ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT / Winter 2000 / 83© 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Environmental Psychology: Why Should We Care?

Jeff Weinrach

I remember all too well the first time Istood before a stoic audience trying toexplain how to comply with the ResourceConservation and Recovery Act. (I experi-enced a particular level of glee when theystarting using “RCRA” as if it were a per-manent part of their vernacular!)

Before there was an understandingof the likely economic benefits of effec-tive environmental management, one ofthe most fundamental issues thatseemed to come up, either throughdirect conversation or through implica-tion, was “Why should we care aboutthis?” People understood that therewere significant federal and staterequirements that had to be compliedwith in the area of environment, health,and safety, but the issue they wereaddressing was a more basic one.

It wasn’t even a question of why theregulations exist. Most members of theaudience acknowledged that we have aninordinate number of regulations, someof which can be easily justified, whileothers are more obscure. Instead, thequestion related to how these require-ments would affect daily productivity onthe job.

This was an issue of bringing theenvironment down to the level of theindividual, as opposed to the “masses.” Itwas at that point that I began to explorethe notion of “work environment” as aprimary component of training.

I have always been interested in howto correlate broad environmental issues

EHS Training

with the effects on a smaller scale—includ-ing effects on me as an individual (an envi-ronmental steward). Consider the distinc-tions between addressing environmentalimprovement for a factory and for a conti-nent. The differences can be dramatic,even if the core principles are similar.

Recently, I was interested to see thatan entire field of psychology, environ-mental psychology, explores these typesof issues regarding the environment andour personal behavior. This columnexplores the basics of environmental psy-chology and how personal awareness andbehaviors associated with the environ-ment can be correlated to our work envi-ronments and our training programs.

ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY ANDECOPSYCHOLOGY

Let’s begin with a working defini-tion of environmental psychology: It isthe branch of psychology that dealswith providing a systematic account ofthe relationship between a person andthe environment. See Russell &Snodgrass, Handbook of EnvironmentalPsychology, John Wiley & Sons, pp.245–281.

A related field that is often referred toin the literature as “ecopsychology” inte-grates the two fields of—yes, you guessedit—ecology and psychology. Accordingto John Davis, of the Department ofPsychology at The Metropolitan StateCollege of Denver (http://clem.mscd.edu/~davisj/ep/ecopsy.html):

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Among its contributions are bring-ing psychological principles andpractices to environmental educa-tion and action, bringing the contri-butions of ecological thinking andthe values of the natural world topsychotherapy and personalgrowth, and fostering lifestyles thatare both ecologically and psycho-logically healthy.

THE WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENT One place where we can clearly see

the interaction of the environment withhuman psychology is in the workplace.A clean, safe, and environmentallyfriendly workplace can improveemployee morale and enhance workperformance. It can also mirror the typeof overall environment that we hope tocreate on a larger scale.

Among the most important aspects ofthe workplace environment is lighting.According to “Lighting–The ElectronicTextbook” (http://www.arce.ukans.edu/book/psych/psych.htm), psychologicaleffects in the workplace related to light-ing can be categorized by “behavior” and“impression.”

Behavioral (e.g., physiological)effects concern how our actions (ourwork, for example) are influenced by ourenvironment. Impressions refer to howour environment makes us feel (our emo-tional response). Both of these effectscan have significant impact on our pro-ductivity. If workers are in an environ-ment with poor lighting, two effects mayoccur:

• The workers will have difficulty car-rying out tasks such as reading, andtherefore will not be as productive (abehavioral effect).

• Because of these difficulties, andbecause the “mood” of the work-space is unpleasant, the workers willnot be as motivated or enthusiastic

about being productive (an impres-sion effect).

As you can imagine, these two dif-ferent types of effects often complementand “feed on” each other. Together, theycan make the work experience muchworse than either effect alone would do.

This is just one example of a compo-nent of our working environment andhow it can affect productivity. As I amwriting this column, another componentthat can have dramatic effects comesstrongly to mind: temperature control!These types of environmental effects caneasily create a number of distractionsthat dramatically affect productivity.

BACKGROUND NOISE AND COGNITIVEMAPS

Maintaining a clean, healthy, andsafe working environment clearly has adirect bearing on our productivity andour well-being. Whether on a consciousor a subconscious level, we are keenlyaware of our surrounding environmentwhen we are at work—or, for that matter,at home, or any other place.

Raymond De Young, an associateprofessor of Environmental Psychologyand Conservation Behavior at theUniversity of Michigan, discusses theprinciples of perception and “cognitivemaps,” the mechanisms by which westore information in our brains (seehttp://www.snre.umich.edu/~rdey-oung/envtpsych.html). Dr. De Youngstates, “Interestingly, what humansknow about an environment is both morethan external reality, in that they per-ceive with prior knowledge and expecta-tions, and less than external reality, inthat they record only a portion of theentire visual frame yet recall it as com-plete and continuous.”

What I believe Dr. De Young meanshere is that we filter our knowledge andawareness of our environment throughour cognitive maps. Thus, our prior

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knowledge and experiences have aneffect on how we perceive—and behavewithin—our environment. Two parts ofthe brain, the amygdala and the hip-pocampus, have been identified as thesources for environmental (sensory)recall. Numerous studies, includingresearch by Dr. De Young, address howthese two parts of the brain use environ-mental information, along with emotion-al and motivational information, todirect our behavior and our mental/emo-tional state.

When we are at a movie theater andare watching a well-produced film, wemay sit through the entire two hours of thepresentation and not consciouslyacknowledge the musical score thataccompanied the movie. Not being able toconsciously remember the score does notmean that it had no effect on our experi-ence, however. On the contrary, the scorelikely added to the experience and was anintegral part of our sensing and our enjoy-ment. According to Dr. De Young andother psychologists, we “record” the scoreeven if we are not consciously aware ofdoing so.

If we are watching a bad movie, onthe other hand, we may be extremelyconscious of the musical score becausewe are not interested in absorbing theentire experience, due to our displeasure.

One of the more recent psychologi-cal techniques that addresses some ofthese issues is (EMDR) Eye MovementDesensitization and Reprocessing.EMDR involves a combination of rhyth-mic eye movements and other stimula-tions which, in turn, stimulate thebrain’s information processing system,including the amygdala and the hip-pocampus. Using this technique, we areable to bring to the surface and examineitems from our memory that we mightnot be able to consciously recall, butthat were recorded by our brains.

Such recall and examination couldaddress particular emotional responses

that we get when we are in particularenvironments; it could also help to iden-tify the root cause of emotional respons-es or traumas that we have throughoutour lifetimes. A number of EmployeeAssistance Programs (EAPs) are usingtechniques such as EMDR to try toimprove the work environment.

ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY ANDTRAINING

When we talk about training andawareness, we usually think of them asactive and passive, respectively. I havesometimes thought that it might bemore appropriate to change the title ofthis column to include the term “aware-ness” instead of “training.” This isbecause much of our current environ-mental improvement activity has shift-ed toward a sustainable, learningapproach that fosters creativity andinnovation, as opposed to emphasizingstructured projects and patternedbehavior.

The field of environmental psychol-ogy allows us to understand, to someextent at least, why it is that we have afundamental awareness of the environ-ment and why, as environmental stew-ards, we have a unique responsibility totranslate that awareness into positiveaction. As such, it serves as an impor-tant backdrop to all our training efforts.

CONCLUSIONWhen I talk about the importance of

environmental psychology, I do notwant to suggest that filling out wasteprofile forms or cataloging materialsafety data sheets is an emotionallypleasing activity. If you feel that it is,then perhaps a different type of psy-chology would be more appropriate foryou to explore.

Instead, the message of this columnis that issues we often deal with in theenvironment, safety, and health field—such as ergonomics, workplace lighting,

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and pollution—are more than justrequirements to be complied with. Theyoften have a significant effect on ourproductivity in the workplace, includ-ing our job satisfaction. In the broadersense, they can also have an effect onwhere we choose to live and where toraise our families. As long as we havesenses to influence our actions, ratherthan a set of instructions that are fed tous, we will always have a special rela-tionship with the environment whichshould be nurtured.

Jeff Weinrach is director of Quality and Standards with JCS/Novation, Inc. He can be reached atjbwein@rt66.com.

Our environment has a dramaticeffect on us humans; it affects our lives,our behavior, our emotions, and our pro-ductivity. Environmental quality manage-ment focuses on our effects on the envi-ronment, how to improve it and how tosustain it. Perhaps these two relation-ships are not independent. Perhaps thereis a universal balance between humansand the environment where our effects oneach other reach some level of sustainableequilibrium.

Until then, it’s back to RCRA.