Environmental psychology is an interdisciplinary field that focuses on the interplay between individuals and their surroundings including natural environments, social settings, built environments, learning environments, and informational environments. This definition is taken from: Wikipedia, Environmental Psychology
Discuss briefly, citing three actual examples, how our surroundings can influence our actions and emotions. Provide references and bibliography (this is not an opinion piece.) 24 marks.
Environmental psychology is a field within psychology which focuses on cognition, perception, learning, and social psychology. It seeks to understand the interplay between the natural and human-made world and the effects it has on human emotion and behavior.
Humans are auditory creatures. This mean that they responding to important sounds such as sirens or the voice someone they care about. Sound is used to to negotiate in the current society. Individuals find it difficult to interpret a conversation without hearing the the tone of voice an individual has in their voice. Sounds just like other stimuli have the ability to be problematic also. Certain forms of sound stimulation can produce deficits in performance and negative emotional states in people. Sound that is interpreted as unnecessary and irritating by a person is referred to “ noise “ by environmental psychologists. Noise to one person may be a stimulation that another finds enjoyable. by a given individual at a particular time is referred to as “noise” by environmental psychologists. An example of this would be if you are living in an apartment complex and your neighbor on a sunday night has friends over and they are playing loud music. This constitutes to be highly eternining for those people. It could prove to be disruptive for you as you are studying for a Physics exam that is scheduled for the Monday morning.
The disruptive nature of noise as an environmental variable can be determined from the nature of the sound. Along with the setting of the sound and the people who are listening to it. This can be shown that particularly loud sounds, similar to those in conceters and planes taking off, have the ability to lead to hearing loss, high blood pressure, and decreased academic performance. This is with prolonged exposure. A great deal of ambient noise with we experience is due to technology and indriulization. This is one of the reasons many communities have passed noise ordinances in the hopes of reducing noise at designated times in the day. This leads us to conclude that auditory stimuli has effects on humans.
Humans are social species. This means that a part of our environment is made up of other people. A great deal of our energy is spent thinking, feeling, and doing revolves around some aspect of our social world. The majority of people spend a great deal of their time interaction with others. This is done in a varying of ways in which other people support, love, frustrate and disappoint others in their lives. There is a multitude of variables to be explored regarding human interaction. These facts are conceptualised through our own perceptions and experiences. An interest of environmental psychologists is the impact of social interactions on human behavior. Humans have evolved form initially relatively small and isolated groups of hunter-gatherers. Large urban centers which are the modern reality of our civilization with millions upon millions of people showcase a recent change in our living conditions. The industrialized world is an unintentional experiment, in that it has created the conditions for assessing the effects of crowding on human behavior. We’ve known for some time that increased social density, defined as the number of organisms occupying a specific physical space, leads to a number of pathological conditions in nonhuman animals. There are many negative consequences of crowding those include including increases in physiological arousal, such as increases in blood pressure and secretion of stress hormones. In addition, severe disruptions in mating, reproductive, and parenting behaviors have been observed. Indeed, reduced reproductive rates in the wild may be an adaptive response to increases in social density, as such conditions ordinarily entail corresponding reductions in the natural resources needed to survive and raise offspring. An example of population density is in and university residence. This has allowed us to see that crowding will produce negative emotional reactions, along with increased arousal and if it is possible social withdrawal. But university rooms the effects of this crowding are much more moderate this is due to the layout and freedom these individuals have. Where in passion images it is more notable as they do not have personal control over their living arrangements and conditions.
Humans like other animals at times encounter life-threatening changes in their surrounding environment this extremely impacts their ability to cope and function. Examples of cases where this could happen are natural disasters, such as floods, fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes, and disasters stemming from human technology. Environmental psychologists have focused a great deal of attention on how people perceive the risks of such events including their probability of occurrence and potential coping responses to such threats. The most consistent finding is that people frequently underestimate the likelihood or probability of such events will affect them in a personal manner. If there was to be a university student who inhabits a poorly designed dormitories on a campus identified to be at considerable risk of a major earthquake nevertheless perceived themselves to be safe and unlikely victims of such a hazard. Perhaps even more surprising is the finding that people who have actually experienced natural disasters often assume that because they’ve already encountered the hazard, there is essentially no chance of being exposed to the threat in the future. This assumption is wrong and indicates a common misunderstanding of probability.
Work Cited :
http://www.psychology4all.com/environmentalpsychology.htm
https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-22/edition-2/roots-and-branches-environmental-psychology
http://psychapprentice.weebly.com/psychology-lexicon/environmental-psychology
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/83771/De_Young_(1999)_Environmental_psychology,_EES_(223-224).pdf;jsessionid=E5A59C342CA6C329CE943D4085A4D663?sequence=1
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/mind-wandering/201508/does-where-you-live-make-you-who-you-are
http://www.apa.org/action/science/environment/index.aspx