Transcription
Greetings Earthlings! Today we're talking about environmental perception.
Environmental perception is important in environmental psychology. After all, how we experience and react to environments starts with how we perceive them. So today the focus is on environmental perception basics, and what's more basic than a definition? So here's your definition of environmental perception. We can say that environmental perception is about how we make sense of the environment through our interpretation of sensory inputs from the environment, whether those inputs are visual, auditory, tactile, or taste, or olfactory. So in other words, what we see, what we hear, what we feel, what we taste, and what we smell.
A second environmental perception basic is that environmental perception is complex. And the reason why it's so complex is that environments consist of multiple stimuli. And by "stimuli," what we mean is basically elements of the environment that activate sensory receptors. By the way, the singular for stimuli is stimulus.
Now acknowledging this complexity leads to a difference in the study of environmental perception by environmental psychologists versus the study of perception in traditional psychology. The traditional psychological study of perception tends to focus on a discrete stimulus studied in a laboratory setting while everything else is held constant. Now environmental psychologists, in contrast, are much more likely to study whole complex everyday environments, and they mostly study perception in real-world settings. So they'll use surveys to ask people about their perception of the environment. They'll use time sampling, where they'll have people walk through an environment and at timed intervals, stop and tell us what they were focused on--what was jumping out at them. They'll use observation to record what people focus on. Like in a museum, for example, you know, you can train observers to record where, at what points, people stop, and how long they stay there, and what they seem to focus on. Sometimes, environmental psychologists use simulations; sometimes they show people photos or slides.
A third environmental perception basic is that environmental perception is selective. And admittedly, this overlaps with our second basic that environments are complex, because you have to be selective, you know. You only perceive parts of an environment because there are so many stimuli, and only some of them are going to appear relevant to you. What we tune into is selective, so we only perceive parts of the physical environment, only some of those stimuli. What we tune into depends on a variety of different things. We'll see that it depends in part on actual qualities of the physical environment itself, but also on your past experiences with that environment and even your personal needs and goals, even to some extent your physical, perceptual abilities. So the idea that we're selective in what we perceive in the environment and what we focus on is what helps us to function effectively. This idea you actually see pretty early in environmental psychology from Egon Brunswik. So he basically said that there's so many cues in the environment that you have to be selective in order to function effectively. And for this reason, this is called a "functionalist perspective to environmental perception."
So now that you have the basic idea about what we mean by "selectivity," you know the idea is that we don't perceive all environmental elements, or really pay attention to all sensory inputs present in an environment; we're selective.
Next, I want to talk about how selectivity depends on two things. And one of those is the physical properties of the environment, and the other is our personal characteristics and our personal needs and goals at that particular time.
So as far as physical properties of the environment go, some elements of the environment are more what we call "salient." And by salient, we mean "perceptually noticeable." So salience is determined by things like size. You know, so a larger physical element is more likely to call your attention. Stimulus intensity affects salience. The intensity of the color of a wall, the intensity of noise, it can be the intensity of a smell. Yeah, so the more intense elements are going to be more salient to us; it's more likely we're more likely to pay attention to those. So size, intensity. I should also mention novelty, which is like how unusual the element is. Movement will also draw our attention.
Now it's not just about salience; it's also about something called "stimulus constancy." So as far as the physical properties of the environment go and what we pay attention to, this issue again of selectivity, whether or not we perceive a stimulus also depends on its constancy. The short story is that we tend to tune out familiar, predictable stimuli that we've learned are inconsequential, and this waning of a response to stimuli after repeated exposure to them is called habituation. The long story is more complicated and includes answers to such questions as, "what does it take to regain our attention once we've habituated," but for now I want to say a little bit about the ways in which habituation can be adaptive or maladaptive. First, it's adaptive to filter out the irrelevant; that's why habituation is "hardwired" in most animals. Learning what to tune into and what to tune out aids in survival. It frees up limited processing resources so that we can focus on more relevant, important stimuli. This cognitive gatekeeper prevents us from being overwhelmed by all the sensory information contained in the setting. For instance, some neurodiverse people, such as people on the autism spectrum, or some people with attention deficit disorder, have trouble habituating and become overwhelmed with sensory information. Habituation also reduces stress, so we can adjust to a noisy or crowded environment. We no longer notice the disturbing scenes of poverty or homelessness in our city environment. We don't see the clutter or the mess in our home. So in some ways, it's adaptive.
But while habituation is adaptive, it can also be maladaptive. It can produce a psychological numbness to unhealthy and dangerous home, work, or public environments, including environments with air and water pollution, filth and clutter, and noise, even when those stimuli are actually damaging to our health. Our habituation can mean that we tune out things that we shouldn't. I mean, we shouldn't tune out homelessness and poverty in our public environments. It means that we don't use our power and our resources to help. We can also get used to living with environmental risks and hazards and not prepare or act when in fact we should. We'll talk more about environmental risk perception later.
So remember the point here is that environmental perception is selective and that the environmental elements that get our attention are affected by their physical properties, but there's another layer here which I've already suggested. And that is that our personal characteristics also affect selectivity. So this is why environmental psychologists say that environmental perception involves an interaction between the person and the environment.
So more specifically, when we're talking about personal characteristics that influence environmental perception, you know we're talking about four general things that affect the environmental stimuli that we notice and respond to. So we're we're talking about things like the acuity of our senses, our immediate goals and needs, our past experiences, and also individual differences like our profession.
So, for example, when it comes to the acuity of our senses, and by this I mean sort of the sharpness of your senses, you know how sharp your vision is, how good your hearing is, your sense of smell--all of these things affect your environmental perception. Remember, too, that your immediate needs and goals will influence your environmental perception; that is, what you notice and what you pay attention to. A good example of that is if you're away from home and you need to pee and you don't know where the restroom is, your focus becomes laser-like trying to find that signage pointing the way to a restroom. And if you're traveling and you become hungry, you start focusing on aspects of the environment that provide the clues as to where you might get something tasty to eat. Our past experiences in an environment or similar environments also affect selectivity. You're experienced in going to school, and so when you enter a classroom you've never been in before, you know what to focus on because you're an experienced student. If you're experienced riding the subway and go to another city and ride the subway there, your past subway experience will help you know where to look for information about your stop.
Remember, too, that people are diverse, and individual differences, the ways in which individuals vary from one another, including their age, their culture, disability, profession, personality--these personal characteristics, these individual differences, also affect our selectivity, what we perceive in an environment, what we notice. So, for example, when I was in a wheelchair, I processed the environment very differently than when I was not. Curbs, for example, are very salient when you use a chair. I have lung problems, and this affects my perception of wildfire smoke and smoky environments in general, probably making smokiness a lot more salient to me than someone who doesn't have breathing problems. Profession. Think about how an architect might perceive elements of the environment differently than someone who does not have that professional background. Chances are that you live with someone that perceives dirtiness and cleanliness differently than you do, and that too is another individual difference that affects environmental perception. If you're the neat one, the one that is inclined towards lots of cleanliness, you're going to notice dirt and mess that your messier counterpart doesn't.
That sums it up for our environmental perception basics. Next up, we'll be talking about the perception of environmental risks and hazards; it's a very interesting and important topic.