Viewing human environments as sociophysical systems means that the qualities of our environments and their impacts on behavior and health can be changed by altering their physical or social structures. Illustrative cases in which specific architectural or social features of behavior settings were modified to improve occupants’ emotional and physical well-being are presented. The proliferation of virtual behavior settings in recent years poses new challenges for maintaining complementarity...

Throughout this course, we have emphasized the importance of systematically evaluating the effects of sociophysical environments on people’s behavior and health; and the efficacy of social and environmental policies and programs in fostering higher levels of mental and physical well-being in a population. Rigorous evaluations of public policies and environmental interventions provide an empirical foundation for developing evidence-based design guidelines to help ensure that future...

People’s reliance on mobile communications and Internet technologies has increased dramatically since the 1990s. Today, there are nearly 5.5 billion cell phone users and two billion Internet users in the world. The explosive growth of digital information and communications have altered the structure of human environments and have had profound impacts on people’s behavior and well-being. This lecture examines the growing interdependence between our place-based and virtual environments and...

Individuals’ participation in natural environments such as wilderness areas and parklands, as well as their proximity to nearby nature in residential, health care and community environments, have a profound influence on their psychological and physical well-being. This lecture examines the findings from recent research on the relationships between people’s exposure to nature and their mental and physical health. The distinction between spontaneous and directed attention, and the capacity of...

This lecture traces the rapid growth of mass-produced, American suburban housing developments (such as Levittown, Pennsylvania) following World War II, and the subsequent emergence of planned communities in the U.S. during the 1960s and Seventies, exemplified by Columbia, Maryland, Reston, Virginia, and Irvine, California. The translation of environmental psychology concepts and findings into design guidelines for creating successful residential neighborhoods is illustrated through examples...

The preceding lecture focused on developing research-based guidelines for creating effective public spaces and urban designs. The present lecture extends that discussion by examining evidence-based guidelines for enhancing the effectiveness of specific places and facilities such as mixed-use streetscapes, offices, homes, classrooms, concert halls, and health care facilities. Design guidelines drawn from Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language, including the provision of intimacy...

This lecture recaps several environmental psychology concepts and empirical research findings covered in prior lectures, and illustrates their usefulness as a basis for developing evidence-based guidelines for urban design. Several diverse and sometimes contrasting philosophical perspectives on urban design are discussed, including the perspectives of both anti-density (decentrist) designers (such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Ebenezer Howard) and pro-density (centrist) designers (such as Le...

This lecture examines several different ways in which designed environments such as buildings, neighborhoods, and urban regions, influence the patterns and quality of people’s social interactions. For instance, the physical design of dormitories, apartment buildings, and city streets can facilitate or hinder the development of residents’ social relationships by influencing their activity patterns and their perceptions of defensible space, neighborhood walkability and safety. Environmental...

Environments provide their occupants with both opportunities and constraints. Most environmental situations present a mix of opportunities and constraints. For instance, residents of large cities have access to numerous recreational and cultural resources, yet they are also confronted by inconveniences associated with population density, traffic congestion, and noise. People’s behavioral, emotional, and physiological responses to their surroundings depend on how they construe environmental...

Certain behaviors enacted by individuals and groups (for instance, deciding whether or not to conserve energy or recycle resources) have a profound impact on the environmental quality and healthfulness of our physical surroundings. This lecture highlights the vital role of natural capital (such as nutrient-rich soils and unpolluted waterways) in generating a variety ecosystem services such as the production of food, energy, and pharmaceuticals. Important demographic and environmental trends...

This lecture explores the topic of proxemics, or the ways in which people use space in their day-to-day interactions with others. Four core processes of human spatial behavior are privacy, personal space, territoriality, and crowding. Examples of these processes and the ways they work together as part of a dynamic system to regulate individuals’ privacy needs are discussed. Cultural differences in people’s use of personal space and territoriality are illustrated. Also, distinctions...

This lecture focuses on environmental attitudes, people’s tendencies to respond favorably or unfavorably to their surroundings through their emotions, beliefs, and behavior—and environmental assessment, or the systematic evaluation of people’s reactions to their present surroundings as well as their preferences about the shape of future environments. The lecture opens with several examples of how music is used to express evaluative sentiments about particular places and more general...

Personality is defined as a relatively stable set of personal attributes that characterize an individual and are observable by others across a variety of situations and settings. This lecture examines several different facets of the relationship between individuals’ personality and their socio-physical surroundings including: (1) the ways in which personal traits influence people’s interpretations of and reactions to particular places; and the (2) the distinctive qualities or ambiance of...

This lecture focuses on mental processes by which individuals form spatial memories, or cognitive maps, of their physical and social environments. The distinction between individuals’ perceptions of discrete objects as compared to their interpretations and memories of their large-scale, socio-physical surroundings (e.g., neighborhoods, workplaces, public spaces) is discussed. Key features of physical environments that people use to form cognitive maps of their spatial surroundings include...

This lecture provides an overview of systems theory and the concepts of physiological and psychological stress. As discussed in earlier lectures, the ecological paradigm and systems theory developed in response to narrower, deterministic explanations of environmental influences on human behavior and well-being. In ecological systems analyses, the degree of fit or congruence achieved by people and their surroundings depends on a variety of context-specific circumstances, such as spatial...

This lecture outlines the development and core assumptions of the ecological paradigm as it has evolved in the fields of biology, sociology, psychology, and public health. The Chicago School of Human Ecology is described and contrasted with broader-gauged analyses of human ecosystems including the Sociocultural School of Human Ecology and more recent conceptualizations of Social Ecology. The Chicago School, based largely on biological and economic principles, neglected the role of...

This lecture focuses on a contemporary societal problem, the obesity epidemic in the US and other countries, to illustrate how certain core principles of environmental psychology—including ecological and interdisciplinary analyses of people’s relations with their surroundings, can be applied to better understand complex social and environmental problems. Multiple environmental contributors to the obesity crisis in the US are discussed. Some of these etiologic factors are rooted in the...

This lecture provides an introductory overview of major topics that have been investigated in the field of environmental psychology. Environmental psychology is broadly defined as the study of people’s relationships with their everyday social and physical surroundings. People’s everyday environments include their homes, neighborhoods, classrooms, workplaces, health care settings, community public spaces, as well as more remote regional and global influences on their lives. These environments...