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1. Theories of Environmental
Psychology

2. When solving problems involving human-environment
interactions, it is essential to:have a model of human nature
that predicts the conditions under which humans will behave
in a decent and creative manner.
We can use theories in order make assumptions on
general human behaviour.
One of the most important functions of a theory is: to
provide generalizations that give order and meaning to
specific observations about person-environment
relations.

3. Barker’s Ecological Theory
 The first significant findings in environmental psychology can be
traced back to researcher Roger Barker, who founded his
research station in Kansas in 1947, and ran it for several
decades.
 From detailed field observations he developed the theory that
social settings influence behavior.
 In a store, people assume their roles as customers; in school and
church, proper behavior is somehow coded in the place.
 Barker spent his career expanding on what he called ecological
psychology, identifying these behavior settings.
 The "behavior setting" remains a valid principle which receives
serious attention.

4. Behavioral Architecture
- provides settings for certain activities (sports, education, etc.)
- It reminds people of what certain activities are, (eating, studying, etc.)
- It signifies power, status, or privacy ( wealth, richness, residential)
- It expresses and supports beliefs (mosques, churches).
- It communicates information (the time a building was built, the climate, thickness of the
walls, etc.)
- It helps establish individual or group identity (Home vs. classroom, studios)
- And it encodes value systems (Different types of buildings in different cultures)
- Designers are liable of designing spaces in respect to their prospective users. It is their
responsibility to enable users where they are and how they can reach or use the services
provided.
- Designers need to communicate some messages, in order to be able to do this they need to
understand how people perceive their surroundings.

5. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
 Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology that Abraham Maslow
proposed in 1943 ( A Theory of Human Motivation).
 Maslow has a theory of motivation based on needs that people have. He
arranges them in order of importance; that is, he believes you must fulfill the
lower needs before achieving a higher one. If you achieve something near the
top first, happiness will not last; but if you climb up the pyramid of needs, you
will achieve great satisfaction with life.
 Maslow studied exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt,
and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that:
 "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple
psychology and a cripple philosophy."
 Maslow also studied the healthiest one percent of the college student
population.

6. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is often depicted as a
pyramid consisting of five levels:
 The four lower levels are Deficiency needs that are grouped together as
being associated with Physiological needs, while the top level is termed as
Growth needs associated with Psychological needs.
 DEFICIENCY NEEDS PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS
 GROWTH NEEDS PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS
 Deficiency needs must be met first. Once these are met, seeking to satisfy
growth needs drives personal growth. The higher needs in this hierarchy only
come into focus when the lower needs in the pyramid are satisfied.

7. Deficiency
needs
Growth
needs

8. Deficiency needs
The first four layers of the pyramid are what Maslow called
"deficiency needs" or "D-needs": the individual does not
feel anything if they are met, but feels anxious if they are
not met.
The deficiency needs are:
Physiological,
Safety needs,
Love/Belonging, and
Esteem needs.

9. Physiological needs
 These are the basic animal needs for such things as air, water,
food, warmth, sex, sleep and other body needs.
 When these are not satisfied we may feel sickness, irritation, pain,
discomfort, etc. These feelings motivate us to alleviate them as soon
as possible to establish homeostasis. Once they are alleviated, we
may think about other things.
 For example if a person is hungry or thirsty or his body is chemically
unbalanced, all of his energies turn toward remedying these
deficiencies, and other needs remain inactive.

10. The physiological needs of the [organism] (those enabling
[homeostasis]) take first precedence.
 The physiological needs consist mainly of:
Eating
Drinking
Sleeping
Excretion
Sex
Warmth
 If some needs are not fulfilled, a human's
physiological needs take the highest priority.
Physiological needs can control thoughts and
behaviors, and can cause people to feel
sickness, pain, and discomfort.

11. Safety needs
 With his physical needs relatively satisfied, the individual's safety needs take over and dominate his
behavior.
 Safety needs are:
 man's yearning for a predictable, orderly world in which injustice and inconsistency are under control,
 the familiar frequent, and
 the unfamiliar rare.
 In the world of work, these safety needs manifest themselves in such things as a preference for
job security, grievance procedures for protecting the individual from unilateral authority, savings
accounts, insurance policies, and the like.
 Safety needs include:
 Personal security from crime
 Financial security
 Health and well-being
 Safety net against accidents/illness and the adverse impacts

12. Love/Belonging/Social needs
 After physiological and safety needs are fulfilled, the third layer of human needs is social. This
psychological aspect of Maslow's hierarchy involves emotionally-based relationships in general,
such as:
 friendship
 sexual intimacy
 having a supportive and communicative family
 Humans need to feel a sense of belonging and acceptance, whether it comes from a large social
group (such as clubs, office culture, religious groups, professional organizations, sports teams,
gangs) or small social connections (family members, intimate partners, mentors, close colleagues,
confidants).
 They need to love and be loved (sexually and non-sexually) by others. In the absence of these
elements, many people become susceptible to loneliness, social anxiety, and depression.
 This need for belonging can sometimes overcome the physiological and security needs, depending
on the strength of the peer pressure. e.g. an anorexic ignores the need to eat and the security of
health for a feeling of belonging.

13. Esteem needs
 All humans have a need to be respected, to have self-esteem, self-respect, and to respect others.
People need to engage themselves to gain recognition and have an activity or activities that give
the person a sense of contribution, to feel accepted and self-valued, be it in a profession or a
hobby. Imbalances at this level can result in low self-esteem, inferiority complexes.
 People with low self-esteem especially need respect from others. They may seek fame or glory,
which again depends on others.
 However, confidence, competence and achievement only need one person and everyone else is
inconsequential to one's own success.
 It may be noted, however, that many people with low self-esteem will not be able to improve their
view of themselves simply by receiving fame, respect, and glory externally, but must first accept
themselves internally. Psychological imbalances such as depression can also prevent one from
obtaining self-esteem on both levels.

14. Growth needs
 Though the deficiency needs may be seen as "basic", and can be met and neutralized; self-
actualization and transcendence are "being" or "growth needs" (also termed "B-needs"), i.e.
they are enduring motivations or drivers of behavior.
 Cognitive needs
 Maslow believed that humans have the need to increase their intelligence and thereby chase
knowledge.
 Cognitive needs is the expression of the natural human need to learn, explore, discover and
create to get a better understanding of the world around them.
 Aesthetic needs
 Based on Maslow's beliefs, humans need beautiful imagery or something new and
aesthetically pleasing to continue up towards Self-Actualization.
 Humans need to refresh themselves in the presence and beauty of nature while carefully
absorbing and observing their surroundings to extract the beauty that the world has to offer.

15. Self-actualization
 Self-actualization — a concept Maslow attributed to Kurt Goldstein, one of his mentors — is the
instinctual need of humans to make the most of their abilities and to strive to be the best they can.
 Maslow writes the following of self-actualizing people:
 They embrace the facts and realities of the world (including themselves) rather than denying or
avoiding them.
 They are spontaneous in their ideas and actions.
 They are creative.
 They are interested in solving problems; this often includes the problems of others. Solving these
problems is often a key focus in their lives.
 They feel a closeness to other people, and generally appreciate life.
 They have a system of morality that is fully internalized and independent of external authority.
 They have discernment and are able to view all things in an objective manner.

16. Other Theories and Approaches
 Stimulation Theories conceptualize the environment as a source
of sensory information. The stimulation includes:
 Simple stimuli such as light, color, sound, noise, heat and cold,
and,
 Complex stimuli such as buildings, streets, outdoor settings, and
other people.
 Amount of stimulation includes dimensions such as intensity,
duration, frequency, and number of sources.
 Meaning of stimulation refers to each person’s integration and
interpretation of the stimulus information.

17. Stimulation based theories
 Adaptation-level Theory: Individuals adapt to certain levels of
stimulation in certain contexts, no particular amount of stimulation
is good for everyone.
 Arousel Theories: These are based on the assumption that the
form and content of a broad range of our behavior and experience
are related to how physiologically aroused we are.
 Overload Theory: concentrates on the effects of too much
stimulation (noise, heat, cold, crowding).
 Restricted Environmental Stimulation: Too little stimulation
causes problems in some circumstances, and has positive effects
in others such as easy cognitive tasks.

18. Stress and environment
 Stress: is another important concept. When environmental
stimulation exceeds an individuals adaptive resources, behavioral
and health effects occur.
 Stressors include: air pollution, hospitals, offices, extreme
temperatures, traffic, noise, etc.
 Acute stressors: negative, intense, short impacts,
 Ambient stressors: negative, chronic, global conditions remaining in
the background,
 Daily hassles: negative, non-urgent.

19. Control Theories:
 How much control we have over environmental stimulation is
very important. We have more control at home, and less control
outdoors such as in traffic jams.
 Personal Control: accounts for the effects of being able or
unable to influence stimulation.
 Psychological reactance: is a result of lack of control.
 Learned helplessness: is the conviction that nothing can
change or overcome an unpleasant or painful situation.
 In everyday social transactions, we attempt to achieve personal
control through boundary regulation mechanisms, such as
personal space and territoriality

20. Behavior-Setting Theory
 This is a concept based on Barker’s ecological psychology. It tends to explain
person-environment relations in terms of the settings, social features, such
as rules, customs, and typical activities, and its physical features.
 Consistent, prescribed patterns of behavior called programs are found in
many places. When you enter a certain space you are likely to see reccurrent
activities, regularly carried out by persons holding specific roles. For
example, every football game has two teams who run, pass the ball and
score, and a referee. Uniformity of actions of certain roles is important.

21. Integral Theories:
 A theory that searchs for a model that captures the full complexity of everyday
person-environment relations.
Interactionism: People & environment are seperate entities but are in
continous interaction.
Transactionism: Person & env. are inclusive, one defines the other.
Organismic: Dynamic interplay of social and individual factors. Person is
affected by social env. And the society.
 The Operant Approach: Its goal is to modify the behavior of individuals whose
behavior is contributing to some environmental problem. Problematic behaviors
are identified, appropriate positive reinforcements are delivered when individuals
engage in beneficial behavior. For example recycling, littering, energy waste.

22. Environment-centered Approaches
 These approaches focus on the state or quality of the
environment without ignoring people. The approach may contrast
instrumental versus spiritual views of the environment.
Should the environment be used to support human goals such
as productivity, or is it a context in which human values are
cultivated?
We receive information from the environment all through our
lives, this affects our behaviors physically and psychologically as
the brain and the body give reactions to the stimuli from the
environment. These processes are concerned with perception,
cognition, and cognitive maps.

23. Some related concepts
 Perception: The gathering of information through our senses such as seeing,
hearing, touching, etc. in order to understand the environment. It is how we make
sense of the stimuli around us. The visual field is the area where objects are visually
perceived, and it is limited with our ability to perceive the visual characteristics of
the environment. We perceive motion, brightness, color and form.
 The environment is filled with various objects that we scan and glance at. This
process takes only a few seconds. Only a very small amount of written items can be
read in a glance. So, information should be grouped and limited.
 Cognition; It is the processing of the information acquired by perception through
storing, organizing and recalling.
 Spatial cognition is the way we acquire, store, and recall information about
location, distances, and arrangements in the physical environment.
 Environmental Cognition is the awareness, impressions, information, images, and
beliefs that people have about environments.