Environmental Psychology

Una mirada del habitante en el espacio de la vivienda de interés social

by Adolfo Gomez Amador

Producto del proyecto de investigación de doctorado de Ana Rosa Velasco

Dragonfly: An Ecological Approach to Digital Architectural Design

by Michael J. Braund

Published in ACADIA 2011: Integration Through Computation, ed. by J.M. Taron, V. Parlac, B. Kolarevic and J.S. Johnson, pp.178-186. Stroughton, WI: The Printing House, 2011.

(Co-authored with Daniel Hambleton)

In his keynote address delivered to The American Society for Esthetics in 1976, James J. Gibson wrote, “Architecture... more In his keynote address delivered to The American Society for Esthetics in 1976, James J. Gibson wrote, “Architecture and design do not have a satisfactory theoretical basis.” He then asked, “Can an ecological approach to the psychology of perception and behavior provide it?” (1976, p. 413) We believe that it can, at least in part. In this paper, we expand upon Gibson’s insights into the nature of perceptual experience by applying the concept of “affordances” to the design of architectural objects in general, and to the domain of digital architectural design in particular. On our account, the affordance-concept supplies a useful theoretical basis for conceptualizing the relationship between environments and occupants with respect to the form and behavioral meaning of geometrically constructed layouts.

Donald Norman (1988) first introduced affordances to interaction design theorists, as a conceptual tool for predicting how agents will interact with a given product. The extensive body of literature that has since emerged, from human-computer-interaction studies (Ackerman, 1996; Conn, 1995; Moran, 1997; Norman, 1999) to architectural theory and practice (Koutamanis, 2006; Maier and Fadel, 2009), has followed Norman’s lead in defining affordances, somewhat amorphously, as whichever action-related properties of objects are sufficient to elicit the intended forms of behavioral interaction between the agent and object. However, while this is correct, it is only half the story. It leaves unexplained how human perceivers detect and “pair down” on the potentially vast range of possible affordances (at a given time), to select the ones that will be relevant to the coordination and guidance of the targeted actions. Call this the “selectivity problem,” a proper treatment of which is missing from the literature. This is no small matter. If the theory of affordances is to be useful to architects and designers, if it is to have explanatory and predictive power over how perceivers will interact with their surroundings, then some account of the cognitive procedure by which affordances are selected for the deployment of specific behaviors is necessary. Otherwise, it is unclear what the theory hopes to predict or explain.

To this end, we maintain that the couching of affordances in a framework of human intentionality is not only consistent with Gibson’s theoretical views (i.e., the action-oriented definition of the concept of affordances not only suggests an intentional perspective), indeed, such a perspective is necessary if we are to succeed in implementing the affordance-concept into an architectural design context in a way that addresses the selectivity problem. This is one of the goals of “Dragonfly,” a first attempt at implementing the affordance-based control of perceptually guided-action into a digital design simulation. Dragonfly enables human interaction with geometry by encoding the basic principles of ecological psychology (including a rudimentary form of intentionality) into an interactive CAD environment. New vistas for future research and interdisciplinary approaches to design are then discussed, with a special emphasis on their applicability to architecture.

El Habitante Actor y Lector de la Vivienda de Interés Social

by Adolfo Gomez Amador

The Inhabitant: Reader And Actor of Income Housing Space
Co-authored with Ana Rosa Velasco Ávalos. Published in “Arquitectura Ciudad Patrimonio y Medio Ambiente” Universidad de Colima, 2009

This research is proposed for the city of Morelia, where they started the first social housing, since the 1960's to... more This research is proposed for the city of Morelia, where they started the first social housing, since the 1960's to date, houses has been transformed in design and space organization, and in application of building materials, affecting not only the performance and interaction between built spaces and inhabitant, but also the internal comfort conditions as a result of the minimization of dimensions and the adjustments they made to housing.

Architectural Qualities for Violence-Free Houses: Case Colima, Mexico.

by Adolfo Gomez Amador

Co-authored with Gabriel Gómez Azpeitia et al, Published in "The 2005 World Sustainable Building Conference, Tokyo, 27-29 September 2005 (SB05Tokyo) Proceedings".

We have analyzed several characteristics of 12 natural ventilated houses localized in a hot sub –humid climate in... more We have analyzed several characteristics of 12 natural ventilated houses localized in a hot sub –humid climate in Colima, Mexico. A correlation has been made between the qualities of this buildings and the occurrence of domestic violence in them. These houses were divided into two groups: one group of five houses whose inhabitants affirmed that they did not have violent events during the six previous months to the inquiry; the second group of seven houses whose inhabitants acknowledged some violent events during the same period. The violence was classified into four categories: psychological, intimidation, physical and sexual.
The architectural characteristics of these houses were analyzed based on four categories: territoriality, topology, bioclimate and semiotic. In territoriality we considered the availability and use of spaces within a house. In topology we explored the people circulation into the house, which may affect the intimacy of its habitants. In bioclimate we measured the indoor temperature and relative humidity. In semiotic we analyzed the order and color of the internal decoration.
The study shows the correlation — going from moderate to strong— between the buildings characteristics, their operative use, and their violence events. This correlation was found in situations such as the space where the inhabitants discuss important family issues (r=0.72), the amount of occupants in a bedroom (r=0.81), the connectivity between spaces according to their level of intimacy (r=0.62), the indoor temperature ranges (r=0.8), the maximum’s and minimum’s indoor temperatures (r=0.73 and r=-0.72), the color of walls, ceiling and floors (r=0.79 for brown, r=-0.65 for yellow, r=0.59 for gray, etc.) and the arrangement of furniture and decorative pieces (r=0.76).
We propose that the accurate design of certain architectural elements may reduce the possibility of violence, but that it is also possible to consider the existence of a pattern in the behavior allowing the occupants to perform several actions in their houses to achieve the best possible conditions, with more or less success.
This "environmental intelligence" seems to have a parallel functioning with "emotional intelligence" established by Salovey and Mayer (1990). Therefore, the human factor is a relevant element to consider in design of housing.

Forscher als Normbrecher: Das Experiment als empirischer Zugang der Rechts-, Raum-und Sozialforschung

by Martin Klamt

The effects of familiarity and gender on spatial representation

by Francesco Ruotolo

Iachini, T., Ruotolo, F., & Ruggiero, G. (2009). The effects of familiarity and gender on spatial representation. Journal of Environmental Psychology,
Volume 29, Issue 2, pp. 227-234

This paper reports a study of how familiarity and gender may influence the frames of reference used in memory to... more This paper reports a study of how familiarity and gender may influence the frames of reference used in memory to represent a real-world regularly shaped environment. Familiar and unfamiliar participants learned the locations of three triads of buildings by walking on a path which encircled each triad. Then they were shown with maps reproducing these triads at five different orientations (from 0° to 180°) and had to judge whether each triad represented correctly the relative positions between the buildings. Results showed that unfamiliar participants performed better when the orientation of triads was closer to the learning perspective (0° and 45°) and corresponded to front rather than to back positions. Instead, familiar participants showed a facilitation for triads oriented along orthogonal axes (0°–180°, 90°) and no difference between front and back positions. These findings suggested that locations of unfamiliar buildings were mentally represented in terms of egocentric frames of reference; instead, allocentric frames of reference defined by the environment were used when the environment was familiar. Finally, males were more accurate and faster than females, and this difference was particularly evident in participants unfamiliar with the environment.

Locating art: The display and construction of place identity in art galleries

by Chris Whitehead

in Peralta E; Anico M (eds), Heritage and Identity: Engagement and Demission in the Contemporary World, Routledge, 2009

This essay will address the relationships between art on display in museums and galleries, identity and geographic... more This essay will address the relationships between art on display in museums and galleries, identity and geographic location with reference to theories of place identity developed by scholars such as Relph (1976), Proshansky et al (1983), Rowles (1983) and Dixon and Durrheim (2000). It will focus on the ways in which place identities are constructed in displays of art, building upon the notion of place identity as a political and social construction (and in this case specifically a curatorial one) that allows people to make sense of their connectivity to place and to guide their actions and projects accordingly. (Danziger, 1997 and Dixon and Durrheim, 2000) It will refer extensively (though not exclusively) to the representation and construction of place identity in art museums and galleries in the adjoining north-eastern cities of Newcastle, Gateshead and Sunderland. Focal points will include the Laing Art Gallery’s permanent display Art on Tyneside, which is intended to represent an artistic history of the region, and some of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art’s exhibitions of specially commissioned works, such as American artist Chris Burden’s large-scale sculpture of the nearby Tyne Bridge.

Within this analysis, the essay will explore the following questions: why are place, community and identity actively connected in these gallery displays and what rhetorical means are used to do so? In addressing the first of these questions, the essay will examine the politics of representation and the agendas which drive curatorial (and in some cases artistic) choices and initiatives. The second question will focus on identifiable museological strategies of interpretation (including text, graphics and the configuring of interior décor) in the venues under study and will involve an exploration of the discourses of place identity which displays both represent and construct. In this context one may also ask: what are the ‘preferred performances’ (to conflate two bodies of theory) which these displays are intended to prompt in visitors, and what does this say about institutional views of citizenship, community and belonging?

This study will provide a platform for a wider discussion of the significance of place identity in the gallery for ontological understandings of art and engagement with art: what confers ‘north-eastern-ness’ on some art and how might this affect audience understandings of art as a concept, and as a category of material culture and experience? These last questions will be related to complex debates in art history and theory on the relationships between art production and geography, and to others in aesthetics, sociology, cultural studies and museum studies on the role of identity in visitors’ development of cultural capital and in their acts of meaning making and performance in art museums and galleries.

CONFORTO E PSICOLOGIA AMBIENTAL: A QUESTÃO DO ESPAÇO PESSOAL NO PROJETO ARQUITETÔNICO

by Doris Kowaltowski

Human behaviour patterns of a welfare house inhabitant as an adaptative action in a humid hot weather. Case Colima-Villa de Álvarez conurbation, México

by Carlos Javier Esparza López

Co-authored Dr. Armando Alcántara Lomelí and Dr. Evelyn Irma Rodríguez Morrill

In Mexico, increased production housing is social housing or a welfare house. It is essential to know the population... more In Mexico, increased production housing is social housing or a welfare house. It is essential to know the population sector for those builds, as contrary to reason, It is designed and constructed without taking account the needs, requirements and conditions of minimum comfort for the person to falls under the performance-friendly environments of their activities. The objective of this research is to analyze the interaction generated between the inhabitants of the house and the window. It aims to analyze environmental conditions generated by the window in a common area such as the living room for a week in the two major climatic periods for the city of Colima, the warm humid covering June to October and warm dry covering November to May. The type of study is an exploratory design research, not experimental type.
So far the results show a diversity of behaviours consistent with the climatic-environmental conditions such as keeping doors and windows open throughout the day, barefoot in the house, change the dress of light to very light inside the house, take over a bath at day and taking naps at noon. Also we can find extreme adaptative behaviours, as sleeping at the backyard, taking baths at the pile (a recipient where is saved water for cloths washing) and sleep at the living room. This actions show the inefficiency that exist between the envelope and the outside climate and between the outside-inside weather being controlled by the envelope.

Violencia doméstica, mensajes dentro del espacio arquitectónico

by Adolfo Gomez Amador

El documento reporta parte de los resultados de una investigación con la finalidad de encontrar la correlación entre... more El documento reporta parte de los resultados de una investigación con la finalidad de encontrar la correlación entre patrones de conducta violenta y su entorno arquitectónico.
Se establece un procedimiento de análisis de la disposición de los objetos colocados sobre los muros en los espacios de mayor importancia para los habitantes, para ello se define un concepto de orden y a partir de esto se consideró que la respuesta perceptiva es una tarea compleja, en donde la composición implica la idea de agrupamiento ordenado.
Para efectuar el proceso de análisis se tomaron en cuenta diversos criterios, en función a tres categorías básicas: el espacio, los elementos y los principios com- positivos. Los elementos compositivos se analizaron ateniéndonos a principios y leyes de la percepción identificados experimentalmente entre 1975 y 1995 por diversos autores.

Kılınç, A., Boyes, E., & Stanisstreet, M. (accepted) Exploring Students' Ideas about Risks and Benefits of Nuclear Power Using Risk Perception Theories. Journal of Science Education and Technology

by Ahmet Kilinc

Due to increased energy demand, Turkey is continuing to explore the possibilities of introducing nuclear power. ... more Due to increased energy demand, Turkey is continuing to explore the possibilities of introducing nuclear power.  Gaining acceptance from local populations, however, may be problematic because nuclear power has a negative image and risk perceptions are complicated by a range of psychological and cultural factors.  In this study, we explore the views about nuclear power of school students from three locations in Turkey, two of which have been proposed as sites suitable for nuclear power plants.  About half of the student cohort believed that nuclear power can supply continuous and sufficient electricity, but approximately three quarters thought that nuclear power stations could harm organisms, including humans, living nearby.  Rather few students realized that adoption of nuclear power would help to reduce global warming and thereby limit climate change; indeed, three quarters thought that nuclear power would make global warming worse.  There was a tendency for more students from the location most likely to have a nuclear power plant to believe negative characteristics of nuclear power, and for fewer students to believe positive characteristics.  Exploration of the possible nuclear power programmes by Turkey offers an educational opportunity to understand the risk perceptions of students that affect their decision-making processes.

Users’ views of hospital environmental quality: Validation of the Perceived Hospital Environment Quality Indicators (PHEQIs)

by Cláudia Andrade

Environmental Quality Perception (EQP) is an important construct used to help to understand the relationship between... more Environmental Quality Perception (EQP) is an important construct used to help to understand the relationship between people and the hospital environment. From a patient-centered care perspective, it is important that hospital design take into account the patients’ (and other users’) point of view. This paper presents the adaptation and validation of a measure of hospital EQP, the Perceived Hospital Environment Quality Indicators (PHEQIs; Fornara, Bonaiuto, & Bonnes, 2006), and seeks to confirm the factor structure of this construct in a different cultural context. Three scales, two focusing on physical environments and one evaluating the social environment, were completed by 562 users of four orthopedic units in Portuguese hospitals, two older and two recently built or renovated. To assess criterion validity, hospital physical environments were also objectively evaluated by two architects. Using a confirmatory factor analysis the three validation procedures produced acceptable fit indices in the final measurement models. Overall reliability values were satisfactory, as was the evidence for criterion validity. PHEQIs scales and factors correlated with global evaluation of the environment, supporting concurrent criterion validity; and predictive criterion validity was demonstrated given that users of older and newer hospitals differed significantly on the perception of quality of hospital EQP, and that high congruence between users’ and experts’ evaluations was found. Discriminant construct validity was supported, and some difficulties in showing convergent validity are discussed in terms of item formulation adequacy. Implications for research and practice are described.

The Void Underfoot - Caves in America

by Emerson Andrews

Caves are explored in three different perspectives: recreation, biology, and meaning. In 2007 the European introduced... more Caves are explored in three different perspectives: recreation, biology, and meaning. In 2007 the European introduced White-Nose Syndrome started it's rampage on hibernating bat species in North America. In 2009 John Jones tragically dies while recreating in Nutty Putty cave. The piece uses my own caving experience with a man who was involved with the failed rescue attempt at Nutty Putty in 2007 to elucidate the connections that these two events have. The piece asks questions about meaning. What do caves mean ecologically? What do Bats mean ecologically? What do caves mean for us both ecologically and culturally? Finally it examines what options we have when faced with death in the dark places of our world, and what that means for the surface.

Profiling the 'Pro‐environmental Individual': A Personality Perspective

by Ezra Markowitz

Markowitz, E.M., Goldberg, L.R., Ashton, M.C. & Lee, K. (Forthcoming, 2012). Profiling the ‘pro-environmental individual’: A personality perspective. Journal of Personality.

How much is enough? Examining the public's beliefs about consumption

by Ezra Markowitz

Markowitz, E.M. & Bowerman, T. (Forthcoming, 2012). How much is too much? Examining the public’s beliefs about consumption. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy.

Climate change and moral judgment

by Ezra Markowitz

Markowitz, EM & Shariff AF (2012). Climate change and moral judgment. Nature Climate Change.

Psychology and global climate change

by Ezra Markowitz

Swim, J., Markowitz, E.M., & Bloodhart, B. (Forthcoming, 2012). Psychology and global climate change. Invited chapter for Oxford Handbook of Environmental Psychology.

Understanding cooking behaviours to design energy saving interventions

by Luis Oliveira

Full citation:
Oliveira, L., Mitchell, V., & Badni, K. (2011). Understanding cooking behaviours to design energy saving interventions. Buildings don’t use energy, people do? – Research students conference on domestic energy use and CO2 emissions in existing dwellings, Bath, UK

Conference webpage:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/ace/events/

People’s behaviours play an important role in energy consumption, especially whilst dealing with high consumption,... more People’s behaviours play an important role in energy consumption, especially whilst dealing with high consumption, highly interactive appliances such as cookers. In a user observation study conducted among university students, participants were asked to perform a simple cooking task. Their behaviours were analysed and compared with a set of recommended practices. The electricity usage and time to complete the activity were also measured. The results show that participants performed in several different ways, presenting diverse energy usage. The determinants of these behaviours were also collected, and will help to inform the design of interventions to motivate people to change their behaviours whilst cooking.

Subjective and objective dimensions of spatial legibility

by Emine Koseoglu

Authors: Emine Koseoglu and Deniz Erinsel Onder

Abstract
Reading space means understanding, analyzing or evaluating a certain space. Yet spatial legibility... more Abstract
Reading space means understanding, analyzing or evaluating a certain space. Yet spatial legibility differs from the concept of reading. Legibility is one of the principles of urban design. Legibility means the possibility of organizing an environment within an imageable and coherent pattern. Reading an environment is a process that evolves with the obtaining of spatial information from the environment and by mentally processing that information and using it in a way appropriate to its purpose. Two components play a part in the process of obtaining spatial information: the characteristics of the space and the characteristics of the observer. The observer's perception and understanding of the characteristics of a space occurs as a result of spatialpsychological processes that happen in the mind. At the same time, legibility is influenced by spatial characteristics. The degree of legibility of a space depends on the plan layout in the second dimension and its complexity, and on the aliency of architectural components in the third dimension. There are many concepts in the literature that define legible environments: simple, coherent, understandable, perceivable, etc. All of these concepts point to characteristics deriving from the structure of the space. However, it is impossible to measure legibility by these concepts. It is discussed in this article that there are two main variables to devise a definition based on characteristics deriving from space: 1. the complexity of spatial layout and 2. the saliency of landmarks. The complexity of spatial layout describes the two-dimensional information about a space, while the saliency of landmarks refers to the three-dimensional information about a space. These two variables are also the elements of spatial information used while employing wayfinding behavior.

Keywords: Spatial Perception; Spatial Legibility; Urban Form; Human Mind; Landmarks

A Geography of the Lifeworld (1979)

by David Seamon

A Geography of the Lifeworld, a book originally published in 1979 by Croom Helm (London) & St. Martin's Press (New York)

This book,  A Geography of the Lifeworld (1979), focuses on a wide-ranging phenomenon labelled everyday... more This book,  A Geography of the Lifeworld (1979), focuses on a wide-ranging phenomenon labelled everyday environmental experience—the sum total of peoples’ firsthand involvements with the geographical world in which they live. By geographical world is meant the everyday places, spaces, and environments in which people find themselves. The source of experiential descriptions was environmental experience groups, small focus groups of students and other interested participants who were willing to meet weekly to examine in their own daily experience such themes as movement patterns, emotions relating to place, the nature of noticing and attention, the meaning of home and at-homeness, places for things, deciding where to go when, and so forth.

Through a phenomenological explication of the more than 1,500 personal observations offered in these environmental experience groups, the study identifies three overarching themes—movement, rest, and encounter—that appear to mark the essential core of everyday environmental experience.

The section on movement examines the habitual nature of everyday environmental behaviors and argues, after French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962), that the lived foundation of these behaviors is the body as preconscious but intelligent subject. The section on rest explores people’s attachment to place and gives particular attention to at-homeness and positive affective relationships with places and environments.

The book’s final section on encounter considers the multifaced ways in which people make attentive contact with their world. Group observations indicate that this range of awareness extends from obliviousness and minimal attentive contact with the world at hand through watching, noticing, and more intense kinds of encounter where the experiencer, at least metaphorically, feels a sense of “merging” with some aspect of world.

The last section of the book examines lived relationships and interconnections among movement, rest, and encounter and argues that their threefold structure offers one simple but integrated way to envision human environmental experience conceptually and to think about design and policy implications practically.