’re especially cookbooks and romance novels. feeling a bit uncertain about how to behave, or are having a hard time making a choice between similarly appealing options. Imagine that you are planning on buying some wine for a dinner party, and the local bottle shop had a special sale on a range of French and German wines. Research indicates that the music playing in the store could nudge you in a particular direction. North et al. (1999) ran quite a clever study that set up an in-store display like the one you just imagined, in which a suburban supermarket in the East Midlands of the UK alternate between playing French music one day, and German the The effects of environmental cues are not limited next, over a fortnight. Across the days where to bottle shops, florists, restaurants, and the store was playing French music, shoppers bookstores, but these illustrate how ambient bought a total of 40 bottles of French wine and sounds and smells can shape people’s only 8 bottles of German wine, but when behaviours, even if they are not explicitly aware German music was playing, the pattern reversed of it. If you are interested in learning more about considerably, with customers buying 22 bottles research in this area, you can use Google of German wine and 12 bottles of French wine. Scholar to find many similar studies, especially in marketing and applied psychology journals. Personal Space Another hot topic in environmental psychology is personal space, the invisible bubble that we carry around ourselves that functions as a sort of mobile territory. There is a whole subfield dedicated to studying this, known as proxemics. Proxemics research bean to gain popularity in the 1960s, largely via work by cultural anthropologist Edward Hall (1963). He claimed Germany and France both take their wines VERY that there are four ‘zones’ around a person— seriously, so hopefully this won’t lead to any intimate, personal, social, and public. As the international incidents. names suggest, intimate space is reserved for people with whom you have an intimate But perhaps you are not the type of person who (physical) relationship, personal space is for drinks wine, or are not interested in any type of close friends and family, social space is for casual friends and acquaintances, and public space for everyone else. Ideas of an appropriate interpersonal distance can change according to several cues, such as the situation one is in. For example, although the average person in Germany might usually maintain a rather large bubble, the norms at a Weihnachtsmarkt—an outdoor Christmas market featuring an array of vendors selling Source: “Personal Space” by WebHamster things like handmade crafts, baked goods, chocolates, and mulled wine (but not romance CC BY-SA https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Personal_Space.svg novels) are another matter entirely. Observing how far apart people are when they interact with one another can often tell you a lot about their relationship, and people tend not to react well when someone enters one of the zones that is not for them. Take a few minutes to watch this video by comedian and scientist Eline van der Velden, who tests the effects of entering the personal space of strangers on the streets of the UK. We do not suggest that you try this out yourself, but take some time to reflect on what the video shows. Pre-pandemic, how do you think you would react if you were an unwitting participant in her ‘experiment’? Do Similarly, the language people are speaking can you think that people would act differently here temporarily change how far apart they choose in Australia? What about in different cultural to sit from one another—Sussman et al. (1982) contexts, like Peru, or Germany, or Japan? found that when Venezuelan participants were speaking Spanish to one another, they sat closer A growing body of research shows that ideas of appropriate personal space can vary quite a lot together than when they were speaking English, across cultures. Speaking very broadly, people whereas Japanese participants did the exact from cultures in North America, Northern opposite, sitting farther apart when they were Europe, and East Asia (sometimes referred to as speaking Japanese than when they were ‘non-contact cultures’) tend to stand farther speaking English. apart in their social interactions than do people from cultures in Latin America, Southern and As you likely noticed in the video clip with Eline Eastern Europe, and Arabic cultures (sometimes van der Velden, people will do all manner of referred to as ‘contact cultures’; e.g., Aiello, things to protect their personal space. A large 1987; Remland et al., 1995). study of commuters in New Zealand found that roughly a quarter of participants defended their personal bubble by doing things like putting body of research demonstrates that exposure to their bag on the seat next to them, or spreading nature can be good for people. out to take up more space (Thomas, 2009). Classic work conducted in the USA by Ulrich Although this might sound rude, it was (1984) demonstrated that after undergoing effective—most participants chose not to sit surgery, patients assigned to rooms with next to these people. Here in Australia, Hirsch windows overlooking nature spent less time in and Thompson (2011) found that popular hospital, had fewer reported complications, and strategies among commuters were to focus on took fewer painkillers than those whose their mobile phones, put on headphones, take windows had a view of a brick wall. Ulrich and up the neighbouring seat with their bag, or fake colleagues (1991) later showed similar effects being sick. One younger male participant said in a more general population– after watching a that he regularly wore too much deodorant so stressful movie, the stress levels of participants that people would keep their distance. who watched videos of nature (e.g., a forest with bids singing, a fast-moving stream) dropped faster than participants who watched ‘urban videos’ (e.g., moderate traffic on a commercial street, people walking in a busy outdoor mall). This was true for both how much stress participants said they felt, and for physiological measures, like heart rate, skin conductance, and muscle tension. Although well-known, Ulrich was not the first to do this sort of work. In 1982, the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries coined the term Shinrin-Yoku (taking in the forest atmosphere, or ‘forest bathing’; Park et Related to personal space, crowding is the al., 2010). A lot of work has since been done subjective sense that arises when there are “too that demonstrates the benefits of forest bathing, many” people in a space. Like with personal from reducing stress to boosting immune space, ideas of what is and isn’t “crowded” vary function. For a quirky review of this, including a lot between and within cultures. Research in some tests of WHY spending time in the forest this area remains rather limited, but with a may give our immune systems a kick-start, check growing global population, this is likely to out this brief video by Dr. Michael Greger. become more and more of an issue. In some cities, people are coming up with novel ways to cope with crowded and expensive housing, with ‘micro-apartments’, ‘tiny homes’, and ‘nanoflats’ becoming more common. Check out this video that explores nanoflats in Hong Kong, and how some residents are getting very creative to maximize the use they can get out of very small spaces. What do you think it would be like to live in a flat like this? The Benefits of Exposure to Nature Back in Topic 3, we learned about the Biophilia Returning to the contrast between nature and Hypothesis- the idea that humans should have a urban environments, there’s also growing psychological preference for certain types of evidence of the importance of “green space” in outdoor environments. It turns out that people cities (such as parks, forests, waterways, and don’t just like spending time there–a growing community gardens. Besides proving important habit for non-human animals, these green spaces can help filter air, regulate temperatures, and Torres Strait Islander definitions of Social absorb heavy rainfall, and dampen the noise and Emotional Wellbeing (SEWB). created by the city’s human inhabitants. Parks in This connection is an interdependent and particular help enhance people’s health by reciprocal relationship, described in sayings providing communal spaces for exercise, and such as ‘If you look after Country, Country will public gardens help feed communities and look after you,’ and can be strengthened by a strengthen connections between community wide array of activities, such as fire members (for a review, see Thomspon et al., management, revegetation, controlling invasive 2015; Wolch et al., 2014). species, harvesting bush foods, and protecting Access to green space is often inequitable, in sacred lands (Burgess et al., 2008; Weir et al., Australia and in many other parts of the world. 2011). Across different mobs, communities, and Astell-Burt and colleagues (2014) investigated ways of engagement, literature reviews have Australia’s five most populous cities, and the repeatedly found that Caring for Country is consistent pattern was that people living in the positively associated with SEWB (Weir et al., most disadvantaged areas (as measured by 2011; Fatima et al., 2023). percent of people in low-income households) were least likely to have access to green space. The amount of green space also varies wildly by location- as shown above, there is about 350 m2 of green space per person in Canberra and 300 m2 in Perth, whereas that number drops to ~120 m2 in Melbourne and ~80 m2 in Sydney. As cities and populations continue to expand, maintaining the “right amount” of green space, and that people can access it with relative ease, will continue to pose a challenge. Topic Summary In this topic we explored some of the relationships that humans have with their (natural and crafted) environments, and the ways that people’s environment can affect their behaviour. We’ve reviewed the origins of the field of Environmental Psychology, and explored several classic and recent studies to give you an Source: https://soe.environment.gov.au/theme/built-environment/ idea of the sort of work that happens in this topic/2016/livability-urban-amenity space. We’ve looked at how people think about Caring for Country their personal space, how they defend it, and the ways that this tends to vary across cultures. Caring for Country is a term for “Indigenous We’ve finished up by reviewing some research participation in interrelated activities with the on how spending time out in nature can improve objective of promoting ecological and human people’s mental and physical health. We’ve only health” (Burgess et al., 2008). For millennia, scratched the surface of environmental Indigenous peoples and communities have psychology, but hopefully this topic, and the understood the importance of connecting with accompanying activities, has made you a bit nature. As Gee et al. (2014) explain, connection more aware of the relationships that you have to Country is a key domain in many Aboriginal with the various environments in which you live.  References and/or supplementary resources: Aiello, J. R. (1987). Human spatial behavior. Handbook of Environmental Psychology, 1, 389- 504. Astell-Burt, T., Feng, X., Mavoa, S., Badland, H. M., & Giles-Corti, B. (2014). Do low-income neighbourhoods have the least green space? A cross-sectional study of Australia’s most populous cities. BMC Public Health, 14(1), 1-11. Bratman, G. N., Daily, G. C., Levy, B. J., & Gross, J. J. (2015). The benefits of nature experience: Improved affect and cognition. Landscape and Urban Planning, 138, 41-50. Brunswik, E. (1943). 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