Environmental psychology: short and sweet
As an environmental psychologist, I get a lot of questions about what it exactly is that I do. Past confused attempts made to understand “environmental psychology” included interesting assumptions such as: “Does it mean you’re looking at the psychology of the… environment…?” While I would absolutely love to have that particular superpower at my disposal and overthrow ignorant policymakers by conspiring with majestic mountains and neglected neighborhoods, the skill set of environmental psychologists does not include tree and concrete whispering.
Environmental psychology looks at the relationship between people and the environment. This includes how people interact with, experience, or perceive their environment, as well as how they affect it. The environment can be anything from a public park, to a working space, or even an entire neighborhood – as long as the emphasis is placed on the physical elements of an environment. Environmental psychologists make a distinction between two types of physical environments: the natural environment (nature, beach, mountains, etc.) and the built environment (as the name suggests, anything made from bricks).
Environmental psychology provides tools to study perceptions, experiences, and behaviors of people in spaces and places. This can help us create better environments as a result.
Environmental psychologists could play an important role in difficult global challenges we’re facing today. According to the UN, currently 54% of the world’s population is living in urban areas and this percentage is expected to increase to 66% by 2050. This has great implications for the lives of millions of people and raises difficult questions like: How can we build resilient cities that can sustain a rapidly growing population without exhausting the world’s limited resources? How can we prevent segregation between groups of people in different spaces? Can we shape the environment in ways that encourages pro-environmental behaviors and lifestyles? In what ways can we create inclusive environments that nurture vulnerable populations and minority groups?
Caught in the middle: environmental psychologists as “desciencers”
According to Nasar (2008), designers and scientists take a different approach when looking at environments. Designers tend to take a top-down approach, emphasizing historical context, knowledge, and creativity, while scientists take a bottoms-up approach where they need to dissect concepts to testable and controllable variables. Environmental psychologists ambitiously aim to bring those two perspectives together and operate as what I like to call desciencers.
Desciencing allows us to focus on research from a problem-solving perspective that is applicable to the real world and is necessary for understanding daily processes like why we feel the need to personalize our desk, or when we are more likely to litter in public spaces, and how on earth patients with a view overlooking nature get better faster than those without. By understanding these type of processes we hope to assist designers, architects, planners, policy-makers, or any other interested individuals in creating better environments.
In conclusion, in spite of being a relatively young scientific discipline, environmental psychology has much to offer and we do hope to welcome many of you into this vibrant community…
Craving more content? Also read this EΨch Insight article on the role of psychology in the design of public spaces.
Kübra Zehra
Environmental psychologist & Researcher
Founder of EΨch, environmental psychologist (MSc; PhD student) and pro healthy & inclusive spaces @sometimes Guildford, UK, & sometimes Rotterdam, the Netherlands
You make an excellent point when you say that environmental psychology provides tools for studying people in spaces and places. But, I think this is but one side of the equation that we need to address if “ep” is going to reach its maximum potential. We need to understand how our findings can be translated into the terms and context of the disciplines we seek to support,
In practice, we are, I fear, often a little naïve by trying to sell our tools rather than solutions. After all, the old marketing maxim says “People don’t buy products, they buy solutions to problems” We need to work harder to understand our client’s problems and then assist with proposed solutions.
Hi Rob, first of all thanks very much for your insightful comment. You raise an important point. Merely singing the praises of environmental psychology is not enough to truly bridge the distance between our science and others’ reality. We have to show not only what we can do, but how we can contribute to solving existing problems. We also need to be able to communicate our solutions in ways that are accessible to all other stakeholders and are easily and effectively applicable in practice. Our vision for EΨch is for it to become the global platform where this is facilitated. Hopefully, with all of our combined efforts and through contributions made by professionals such as yourself, this vision will become a reality sooner than later. Our best (sustainable) wishes.
Hi I am greatly impressed by this new field in my life’ Desciencing ‘ of which binds us on our daily basis since none leaves in a vacuum. You have done your best and the way forward is that you have good points that a person like me leaving in Kenyan capital city needs to have a copy of this. My conscience tells what next can my biotech knowledge do truly we have a lot to offer only issue if we have this fact then with good coordination among different expertise solution will come and the there implementation. For example he raw sewage and the flying toilets in poor suburbs of Nairobi needs a solution.Schooling conditions for students and pupils in this city truly need proper advise.
Thanks a lot am glad to join you and I will be humbled to get from you