User:Arleenicolee/Environmental psychology

Article Draft User:Arleenicolee/Environmental psychology

Environmental psychology is a branch of psychology that explores the relationship between humans and the external world. It examines the way in which the natural environment and our built environments shape us as individuals. Environmental Psychology emphasizes how humans change the environment and how the environment changes humans' experiences and behaviors. The field defines the term environment broadly, encompassing natural environments, social settings, built environments, learning environments, and informational environments. According to an article on APA Psychnet, environmental psychology is when a person thinks of a plan, travels to a certain place, and follows through with the plan throughout their behavior.

Personal Space and Territory:

"Get out of my personal space"

Proxemics is known as the study of human space. It also studies the effects that population has on human behavior, communication, and social interaction. Having an area of personal territory in a public space, e.g., at the office, is a key feature of many architectural designs. Having such a 'defensible space' can reduce the negative effects of crowding in urban environments. The term, coined by John B. Calhoun in 1947, is the result of multiple environmental experiments conducted on rats. Originally beginning as an experiment to measure how many rats could be accommodated in a given space, it expanded into determining how rats, given the proper food, shelter and bedding would behave under a confined environment.

Under these circumstances, the males became aggressive, some exclusively homosexual. Others became pansexual and hypersexual, seeking every chance to mount any rat they encountered. As a result, mating behaviors were upset with an increase in infant mortalities. With parents failing to provide proper nests, thoughtlessly ditching their young and even attacking them, infant mortality rose as high as 96% in certain sections. Calhoun published the results as "Population Density and Social Pathology" in a 1962 edition of Scientific American.

Creating barriers and customizing the space are ways of creating personal space, e.g., using pictures of one's family in an office setting. This increases cognitive control as one sees oneself as having control over the competitors to the personal space and therefore able to control the level of density and crowding in the space. Personal space can be both good and bad. It is good when it is used as stated above. Creating "personal space" in an office or work setting can make one feel more comfortable about being at work. Personal space can be bad when someone is in your personal space. In the image to the right, one person is mad at the other person because she is invading her personal space by laying on her.

System Oriented:

The systems-oriented approach to experimenting is applied to individuals or people that are a part of communities, groups, and organizations. These communities, groups, and organizations are systems in homeostasis. Homeostasis is known as the "state of steady conditions within a system." Homeostasis is what contains body temperature and the balance of fluids. This approach particularly examines group interaction, as opposed to an individual's interaction and it emphasizes on factors of social integration. In the laboratory, experiments focus on cause and effect processes within human nature.

Nature Restoration:

Environmental health shows the effects people have on the environment as well as the effects the environment has on people. From early studies showing that patients with a view of nature from their hospital recovered faster than patients with a window view of a brick wall, how, why, and to which extent nature has mental and physical restorative properties has been a central branch of the field. Although the positive effects of nature have been established, the theoretical underpinning of why it is restorative is still discussed. The most cited theory is the Attention Restoration Theory, which claims nature is a “soft fascination” which restores the ability to direct attention. It is said that being in nature can reduce stress. Studies show that it can reduce anger, improve mood, and even lower ones blood pressure. Secondly, Stress reduction theory claims that because humans have evolved in nature, this type of environment is relaxing, and more adjusted to the senses. Newer theoretical work includes the Conditioned Restoration Theory, which suggests a two-step process. The first step involves associating nature with relaxation, and the second step involves retrieving the same relaxation when presented with an associated stimulus.

Place Attachment:

Main article: Place attachment

According to the book, "Place Attachment", place attachment is a "complex phenomenon that incorporates people-place bonding" Many different perceptions of the bond between people and places have been hypothesized and studied. The most widespread terms include place attachment and sense of place. One consistent thread woven throughout most recent research on place attachment deals with the importance of the amount of time spent at a certain place (the length of association with a place). While both researchers and writers have made the case that time and experience in a place are important for deepening the meanings and emotional ties central to the person-place relationship, little in-depth research has studied these factors and their role in forging this connection.

Place attachment is defined as one's emotional or affective ties to a place, and is generally thought to be the result of a long-term connection with a certain environment. This is different from a simple aesthetic response such as saying a certain place is special because it is beautiful. For example, one can have an emotional response to a beautiful (or ugly) landscape or place, but this response may sometimes be shallow and fleeting. This distinction is one that Schroeder labeled "meaning versus preference". According to Schroeder the definition of "meaning" is "the thoughts, feelings, memories and interpretations evoked by a landscape"; whereas "preference" is "the degree of liking for one landscape compared to another". For a deeper and lasting emotional attachment to develop (Or in Schroeder's terms, for it to have meaning) an enduring relationship with a place is usually a critical factor. Chigbu carried out a rural study of place-attachment using a qualitative approach to check its impact on a community, Uturu (in Nigeria), and found that it has a direct relationship to the level of community development.

Natural Environment research findings:

Environmental psychology research has observed various concepts relating to humans' innate connection to natural environments which begins in early childhood. One study shows that fostering children's connectedness to nature will, in turn, create habitual pro-ecological behaviors in time. Exposure to natural environment may lead to a positive psychological well-being and form positive attitudes and behavior towards nature. Connectedness to nature has shown to be a huge contributor to predicting people's general pro-ecological and pro-social behaviors. Connectedness to nature has also been shown to benefit well-being, happiness, and general satisfaction. "Nature-deficit disorder" has recently been coined to explain the lack of connectedness to nature due to a lack of consciousness identification and nature disconnect. Further research is required to make definitive claims about the effects of connectedness to nature.

Environmental Psychologist:

Environmental psychologists are the ones who study the relationship between human behavior and the environment that surrounds them. These psychologist study any type of environment, even the ones who are "built" such as peoples homes. They study how we as humans behave and interact in the world. As of May of 2020, the annual salary of an environmental psychologist is $82,180. The two sub-disciplines are conservation psychology and ecopsychology. Conservation Psychology is the study of the development of attitudes in the environment. Ecopsychology is close to the same as conservation psychology, but it focuses on the ties of environmental and societal degradation.

Instructor feedback:

The first thing I noticed about your article was the proposed organization. I realized when I navigated to the published Wikipedia article that titles such as “Nature restoration” were very far away from the section titled “Systems Oriented”. I found this confusing when reviewing your sandbox as I wasn’t sure of the overall flow of the article. I would suggest that you bring over more of the article you plan to edit allowing the reviewer to see how the proposed edits fit with the current published article. The statement “Environmental health shows the affects people have on the environment as well as the affects the environment has on people.”  sses the term affect where I believe you should be using the term “effect”. Otherwise, I think this is a nice opener to the section that is appropriately sourced with peer-reviewed secondary literature. Your second statement adds to the preceding statement about “Attention Restoration Theory” and while your source is a website, it does support the claim. There is a minor typo at the end (additional space prior to the bracketed citation).

Contributions to the “System Oriented” section are appropriate, though the citation was again for a website (I would encourage peer-reviewed secondary literature be included). There does appear to be a typo in the following quote “Homeostasis is what contains body temperature and the balance of fluids. Homeostasis This “. The word Homeostasis seems to be alone and not contribution to the sentence that follows?

Your initial statement about Proxemics should be cited. I believe this is the logical place to hyperlink out to another, existing Wikipedia article, but that hyperlink is now at the end of these statements and not part of a grammatical sentence “Proxemics Having an”. Again, the term effects and affects look interchanged in this section. Nice introduction of new terminology to the article! I am not a fan of using the transitional phrase, “on the other hand” unless the preceding statement states “on the one hand”. The phrase “someone is all up in your personal space” is not scientific or appropriate for this article and should be removed. The image is clever, but have you ensured that you are adhering to the platform expectations? Based on my read of the instructions, I do not believe you are. People can be included only if they are “in public places”. Also, you need to reword the phrase referencing the image as you cannot use phrases like “my friend” in this type of article. This is the area of the article that you have worked on to date that needs the most additional work. What you have written needs additional referencing.

Overall, you are off to a good start, but I still urge you to review the rubric. Additional edits will need to be made in order for this work to be eligible for full credit. You will want 2-3 peer-reviewed secondary reviews referenced with your contributions and you will want to ensure that all additions requiring a citation have them.

Review Reply:

Mrs. Rahn,

Thank you so much for your review on my article. Everything you told me was extremely helpful and is going to help me a lot when it comes to bettering my sandbox edit. Although I do know the difference between affects and effects, I realize sometimes it is hard to distinguish between the two. It is easy to find information about environmental psychology, but it is hard to find peer reviewed articles. I now know to only use peer reviewed articles. I went through and edited everything regarding your review, the only thing I have not done yet is find the peer reviewed articles. I will be spending today doing that. That picture that I posted is at our work which we had permission to do, but if that is still not allowed I will delete it. Thank you again for your amazing feedback. I look forward to bettering my article.

--~~~~arleenicolee