Environmental Psychology

This review, like the model of psychology we advocate, looks to the past, present and future of environmental psychology. The chapter begins with a discussion of the importance of the socio-environmental context for human behaviour. Having demonstrated that the environment, far from being a silent witness to human actions, is an integral part of the plot, the chapter continues with an examination of the nature and scope of environmental psychology. Its interdisciplinary origins and applied emphasis have both conspired to prevent a straightforward and uncontentious definition of environmental psychology. We review some of these and suggest how recent definitions are beginning to adopt a more inclusive, holistic and transactional perspective on people-environment relations. The next section discusses the various spatial scales at which environmental psychologists operate - from the micro level such as personal space and individual rooms, public/private spaces and public spaces through to the global environment. This incorporates research on the home, the workplace, the visual impact of buildings, the negative effects of cities, the restorative role of nature, and environmental attitudes and sustainable behaviour. The third section takes three key theoretical perspectives which have informed environmental psychology - determinism, interactionalism, and transactionalism. - and uses these as an organising framework to examine various theories used by environmental psychologists: arousal theory, environmental load, adaptation level theory within a behaviourist and determinist paradigm; control, stress adaptation, behavioural elasticity, cognitive mapping and environmental evaluation within an interactionist paradigm; and behaviour settings, affordance theory and theories of place, place identity and place attachment within transactionalism