Environmental Psychology: Introduction

Environmental Psychology

• Psychologists, architects, and anthropologists work together to promote environmental sustainability
• How human behavior impact the environment and how environment influence human behavior

PART 1: Predictors of Pro-Environmental Attitudes, Intention, and Behaviors

• Climate Change Beliefs

  • The extent to which a person believes that:
  • Climate change is happening now
  • Climate change is primarily human-caused

• Stronger belief = higher climate change belief

• Merely informing people about the presence of climate change do not lead to pro-environmental behaviors all the time

  • People receive other information about climate change (e.g., influential people claiming climate change is a fraud and a false idea)

• Pro-environmental Behaviors 

• Values

  • Reduce pro-environmental behaviors: engaging in pro-environmental behaviors is effortful, costly
  • Hedonic Values: importance given for pleasurable life
  • Egoistic Values: importance given to enhance money, resources, status, etc.

• Promoting Pro-environmental Behaviors

  • Altruistic Values: other people’s welfare; more likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviors; their behaviors indirectly influencing welfare of other people
  • Biospheric Values: welfare of nature; directly predicts pro-environmental behavior

• Values and Information Processing

  • Bolderdijk, Gorzira, Kaizer, & Steg (2013)
  • Controlled group: no relation to environment
  • Experimental group: related to environment (plastic bottle movie)
  • Measured environmental knowledge: experimental group is higher
  • Intention (plastic use): no difference
  • Support for policy (higher taxes): no difference
  • High in biospheric values: higher intentions and higher support for policy
  • Informing is not enough, should instill people values

• Connectedness to nature encourages, but materialism hinders, ecological behavior in the Philippines: The higher order and second-order factors of environmental attitudes as viable mediating pathways

  • Materialism: based your worth on materialistic possessions
  • Higher materialism = less likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviors (less likely to recycle etc.)
  • Materialism reduces environmentalism

• Nature-relatedness: higher pro-environmental behaviors

  • If materialism is taken into account pro-environmental behaviors are lowered

• Psychological Distance (Yaacov, Liberman, 2010): if you feel the threat is farther from you. Greater psychological distance 

  • Temporal distance: “This is more likely to happen in the far future than today.”
  • Lower = threat may happen any time
  • Social distance: “This is more likely to happen to other people than to people like me.”
  • Cognitive bias
  • Geographical distance: “This is more likely to happen elsewhere than to my local community/country.”
  • Cognitive bias
  • Environmental Psychology
  • Psychological distance hinders (less worried about environmental consequences)
  • Psychological distance lessens preparedness to reduce energy use
  • New Zealand: people who live near the coast have higher levels of climate change beliefs
  • Psychological distance: if you live nearer to the coast, you are more likely to experience environmental consequences
  • Filipinos have low/very low knowledge on climate change
  • Explains why Filipinos do not engage in climate change mitigation efforts 

• Environmental Identity (Van den Werff, Steg, & Keizer, 2013a, 2013b):

  • If you define/view yourself as environmental, more likely to engage in actions that preserve/protect the natural environment
  • Past behavior: people who engage in pro-environmental behaviors in the past are more likely to view themselves as environmental -> contributes to higher environmental identity

  

• Norms: People copy what they think is normal behavior

  • Many garbage condition = 32% increase in garbage
  • Few garbage condition = 14% increase in garbage
  • Smith et al. (2012)
  • Descriptive norms: what people around actually do
  • Injunctive norms: what you think people around you approve of
  • Supportive DN: 82% engaged in energy conservation
  • Unsupportive DN: 22% engaged in energy conservation
  • Supportive IN: 85% of approved of other students who engage in energy conservation
  • Unsupportive IN: 23% approved of other students who engage in energy conservation
  • “Walk your talk” - show (descriptive norm)

• Emotions

  • Positive Emotions:
  • Aew, pride (bering proud), happiness, joy, etc
  • Negative Emotions:
  • Shame, guilt, sadness, anger, fear
  • If you trigger negative emotions, less likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviors
  • Encourage others through positive emotions and highlight positive emotional consequences of environmentalism, more likely to encourage pro-environmental behaviors

• Potential Research Direction:

  • Philippines as geographically and economically vulnerable to climate consequences
  • Philippines is one of the five countries contributing to 50% of plastic wastes worldwide

SUMMARY OF PART 1

• Informing people about climate change is not enough. Policies and programs that teach and instill environmental values are necessary.
• Inform Filipinos about the link between climate crisis and natural disasters that they experience
  • Localize communication strategies: local climate change consequences
• We can minimize people’s bias for psychological distance if we design climate communication strategies that emphasize climate effect
  • At the local community
  • On people similar to the target group
  • Right now
• At the individual level, we can signal environmental norms by telling people that caring for the environment is good. But more importantly, we need to show people that we actually take care of the environment.
  • In short, walk your talk and make your actions visible.
• We can carefully strategize how to correct people’s environmental behavior by anticipating what specific emotions we might trigger. Highlight the positive emotional consequences.

PART 2: Role of Nature on Mental Health

• Biophilia Hypothesis (Edward Wilson)
  • There is an instinctive bond between human beings and other living systems.
  • Our ancestors evolved in nature so our brain is in synced with nature explaining why humans reaped the psychological benefits of being in nature
• Eco-Existential Positive Psychology (Holli-Anne Passmore and Andrew Howell, 2014)
  • Posits that experiences with the natural environment play a fundamentally important role in addressing the 6 existential anxieties of identity, happiness, isolation, meaning in life, freedom, and death.
  • Shinrin Yoku: The Japanese Way of “Forest Bathing” for peace of mind, mindful sleep, and physical health
  • Experience nature and away from the busyness of life
  • Go to forested area and wander, smell aromas, listen to the water
  • Bathing of full experience in the forest, engaging all your senses
  • Results:
    • 15 mins of wandering:
    • Blood pressure drops
    • Stress levels are 
    • Concentration and mental clarity improve
    • Specialized cells that combat cancer flourish
  • Taking time to simply sit
    • Brain will go to a quieter and peaceful mind
  • Nature and Cognitive Restoration
  • Walking in a nature park:
    • No phone condition: very low brain activity; relaxed
    • Phone condition: high brain activity
  • Nature walk can only work without technology
  • Effects on Reaction Time in Cognitive Tasks
  • Natural environment: reaction time was faster when they answered correctly
  • Built environment (buildings): processing was longer when they answered correctly
  • Attention Restoration Theory: A systematic review to clarify attention processes affected by exposure to natural environments
  • Meta-analysis (42 articles published since 2013)
  • Exposure to natural environments improve:
    • Working memory
    • Cognitive flexibility
    • Attentional control (to a less-reliable degree): focus and attention
  • Low to moderate effect sizes
  • actual exposure > virtual exposure
    • Actual exposure has more psychological benefits than virtual exposure though virtual exposure also has positive effects
  • Climate Anxiety: low in prevalence but it exists
  • Who experiences climate anxiety?
    • People with high concern for the environment
    • People who experienced climate impacts
    • People high in neuroticism trait
    • Prevalent among younger adults
    • Some reports among older children worried about climate change
    • Indigenous groups
  • Nature Walks as a Part of Therapeutic Interventions for Depression
  • People with depressive symptoms exposed to nature walks after several weeks reported lower depression
  • Home garden use during COVID-19: Associations with physical and mental wellbeing in older adults
  • Better physical health
  • Better emotional and mental health
  • Better sleep quality
  • Negative emotions about climate change are related to insomnia symptoms and mental health: cross-sectional evidence from 25 countries
  • Negative emotions about climate change are related to insomnia symptoms and lower levels of mental health
  • Philippine data: weak but positive significant correlation between negative emotions about climate change and mental health
    • More negative emotions = lower mental health
  • Philippine data: weak but positive correlation between negative emotions and insomnia symptoms
  • PTSD’s underlying dimensions in typhoon Haiyan survivors: assessing DSM-5 Symptomatology-based PTSD models and their relation to posttraumatic cognition
  • Survivors of Yolanda show PTSD symptoms and tested several models of PTSD scales
  • Most viable: 7-factor model
  • The quest of mental well-being: Nature connectedness, materialism and the mediating role of meaning in life in the Philippine context
  • People with greater levels of affiliation with nature reported higher levels of mental wellbeing because they find a sense of meaning out of their connection of the natural world anchored through the biophilia hypothesis and eco-existential positive psychology
  • Gap in the literature
  • Lack of experimental studies showing the long-term effects of nature on mental health
  • Lack of studies in non-Western contexts
• Where is the Philippines in Environmental Psychology Research?
  • Towards cross-cultural environmental psychology: a state-of-the-art review and recommendations
  • 1991-2019
  • Western-based (UK and US are dominating the publications in environmental psychology)
  • Cross-cultural studies: Western countries are very active in the cross-cultural collaboration (US, UK, Germany)

SUMMARY OF PART 2: 

• If we want improved mental health at individual and collective levels, we need to take care of the natural environment and spend more time in nature

• Despite being the constant receiver of climate consequences, very little research has been done using Philippine samples.

• Philippine-based psychologists will play a crucial role in promoting better mental health by promoting nature preservation among Filipinos.

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