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psychiatry is a branch of medicine
of all psychologists, only clinical psychologists are engaged in therapy
hierarchy of methods:
1 case study
2 correlational
3 experimental
Environment
Environmental psychology is a relatively young (sub)discipline
Today, two professional organisations that organize conferences:
Primary Journals:
landscape, nature, environment, wildlife
built environment,
interior, place, garden
these objects/environments are studied by other disciplines (geology, soil sciences, hydrology, ecology, rural sociology, resource economy, etc.) as well, so what's distinctive about environmental psychology?
Conclusion:
We do not see the world as it is, but we organize stimuli by assigning meaning
See sections 9.2 and 9.3 in: Jacobs, MH (2006) The production of mindscapes. Wageningen: Wageningen University
(note: mental concepts is equivalent to meanings)
Gestalt theory:
Laws that describe how we tend to see stimuli as a whole
AND ALSO
policy makers, planners and architects strive for aesthetically appealing landscapes
problem!
Expert judgments, however, may not be reflective of the public.
Solution: empirical research into landscape experience and preferences
Question: which landscapes are experienced as beautiful?
Variety of theories has been developed
sense of place
Images of nature
adapative approach
today
Adaptive approaches:
Arousal theory - Berlyne
Preference matrix - Kaplan & Kaplan
Prospect refuge theory - Appleton
landscapes that evoke an optimal arousal level have a high hedonic value and are therefore preferred
Which landscapes?
We prefer landscapes that are:
Hence: keep it simple:
We like those landscapes that enhance survival
1 landscapes with water (needed to survive)
2 landscapes with vegetation (food and shelter)
3 landscapes with prospect refuge opportunities
coherent and complex
legible and mysterious
prospect and refuge
legible but not mysterious
low arousal
prospect but no refure
refuge but no prospect
coherent but not complex
changing relationships with nature
"woeste gronden" (wild domains) or "te ontginnen gronden" (domains to be colonised)
becomes "nature"on maps
divergence
aim: to identify people's views on nature
practical benefits:
1 cognitive component:
What is real nature?
2 normative component:
How should we manage nature?
3 expressive component:
What is beautiful nature?
Criticism
Empirical research is so-so
Focused on policy, not so much on the public
Expressive dimension is operationalized in a pretty weird way
Study:
Buijs, A.E. (2008). Lay people's images of nature. Society and Natural Resources, 22, 417-432.
what are the effects of images of nature?
Relationships between images and landscape preferences:
Relationships between images and demographics:
Relationships between images and ethnicity:
what can policy makers, planners, designers do with images of nature?
As future designers, planners, and policy makers, what do you think?
Despite criticism,
it seems safe to say that humans have a severe and often negative influence on the environment
anthropocene
= current geological epoch
Mankind has a central role in ecology and geology
Most experts agree that, ultimately, human behaviour has te change, in order to reduce environmental impact
environmental consequences are often:
collective
global
Therefore, a need to understand environmental behaviour (what people do) and enviromental attitudes (what people think)
Attitude is the most frequently employed concept in social psychology, also used a lot in environmental psychology
Attitudes:
Steps for measuring attitudes:
1 determine attitude object
2 elicit relevant beliefs
3 questionnaire and data collection
4 data analysis
various operationalizations and measurements, no standard has emerged yet
New
Environmental
Paradigm
New Environmental Paradigm refers to this new worldview that places emphasis on environment
Scales for questionnaires consists of 12/15 items, e.g.:
NEP doesn't predict behaviour very well
(this was never the intention)
Approaches to behavioural change
Con: Values are often pretty resistent to change
Con: Many agents influence one's attitudes
Con: Behavior is guided by many external factors
Con: Often hard to achieve
Factors that influence behaviours:
Paul Stern (2000) Toward a theory of environmentally significant behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 56, 3, 407-424
Have environmental attitudes changed over time?
While some are disappointed and skeptic, specific things have changed
Trends:
Also, proenviromental behaviour is not only a matter of psychology:
To conclude, humans have special bonds with animals
the primary scientific question: WHY?
Two basic categories of mental dispositions:
1 Cognitions (today)
2 Emotions (Thursday)
Strong oppositions for potential solutions to these problems
Thus: A need to understand human thought and reasoning about wildlife, in order to find acceptable solutions and devise successful communication
2 Primary wildlife value orientations:
1 Mutualism
2 Domination
Wildlife value orientations
Appropriate Use Beliefs
Domination
Hunting Beliefs
Social Affiliation Beliefs
Mutualism
Caring Beliefs
Predictive value
The concept of wildlife value orientations is scientifically and practically interesting if it predicts specific thought
WVO's are found to predict (up to 50%):
change
Studies suggest societal change towards mutualism as societies:
Similarities with previous concepts
Mutualism-Domination continuum seems equivalent to:
functional to wilderness images of nature
anthropocentric to biocentric environmental values
Emotions form the basis for attraction to wildlife, wildlife related activities, and conflicts over wildife
Thus, if we are to understand and explain human responses to and thought about wildlife, we must understand emotions
why is that?
Emotions have emerged in the course of evolution as adaptations
This only works if emotions take over control!
Normally, we stop whatever we're doing during an emotion and attend to the emotion and its cause
Emotions guide:
Physiological responses, e.g:
Behavioural tendencies, e.g:
Emotional experiences
core affects:
1 valence
2 arousal
discrete feelings,
e.g. sad, happy, angry
emotionally laden thought
general working of emotions is applicable to many domains of research, e.g. landscape preferences, bonds with nature, human wildlife interactions
Study:
Jacobs (2009) Why do we like or dislike animals?
Since spatial planning/design ultimately changes local places
Are definitions important?
1 Yes: we must know what we're talking about
2 No: Ultimately, measurement counts
Connotative definition
(Analytical definition is typically the end result of years of research)
E.g. Lightning is the light you see when you hear thunder
Lightning is caused by electrical discharge of the air onto the earth, resulting in bright flashes of light.
In the literature, lots of different more restrictive definitions can be found
Stedman and Jorgensen have operationalized sense of place into three sets of items
Today's focus:
1 development
2 culture
nested
questions
Newborn babies are absolutely egocentric
Savannah landscapes prefered by young children; gradually, own landscape gets prefered
environmental psychology studies interactions between people and environment at the level of the individual mind
experiential qualities of the landscape are increasingly important in western societies
Berlyne's arousal theory is a general theory of aesthetics.
Early environmental psychologists have adopted this theory as a framework for their research.
Two primary concepts:
These are according to theorists:
Appleton
landscape = habitat
humans are predators and prey, hence, seeing without being seen is optimal.
We prefer landscapes with prospect and refuge opportunities.
Kaplan & Kaplan
We need knowledge in order to survive in an environment.
Hence, we prefer landscapes that enable us to gather knowlegde.
Images of nature comprise 3 components
Continuum from untouched to man-made
Continuum from hands off to intensive management
Continuum from wild to well-kept
images of nature approach 2: Buijs
changing behaviour
1 Moral appeal:
try to act on values
2 Education: try to change attitudes
3 Rewards and penalties: try to change behavior
4 Community management: influence collective norms
Principles for behavioural change:
Simple and liberal connotative definition:
Sense of place is the total set of meanings a person assigns to a place
How do we get from a virtually blank mind to a mind loaded with cognitions and emotions related to the enviroment?
How does culture influence human-environment interactions and how do groups differ?
And:
Nature and health, restoration, and children by Agnes van den Berg
Study for exam:
1 all lectures
2 literature
exam format
E.g. Who formulated the preference matrix?
E.g. Name three predictors of landscape preference according to the preference matrix
E.g. According to the adaptive approach, humans have innate landscape preferences. Why do we have innate preferences?
E.g. In recent debates concerning livestock in the Netherlands, many people indicate they would like to see more cows in meadows, instead of in stables. Why could people like to see cows in meadows?
overview
introduction to environmental psychology
images of nature
Human dimensions of wildlife part 1: cognitions
Sense of Place
Example
joining hunting association
joining party for animal rally
consequences
pro-hunting
anti-hunting
theoretical approaches
what is environmental psychology?
humans are free to consume animals
animals are free to walk around
history of human-nature relationships
Wildlife tourism
freedom
it affects people:
nature as enemy
mastery over nature
After Middle Ages:
Nature and health
prehistoric times, before the advent of agriculture
pets
definition of nature
cognitive
part of nature
theory: cognitive hierarchy
beliefs about nature
characteristics of environmental psychology
image of nature
values
sense of place
See chapter 1 in: Bell, PA, Greene, TC, Fischer, JD, Baum, AB (1996) Environmental Psychology. Fort Worth etc: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.
zoos
normative
Psychology
1 Real life situations
extinction rates 1000 times higher
value orientations
10.000 years ago:
3 Problem-oriented
social identity
development of new nature
personal identity
Roles of animals in our lives
Generic psychology uses seperate stimuli, EP studies naturalistic environments
Growing consensus that mastery comes to an end, e.g.:
2 Two directions
relevance of the concept of sense of place
now?
unprecedented in history
4 Variety of methods
Mass media
meanwhile:
nature conservation profession is changing
Leisure near home
is
not:
psychology is:
place meanings
multiple meanings of landscape (environment/nature)
experts
communication
public informed management
cf. postmodern society
beliefs about intervention
attitudes towards intervention
Wildlife Value Orientation
?
research field characterized by:
basics of perception
perception is the experience of the outer world in a meaningful way
measurement and findings
outline of this course
See Chapter 2 in: Jacobs, MH (2006) The production of mindscapes: A comprehensive theory of landscape experience. Wageningen: Wageningen University
Social issues
consequences
proximity
E.g.: wolves are endangered species
E.g.:
Week 1 Introduction and landscape perception
Week 2 Nature, health, and well being - Agnes van den Berg
Week 3 Images of nature and environmental attitudes
Week 4 Human dimensions of wildlife
Week 5 Sense of place
Week 6 Consequences and summary
Are more urbanized
similarity
closure
E.g.: connecting Oostvaardersplassen with Veluwe
Solving social issues:
what are images of nature?
E.g.: building a dike for herbivores to hide for wind
columns
rows
surroundedness
Exam: 21 April - study all lectures and all literature
Activities: reading, attending lectures, in-class research
Contact: maarten.jacobs@wur.nl
E.g.: shooting weak herbivores to prevent suffering
Does EP not study the truth?
Yes, but the truth about mind, not about landscape
Consequences
exam preparation
culture and development
landscape experience and preferences
environmental attitudes and behaviour
Human dimensions of wildlife part 2: emotions
high arousal
as societies become more affluent ...
visual quality assessment
... landscapes change rapidly ...
theory and measurement: TOP
Bodily reactions, e.g:
context
Children and the development of human-environment relationships
Importance of emotions
TOM =
expert-approach
e.g. 1 You can't create enviromental attitudes in young children
e.g. 2 Sense of place gets increasingly complex and changes in nature over the years
But not liked by foreign tourists at all
E.g. polder landscapes often indicated as special by landscape architects, but also by tourism industry: most frequent landscape picture in tourist brochures
... people have more financial and psychological freedom to care for non-subsistance issues, such as aesthetics and identity.
Most famous attitude theory:
E.g.
It is highly unlikely you will continue contemplating a maths problem if a lion scares you
= mental disposition to favour or disfavour an object/person/situation/event with some degree
Emotions towards wildlife
1 determining attitude object
Components of emotions
Is oftentimes more difficult than people think
scared of lion
avoidance
4 data analysis
strength * evaluation for each item
add all scores to calculated attitude
2 eliciting relevant beliefs
E.g. Snakes are quickly detected, and even quicker by people with snake phobia
semi-structured interviews
survival
"What do you see as the advantages of creating room for rivers?"
"What do you see as the disadvantages of creating room for rivers?"
"How much do you agree or disagree with creating room for rivers?"
However, blind empirical research is nuts
3 questionnaire
Select the salient modal beliefs
Measure belief strength and evaluation
Components
Theory is needed to guide systematic research
Possible criticism on both arousal theory and preference matrix:
In 1970s, new ideas about environment and ecology began to boil down from conservation and scientific communities to general public
Berlyne
Working of emotions
trends in society
Not relevant
Reading:
hedoniv value
arousal level
VBN
Review questions: