The birth of environmental psychology

In the last few years of research stations in the field of Chinese and western psychology, that is, from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, clear research fields of environmental psychology began to appear, and many psychologists gradually became accustomed to identifying themselves as environmental psychologists. Proxiaski (1987) observed that there were many factors in this period that prompted psychology to differentiate into environmental psychology. For example, for more and more urgent social problems, such as human rights, environmental problems and women's movements, researchers turn to the perspective of social psychology to solve these problems that plague society. Unfortunately, the effect of these attempts is not obvious. Social psychologists, who have always relied on artificial laboratory research, are at a loss for a series of complicated and confusing problems that suddenly appear in front of them. The strong pressure brought by social change requires relaxing the strict traditional experimental methods. The new field of environmental psychology is more eclectic, not strictly related to theory, and more interdisciplinary. All these have prepared for the emergence of environmental psychology. Therefore, the first group of environmental psychologists combined social psychology with flexible methods to solve social problems. Now the trace of social psychology in environmental psychology is still obvious, because many environmental psychologists have been trained in social psychology. However, this "marriage" has also brought some troubles. Traditionally, social psychology relies on experiments constructed by theories close to science and hypothesis testing methods. Proxiaski (1976) has repeatedly stated that the theory and research methods of social psychology will eventually prove to be a great asset for environmental psychologists. Social psychology undoubtedly has a great influence on environmental psychology, but we believe that this influence will be weakened when a group of environment-behavior researchers who have been trained in certain fields (developmental psychology, art, architecture, sociology) grow up. There is no doubt that the emergence of environmental psychology as a discipline should be attributed to Barker and others' ecological research on residents' behavior in natural settlements in the late 1940s, Hall's research on individual space use from the perspective of cultural anthropology in the 1950s, and K Lynch's research on urban appearance and environmental cognition in the 1960s. On the basis of these studies, coupled with the realistic difficulties such as the deterioration of the environment and the reduction of natural resources at that time, scientists were particularly interested in the human ecological environment in the 1960s, and psychologists paid more attention to the influence of the environment on individual psychology and behavior, and studied topics related to environmental psychology in succession. 196 1 and 1966, the first two conferences on environmental psychology were held in the University of Utah. 1968 established an academic organization of environmental behavior, which represents the research trend in the United States: the Environmental Design Research Society (EDRA), and held an annual meeting. In the same year, the City University of new york established the first doctoral program in environmental psychology. Two years later, Environmental Psychology, co-edited by W. Ittelson and Proxiasky, was officially published. In the same year, the International construction of psychology Society, which represents the trend of European research, was established in Kingston, England. 197 1 year, the Philadelphia branch of the American Institute of Architecture and other groups organized a seminar on "Design for Human Behavior". 1975, with the first doctor of environmental psychology. The first environmental psychology magazines were also founded in the late 1960s, and the most famous magazine Environment and Behavior was founded in 1969. Therefore, it is generally believed that environmental psychology, as a branch of psychology, was born in the early 1970s and has a history of more than 20 years.