Environmental disasters
Environmental disasters have been happening for longer than humans have existed. Meteorites, volcanos and shifts on earths plates (earthquakes) are problems that we can be faced with anytime in our lives.
There is also the problem of man-caused-environmental-disasters conserning global warming. This is caused when greenhouse gases prevent heat escaping from Earth.
A draft report by many of the world's leading climatologists says emissions of greenhouse gases could rise hugely over the next 100 years.
The report, which comes from the highly influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), envisages one scenario in which carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at the end of the next century are five times what they are today.
This would almost certainly have dire consequences for the Earth's climate system, with much higher global temperatures and sea levels. Such a scenario would inevitably cause social and economic upheaval as populations would migrate from flooded coastal communities.
Higher temperatures could lead to melting in the polar regions and mass death of forests would be just some of the problems global warming will lead. This mass death of forests, with the trees releasing the CO2 they had stored up, would add to global warming instead of restraining it.
It would be likely to make the eventual collapse of the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica inevitable. That, in turn, could trigger a significant global sea-level rise (by around 70 meters), which would lead to the loss of the huge and densely-populated coastal areas.
Other global changes are already occuring like the El Nino, which together with its less-understood sister phenomenon, La Nina, causes complex fluctuations in atmospheric pressure and surface temperatures across the tropical Pacific.
This changes weather patterns across the globe. Thanks to global warming, El Nino is occurring more and more often. In 1998 it brought the western hemisphere's worst storm for two hundred years: Hurricane Mitch. An entire year's rainfall hit Central America in a few hours. Ten thousand were killed.
From Africa to Australia there were droughts, and in Indonesia forests burned and smog blotted out the sun for weeks. In the Asian sub-continent, by contrast, there was severe flooding.
Shortly before Mitch struck, there were four hurricanes in the Atlantic at once, for the first time this century.
Now The Maldives are threatened by global warming. Coral reefs in there have been destroyed thanks to an increase of 1 degree Celsius during the last El Nino.
Many reefs are not affected, and there are a few signs of regrowth; but the Maldives are in serious danger.
POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is a psychiatric disorder that can occur following the experience or witnessing of life-threatening events such as military combat, natural disasters, terrorist incidents, serious accidents, or violent personal assaults like rape. People who suffer from PTSD often relive the experience through nightmares and flashbacks, have difficulty sleeping, and feel detached or estranged, and these symptoms can be severe enough and last long enough to significantly impair the person’s daily life.
PTSD is marked by clear biological changes as well as psychological symptoms. PTSD is complicated by the fact that it frequently occurs in conjunction with related disorders such as depression, substance abuse, problems of memory and cognition, and other problems of physical and mental health. The disorder is also associated with impairment of the person’s ability to function in social or family life, including occupational instability, marital problems and divorces, family discord, and difficulties in parenting.
PTSD is not a new disorder. There are written accounts of similar symptoms that go back to ancient times, and there is clear documentation in the historical medical literature starting with the Civil War, where a PTSD-like disorder was known as "Da Costa’s Syndrome." There are particularly good descriptions of post-traumatic stress symptoms in the medical literature on combat veterans of World War II and on Holocaust survivors.
Most people who are exposed to a traumatic, stressful event experience some of the symptoms of PTSD in the days and weeks following exposure. Available data suggest that about 8% of men and 20% of women go on to develop PTSD, and roughly 30% of these individuals develop a chronic form that persists throughout their lifetimes.
The course of chronic PTSD usually involves periods of symptom increase followed by remission or decrease, although for some individuals symptoms may be unremitting and severe. Some older veterans who report a lifetime of only mild symptoms have experienced significant increases following retirement, severe medical illness in themselves or their spouses, or reminders of their military service such as reunions or media broadcasts of the anniversaries of war events.
An estimated 7.8 percent of Americans will experience PTSD at some point in their lives, with women (10.4%) twice as likely as men (5%) to have PTSD. About 3.6 percent of U.S. adults ages 18 to 54 (5.2 million people) have PTSD during the course of a given year. This represents a small proportion of those who have experienced a traumatic event at some point in their lives, for 60.7% of men and 51.2% of women reported at least one traumatic event. The traumatic events most often associated with PTSD are: for men: rape, combat exposure, childhood neglect, and childhood physical abuse. For women: rape, sexual molestation, physical attack, being threatened with a weapon, and childhood physical abuse.
About 30 percent of the men and women who have spent time in war zones experience PTSD. An additional 20 to 25 percent have had partial PTSD at some point in their lives. Thus more than half of all male Vietnam veterans and almost half of all female Vietnam veterans have experienced "clinically serious stress reaction symptoms." PTSD has also been detected among veterans of the Gulf War, with some estimates running as high as 8 percent.
PTSD is associated with a number of distinctive neurobiological and physiological changes. PTSD may be associated with stable neurobiological alterations in both the central and autonomic nervous systems, such as altered brainwave activity, decreased volume of the hippocampus, and abnormal activation of the amygdala. Both of these brain structures are involved in the processing and integration of memory . The amygdala has also been found to be involved in coordinating the body's fear response.
Psychophysiological alterations associated with PTSD include hyperarousal of the sympathetic nervous system, increased sensitivity of the startle reflex, and sleep abnormalities.
People with PTSD tend to have abnormal levels of key hormones involved in response to stress. Thyroid function seems to be enhanced in people with PTSD. Some studies have shown that cortisol levels are lower than normal and epinephrine and norepinephrine are higher than normal. People with PTSD also continue to produce higher than normal levels of natural opiates after the trauma has passed. An important finding is that the neurohormonal changes seen in PTSD are distinct from, and actually opposite to, those seen in major depression; also, the distinctive profile associated with PTSD is seen in individuals who have both PTSD and depression.
PTSD is associated with increased likelihood of co-occurring psychiatric disorders. In a large-scale study, 88 percent of men and 79 percent of women with PTSD met criteria for another psychiatric disorder. The co-occurring disorders most prevalent for men with PTSD were alcohol abuse or dependence (51.9 percent), major depressive episode (47.9 percent), conduct disorder (43.3 percent), and drug abuse and dependence (34.5 percent). The disorders most frequently comorbid with PTSD among women were major depressive disorder (48.5 percent), simple phobia (29 percent), social phobia (28.4 percent) and alcohol abuse/dependence (27.9 percent).
PTSD also makes a significant impact on psychosocial functioning, independent of comorbid conditions. For instance, Vietnam veterans with PTSD were found to have profound and pervasive problems in their daily lives. This included problems in family and other interpersonal relationships, employment, and involvement with the criminal justice system.
Headaches, gastrointestinal complaints, immune system problems, dizziness, chest pain, or discomfort in other parts of the body are common in people with PTSD. Often, medical doctors treat the symptoms without being aware that they stem from PTSD.
PTSD is treated by a variety of forms of psychotherapy and drug therapy. There is no definitive treatment, and no cure, but some treatments appear to be quite promising, especially cognitive-behavioral therapy, group therapy, and exposure therapy, in which the patient repeatedly relives the frightening experience under controlled conditions to help him or her work throughout the trauma. Studies have also shown that medications help ease associated symptoms of depression and anxiety and help ease sleep. The most widely-used drug treatments for PTSD are the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, such as Prozac and Zoloft. At present, cognitive-behavioral therapy appears to be somewhat more effective than drug therapy, but it would be premature to conclude that drug therapy is less effective overall since drug trials for PTSD are at a very early stage. Drug therapy definitely appears to be highly effective for some individuals and is helpful for many more. Also, the recent findings on the biological changes associated with PTSD have spurred new research into drugs that target these biological changes, which may lead to much increased efficacy.
OTHER COMMON PRIMARY AND SECONDARY EFFECTS OF TRAUMA
Sometimes, when they find themselves suddenly in danger, people are overcome with feelings of fear, helplessness, or horror. These events are called traumatic experiences. Some common traumatic experiences include being physically attacked, being in a serious accident, being in combat, being sexually assaulted, and being in a fire or a disaster like a hurricane or a tornado. After traumatic experiences, people can find themselves having problems that they didn't have before the event.
People who go through traumatic experiences often have symptoms and problems afterwards. How serious the symptoms and problems are depends on many things, including a person's life experiences before the trauma, a person's own natural ability to cope with stress, how serious the trauma was, and what kinds of help and support a person gets from family, friends, and professionals immediately following the trauma.
Because most trauma survivors don't know how trauma usually affects people, they often have trouble understanding what is happening to them. They may think it is their fault that the trauma happened, that they are going crazy, or that there is something wrong with them because other people who were there don't seem to have the same problems. They may turn to drugs or alcohol to make them feel better. They may turn away from friends and family who don't seem to understand. They may not know what they can do to get better.
Trauma survivors commonly continue re-experiencing their traumas. Re-experiencing means that the survivor continues to have the same mental, emotional, and physical experiences that occurred during or just after the trauma. This includes thinking about the trauma, seeing images of the event, feeling agitated, and having physical sensations like those that occurred during the trauma. Trauma survivors find themselves feeling and acting as if the trauma is happening again: feeling as if they are in danger, experiencing panic sensations, wanting to escape, getting angry, thinking about attacking or harming someone else. Because they are anxious and physically agitated, they may have trouble sleeping and trouble concentrating. These experiences are not usually voluntary; the survivor usually can't control them or stop them from happening. Mentally re-experiencing the trauma can include: flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety or fear, anger or aggressive feelings, feeling of danger and so on.
People also can have physical reactions to trauma reminders such as: trouble falling or staying asleep, feeling agitated and constantly on the lookout for danger, getting very startled by loud noises or something or someone coming up on you from behind when you don't expect it, feeling shaky and sweaty, having your heart pound or having trouble breathing.
Because they have these upsetting feelings, trauma survivors often act as if they are in danger again when they get stressed or reminded of their trauma. Although reexperiencing symptoms are unpleasant, they are a sign that the body and mind are actively struggling to cope with the traumatic experience. These symptoms are automatic, learned responses to trauma reminders: trauma has become associated with lots of things so that they remind the person of the trauma and give them feeling that they are in danger again. It is also possible that reexperiencing symptoms are actually part of the mind’s attempt to make sense of what has happened.
Avoidance Symptoms:
Because thinking about the trauma and feeling as if you are in danger is so upsetting, people who have been through traumas want to avoid reminders of trauma. Sometimes they are aware of this and avoid trauma reminders on purpose and sometimes they do it without realizing what they are doing.
Avoiding thinking about trauma or avoiding treatment for your trauma-related problems may keep a person from feeling upset in the short run. But avoiding treatment of continuing trauma symptoms prevents progress on coping with trauma so that people's trauma symptoms don't go away
Secondary symptoms are problems that come about because of having post-traumatic re-experiencing and avoidance symptoms. For example: because a person wants to avoid talking about a trauamatic event that happened, she might get cut off from friends and begin to feel lonely and depressed. As time passes after a traumatic experience, more and more secondary symptoms may develop. Over time, secondary symptoms can become more troubling and disabling than the original re-experiencing and avoidance symptoms.
Associated symptoms are problems that don't come directly from being overwhelmed with fear, but happen because of other things that were going on at the time of the trauma. For example: a person who gets psychologically traumatized in a car accident might also get physically injured and then get depressed because he can't work or leave the house.
Examples of secondary or associated trauma symptoms: deppression, despair and hopelessness, loss of important beliefs, aggressive behavior towards oneself or others, loss of important beliefs, self-blame, guilt, and shame, problems in relationships with people, feeling detached or disconnected from others, getting into arguments and fights with people, less interest or participation in things the person used to like to do, social isolation, problems with identity, feeling permanently damaged, self-esteem problems, physical health symptoms and problems and alcohol and/or drug abuse.
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Environmental disasters
Environmental disasters have been happening for longer than humans have existed. Meteorites, volcanos and shifts on earths plates (earthquakes) are problems that we can be faced with anytime in our lives.
There is also the problem of man-caused-environmental-disasters conserning global warming. This is caused when greenhouse gases prevent heat escaping from Earth.
A draft report by many of the world's leading climatologists says emissions of greenhouse gases could rise hugely over the next 100 years.
The report, which comes from the highly influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), envisages one scenario in which carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at the end of the next century are five times what they are today.
This would almost certainly have dire consequences for the Earth's climate system, with much higher global temperatures and sea levels. Such a scenario would inevitably cause social and economic upheaval as populations would migrate from flooded coastal communities.
Higher temperatures could lead to melting in the polar regions and mass death of forests would be just some of the problems global warming will lead. This mass death of forests, with the trees releasing the CO2 they had stored up, would add to global warming instead of restraining it.
It would be likely to make the eventual collapse of the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica inevitable. That, in turn, could trigger a significant global sea-level rise (by around 70 meters), which would lead to the loss of the huge and densely-populated coastal areas.
Other global changes are already occuring like the El Nino, which together with its less-understood sister phenomenon, La Nina, causes complex fluctuations in atmospheric pressure and surface temperatures across the tropical Pacific.
This changes weather patterns across the globe. Thanks to global warming, El Nino is occurring more and more often. In 1998 it brought the western hemisphere's worst storm for two hundred years: Hurricane Mitch. An entire year's rainfall hit Central America in a few hours. Ten thousand were killed.
From Africa to Australia there were droughts, and in Indonesia forests burned and smog blotted out the sun for weeks. In the Asian sub-continent, by contrast, there was severe flooding.
Shortly before Mitch struck, there were four hurricanes in the Atlantic at once, for the first time this century.
Now The Maldives are threatened by global warming. Coral reefs in there have been destroyed thanks to an increase of 1 degree Celsius during the last El Nino.
Many reefs are not affected, and there are a few signs of regrowth; but the Maldives are in serious danger.
POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is a psychiatric disorder that can occur following the experience or witnessing of life-threatening events such as military combat, natural disasters, terrorist incidents, serious accidents, or violent personal assaults like rape. People who suffer from PTSD often relive the experience through nightmares and flashbacks, have difficulty sleeping, and feel detached or estranged, and these symptoms can be severe enough and last long enough to significantly impair the person’s daily life.
PTSD is marked by clear biological changes as well as psychological symptoms. PTSD is complicated by the fact that it frequently occurs in conjunction with related disorders such as depression, substance abuse, problems of memory and cognition, and other problems of physical and mental health. The disorder is also associated with impairment of the person’s ability to function in social or family life, including occupational instability, marital problems and divorces, family discord, and difficulties in parenting.
PTSD is not a new disorder. There are written accounts of similar symptoms that go back to ancient times, and there is clear documentation in the historical medical literature starting with the Civil War, where a PTSD-like disorder was known as "Da Costa’s Syndrome." There are particularly good descriptions of post-traumatic stress symptoms in the medical literature on combat veterans of World War II and on Holocaust survivors.
Most people who are exposed to a traumatic, stressful event experience some of the symptoms of PTSD in the days and weeks following exposure. Available data suggest that about 8% of men and 20% of women go on to develop PTSD, and roughly 30% of these individuals develop a chronic form that persists throughout their lifetimes.
The course of chronic PTSD usually involves periods of symptom increase followed by remission or decrease, although for some individuals symptoms may be unremitting and severe. Some older veterans who report a lifetime of only mild symptoms have experienced significant increases following retirement, severe medical illness in themselves or their spouses, or reminders of their military service such as reunions or media broadcasts of the anniversaries of war events.
An estimated 7.8 percent of Americans will experience PTSD at some point in their lives, with women (10.4%) twice as likely as men (5%) to have PTSD. About 3.6 percent of U.S. adults ages 18 to 54 (5.2 million people) have PTSD during the course of a given year. This represents a small proportion of those who have experienced a traumatic event at some point in their lives, for 60.7% of men and 51.2% of women reported at least one traumatic event. The traumatic events most often associated with PTSD are: for men: rape, combat exposure, childhood neglect, and childhood physical abuse. For women: rape, sexual molestation, physical attack, being threatened with a weapon, and childhood physical abuse.
About 30 percent of the men and women who have spent time in war zones experience PTSD. An additional 20 to 25 percent have had partial PTSD at some point in their lives. Thus more than half of all male Vietnam veterans and almost half of all female Vietnam veterans have experienced "clinically serious stress reaction symptoms." PTSD has also been detected among veterans of the Gulf War, with some estimates running as high as 8 percent.
PTSD is associated with a number of distinctive neurobiological and physiological changes. PTSD may be associated with stable neurobiological alterations in both the central and autonomic nervous systems, such as altered brainwave activity, decreased volume of the hippocampus, and abnormal activation of the amygdala. Both of these brain structures are involved in the processing and integration of memory . The amygdala has also been found to be involved in coordinating the body's fear response.
Psychophysiological alterations associated with PTSD include hyperarousal of the sympathetic nervous system, increased sensitivity of the startle reflex, and sleep abnormalities.
People with PTSD tend to have abnormal levels of key hormones involved in response to stress. Thyroid function seems to be enhanced in people with PTSD. Some studies have shown that cortisol levels are lower than normal and epinephrine and norepinephrine are higher than normal. People with PTSD also continue to produce higher than normal levels of natural opiates after the trauma has passed. An important finding is that the neurohormonal changes seen in PTSD are distinct from, and actually opposite to, those seen in major depression; also, the distinctive profile associated with PTSD is seen in individuals who have both PTSD and depression.
PTSD is associated with increased likelihood of co-occurring psychiatric disorders. In a large-scale study, 88 percent of men and 79 percent of women with PTSD met criteria for another psychiatric disorder. The co-occurring disorders most prevalent for men with PTSD were alcohol abuse or dependence (51.9 percent), major depressive episode (47.9 percent), conduct disorder (43.3 percent), and drug abuse and dependence (34.5 percent). The disorders most frequently comorbid with PTSD among women were major depressive disorder (48.5 percent), simple phobia (29 percent), social phobia (28.4 percent) and alcohol abuse/dependence (27.9 percent).
PTSD also makes a significant impact on psychosocial functioning, independent of comorbid conditions. For instance, Vietnam veterans with PTSD were found to have profound and pervasive problems in their daily lives. This included problems in family and other interpersonal relationships, employment, and involvement with the criminal justice system.
Headaches, gastrointestinal complaints, immune system problems, dizziness, chest pain, or discomfort in other parts of the body are common in people with PTSD. Often, medical doctors treat the symptoms without being aware that they stem from PTSD.
PTSD is treated by a variety of forms of psychotherapy and drug therapy. There is no definitive treatment, and no cure, but some treatments appear to be quite promising, especially cognitive-behavioral therapy, group therapy, and exposure therapy, in which the patient repeatedly relives the frightening experience under controlled conditions to help him or her work throughout the trauma. Studies have also shown that medications help ease associated symptoms of depression and anxiety and help ease sleep. The most widely-used drug treatments for PTSD are the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, such as Prozac and Zoloft. At present, cognitive-behavioral therapy appears to be somewhat more effective than drug therapy, but it would be premature to conclude that drug therapy is less effective overall since drug trials for PTSD are at a very early stage. Drug therapy definitely appears to be highly effective for some individuals and is helpful for many more. Also, the recent findings on the biological changes associated with PTSD have spurred new research into drugs that target these biological changes, which may lead to much increased efficacy.
OTHER COMMON PRIMARY AND SECONDARY EFFECTS OF TRAUMA
Sometimes, when they find themselves suddenly in danger, people are overcome with feelings of fear, helplessness, or horror. These events are called traumatic experiences. Some common traumatic experiences include being physically attacked, being in a serious accident, being in combat, being sexually assaulted, and being in a fire or a disaster like a hurricane or a tornado. After traumatic experiences, people can find themselves having problems that they didn't have before the event.
People who go through traumatic experiences often have symptoms and problems afterwards. How serious the symptoms and problems are depends on many things, including a person's life experiences before the trauma, a person's own natural ability to cope with stress, how serious the trauma was, and what kinds of help and support a person gets from family, friends, and professionals immediately following the trauma.
Because most trauma survivors don't know how trauma usually affects people, they often have trouble understanding what is happening to them. They may think it is their fault that the trauma happened, that they are going crazy, or that there is something wrong with them because other people who were there don't seem to have the same problems. They may turn to drugs or alcohol to make them feel better. They may turn away from friends and family who don't seem to understand. They may not know what they can do to get better.
Trauma survivors commonly continue re-experiencing their traumas. Re-experiencing means that the survivor continues to have the same mental, emotional, and physical experiences that occurred during or just after the trauma. This includes thinking about the trauma, seeing images of the event, feeling agitated, and having physical sensations like those that occurred during the trauma. Trauma survivors find themselves feeling and acting as if the trauma is happening again: feeling as if they are in danger, experiencing panic sensations, wanting to escape, getting angry, thinking about attacking or harming someone else. Because they are anxious and physically agitated, they may have trouble sleeping and trouble concentrating. These experiences are not usually voluntary; the survivor usually can't control them or stop them from happening. Mentally re-experiencing the trauma can include: flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety or fear, anger or aggressive feelings, feeling of danger and so on.
People also can have physical reactions to trauma reminders such as: trouble falling or staying asleep, feeling agitated and constantly on the lookout for danger, getting very startled by loud noises or something or someone coming up on you from behind when you don't expect it, feeling shaky and sweaty, having your heart pound or having trouble breathing.
Because they have these upsetting feelings, trauma survivors often act as if they are in danger again when they get stressed or reminded of their trauma. Although reexperiencing symptoms are unpleasant, they are a sign that the body and mind are actively struggling to cope with the traumatic experience. These symptoms are automatic, learned responses to trauma reminders: trauma has become associated with lots of things so that they remind the person of the trauma and give them feeling that they are in danger again. It is also possible that reexperiencing symptoms are actually part of the mind’s attempt to make sense of what has happened.
Avoidance Symptoms:
Because thinking about the trauma and feeling as if you are in danger is so upsetting, people who have been through traumas want to avoid reminders of trauma. Sometimes they are aware of this and avoid trauma reminders on purpose and sometimes they do it without realizing what they are doing.
Avoiding thinking about trauma or avoiding treatment for your trauma-related problems may keep a person from feeling upset in the short run. But avoiding treatment of continuing trauma symptoms prevents progress on coping with trauma so that people's trauma symptoms don't go away
Secondary symptoms are problems that come about because of having post-traumatic re-experiencing and avoidance symptoms. For example: because a person wants to avoid talking about a trauamatic event that happened, she might get cut off from friends and begin to feel lonely and depressed. As time passes after a traumatic experience, more and more secondary symptoms may develop. Over time, secondary symptoms can become more troubling and disabling than the original re-experiencing and avoidance symptoms.
Associated symptoms are problems that don't come directly from being overwhelmed with fear, but happen because of other things that were going on at the time of the trauma. For example: a person who gets psychologically traumatized in a car accident might also get physically injured and then get depressed because he can't work or leave the house.
Examples of secondary or associated trauma symptoms: deppression, despair and hopelessness, loss of important beliefs, aggressive behavior towards oneself or others, loss of important beliefs, self-blame, guilt, and shame, problems in relationships with people, feeling detached or disconnected from others, getting into arguments and fights with people, less interest or participation in things the person used to like to do, social isolation, problems with identity, feeling permanently damaged, self-esteem problems, physical health symptoms and problems and alcohol and/or drug abuse.
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ENVIRONMENTAL PERCEPTION AND COGNITION
PERCEPTION
Environmental perception means the basic function of cathering information with all of our senses. This cathering of information is not just simple and automatic, but rather a very complicated phonomenon. Environmental perception contrasts with the traditional perception research. The traditional approach simplifies the process to simple stimulus and performes studies in a labratory. It tries to use the knowledge gathered from the studies of simple stimuli and combine them to understand the complexity. Environmental psychology on the other hand sutdies the whole complexity (for exapmle entire building and landscapes).
William Ittelson pioneered the field of environmental perception and made the differance between it and the normal study of perception creating object perception or what is now known as environmental perception. When normal study of perception consentrates on studying simple properties of objects such as depth, color and form environmental perception studies things in large quantities like large scale scenes.
Another difference between the two ways of studying perception is the role of the perciever. In environmental perception the perticipants move around, in and out of the scene becoming a part of it as experiencing it from multiple perspectives. In environmental perception the viewer is also connected to the environmental display by clear goal or purpose.
There is too much information in the environment for any of us to handle so we often see things selectively concentrating on certain things and disregarding others. Even sometimes forgetting scenes completely (like when driving down a steer you drive along everyday - you might not pay much attension to anything).
We may adapt to the perception of air pollution only noticing it when there is a sudden rise in it's presence. An amount of air pollution that would have outraged a community where there us a little pollution might not be even noticed in a place where the pollution level is high.
We don't actually direct so much attension to the physical environment, but rather to other people and ourselves even if the surroundings cause us discomfort (also known as environmental numbness). This often happens when our attension is cought by more lively aspect of the world (e.g. reading a book) and may cause us to crash with the physical world as somthing unexpected occurs when we don't notice things happening around us. Though this can prove to be dangerous sometimes there are ways o enhance awareness of physical surroundings.
STUDYING ENVIRONMENTAL PERCEPTION
As environmental perception is preferred to be studied as a whole methods like whowing real (live) pictures to participants is very common. Of course, this is not always possible like when studying a building not built yet or which is in a distant location. Then how to study the process of perception? You can't study a person's perception directily because it is a person's own experience of the place or event. Generally there are five ways of study:
1.) Asking. Different kinds of self-report methods are a good way to get insight in people's feelings and are the most common way of studying environmental perception. There are though some problems like people misinterpeting their own feelings or not being able to fully explaing their emotions.
2.) This is why there is a rather similar, but somewhat a more detailed method of TIME-SAMPLING. In this method the person walks through a setting reporting on certain interwals or afterwards the sensations. Thoguht the method is rather similar here moving perception is used and the style of recording information is more active.
3.) Behavioral-interference method. This method involves interpreting people's behavior (for e.g. how long people spend on looking at a painting or inside a museum)
4.) Psychophysical approach uses bodily information and how people physicly react and in which proportion to the perception of a psychological construct.
5.) In Phenomenological approach the researcher is the perciever. A smaller amount of subjects is used and they give very wide, detailed discriptions of their perception.
What things then influence perseption? Many differences are often cause by personal variationsor physical variations among environmental displays. SOme perceptions are formed by particular combinations of displayed characteristics between the observer and the environment.
Some thigns that can influence perception are personal influeces such variability in perceptual ability and personal characteristics like sex, education and training, experience and liking. Perception can also be influenced by culture like in the case of the Pygmies of Congo region who thought buffalos are insects because they were not used to percieving large objects. This is also known as size consistency, trying to see things in certain size though distance is smaller.
There are also physical factors that can influence perception because environmental perception is also dependent to the scene being percieved. A space can be affected with such things as lights, colors and architecture. AN example of this is that a light colored room might look larger than dark one or a room with more furniture smaller than one with less. Fog can also make things seem more distant or viewing things under water can distord them. FOr example a road often seems longer the more turns it has.
THEORIES
Brunswik: Probabilistic functionalism
According to Brunswik borh the perciever and the environment are important. The environment offers a multitude of cues and the perciever must make sense of the most important ones to function effectively (usually only a portion of the cues are usefull).
Theory of probabilism states that there is no cue perfectly reliable or unreliable , but all things can be trusted to a certain degeree. People weight the value of different cues and when they closely match ecological validity (the estimate of correct relations between the environment and cues) achievement will be high (a discription of environment will match the actual invironment).
Gibson: Affordances
Certain arrangements of cues give the perciever direct, immidiate perceptions of the environment. World is composed of to things; substances and surfaces which provide affordances (clear function). According to Gibson we can straight away interpret the world from the given cues without weighting them.
Berlyne: Collative properties
Berlyne believes that ideas are between perception and cognition and that environmental stimulation has several collative properties (characteristics of stimulus that cause the viewer to pay attension, investigate move and to compare). Some collative properties are for e.g. novelty (newness to perciever), incongruity (something being out of place), complexity (large variety of elements) and suprisingness (unexpected elements). There collatice properties influence the percievers judgement and desire to explore.
Phenomenology
This idea has it's roots in philosophy and it studies for e.g. people's attachment to places (like home) known as topophilia and how different places are relevant to others.
ENVIRONMENTAL COGNITION
The term environmental cognition is seen to mean the way we aquire, store, organize and recall information about location, distances and arrangements in buildings, streets and the great outdoors. A process which helps us to find our way around familiar settings is known as spatial congnition. Other things that help us are cognitive maps (images of scenes - pictorial and semantic - and the way things are arranged)
If thinking about a place with no particular reference to it's relative location or distance the process is known as NONSPATIAL ENVIRONMENTAL COGNITION. When understanding the peculiar ways that humans think about their environments this information can b used to design better buildings. THis is connected to the concept of an idea called LEGIBILITY, or the ease with which a setting can be recognized and organized by people. Kevin Lynch who has studied this topic has recognized five such elements:
- paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks
RESEARCH METHODS
Like perception congnition has to also be studied indirectily by trying to get accurate information about individual's spatial knowledge by for example scatching maps or/and estimating distancies. It is not very clear how usefull one method would be on it's own so it's common to use many methods to obtain moer data and to get more accurate results.
There are few things that influence spatial cognition and some of them are a bit similar to those that influence perception.
One is spatial ability (how well one can notice, learn and remember locations), visual impairememnt, age/stage of life (children are rather egocentric and thir world can be smaller than with and adult as a child grows he/she learns new spatial information), sex (men have - in some studies - been found to do better) and of course familiarity with the settings.
People can also err because the cognitive maps we have do not resemble cartographic maps. There are three main ways one may err in this; People tend to think places more gridlike than they are in reality, secondly people tend to use larger categories to reason about the location of places with lead to wrong assumptions and thirdly breaking distances into peaces and trying to estimate tends to cause people to make mistakes.
There are also the physical influences and it has been noticed that things like regular traffic patters can improve distance judgements.
There are five theories on spatial cognition in the field of environmental cognition. These are; two physical environment theories (hippoccampal and world graph theories which think the roots for spatial congnition are in the brain and it's functions), the legibility approach (concentrates how cities and town should be built so that there would be clear landmarks for people to travel around) and the two cognitive theories (intellectual growth - how childrens cognitive abilities increase with age, planning approach - how premade plans can affect the possible ways to find the travel location).
Environmental cognition and design can be used with for e.g. You-Are-Here Maps from which many do not actually work or even futhermore confuse. When creating such maps two things are important: structure matching (that the map matches reality) and orientation (that the map is alligned as the setting, that it's the right way around).
Another things environmental cognition can be used is for example to improve wayfinding with diffent colors and numbers which has been proven to be very usefull.
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INTRODUCTION TO ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Being a newly formed field of psychology, founded only 30 years ago, environmental psychology is still a fresh and shaping field. As new research is done the new data keeps molding the old existing ideas of the field into new ones. This is why exactly defining the term environmental psychology comes to be a bit difficult. In 1987 Gifford described it as follows: "study of transaction between individuals and their physical settings". This can be seen in two kinds of transactions; how an induviduals actions effect the environment and how the environment effects individual. The knowledge gathered from research data can be used for e.g. to make buildings more humane and to improve the relationship with people and their natural environment.
As I said before the field was recognized officially about 30 years ago, but the roots of it go back all the way to the dawn of psychology. Because of things such as energy shortages and unsuitable buildings there have been many studies done in the field since the 60s. These of course were not the only reasons, there has also been the question of how and why we act and feel in our natural settings.
The term environment can be broken down to two parts; built settings (such as buildings, homes and streets) and natural settings (such as natural parks, forests and lakes). For researchers in the field of environmental psychology there are two related goals. The first is to understand the transactions between individuals and their environment and the second is to use this knowledge to solve problems that appear in these transactions.
The ways in which environmental psychology differs from main core of psychology is that it's able to improve built environmental surroundings and the using of natural resources. The studies on the field are rarely carried out in laboratory settings and a person and his/her settings are in studies considered as a whole rather than two different factors. Environmental psychology recognizes the fact that individuals actively shape and cope with the settings rather than passively absorbe environmental forces. The studies on the field, though independent, are also performed in co-operation to other fields of psychology and with combining knowledge from many different sources.
Propably the first person to use the term environmental psychology (in 1943) was Egon Brunswik (1903-1955). He was born in Budabest and trained in Vienna, but emigrated to the United States in the 30s. He originally concentrated on studying the area of perception, but his ideas since then have been extended far beyond.
Another precursor on the field was Kurt Lewin (1890-1947). He was born in Prussia and trained in Germany he too emigrated to U.S. in the 30s. He was the creator of the field theory (the idea of giving consideration to physical environment) and action research (first great push in linking social change and scientific research).
Neither of the men actually performed studies in the field that would now be recognized at environmental psychology. During his lifetime Brunswik had little influence on psychology and only had a few students, but Lewin was a dedicated teacher with an amount of students who after him further shaped his theories from which some further evolved to be the bases for environmental psychology. In fact, it was two of Lewins students; Roger Parker and Herbert Wright that after studying Lewins ideas further created the term ecological psychology. Some of their research was done on the idea of behavioral settings (ecological units that exist in everyday environment). These two men were the ones who in the end created intellectual basis for environmental psychology. The first conferences of architectural psychology were held in the university of Utah in 1961 and in 1966.
Basic priciples of environmental psychology:
1. An interactional perpective; behavior is the result of environment, person and the interaction of the two.
2. An applied research focus; combined use of theory and practice
3. Multiple levels of analysis; all levels of analysis are used from individual to societal/organisational.
4. Research based on field or natural environment; to avoid poor ecological validity of laboratory research
5. A multi-method approach; both qualitive and quantitative methods are used
6. Person seen as active rather than passive when interacting with the environment. (Issue of DETERMINISM VS. FREEWILL/autonomy. In Env. psyc. person given some degree of autonomy)
7. An interdiciplinary perspective.
8. A holistic rather than reductionist approach.
9. A system model of relationship between different aspects of the environment and behavior. It's seen that environment has many aspects that effect each other and a change in one aspect will cause a change in another.
Environmental psychologists today tend to have a career in teaching or research or in a combination of the two, because there is no current rocognised profession of environmental psychologist. They also tend to concentrate on consultancy, advising on the behavioral aspects of building and other physical structure design.
THEORIES AND APPROACHES TO ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Like in all other fields of psychology in environmental psychology there is not a single field that would apply to everything. Rather, there are many competing theories that sometimes conflict each others. The best way to look at this is propably to notice that sometimes different parts of different theories can be used to get a better more covering picture of the whole.
STIMULATION THEORIES - The stimulation theories see the physical environment as a source of sensory enformation that is crucial to our welfare. This stimuli can be rather simple (light, color, sound, noise, heat, cold) or more complex (buildings, streets, outdoor settings, other people). This stimuli is stimuli from the real world and not something artificial created in a laboratory. This environmental stimuli can vary in two ways; Amount (in intensity, duration, frequency and number of souces) and Meaning (how the stimuli is understood).
One of stimulation based theories is the adaptation-level theory according to which a person can adapt to a certain amount of stimuli in a certain context. Also there is not a particualr amount that would be good for everyone, but that differences for the amounts are individual. When the amount of stimulation deffers from our adaptation levels they in affect change feelings and behavior.
According to arousal theories how physiologically aroused we are is related on out experinces and behavior. The OVERLOAD THEORY states that it is possible to be overloaded with too much stimulation but also deprived from the normal amount of stimulation. Deprivation can cause us problems, but can also have positive resutls. For e.g. it has been noticed that performing easy cognitive tasks improves when the condition offers you only a little stimulation.
STRESS is created when stimulation exeeds person's adaptive resources. Some suspected stressors are things like air pollution, hospitals, offices, extreme temperatures, traffic, noice and disasters. There are three different kinds of stressors; Acute stressors (negative, intense, relatively short in impact), Ambient stressors (negative, chronic, global environmental conditions, hard to alter) and Daily Hassless (negative, nonurgent, recurrent stressors)
There are two basic models that dominate. The other consentrates on physiological responses and the other on psychological responses. A GENERAL ADAPTATION SYNDROME is a set of bodily reactions that continue similar thought the source of the stress varies. The psychological side consentrates on how we try to cope with the stressors and underderstand the seriousness of the situation.
Other theories consentrate on the meaning of stimulation and take it's idea even further. We give meanings to places and these meanings affect how we experice the place. What kinds of meanings people create for settings differ between places that have a meaning to us and with places that do not.
CONTROLL THEORIES - These theories focus on controll and how much of it we have (or want to have) over environmental stimulation. For example we have more controll over the environment in our homes than we do in a traffic jam. We need to (atleast feel like) we have a certain amount of controll in influncing things. Lack of controll might lead to attempts to regain freedom and in case this fails might lead to learned helplessness and feeling of not being able to change the situation and inability to regain controll. People try daily to to achieve pesonal controll thought boundary regulation mechanisms like personal space and territory.
BEHAVIORAL SETTINGS THEORY - This theory is based on Barker's ecological psychology. According to him consistent, prediscribed patterns of behavior (programs) are found in many places and situations in our lives. Thought some variations occur less focus is paid on psychological processes and individual differencies and rather than seeing variability in performing certain roles there is a uniformity that is the main point of concentration. Many of these programs are tended to be explained in temrs of cosial features of the setting such as rules, customs and typical activities. One key concept in the theory is the level of staffing which is the amount of people participating in the activity. If there are too many ocerstaffing occures and if too little understaffing.
INTEGRAL THEORIES - This theory tries to, instead of looking at small parts of situations, investigate the full complexity of normal person-environment relations. The earliest explicit theory of environmental psychology was created by Isidor Chein (1954). He called his theory the geo-behavioral environment and it consisted of 5 elements.
* Instigators - environmental stimuli that trig
gers certain behavior
* Goal objects and noxients - situations that can fullfill
needs or create pain or
dissatisfaction
* Support and constraints - things that facilitate or pre
vent our actions
* Directors - features in the environment that
lett us know where to go
and what to do
* Global environment - generalized characteristics of
environment
If you would understand a persons environment according to these terms it would be propably you'd be able to understand the persons behavior rather well.
Another integral theory in sknown as INTERACTIONISM interactionism. According to it person and environment are two different things engaged in series of interactions. Then, according to TRANSACTIONALISM the person and environment are one inclusive identity and you can't talk about one without referring to the other. The two are constantly influencing and dependent of each others. The third view of ORGANISMIC THEORIES sees the person and the environment working as a dynamic interplay of social, societal and individual factors in one closed, cpmlex system. Behavior is seen as a part of many complex sets with both long and short term goals.
OPERANT APPROACH - This theory consentrates on modifying people's behavior which is cause by an environmental problem. First the problem (e.g. littering) is identified and then removed by using positive reinforcement (changed to recycling).
ENVIRONMENT-CENTERED APPROACHES - This appraoch pays special attention to the state and quality of the environment. There are two views to environment; Instrumental (environment seen as a tool for prodactivity) and Spiritual view (env. seen as a context for cultivation of important human values). A field known as green psychology has consentrated on presenving, conserving and helping the natural environment and ecopsychology investigates the bond between humans and earth (also seen as ecological unconcious, denial, addiction and mental health).
ENVIRONMANTAL PSYCHOLOGY TODAY
Nowadays environmental psychology is studied in three levels of analysis:
1.) Fundamental psychological processes like perception, cognition and personality
2.) Social management of space like privacy, personal space, growding
3.) Physical settings in complex and common behavior in everyday life like working and relationship with nature
In the end where does it come to. In the case of environmental psychology it is most clearly needed in the field of improving the environment around us and creating new environments more pleasant and closer to our liking and in finidng right ways of using the environment to further enrich our lives.
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Noise
Noise can be defined as an unwanted sound. Aversiveness of noise is a function of: magnitude; unpredictability; and uncontrollability. Also the extent to which it interferes with task performance. Aversive noises can lead to considerable hostility towards the person responsible for the noise. There is a human dimension to noise, because it is often caused by people. Attribution of inconsiderateness, or aggressiveness to the person who is the source increases the annoyance factor.
Effects of noise must be studied in relationship to the activities that are going on.
Complex tasks such as thinking and speech communication are particularly easily disrupted. Masking of sound can occur, particularly by similar sounds (e.g., speech by speech). However, noise may facilitate certain repetitive tasks due to it’s arousing properties. Noise may also be facilitative when arousal level is unusually low (e.g., as a result of sleep deprivation).
Does noise hinder learning?
Many different techniques have been used to try and reduse the noise levels in classrooms. These things have been done under the assumption that noise does harm classroom performance. Thought this is the ruling idea the scientific evidence of this is conterversial and depends on circumstances.
The relationship between noise and performance is complex because it consists of several factors like the properties of the noise itself, characteristics of the learner, nature of the task and so forth. Many studies do support the fact that noise hinders the abilities of students, but there are some that show that noise might even improve performance.
One study has shown that noise during learning makes it harder to recall things in a test stituation, but doesn't affect recalling of information as much.
The degree to which noise effects a person also has to do with the characteristics of the individual. Some studies have shown noise to slow down women more than men, and quiet to make men slower. Some studies show that noisy music can quiet down hyperactive children, but cause atistic schildren to act even more passive and repetative than normally.
Also personality can affefect noise durability. In one study of 12-year olds it was discovered that children with higher IQs performed better in quiet and children with lower IQs performed better in noisier situations.
Creativity also appears to affect performance. WHen university students were given creative tasks to do they performed better when the noiselevel was low than when it was higher. Sutdies have also shown that shildren who are used to noise perform better in noise and likewise.
Things that affect learning in noise:
The task - this hasn't been emphasized yet.
The situation - It has been shown that duration to noise can be larger when situations change.
Type of noise - The volume, the duration, the harshness... all these things (and many more) do affect how badly the noise disturbs. Studies have whon that noise that is not meaningfull may not be at all so disturbing as noise that is meaningfull (like speech).
Earplugs - Have been shown to improve performance during noise.
The aftereffects of noise - Majority of studies have shown that the affects of noise outlast the noise itself.
One reason this may happen is that the noise might make the student miss information which may have to repeated and if the noise repeats often can hinder performance and also cause less material to be covered.
Also noise may interfere with the development of child's strategies for processing information. Learning is sunsequently impaired, even in quiet surroundings, because the child uses inadequate strategies for thinking about the material to be learned.
If the noise is over the students controll the sense of personal controll may hinder.
Continued loud noise may raise blood pressure and the increase in physiological arousal may interfere with learning.
Feelings - As stated before noise is an unwanted sound and so it is almost always unwelcome. Though it has been noticed that students often find social conversation more disracting than noise.
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Personal space and territory
Personal space is the most studied area of environmental psychology. Personal space can be defined as
an area around a person’s body into which others may not come, but there is some disagreement to how it exactly could be defined. This definition can also be criticised in few ways (for e.g. personal space is not stable as it let's assume, but it's size alters in different circumstances).
Personal space is very significant aspect of human social interaction and can lead to behaviors as extreme as avoidance and aggression.
There are different ways someone may enter your personal space like by accident, intentionally or people may be allowed to enter. Animals give good exapmles about personal space. An example could be birds sitting on a wire keep a certain distance to each others and some animals (like volwes) maintain very large territories for living.
Personal space is created between people through messaging. The size has to do with the relationship of people and the size of the PS can give messages to others of the peoples relationship (two people holding hands -being very close to each others- are generally seen to be in love). Edward Hall, a pioneer to the research of personal space described eight defferent gradations to interpersonal distances.
1.) Intimate:
0-15cm (near phase) is for full-contact activities, For people in intimate terms, acting under a stright set of rules or expressing strong negative emotions.
15-45cm (far phase) in dividuals in very close terms (generally very good friends).
2.) Personal distance:
45-75cm People who are familiar with one another and in good terms. Good friends or happy couple while talking. Entering of a spouse to this space go hardly unnoticed, but with others it will.
75-120cm Used for social interactions between friends and acquitances.
3.) Social distance:
120-200cm Generally used between unacquainted individuals and people encaged in business. Might be used when introduced to someone or while shopping.
200-350cm typical for formal business transactions. a little sense of friendship or trying to be friendly.
4.) Public distance:
350-700cm Less used for interaction between individuals but rather for a speaker and the audience. Might be used to speak for smaller grouds (just so big the situation required speaking not among, but apart from them).
over 700cm Used when ordinary people meet important public figures. People would ordinarily halt at this distance and the public figure would need to approach for conversation.
The rules of ps in real life are propably even more complex, but people rarely are aware of them at all which is suprising. If you think about it, the rules do exist, but they are inbuilt into our consciousness. These rules are acquired while growing up and later braking these rules can lead to negative consequences. First a person being violated would feel uncomfortable. When a person approaches us too closely we attend to associate them with negative attributes seeing them as being pushy, rude or maybe aggressive. Sometimes these things are true, but they can also create a negative impressions of people. When putting distances on personal space it has to be noticed that these distances are not solid, but they change according to interactions and they are also a subjective experience.
There is perpective to the issue that there are two types of personal space:
Alpha personal space (objective, externally measurable distance and angle between individuals)
Beta personal space (subjective experience of the distancing process, to be measured indirectily, persons sense of distance)
There are few ways of studying personal space. one are the simulation methods. These methods have some problems, and would propably work best to measure beta personal space rather than alpha. These methods were generally used during the early days of the studies and they involve placing small felt figures on felt boards and making markings on paper.
Better suited to study alpha personal space are the stop-distance methods. In this methods the distance of discomfort is found by the experimenter and participant moving in different distances to each other. Problem in the method is that the subject is aware of the project and so may have different reactions as to real life.
The last way of stydu are the naturalistic observations which can be technically difficult, because many uncontrollable variables might occur so there might be several reasons for different variations in personal space distances.
Things that affect personal space:
Gender: There are generally a larger distance between different sexes, but this may also vary. One reason is that these distances are social rather than biological and depend on upbringing and other social and cultural influences.
Age: Persoanl space increases with age. For example infants personal space is hard to measure because theu have little independent mobility. Thought it is known that some infants like to be touches more than others which might have something to do with personal space. Arounf the age of 12 chilren acquire similar personal space as adults. A factor that can affect the development of personal space is culture.
Personality: Some studies have concluded that there's no connection between personality and personal space. But a connection between personality and interpersonal domain has been found to exist. People who are more field dependent tend to be warmer and friendlier and to have a smaller personal domain.
Psychological disturbances and violemce: People with emotional problems often have strange personal space zones.
Studies have been conducted with people with disabalities and differencies have been found.
Social influences: Different things in social situations can trigger to different sizes in persoanl space. Things such as attraction(degree of positive or negative feelings towards a person), fear/security (people choose closer distances when they feel safer with a person and larger when unsafe), cooperation/competition (the nature of interaction), power and status (people with lower status further) are broad groups for these.
Physical influnces: For e.g. close distances are more uncomfortable when lighting is dimmer, or more acceptable in narrow rooms.
Cultural, ethnic, religious and legal variations.
Usually when we have our personal space invaded it creates a lott of nagetive emotions (for example in a crowded elevator). It can ben seen from this that appropriate distances in given situation do not create any affect, but too-far, too-close do. Robert Sommer made studies on this theory and founf that if a persons space is invaded this will give them a reason to leave sooner than they would otherwise and closer he moved to the people the sooner thaty left. He also observed differences in reactions when the status and sex of the people were changed.
Another theory that can be proposed is that appropriate use of personal space leads to attraction and otherwise. Research does not support this, but there are some results from studies under 'similar' ideas. For e.g. men tolerate invasion of a woman to a larger extent than women do men.
Close interpersonal distance is often viewed as invasion which is not always correct. A widely discussed study on this is with men who were observed with a hidden camera in the lavatory. It was found that urination took longer to begin and lasted less time the more closer another man stood to them.
Personal space can also affect helping behavior, but as always the relations are not that simple. It has been also noticed that things like face-to-face seating seems to lead to cooperation.
Theories
According to Argyle and Dean’s (1965) affiliative-conflict theory equilibrium of intimacy exists in social interaction (optimal level depends on relationship between interactants). Both too little and too much intimacy is not comfortable.
Problems with this model is that it works only in the middle range (very high or low levels can’t be compensated and people may just avoid the interaction, e.g. sexually harassing touch).
Patterson’s labeling of arousal model states that there are two possibilities: reciprocation vs. compensation. From these reciprocation leads to progressive intimacy and positive label for arousal leads to reciprocation while negative label leads to compensation a’ la Argyle and Dean.
Problem with this model is that it's difficult sometimes to predict what the label will be.
Personal Space and Dominance/control/power theory. Personal space is seen as a status symbol in our society (size of home, office, etc.).
This can be clearly seen in business organizations and some people’s space is more often invaded than others.
