Definition of Environmental psychology

Definition of Environmental psychology

It may be defined as:

Environmental psychology is the study of molar relationships between behavior and experience and built and natural environment.

Early definitions of the environmental psychology emphasized the relationship between behavior and physical environment. Such as Proshan sky (1976b) characterized the field as:

the attempt to establish empirical and theoretical relationships between behavior and experience of a person and his built environment.

In the handbook of environmental psychology, Stokols and Altman (1987) defined the field as:

The study of human behavior and well being in relation to socio physical environment.

Similarly Russel and Snodgrass (1987) defined the field as:

Branch of psychology concerned with providing a systematic account of relationship between a person and the environment.

Such definitions do not emphasize the bi directional nature of environment-behavior relationships.

1. Environments affect behavior.
2. behavior affects environment.

Limiting definitions to the relationship between behavior and built environment is also not satisfactory, because it does not include the non built environment. So we will stick with the very first definition on the top of this page.