What Is Environmental Psychology?

Our environment has a great effect on human psychology because the environment itself shapes who we are today. Our environment shapes our experiences throughout our lives allowing us to perceive different events differently from anyone else. Kurt Lewis claimed that there is a relationship between behaviors and environment, the repetitive contact with the individual variables of the person and their environment leads to certain behaviors (Arkkelin & Veitch, 1995). The term environmental can be very vague when dealing with psychology because it is always different, evolving and forcing us to adapt. Environmental psychology is a behavioral psychology whose focus is the systematic relationships between social and physical environments and the individual’s behaviors and experiences (Arkkelin & Veitch, 1995). Environmental psychology goes over many different environments such as built, learning, and informational environments. When dealing with environmental psychology all of these environments need to be taken into account because they each affect our behaviors.

Environmental psychology has a different view of human psychology because of the explanation between experience, behaviors, interactions, and our environments. The theories and principles of Environmental psychology branches into many other sciences such as sociology, biology, anthropology, urban planning, and so on. Environmental psychology is a mix of many other disciples because so many things need to be account for while researching Environmental psychology (Arkkelin & Veitch, 1995). There are two theories that originate from different disciplines that theorize the relationship between the stimuli and performance. The arousal theories go over the arousal and performance; such as if the arousal is increased, as will the performance (Arkkelin & Veitch, 1995). However, there are limits if the arousal is too strong performance can decline. In Environmental psychology they find that there is good from neurological stimulation, noise level, invasion of personal space, and physiological response. Also, cultures have a habit of developing into environments with only small challenges, which will be able to exist on an individual personal level as well as corporate and cultural levels. Contrasting to the performance and arousal of the arousal and the stimulus theories concern about the determinate capacity of the human’s ability to process that information (Arkkelin & Veitch, 1995). As this controlled capability for information processing is surpassed and advanced, attention is immersed to stimuli that are most significant to the job at hand. When attention is fixated in the direction of the foundations of the task at hand and away from insignificant stimuli performance is enhanced, but when the insignificant stimulus are necessary for the task at hand then performance falls. Thus, the environmental variables in place touch the applicability of the