| In the early70s of the last century environmental psychologyemerged in the United States as the center of North America, regardingtime and iconic event as reference standards. With the warming-up of theenvironmental issues, environmental psychology has also become abreakthrough field in psychology in the21st century. This article mainlystudies the logical line of the development of environmental psychology,combing and comprehending the history, current status, basic concepts,theories, paradigms, core topics and future trends of environmentalpsychology deeply, basically depicting the development of environmentalpsychology, integrating and summarizing the theoretical system ofenvironmental psychology on the basis of a new dimension, and trying toform a unified theoretical framework of environmental psychology.This paper is divided into six chapters. The first chapter reviews the historical background and discipline of environmental psychology, givingan overview and evaluation on its domestic and foreign research progress.Considering its the generated background, the basis of the rise ofenvironmental psychology is the native philosophical pragmatism ofAmerica, the reflection of human activities caused by the deterioration ofthe relationship between people and the environment, its positiveinvolvement in the world, and its focus on environmental awareness,attitudes and behavior through a psychological point of view, as well asthe interaction of people and the environment, and trying to solve theenvironmental problems facing humanity, and explore the interactionbetween people and the environment. In addition, as an independentdiscipline, environmental psychology is also gotten impact coming fromthe related fields of sociology, anthropology, geography, psychiatry, andso on. Meanwhile, as a young discipline, its development status, whetherforeign or domestic, are facing a series of problems. Now the research ofenvironmental psychology in China is still weak, lack of professionalpapers, application research, and specialized research institutions and research teams; while the research of environmental psychology abroadshowed relatively mature, not only topics closely linking to the needs ofthe community and its own development, but also making a significantcontribution for the entire field of psychology. But the capabilities toconstruct and integrate current environmental psychology theory shouldbe improved; a unified research paradigm, terminology and researchsystem, the integration between different disciplines within the field ofenvironmental psychology should also be clear.The second chapter clarifies the connotation and denotation ofenvironmental psychology from an academic angle, making therelationship between environmental psychology and other disciplinesclear, rationalizing the development sequence of environmentalpsychology in order to have a more clear understanding of environmentalpsychology. Unclarity of the breadth of the research, diversity of theparadigm and the concept of environmental psychology itself led scholarsconfuse environmental psychology and other disciplines, such asecological psychology, social psychology, the construction environment psychology, environmental protection psychology. This article comparesand analyzes the differences between environmental psychology andother disciplines from aspects of research paradigm, research content,research objects, trying to clarify the connotation and denotation ofenvironmental psychology, which benefits the academic understandingand is helpful to the development under a clear theoretical framework ofenvironmental psychology. This chapter defines the relationship betweenenvironmental psychology and other disciplines. Environmentalpsychology can be seen as an Applied Science considering the beliefs,needs and value of people as the core, adhering to the people-environment interaction concept, applying diverse research methods,advocating naturalism and multidisciplinary exchanges for the purpose ofidentifying and solving related problems.The third chapter describes the concepts of environment andenvironmental psychology, commenting on mainstream theoreticalmodels of environmental psychology nowadays, and putting forward thepoint of view of how to integrate environmental psychology theory. Through the analysis of basic concepts, such as the environment, theconstruction environment, the natural environment and psychologicalenvironment, this chapter studies more about the concept ofenvironmental psychology. Because of the more attention to theinteraction between people and the environment in the development trendof environmental psychology theory, the mainstream theoretical model ofenvironmental psychology, generalization theory, specific theory, people-environment interaction model etc., these mainstream theoreticalparadigm has always concerned about the relationship between peopleand the environment, which has been the core proposition of its concern.In this sense, environmental psychology is emerging as a new orientationin psychology, focusing on the reality of environmental problems,advocating harmonious existence of human and environment, which willhelp people deepen psychological understanding of the environment. Therise of environmental psychology indicates the profound conversion ofpsychological research, from research concepts, goals, values to researchmethods and technical applications, will have a major impact on the psychology, especially on the contemporary relationship between peopleand the environment, leading mankind strengthen the construction ofecological civilization from a psychological view on the way of areasonable thought. Considering its future development trend, since evenearlier from Barker’s ecological psychology research, the fusion ofqualitative analysis and quantitative techniques has been importantfeatures of the field. Therefore, this technical integration will continueand the degree of integration may be more closely towards the gradualdeepening trend in two different orientations.The fourth chapter aims to introduce and comb the research contentin different areas of environmental psychology, such as noise, congestionand environmental protection awareness, which clarified the scope of thestudy of environmental psychology in order to view environmentalpsychology as an independent discipline. Since1960s environmentalpsychology in foreign countries constantly changed with the developmentof the times and the needs of society. Since the1990s of the last century,the protection of ecosystems and environmental sustainability has become a hot issue. The theme of environmental psychology research changeswith the social characteristics, however, some traditional propositionshave not been abandoned, continuing to give the new object of study,such as noise, congestion, as well as issues of personal space, and havebeen throughout the development of environmental psychology research.In addition, personal space, privacy, the field of environmental equity,environmental protection and sustainability, environmental protectionbehavior, location, environmental design and so on are starting to becomethe research areas of environmental psychology. From the changes in thescope of the study, the current environmental psychology began to payattention to the protection of ecosystems and the sustainable developmentof the people and the environment, which means that environmentalpsychology has begun to correct the view for the relationship betweenpeople and the environment, and believed that the relationship betweenman and nature is mutual. Under the influence of this idea, researchtopics, research paradigm and research content of environmentalpsychology have corresponding changes and some of the classic themes have also updated and upgraded under the influence of the individual-environment interaction methodology.The fifth chapter describes the derivative disciplines ofenvironmental psychology, such as environmental education,environmental sociology, and briefly discusses the relationship betweenthese derivative disciplines and environmental psychology. In the1990s,people began to reverse anthropocentrism, focusing on the interactionbetween individual and nature and the individual understanding of theenvironment has gradually changed. Some derivative disciplines inenvironmental psychology concerned about the public education in orderto achieve the harmonious development of man and nature, such asenvironmental pedagogy; some concerned about the root cause ofenvironmental problems from a sociological point of view to address theroot causes environmental problems, such as social ecology; some studiedrelationship between nature and the environment to exploreenvironmental issues, such as environmental sociology; some exploredthe natural geographical environment and social geography environment in human understanding of the geographical environment, process andbehaviour rules through exploring the spatial relationship of the humanand geographical environment, such as behavioural geography. Thesederivative disciplines in environmental psychology on the one handconstantly enrich the connotation of environmental psychology andexpand the extension of environmental psychology, on the other hand, thecontinuous developing theories, techniques and methods of thesederivatives of the discipline enrich and improve the theoretical framework,the application of technology and research methods of environmentalpsychology, making environmental psychology as an emergingindependent discipline with a more comprehensive and three-dimensionaltheoretical support.The sixth chapter introduces the evaluation and prospects ofenvironmental psychology. Since the rise of environmental psychology inthe1960s and1970s, the development of environmental psychology asindependent discipline have made a breakthrough in many respects afterdecades of development, but there are also many deficiencies. The research ideas and methods of environmental psychology have far-reaching impacts on the breakthrough and promotion of traditionalpsychology. New research claims and research methodology ofenvironmental psychology subvert people default made by the traditionalpsychology laboratory research and have a big impact on for long-termdevelopment of psychology. For psychology researchers, environmentalpsychology provided them with the academic reference and reflection onthe development of psychology, offering a new perspective to the objectsof the understanding and study of psychology and providing a newmethodology for the study of psychology. In addition, environmentalpsychology has also produced some other effects, such as erosion barriersin interdisciplinary branch of psychology; exacerbation of the degree ofexpansion and dispersion of the disciplines; promotion of the diversity ofresearch methods; restatement of problem-oriented research orientation;difficulties of positioning researcher roles; a bridge between disciplinesand so on. On the future development of environmental psychology, frombirth to now an important feature of it is the strong era and social characteristics of research topics. How to achieve optimization betweenthe people and the environment has always been adhering to an ideal goalof environmental psychology, but we do not have a clear understanding ofthe ideal form of optimization, therefore, attempts to predict future trendsfrom existing studies, the accuracy is not high relatively, or the interval ofspeculation cannot be too long. From environmental psychology researchpoint of view, the lack of theoretical construction capacity may limit thelong-term development of environmental psychology; therefore, how toenhance theoretical capacity and establish an integrated, unifiedtheoretical framework will be the long-term development goals ofenvironmental psychology. |
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