PSYC58 Week 10

• William James


  Father of American Psychology
• The Principles of Psychology


  Influential tome written by William James in 1980
• What was William James concerned about?

  William James was concerned about the negative effects of living increasingly disconnected from nature
• Positive Psychology Movement


  The study of factors that promote well-being
• Ecological Unconscious


  A fundamental premise of the ecopsychological perspective is that the idea that planetary well-being and human well-being are mutually dependent from each other
• Ecopsychology


  Coined by social historian Theodore Roszak (1992)
• Ecological Unconscious


  Roszak introduced the term which was a sense of interconnectedness between humans and other living things with roots of our ancestral past
• Ecopsychology: '"When the Earth hurts, we hurt with it"'
• Goal of Ecopsychology


  • To recover people's repressed connection to nonhuman nature
  • This will benefit people's health and restore their inherent sense of responsibility to the ecosystem and all of its inhabitants
• Key Tenets of Ecopsychology

  • At the core of the human mind is the ecological unconscious
  • In order to heal, people must become aware of where they came from and their primal connection to their ecological home rather than repressing this
  • Repression of the ecological unconscious means disconnection from the ecological self
  • Through ecologically based transcendent experience, people can reconnect with the ecological unconscious and reclaim their ecological selves
  • Recovery of the ecological self leads to sustainable behavior
• Biophilia Hypothesis


  Proposed by Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson that humans are born with an innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike process which means we have a feeling of kinship with natural environments and their inhabitants
• Biophobia


  The aversion to potentially dangerous natural stimuli
• Both the attraction to and aversion of nature can be explained evolutionary
• Biophilia advocates insist that we have an instinctive yearning to commune with nature
• Biophilia


  • Student study focused on students hating bees or were scared of bees and then after three weeks of honey bee education, they began to like and were interested in bees
• Affordances


  • Features that tend to elicit positive responses because they meet human needs such as water, vegetation, an expansive view and a place to take refuge
  • Evolutionary advantage; access to food and water/ having good vantage point to hide from predators is preferred
• People respond more positively to built environments when they contain some of the same features as preferred natural environments
• Preferred built environments


  • Houses with integrated vegetation, such as ivy climbing the façade or grass on the roof
  • University students prefer more greenery on campus
  • Urban settings with ponds and rivers
  • Purchasing homes at the edges of urban development
  • Hair salon or dental office with potted plant
• Biophilic Design


  • Uses natural settings, materials, and configurations to maximize human well-being in the space
  • Based on research findings about human responses to nature
• Biophilic architecture wouldn't build Wright's Fallingwater; marvelous views of natural surroundings, location of waterfall to be ecologically disruptive
• Techniques employed by biophilic designers

  • Direct Experience of Nature: Includes elements such as natural light, water, fresh air, plants, and animals
  • Indirect Experience of Nature: Images and representations of nature, natural materials, simulations of natural light and air, and naturalistic shapes and forms
  • Connection to place: Using elements that derive from the building's ecological and cultural context
• Vernacular architecture


  Using local natural materials to build structures that fit the environmental conditions of the area and the practices of the community
• Place Attachment


  Bonds between people and places that are mutually beneficial. Meaningful places serve as memory triggers, contribute to feelings of comfort and belonging, and evoke emotions such as happiness, hope, and pride
• Special places feel good, which inspires people to safeguard those places—sometimes. When it comes to environmental stewardship, place attachment does not always predict place-protective behaviors
• Place Attachment Disruptions


  Modern living and its consequences mean that some place attachments are more vulnerable to disruption than they were in past generations. Climate change is causing forced relocations, abruptly uprooting people, and gradually altering the landscape, which threatens attachment as well
• Place Attachment Disruptions


  • Inuit community in Canada find climate change interfering with Indigenous food sources
  • Tourists/residents in Australia found to have depression when thinking about Great Barrier Reef's decline due to coral bleaching
  • Ontario Place, an amusement park being turned into a private spa, might make people protest because they are feeling a loss of connection to this nostalgic green space
• Anthropomorphism


  Attributing human qualities, motives, and behaviors to animals
• Anthropomorphism is associated with support for animal welfare, conservation efforts, and general proenvironmental behavior, likely because seeing similarity is associated with feeling empathy
• Anthropomorphism


  • Furries: People who identify with anthropomorphized animals and develop fursonas
  • Therians: People whose identity is not wholly human and believe they are in part another species
• The strongest support for animal rights was expressed by the therians, who engage in not only anthropomorphism but also zoomorphism, attributing animal-like traits to humans
• People who have pets report that animal companions are as good as, or better than, humans at providing social support
• Charismatic Megafauna


  Large, best-known and most beloved wild animals such as great apes, elephants, and tigers
• Artificial life-forms are not the same as real ones, nor do they prompt all the same emotions and behaviors in people as living creatures do
• Restorative Environments


  The renewal or recovery of adaptive resources or capabilities that have become depleted in meeting the demands of everyday life
• Theories of Restorative Environments

  • Stress Recovery Theory: If we reduce stress, it will improve peoples mood
  • Attention Restoration Theory: Natural settings allow us to rest and replenish because they capture our attention
• Not all Natural settings are equally restorative
• People expect to be restored by nature sounds, such as birdsong
• People rightly expect more restoration from natural environments, but urban spaces can have restorative benefits
• Attention Restoration Theory


  Describes revived ability to concentrate after mental fatigue. When we engage in deliberate and sustained directed attention we get tired. Natural settings allow us to rest and replenish because they capture our attention
• Support for Attention Restoration Theory by experiments in which attentional capacity is replenished after exposure to nature, after having been depleted by a cognitively demanding task