Welcome to lesson fifteen, module one, environmental
psychology.
Let’s move to slide two. Today we’re going to be discussing weather,
climate, behavior, disasters, hazards, & pollution; crowding, city,and
architecture.
Let’s move to slide three and begin. What are the effects of heat? There
have been a lot of studies on temperature. What do we know? We know that
there’s more horn honking in hot weather, that is when the temperature
rises above 100 degrees, there’ll actually be an increase in horn honking.
Typically the people who are doing this tend to be people who do not
have air conditioning, that is, we measured the sites looking at whether
or not they’re driving with their windows open and people who live in
urban areas. We’ve also observed increases when the asphalt is black and
gives off heat waves. Most people see honking their horn as instrumental
aggression. What else do we know about heat? When games are very hot,
more batters are hit by errant pitches when it is above 80 or 90
degrees. What about helping in heat. Remember these findings are
unclear and there's little data. There tends to be an effect of indoor/outdoor temperature.
There are no effects for requests or clear needs, that is regardless of
whether it’s hot or cold, if you make a clear request or you clearly
need help, people will help you. However, people help inside when it is
cold outside. When it’s hot outside, people are also more likely to help
inside. Again, this depends on the area and again the data are a little
bit unclear.
Let’s move to slide four. What about cold weather. We’re often
interested in cold performance because we have people who actually work
in rather cold environments. We know that energy is largely focused on
staying warm in extreme cold. This works by activating warm existence.
Creating goose bumps on the skin, increased blood flow to the
extremities, or to the core and not to the extremities. What we do know
that hand warm is key for manual dexterity, even when the core
temperature is low. This is difficult to achieve because when the body
becomes cold, it begins to reserve blood flow for the core elements of
the body typically making your fingers and toes quite cold, even your
hands and feet. This can in turn impair driving skills, reducing your
grip strength, it reduces your ability to feel the road, typically
because we’re shaking in the body trying to stay warm. It also impairs
your ability to track with your eyes, other things that are moving on
the road or across the road.
Let’s move to slide five. SAD or seasonal affective disorder usually
occurs during the fall and winter months. What we find is these people
suffer from hypersomnia, they sleep all the time. They are very fatigued,
they have high carb cravings and often will gain weight in the winter.
There has been some evidence that there is an artificial light cure,
that is buying sun lamps or using artificial light that is meant to look
like natural light for certain periods every day can reduce the impact
of seasonal affective disorder. In animals, this is also paired with
melatonin increase, but this does not work for humans. Sunlight tends to be
associated with good moods, increased helping, more tips and many other
positive things. In addition, sunlight is also associated with more
suicides and crime. How do we explain this? Perhaps it is more social
stress. When it is sunny outside, there are more people who are going
outside, you’re more likely to encounter people. Both good and bad.
People who make you feel bad about yourself, people who are willing to
commit crimes against you, as well as people who are going to help you
and maybe even tip you more if you’re in a particular service where
tipping is required.
Let’s more to slide six. What about disasters. Disasters are described
as sudden, unpredictable, uncontrollable, destructive and huge. There
are two effects; the crisis effect and the levy effect. The crisis
effect says that awareness dissipates over time. This makes mornings
less effective. So once there’s a crisis, people then will pay
attention, however, over time this will dissipate. For example if you
take the terrorists of 911, in the days following the attack, everyone
was very aware of what level of the alert we were at in the country.
However, after many months of being at a very high level of alert,
people weren’t seeing these warnings, and they became less effective.
The levy effect is when we take preventative measures and then trust
them to be effective. For example, many people felt much better about
the idea that there would not be terrorist attacks once searches at the
airport increased to begin scanning luggage and so on, and we trust for
them to be effective. This is called the levy effect; you build a levy
and assume it's going to work. However, what doesn’t happen is that
people do not remain constantly alert over time. This is because of
adaptation. They become desensitized to the hazards, especially if there
are many false alarms. This is why having many fire drills is not very
effective because people will assume this is simply another drill.
Let’s move to slide seven. How do people really respond to disasters?
Most as though it were a spectator sport. Very few people actually panic
as movies would have you believe. Most are simply stunned and silent.
About 25 to 30% of people show long lasting effects, that are
psychological in nature and these tend to be people who lost the most in
the disaster. In addition, the thing that upsets people the most about
disasters is when there is a loss of freedom. For example, when people lose
their home and they’re no longer free to go to their home or to be in a
safe place.
Let’s move to slide eight. What about interior design, can it help us
reduce stress? There are different types of spacing that can help us to
reduce stress; sociopetal spacing, such as living rooms where you can
think of the seats as being all facing one another, usually in a circle,
or sociopupil. This is typically lined up chairs where people aren’t
facing each other, but all facing perhaps a blank wall. In addition, we
know that people need space. So if you have to wait in a sociopetal
room, this could be very useful to the extent that you’re comfortable
wherever you’re waiting. That is, you’re not waiting to hear a severe
diagnosis in which if you’re in the sociopupil space, it’d be more
important. But if you’re waiting to get your driver’s license, a sociopetal spacing could be very useful in decreasing stress. What we do know
is that often we are required to perform private behaviors in public
spaces. For example, having to use the public bathroom. The maturation
study graph below is one indication that we very much value space. In
this study, it was done in male restrooms and they looked at the delay
of onset of urination as well as how long urination lasted. By putting a
small camera underneath the stalls, they could measure when someone
began to urinate, from the time they began standing in front of the
urinal, which urinal they chose, and how long they continued to urinate.
What you find is in the controlled condition where there was no one else
in the room, the delay of onset is quite low and the duration or
persistence is quite high. However, if there was someone not right next
to you at the next urinal, but one urinal over, you saw a slight
decrease, so it’s a moderate distance, the delay of onset; it took
longer for a person to begin urination and they did not urinate quite as
long. Finally in a close distance, we find that people when someone’s
standing at the urinal directly next to them, the delay of onset
increases to almost 10 seconds and urination persistence is only about
18 seconds. Clearly simply having others in our spaces influences our
ability to behave.
Let’s move to slide nine. What about gender differences. We know that
different kinds of invasion affect men and women differently. Males
often object to face to face invasion. Sitting directly across from a
male is often more offensive to them than sitting next to them. However,
females often object to adjacent invasion. This has to do with
competition versus affiliation goals. Males are expected to compete and
women to affiliate. It is not necessary to affiliate with someone who is
sitting across from you, but if someone sits next to you, it’s often
felt that you should engage in some affiliative behavior, if you’re a
female. If you’re male on the other hand, an adjacent invasion is not as
important as a face to face or across from you invasion. What we know is
that because these gender differences exist, you can look at where people sit
their belonging. Belongings are often placed to avoid invasion. Females will
often place their books or belonging to the side of them in any vacant
seat in order to force people to have to make another kind of invasion.
However, males on the other hand will often put things across from them
to indicate that they are taking up space that is in front of them to
prevent face to face invasion. What we know is that when males and
females try to approach one another, this can often lead to
miscommunication. Females will often sit next to men in an adjacent
seat, trying to make contact and males do not even see this as
approaching them because they’re used to face to face invasion for
people who matter and typically ignore those who sit adjacent. Females
have exactly the opposite view.
Let’s move to slide ten. We also know that people engage in territorial
behavior. Males have larger territories than females. This begins when
they are children. If you ask young children who perhaps have just
received a bike and have begun to explore the neighborhood using the
sidewalks, you will find that the male children are often able to map
out a much larger area of the place in which they play than females
typically draw perhaps their block or the houses across the street, but
not much beyond that, whereas males will often draw three or four
blocks, sometimes even six block radius around their own home. In
addition, we mark our territory with our belongings. For example,
putting your jacket on the chair next to you, putting your book on the
table in the space that you feel belongs to you. Eighty-three percent of
students sit in the same seat all semester during a large lecture
course. This is quite remarkable. There is nothing really about that
seat specifically that makes it theirs, but we have this very
territorial behavior ingrained in us. In addition we know that when
males mark their territory, these markers are taken very seriously. We
look at desks, office space and seating, you will find that males will
behave in a very different way when it’s their markers. If you enter an
office and you believe that a male is in that office, you will respect
the desk and office space and seating arrangement. However, female
offices tend to be invaded more closely, that is people will move things
on the desk, play with objects on the desk, take up their office space,
choose a different seat, move the chairs and so on. Another study called
the jacket study. In these studies they put a clearly feminine or
clearly masculine jacket on a chair and then had no one available. They
then measured who would sit where and why. If it was a male jacket,
people kept their distance, they sat several chairs away. However, if it
was a female jacket, people often would maybe even move the jacket, turn
it into lost and found, they didn’t see it as a marker. And you can also
look at yourself in terms of whether or not you are territorial. Often
when you go to a restaurant and someone else puts your plate in front of
you, you can’t help but touch it. This is why they always warn you the
plate is hot, especially if you go to a Mexican food restaurant because
they know your instinct is to touch the plate. The next time you eat
out, try very hard to not touch the plate. It’s very difficult to
refrain and now that I’ve made you aware, maybe you’ll see just how
territorial you really are. There is also a study that looks at video
arcade machine touching. Back in the day before Nintendo, Play Station
and X-Boxes, they had video arcades and the people would touch the
machine they were playing. It was often common that even while they were
getting change or talking to someone and not actively engaged with the
machine, they would continue to touch that machine and that machine
only.
Let’s move to slide eleven. Crime and territory. How could
territoriality reduce crime? Well we know that there are less burglaries
if there are symbolic barriers. That is, identity markers. You know who
lives there. Your name on the sidewalk, on the door, on the mailbox. In
addition to actual barriers, so places that have fences. Even like garden
fences that may only be 5 or 6 inches high simply to mark the territory
will reduce burglary. In addition traces, the idea that someone lives
there; cars, sprinklers, visible neighbors, garages, toys in the yard;
all of these things will reduce burglary.
Let’s move to slide twelve. Another measure of space is eye contact.
What we’ve seen is that if we look at who makes eye contact, at the post
office, we can find this sort of a study. They looked in Parksford,
Brynmar, and Philadelphia and found that males and females typically
engage in eye contact at the same level. However, we’re less likely to
do so in the city, moderately likely to do in Brynmar, which is sort of
a suburban area and least likely to do so in Parksford. That is, in
Parksford at the post office you’re expected to look at everyone, saying
hello even, however, in Philadelphia you should not make very much
eye contact and only about 10% of people did. This is a way of
maintaining space. In a rural area such as Parksford, you often feel
that you have enough space and aren’t being threatened, there’s no need
to be territorial. There is no reason to feel like you might be invading
someone else’s territory. However, in Philadelphia, eye contact can help
us maintain a sense of privacy by not making eye contact with others,
it’s simply polite and when people do make eye contact, it’s often
thought to be strange, weird or cause for concern.
Let’s move to slide thirteen. Well what about these urbanites? Typically
these people who live in cities like New York, Chicago, Houston, Dallas
as being relatively unfriendly. In order to test this idea, they had
photos taken and what they found is that urbanites, people who were
thought to live in the city were viewed as less friendly, less easy
going and more tense. However, an interesting thing about urbanites is
they often have familiar strangers, usually around four people. A
familiar stranger is someone you see every day or on a regular basis at
some location that you frequent but you’ve never talked to them. About
89.5% of urbanites have at least one familiar stranger. They said that
they think about them, even when they aren’t in that place, even at home
and places when they’re going elsewhere, they will think about their
familiar strangers. They’re also more likely to help their familiar
strangers than to help someone who is not a familiar stranger, and
they’re not going to interact inside the routine setting but are more
likely to interact outside the routine setting.
Let’s move to slide fourteen and discuss some design issues that can
decrease stress. Chromatic Aberration. This is the idea that the red is
closer to you than to blue. Perceptual emphasis to a flat wall could be
added. This can be very stressful if you do this in a work environment.
Very useful in shopping, clubs or places where you don’t need people to
pay a great deal of attention and simply want to give them something
interesting to look at. However, this sort of making a wall pop could be
very distracting if used in, for example, classrooms or offices.
Let’s move to slide fifteen. Lighter walls typically make a room seem
larger than it is and it reduces the stress of crowding. You can put the
same number of people in a room, paint it a lighter color and they will
actually show fewer stress signals; less physiological responding and so
on. In addition it’s better to increase contrast or task components than
to eliminate the room. For many years we’ve been interested in terms of
factory work, when people are having to do a great deal of manual labor,
sitting at a desk or dealing with very small pieces, we typically become
concerned. One thing we decided to do was to reduce eye stress by simply
lighting everything up better. But what worked even better was to be
sure that the table was the opposite color or a very contrasting color
to the components being used. Some lighting tends to increase intimacy.
What we know is we need to dim the lights, it quiets conversation and
people tend to sit closer to one another in dim lighting than if the
lights are bright. In addition, if you have a lack of windows, this can
create more negative moves.
Let’s move to slide sixteen. Let’s return to the idea of privacy. Visual
intrusion. This is the ability to see or be seen, it’s usually seen as
stressful. Clear panels therefore are not affective. Restaurants or other
offices that have been made to give a sense of privacy, they’re
basically built black barriers or other clear panels do not decrease
visual intrusion or give anyone a sense of privacy. What we know that
college drop outs are more likely to live in dorms with roommates and
communal bathrooms and showers. Bathroom designs and décor. Is there a
usefulness in a frilly shower curtain, are they functional? How do you
use them properly. Look at the picture here. We typically find that
these shower curtains do reduce stress and enhance a sense of privacy
more than anything else. They don’t actually do much else, they’re not
very functional. And remember you’re more likely to drop out of school
if you have to share a bathroom with someone. If you need an argument
for getting your own apartment, this could be it.
Let’s move on to slide seventeen. If we look at a psychiatric unit
crowding, what we find is that the death rate and population are highly
correlated. Paulus, McCain, & Cox, in 1978 conducted this study. As you
look at the death rate and this axis, you should look at 4 deaths per
hundred, 3 deaths per hundred, 2 deaths per hundred on the right hand
side. For population, the correct measure is 700, 600, 500, 400, 300, 200
people. They found that as you can see the black line very closely
mirrors the red line. The more crowded it was, the more deaths there
were per 100 people.
Let’s move on to slide eighteen. We talked about crowding, design. Now we’re gonna talk about pollution. Rotton, Yoshikawa, & Kaplan in 1971 used a
method using an unpleasant smell from a bottle. They took the group and
randomly assigned them. A third were told they could cork the bottle if
they’d like, a third were told to leave the bottle alone and a third
control group did not actually see the bottle or experience the smell.
They were then asked to work on some impossible puzzle. What we found
was that the corking group worked as long as the control group. The
leave it alone group spent the least time working and interestingly, no
one corked the bottle. Therefore, it appears the control is much more
important than actually exercising that control. That means people who
were able to cork the bottle, even if they didn’t, still exposed to that
impossible smell worked longer on a very difficult puzzle.
Let’s move to the final slide, slide nineteen. What about noise? Noise
can be damaging. We know that children living in noisy areas have high
blood pressure. This can also lead to learned helplessness and they
become easily frustrated when doing homework. This is typically only
when you have no control of the noise, that is, if you can at least
predict the noise, you have a better chance. For example, people who
live near railroad tracks where a train comes every day at the same
time, even in the middle of the night at the same time, become
accustomed and don’t wake up or become disturbed by it. However, if the
noise is uncontrollable and you can’t determine when or if it’s going to
happen, you become easily frustrated and develop a sense of learned
helplessness. Glass and Singer in 1972 did a study if you could control the
distracting noise, then you typically performed better, at least as good
as someone who is not experiencing the noise at all.
This concludes our very brief overview of these environmental slide
topics. Thank you very much.
