environmental psychology

glass and singer (aircraft noise) christian (deer)

defining principles: The biological approach believes us to be as a consequence of our genetics and physiology. It is the only approach in psychology that examines thoughts, feelings, and behaviors from a biological and thus physical point of view. Therefore, all that is psychological is first physiological. All thoughts, feeling & behaviour ultimately have a biological cause. A biological perspective is relevant to the study of psychology in three ways:1. Comparative method, 2. Physiology and 3. Investigation of inheritance Each of these biological aspects, the comparative, the physiological (i.e. the brain) and the genetic, can help explain human behavior.

how study relates to area: how the individual's health and well-being influences hypertension and noise levels. The aircraft noise has a biological effect on the pps health.

application: anti-hypertensive drugs - lower blood pressure, brings stress levels down, venkata and ram - 74 pps. beta blocker lowered stress levels better than plaecebo  

A -  to see how aircraft noise exposure affected residents stress and hypertension

P - 750 subjects sent survey around sydney airport

P - 26 noise stations around randomly selected households + 3 in control from 7am - 6pm. pps given questionnairre after, measured 7 major charcteristics: health quality of life, stress condition, noise stress, noise sensitivity, noise annoyance, demographic charcteristics, excersixing/smoking etc

F - noise group was more annoyed, had a less positive health status (inc mental)

C - mean score of general health, vitality and mental health of noise exposure pps was significantly lower than controls. impact from noise exposure did impact on general health. long term noise exposure was associated with chronic noise stress (odds of 2.61) thus associated with hypertension _odds of 2.74) compared to to those without noise exposure.

application: strategies. simulate new time zone - montgomery found less likely to experience symptoms. napping during breaks (drs etc)- body temp lowest at 3am. royal college of physicians says it works

how study relates to area:  The Czeisler study relates to the biological are because the study looks at how by adapting to the body's natural circadian rhythms, shift work becomes easier. The pps found that with the new shift patterns they felt less tired and could adapt easier. 

s+w: strength - is that it tends to use quantitative data because it is easy to analyse and compare the data. strength - is that by being reductionist and only looking at one factor it often leads to useful applications. weakness - it tends to use correlational/ quasi experimental methods to avoid the ethical issues  of manipulation of variables. This is a weakness as it makes it harder to imply cause and effect. weakness - is that by being reductionist researchers are failing to consider all possible explanations. This is a weakness as they fail to consider psychological factors

A rotating sift work schedules that dissrupt sleep are improved by applying circadian principles

p 85 male shift workers control: 68 non-rotating shift workers

p field. IMD. self report. 33 were phase delay rotating 8hr shifts every 7 days. 52 rotated on phase delay once every 21 days . they heard an audio visual presentation on circadian rhythms. questionnaire before and after new shift patterns to assess health and satisfaction.

f response rate was 84%. pre change shift: rotating workers reported more problems with insomnia than non. 29% rotators fell asleep at least once in 3 months. workers preferred phase delay work with complaints dropping from 90 - 20%. increased production

c phase delay work schedule works best with human circadian system. any new schedule must take into account nature of work and needs of workers.

defining principles: Cognitive psychology refers to the study of human mental processes and their role in thinking, feeling, and behaving. Cognitive psychology focuses on the way humans process information, they are interested in the variables that mediate between stimulus/input and response/output. Cognitive psychologists study internal processes including perception, attention, language, memory and thinking. The cognitive perspective applies a nomothetic approach to discover human cognitive processes. Cognitive psychology is also a reductionist approach. This means that all behaviour, no matter how complex can be reduced to simple cognitive processes, like memory or perception.

how study relates to area:  The Lord study relates to the cognitive area because it looked at how different messages affected people's behaviour. The study looked at the perception of the messages and how it affected people- this being one of the defining principles of the cognitive area. 

application: increase number of bins, Luyben and bailey - increased bins around trailer park, 52% increase. oregon 'bottle bill', $0.05 for evry can, bottle or carton returned - 90% increase in returning rate.

a researches the effectiveness of a range if different types of message designed to increase compliance with a recycling programme.

p 140 households in newyork. quota sampling.

p quasi/field/IMD with observation and self report. IV- 3*2 factoral design. message sources= advert/newspaper/letter. message framing= positive and negative. DV= wk 1 - discreet obs and recording of recycling bins. next day - stimulus left at door. wk 2 - discreet obs and recording of recycling bins. next day - questionnaire inc 7 point likert and semantic differential.#

f more favourable attitude were found towards recycling in the experimental groups than the control groups with a mean increase in recycling behaviour of 3.93 items compared to 0.22 in control. positively framed message conditions showed more favouable attitudes than neg. greatest behavioural change was neg from a personal aqaintance.

c lord suggests that combinations of stratedgies such as positively and negatively framed messages could bring the biggest attitudinal and behavioural changes.

how study relates to area:  The Drew and Doig study relates to the cognitive area because it looks at how by making ICU monitors easier to read, it reduces the cognitive load on the nurses to recognise signs of illness or infection. 

application: okken - large desk, large room - people feel more at ease bc less intimacy

s+w: strength - is that it tends to use quantitative data because it is easy to analyse and compare the data.  strength - is that it tends to use scientific methods such as lab means that it often has good application. weakness - is that there tend to be a lack of qualitative data is it is difficult to establish reasons behind participants behaviours. weakness -   is that the use of scientific methods such as lab experiments means that the data tends to be low in ecological validity due to the high levels of control making findings difficult to generalise to real life. 

a develop and evaulate CVS display that would help nurses in detection and identification of physiuological deterioration in a patient.

p 42 registered nurses with a min of 1 yr ICU experience.

p IMD in which the nurses were allocated to either the CVS condition or control. they were given info on 4 hypothetical patients suffering from either early sepsis, septic shock, heart attack or stable. they had 300 seconds to verbally evaluate the patients physiological state and interpret the data and make recommendations. measurew were taken and speed of response accuracy of response and the info assessed

f response time: pps in cvs display con identified patient's state 48% quicker than control group in septic shock and 38% in the heart attack. significantly quicker to identify condition in stable con. accuracy of nurse' assessments improved by a 1/3 or more in CVS compared to control in both conditions. nurses reported significantly lower mental demand in cvs.

c the use of the CVS display could improve accuracy and speed of diagnosis in ICU departments.

Defining principles; Social psychology is about understanding individual behaviours in a social context. Therefore the social assumes that behaviour is the result of other people's influence and the social context to this. Social psychologists therefore deal with the factors that lead us to behave in a given way in the presence of others, and look at the conditions under which certain behavior/actions and feelings occur. Social psychology is to do with the way these feelings, thoughts, beliefs, intentions and goals are constructed and how such psychological factors, in turn, influence our interactions with others. Topics examined in social psychology include: the self concept, social cognition, attribution theory, social influence, group processes, prejudice and discrimination, interpersonal processes, aggression, attitudes and stereotypes.

How the study relates to the area;  The Ulrich study relates the social area because it looks at how the individual behaviour of the patient (and healing process) was influenced by the surroundings (whether they were next to a window with either a brick wall or a natural scene)

application; Green space; greener areas improves psychological wellbeing/ closer to nature. Privacy close proximity of flats may affect wellbeing- can't manage levels of privacy (Altman we manage interaction between ourselves and others in order to achieve optimal level of privacy between lonliness and crowding.)

A How a view from a window may influence recovery from surgery

P 46 pps - cholecystectony surgery - 23 brick wall, 23 window

P pps assigned to rooms as they became free. recovery data was extracted from ps records by a nurse with experience. nurse didn't know which condition pps were in. 5 types of info collected: 1 - days in hopital (surgery til discharge), 2 - num and strength of painkillers per day, 3 - num and strength of anxiety drugs (inc tanquilisers), 4 - minor complications, headaches and nausea and 5 - all nurses notes relating to pps condition or course of recovery

F no differences between doses of anti-anxiety meds. wall view pps had more narcotic meds (produced drowsiness or sedation) therefore possibly reducing their need for sleeping pills

c tree view pps had shorter post-op stays, fewer negative evaluative comments from nurses, took fewer moderate + strong analgyesic doses and has slightly lower scores for post-op complications than wall pps.

Strengths and weaknesses of the area; A strength of social approach; it attempts to use real life situations when studying behaviour, i.e field experiments= high ecological validity, so findings can be generalised to real life. A strength of the social approach is it contributes to our understanding of social behaviour and therefore has good application. A weakness of social area  is that when study social behaviour ethical issues such as protection from harm often occur. A further weakness of the social area is often research is aiming to make generalisations about social behaviour based on quite restricted samples.  

How the study relates to the area;  Wells (2000) relates to the social area because territoriality is a concept of the social area (personal space). Wells shows how and why territoriality in the workplace happens and that it's good for employees, and it shows this in a social context

Application;  Personalisation of workspace; associated with well-being as it may guard against negative physical, physiological and psychological consequences of inadequet privacy, such as stress, illness and anxiety. 

A - see iff office personalisation is associated with wellbeing and whether gender affected it.

p - 20 companies from orange county cali

p - pps completed a survey with some being case studies. short interview and observation in the workplace. interview asked pps to rate their office personalisation and how they would feel if it was banned

f - more women personalised than men to express individuality and emotion, using relationship symbols and trinkets mostly with men doing it to show hierachy and acheivements with acheivements and sport related items.

c - men and women peronalise differently for different reasons. personalisation has a positive impact on a workplace, better behaviour, helth and productivity.