How the environment shapes our behaviour

What is environmental psychology?

‘The discipline that studies the interplay between individuals and the built and natural environment’

Psy1001 - the infleunce of individuals on the environment (eg. understanding a promoting sustainable behaviour)

Psy2002 - the infleunce of the environment on human experiences, behaviour and wellbeing

Boutellier et al (2008)

Studied the effect of office layout

• Cell offices (4 walls and a door) vs multispace layout (more open plan layout) (x 2)

• Are people sharing a space or not

On communication

• Frequency of face to face communication

• Average duration of each event

• assessed via observation

In Novartis Campus in Basel, Switzerland

Results

Frequency

• Communicated more frequntly in open plan offices than in cell offices

• Multispace - 5 ½ people per hour

• Cell office - 2 people per hour

Duration

• Multispace - around 3 minutes

• Cell office - closer to 9 minutes

If you combine those two things how much time do people have without communication

What these open plan offices are permitting is more time without communication

• Though they have more communication its for a shorter duration

On average

• Multispace - 17 minutes to themselves

• Cell office - 3 minutes to themselves

Would have to know whether this difference in amount of time on their own or communication effect productivity

• Depends on the type of work - do you need time alone or is it better for you to have interactions

• Cell offices - peopel are going to see those in individual offices for a different reason but if it was for the same reason it looks like it is taking them longer to get away

Long tail for the length of interaction in individual offices

• The communication that needed to happen took place and the person just lingered there

• Difficult to break their communication

Effect of the environment depends on the nature of the task

Some tasks may require frequent interaction or individual consideration

Seddigh et al (2014)

Independent variables

Office type

• Cell or individual offices

• Shared-room offices

• Small open plan offices

• Medium sized open plan offices

• Large open plan offices

• Flex offices

Type of task

• To what extent do you have individual tasks that require concentration?

Dependent variable

Distraction

• How often are you for some reason disturbed so that you do not get the opportunity to fully immerse yourself in the task you have in front of you?

Cognitive stress

• How much of the time during the past 4 weeks have you found it difficult to think clearly?

Results

Different lines - reflect the different types of offices

Tasks which require concentration on the right and tasks which don’t on the left

Only differences is between the cell offices vs other type of office

These other types of offcies do lead people to be slightly more distracted when they are doing things which need low concentration

But the error bars overlap between the different offices so there is probably not significant differences

When you are doing a task which requires some sort of concentration and you are in a space shared with other poeple, you are more likely to feel distracted

Graph has the same set up but stress on the y-axis

As a result of feeling distracted they also feel more stressed

• Only really feel stressed when they are trying to do something which needs concentration

Effect of the environment depends on the nature of the person

Clear individual differences in preferences and senstivities can play a part

Field theory (Lewin, 1940)

Behaviour is determined by the interaction between a person and their environment

Lewin’s equation: B = f (P, E)

• The life space

• Where B is behaviour, P is person, and E is the environment

Using topology to map ‘life space’

• P is the individual

• O representes their current situation or behaviour

• G is the goal that they wish to achieve

Need to situate the person in their life space

The person is trying to move through the life space to get to the goal from where they are now

• Visual representation of the life space

There is driving and straining forces limiting the impact of this research

• Tried to translate topology to a more dynamic thign → forces which work against them

Too complicated of a model

Useful heuristic for the observation

Behaviour is an interaction between the environment, person and their goals (task)

• Only need to know that he tried to map this!!

Environmental Response inventory

McKechnie (1974)

Measured urbanism (living in the city) and pastoralism (living in rural areas)

Includes need for privacy

• There are often times when I need complete silence

• I am happiest when I am alone

• I get annoyed when people drop by without warning

• I am easily distracted by people moving about

Some people will display clear individual differences

Gifford (1980)

Found negative correlations between need for privacy and evaluations of a cafe (r = -0.22) and city hall (r = -0.17)

Roskams et al (2019)

There is probably a veriability in how people experience thier acoustic environment

• And how this effects their wellbeing

Characteristics of the task

• Task complexity

• Interactivity

Characteristics of the person

• Big Five Mini-Markers Extraversion sub-scale

• Weinstein’s (1978) Noise Sensitivity Scale

Outcomes

• Acoustic comfort

• Disturbance by speech

• Difficulties in concentration

• Percieved stress

• Work engagement

• Office productivity

Results

‘Ppts with higher noise sensitivity tended to rate the acoustical quality of the office more negatively, were more disturbed by speech, had greater difficultues in concentration, were more stressed and had lower self-rated productivity…Thus, it can be be concluded that the appropriateness of open-plan office for effective work performance is largely moderated by an individuals noise sensitivty’

We need to account for individual differences when designing work spaces

Only looked at how people responded to the open plan offices

• Did not compare them to other types of offices

Didn’t compare complex with simple tasks

Summary of first half

The fact that environment can shape outcome is true

But there are moderating influences

• Relationship depends on the interaction between the nature of the task and environment as well as the nature of the person

The environment needs to fit what the person is trying to fo in that environment and their preferences on how the environment supports the task

Focus on the built environment - one sided

Need to also look at the effect of the natural environment

What makes an environment ‘restorative’?

Perceived Restorativeness scale (Hartig et al., 1996; 1997)

This scale measures the things that make an environment restorative

Fascination

• My attention is drawn to many interesting things

Being away

• Spending tiem here gives me a good break from my day-to-day routine

Coherence (extent)

• There is too much going on

Comptability

• I can do things I like here

What aspects of zoo attractions make them restorative?

Correlation between peoples preferences

Sense of fascination seems to be important

• Leads peoples to prefer that environment and they derive pleasure

Novelty

• Kind of important, people like the idea of new especially in a zoo context

• Do not get much pleasure from novelty

Escape is important in some environments and not in others

• Eg. the baboon enclosure provided a sense of escape but the butterfly house did not

• The extent of escape didn’t determine peoples preferences in the butterfly house

What make one environment restorative does not make another environment restorative

• They can restorative for different reasons

• That sense of escape determined preferences of baboon enclosures to the extent to which people experienced pleasre there, but not in the butterfly enclosure

• Novelty seemes to be important for both of them and fascination / interest

Also suggests that perceived restorative scale has some validity

• Can predict peoples preferences in the extent to which they derive pleasure from certain environments

Some subscales such as coherence and comptability did not predict here

Is it the visual environment, the acoustic environment? Are there other important features?

Jiang et al (2011)

Randomly allocated to watch 1 of 12 videos

4 different types of sound

3 different visual scenes

DV

• How did these video make people feel

• Multidimensional mood questionnaire → mood state

Which of these environments are likely to make people feel happy

Which of these environments is likley to make people feel unhappy, angry, agitated

What factor has more of an effect, the acoustic environment or the visual environment

Results

Measured the mood before and after the video and look at if that video has changed their mood

Mute

• When looking at just the visual scene

• Looking at the urban park or office plaza gas no effect on the ppts mood

• When looking at the urban streets this makes people feel more negative

Nature sounds

• Reduce the negative impact of the urban street

• No impact on the office plaza

• Urban park leads to a more positive mood

Mechanical sound

• Park more negative than if you were listening to it in an office plaza

• Idea of compatibility → we have mood effects when looking at inconsistency with environment and sound

Traffic sound

• Ruins the mood in all conditions, mostly in the office plaza

The urban park only has a psoitive effect on peoples mood when it is accompanied by a corresponding compatible sound

• Ruined when playing the wrong sound over it

The acoustic environment is more important than the visual environment

• A place may not be visually appealing but if it is quiet, or has pleasing sound maybe it is enough to make it more pleasurable

What are the strengths and weaknesses of Jiang et al’s research?

Self report

Low ecological validity

Desirability bias

Demand characteristics

Temopral validity

• how long does it need to last for it to count as restoration

Random allocation

• Takes into account differences

Factorial design

What effect(s) do restorative environments have?

Mayer et al (2009) - study 1

Buses went to 2 different places

Half went to a park and half went to the center of the the city

Then went on a walk

Measure how people felt after going on this walk

• How they felt about their problem also

• 7 point strongly agree scale

Results

Does the environment help people to solve their problems

• Yes to an extent

Nature environemnt - more positive

Urban - doesn’t make them feel more negative

Differences in positive affect but not negative

Graph explains ability to reflect on loose ends based on their environment

Compelling as people did not have particulaar connections to this environment

• Also spent a relatively short time in this environment but it seemed ot be having some effects

Soga & Gaston (2024)

Does spending time in natural restorative environemnts lead people to engage in more pro-biodiversity and pro environmental behaviour?

Systematic review including 52 effects sizes from 12 case studies

Direct experiences with nature were psoitively correlated (r+ = 0.20) with actiosn undertaken with the intention of reducing environmental harms and promotin the protections of the natural environment

The environment shapes people then people shape the environment

• The interplay

Stress recovery theory

Ulrich (1983); Ulrich et al (1991)

Features in natural environment (immediately) evoke positive affect, without conscious recognition

• Make people immediately feel happy and positive reactions

• People do not have to think or debate - automaticity

This serves to lower aorusal and reduce stress

People move through their environment with a baseline of stress, arousal, fear and negativity which they get relief from when they enter restorative environments

Low arousal and reduction of stress

• DV

Proximal mediator

• Immediate state of positive affects

Considers restoration as a quick affective process

Kang & Shin (2020)

Measured academic stress using the student version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory and other types of stress using the job seeking stress survey

Does not test on the key predictions of immediacy

Randomly allocated to forest therapy against as control who did not get forest therapy

Measure stress before, after 8 weeks and then a further follow up

Results

Slightly lowe levels of stress compared to control

Experimental group

• Spending time in a forest reduced stress

Evidence for stress recovery theory but does not test immmediacy

• Does not give an opportunity to measure this (do this for 8 weeks and after the time in the forest)

Attention Restoration Theory

Kaplan & Kaplan (1989)

Most environments ‘fight’ for our attention and so are depleting

• Termed directed attentional fatigue

However, natural environments

• Provide fascination

• A sense of connectedness

• A sense of being away from daily hassles

• Are compatible with inclinations

As a result, natural environments restore attention

Allow people to restore their attention

Most environments fight for our attention

Our attention is constantly bombarded by the environment

• We only have so much attentional resources for all this attention → they become depleted so we need restorative environments to restore our attention resources

Directed attentional fatigue → depletes our attention

• Need natural environments to restore this attention

Mayer et al (2009) - study 1

Bus study

Measured how many errors people made on attentional tasks as well

• Search for 5 letters at once within rows of digits

• Like a visual search task

Hypothesis - if people’s attention was depleted they would perform worse on this task (more errors) and if it was restored they would make more errors

However, changes in how connected ppts felt to nature (not attentional capacity) mediated the effect of exposure to natural vs urban environments on outcomes

People who spent time in the natural environment make fewer errors on the attentional task

Provides evidence for attention restoration theory as the natural environment has restored the ppts attentional capacity

When they did the test on mediation, attention did not mediate

• Test whether changes in this variable (number of errors) explained the extent to which people are able to resolve their problem

• The extent to which people felt connected to nature actually mediated

Going out to the park made peopel feel more connected to nature and that is why they felt they could resolve their problems

• That manipulation did have an effect on attentional capacity but it did not explain the effect

• Perhaps a side effect - not clear evidence for attention restoration theory

Contact with nature helps people regulate emotions?

Bratman et al (2024) - Survey of 600 adults in the US

Frequency of contact with nature

• About how often do you usually visit or pass through outdoor natural areas for any reason?

Use of distraction

• To feel less upset during upsetting situations, I divert my attention away from what is happening

Rumination

• I think why do I have problems other people don’t have?

Use of reappraisal

• When something upsetting happens, to feel less upset, I think about the possible benefits of the situation

Emotional ill being and well being

• Measures of positive and negative affect, life satisfaction, purpose in life and perceived stress

Allows poeple the attentional capacity to engage in emotion regulation strategies

Emotion regulation often requires attention

• One of the most effective if the reappraise situations to think differently about it

Attentional capacity is required to stop ruminating

Does the amount of time people spend in contact with their emotions

Hypothesis - if spending time in nature restores attention people should be more likely to use emotion regulation strategies that require attention or are better able to use their strategies if they spend more time in nature

Measure frequency of contact with nature

Graph depicting Bratman et al’s results

Path model

Strong correlation brtween the amount of time spent in nature and their wellbeing

What mediate the effects of frequency spent in nature on wellbeing

Mediators - variables in the middle

Reduces rumination (correlation is negative)

Reduce distraction (correlation is negative)

Increased reappraisal (correlation is 0.57)

Additional tests on if the emotion regulation factors relate to the DV

Rumination is negatively associated with wellbeing

• More you ruminate the lower your wellbeing

Reappraisal is positively associated with wellbeing

Perceptual fluency account

Joye et al (2016)

Natural environments are processed more fluently than urban settings, due to their fractal patterns, which means that they contain more redundant info than urban scenes

• easier to process, require less attention so are more likely to be immediate responses

Hagerhall et al (2015)

Fractal - shapes which have various dimensions

• From simple to complex and they can be random or systemised

Some are more similar to what you might encounter in the real world (more organic - more random)

Top is closer to what we see in urban environments

Natural fractal have a lot of into which you do not need to attend to and process, so have redundant info so require less attention

Measured brain responses using an ERP

Alpha response shows the extent to which peoples are in a wakefully relaxed state (internalised attention)

• Mindfulness

D = number of dimensions

R = randomness

You can see what infleunces this alpha response is how random these fractal are

• You get a stronger alpha repsonse when the fractal are more random than when they are less random

• Make people feel relaxed

When we are in the built environment we are processing unnatural fractals and so it consumes our attention

• Links to attention restoration theory

Immediat so fits with stress recovery - brings both theories together