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Lecture 01 - Introduction to Environmental Psychology and Overview of the Course — Transcript

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0:08And one of the reasons I love to teach
0:09it is I really
0:11am enthusiastic about the material.
0:13Um I think that you will be, too.
0:16There's a lot of really interesting and
0:17it's exciting points covered in the
0:20class. And I'm not going to say that
0:22you're going to be excited about
0:23everything we talk about, but I'm hoping
0:25that at least some things are going to
0:27jump out at you and say, "Gee, that's
0:29something I can use in the future.
0:30That's something I'll take with me. It's
0:32really interesting."
0:33So, this uh YouTube that we just showed,
0:37Black Eyed Peas, is really very much
0:39about what we'll be talking about in
0:40this class in the sense that we're going
0:42to be looking at the relationships
0:43between people, their environments,
0:45behavior, their well-being.
0:48And also, it's a little bit about having
0:49some fun. And I think uh we're going to
0:51have some fun in this class. You know,
0:52college doesn't have to be unfun
0:54necessarily. So, environmental
0:56psychology is basically the
0:57relationships between people and their
1:01everyday social and physical
1:02environments. And how those environments
1:04affect our behavior and our health and
1:06well-being.
1:08And
1:09you know, for centuries, architects and
1:10designers have known that the buildings
1:12they construct have a profound influence
1:15on occupants in those buildings.
1:17And historians of architecture and
1:19anthropologists also know that in every
1:22land, in every country,
1:25the environments that people construct
1:27convey cultural values, cultural
1:28meanings.
1:29But it was only around the 1960s and uh
1:33early '70s that the study of
1:34environmental psychology got going in
1:36earnest.
1:37And there were a number of reasons for
1:38this. One was that during the '60s,
1:41uh people around the world and in this
1:43country were becoming extremely aware of
1:46resource depletion.
1:48Uh there was uh the book Silent Spring
1:51written by Rachel Carson that was
1:53published. Uh there was the Population
1:55Bomb book by Paul Ehrlich that talked
1:58about overcrowding of the world.
2:00And we had urban riots in our cities,
2:03racial tensions.
2:05Uh we had a lot of things going on that
2:07sensitized us to the broader
2:09environment. Now, those of you who are
2:11in PSB know that psychologists have
2:13talked about environment behavior for a
2:14very long time. But when they've talked
2:16about environment, they usually mean
2:18very discrete stimuli that affect
2:22very particular behaviors. So, whether a
2:24particular behavior is reinforced or
2:25conditioned by a particular sound, a
2:28particular noise, uh a particular food
2:30stimulus. Well, what we're talking about
2:32environmental psychology is the broader
2:34environment, like this classroom. This
2:36classroom is what's known as a behavior
2:37setting, and we'll learn more about
2:39that. But it's a system, you know, it's
2:41it's all of you, it's the physical
2:43surroundings, it's the height of the
2:44ceilings, it's the lighting, and it's
2:47the program, the behavioral program that
2:49constitutes this class every Tuesday and
2:51Thursday. So, we're talking about units
2:53of the environment, whether they be high
2:54schools, offices, dormitories,
2:56apartments that you share with your
2:58roommates. Those are the kinds of
2:59environments we're talking about here.
3:01And it turns out that they do have a
3:03very profound influence on how we're
3:05feeling about things and our behavior.
3:08Now, environmental psychology is closely
3:10related to the school in which many of
3:12you are taking your majors, social
3:14ecology.
3:16And you know, when you graduate from
3:17social ecology and and have your major,
3:20uh future employer is going to ask you,
3:22"What the heck is social ecology?
3:24You know, why did you come out of a
3:25social ecology school?"
3:27And we're going to learn about some of
3:29those basic principles of ecology,
3:30particularly next week, which gives a
3:32grounding uh for the the rest of the
3:34course.
3:35What do we mean by social ecology? Well,
3:37environmental psychology is an example
3:40of a field within social ecology. So,
3:42whether you're in criminology or
3:43planning or psychology,
3:46our school has an ecological
3:47perspective, which is to say that we
3:49look at phenomena, whether it's
3:50behavior, crime, planning,
3:53within a broad context. We're looking at
3:56these phenomena as being nested in
3:59layers of environmental influences, from
4:01the microenvironment to the more macro
4:04and the global environment. So, we're
4:05interested in environment behavior at
4:07different levels of analysis.
4:09And we tend to study things not just in
4:11laboratory settings, but also in field,
4:13naturalistic field settings. So, that's
4:16something that came out of ecological
4:18science and biology, where the biologist
4:20went out into the field like Darwin and
4:23started making observations not in an
4:25experimental way, but in a very
4:26naturalistic way.
4:28So, there's the ecological perspective.
4:30There's also the interdisciplinary
4:32aspect of our school and the fact that
4:35environmental psychology, like every
4:37other field in our school, reflects a
4:39convergence of several different fields
4:41and disciplines. So, in environmental
4:43psychology, we'll talk about
4:45architecture, we'll talk about natural
4:47resource management and geography.
4:49We'll talk about environmental
4:51cognition. We'll talk about public
4:53policy. So, it's a very
4:54multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary
4:56field.
4:57A third aspect of social ecology is that
5:00it has a clear community problems
5:02orientation. We're not just doing
5:04research for the sake of research and
5:05theorizing for the sake of theorizing,
5:08but ultimately, we want to see that
5:09stuff applied to try to improve the
5:12world in some way.
5:13And by the same token, when we go out
5:15into the field and we try to improve the
5:16world, we learn things that then feed
5:18back and improve our theories, our
5:19understanding. So, it's a kind of
5:21cyclical relationship between theory,
5:24research, and application, what's today
5:27called translation to public policy or
5:29medical practice or what have you. So,
5:31those are three aspects of social
5:33ecology that are shared by virtually all
5:35the departments and fields in our
5:37school, from criminology to planning to
5:39psychology, environmental science.
5:42The ecological perspective, the
5:43interdisciplinary feature, and the
5:45application to uh
5:47planning, the sort of reciprocal
5:49relationship between research and
5:50community problem solving. Now, the
5:51fourth aspect of environmental
5:53psychology is a little different than
5:54other fields within our school. And that
5:57is to say, we're going to put a little
5:59more emphasis on psychological processes
6:02that mediate between the environment and
6:04how you respond to it or how you work
6:06back on the environment. So, we're going
6:07to be talking about things like how
6:09people interpret the environment, how
6:11they think about the environment, their
6:12cognition.
6:13We're going to be talking about
6:14personality as a psychological process,
6:17how the environment shapes your
6:18personality, and also the personality of
6:20places. You can go into environments in
6:22different places and they have a
6:23different feel, a different ambience to
6:25them.
6:26So, you can even talk about the
6:27personality of places.
6:29We're going to be talking about how
6:30people learn about the environment, how
6:33they conserve natural resources. How do
6:35you get people to behave in a more
6:36green, ecologically responsible way?
6:40So, those are all psychological
6:42processes of learning, cognition,
6:44perception, personality
6:46that we'll be covering in this class. If
6:47you're a criminologist or an urban
6:49planner, typically, you're looking more
6:51at the macro level of environment
6:53behavior. You're not focusing so much on
6:55individual and small group psychological
6:58processes. So, we'll put a little more
6:59emphasis on that here.
7:01But it'll be clear that uh environmental
7:04psych, like other areas of our field, do
7:06reflect those first three principles of
7:08ecology that I I mentioned to you.
7:11Now, um I'm my assumption as you take
7:14this course is it's going to be one of
7:15the most challenging courses you're
7:17going to take
7:18in that we're covering a lot of
7:19material. There's a fair amount of
7:21reading, and I'll say a little bit more
7:22about that.
7:24But I think it's going to be one of the
7:25most interesting courses you take
7:27because of its interdisciplinary
7:28character, and also because you're going
7:30to see relationships between your
7:32everyday life, like when you're talking
7:34to your roommate about who can have a
7:36friend over when, and how do you manage,
7:38who puts up what on the walls, and
7:40privacy regulation and things like that.
7:42You'll see that some of the things we
7:44talk about in this class apply directly
7:46to your everyday lives. So, I think that
7:48makes it uh pretty interesting.
7:51Um
7:52I think it's an important course in the
7:54sense that uh there'll be a lot of
7:56take-home messages
7:57in terms of how these principles, these
8:00tools of environment behavior can be
8:02applied uh um
8:04across many different fields that you
8:05might go into after you leave UCI.
8:08So, those are some assumptions about the
8:09class, and I hope you will find it
8:11interesting and and valuable as you as
8:13you take the class.
8:14Now, we're going to show some
8:15PowerPoints just to get oriented to the
8:18course.
8:19And uh
8:20first off, I want to uh
8:23recognize our A team of teaching
8:26assistants. Uh up at the podium here is
8:29Mark Combs.
8:30And he's a PhD student in planning
8:33policy and design. We've got Chitvan
8:36Chitvan Trivedi, who is a uh PhD
8:39candidate in the social ecology PhD
8:42program.
8:43We've got Hiroshi Ishikawa,
8:45who's a first-year PPD PhD student. And
8:49we've got Beth Carlin, who is a She has
8:52a a master's and also uh before coming
8:55to UCI, as do uh Chitvan and uh
8:59I don't know if if any of you Yeah,
9:01Hiroshi has a master's. So, these folks
9:03have been around before they came to UCI
9:05uh in higher learning. But Beth uh is in
9:08the social ecology PhD program,
9:11and she is studying, among other things,
9:13pro-environmental behavior and uh
9:15translational media. So, each of our TAs
9:17are going to have a chance to tell you
9:18more about their interests as the course
9:20goes on. I think you're going to really
9:21enjoy working with them.
9:23Uh and I I think we have a fabulous team
9:25of uh TAs.
9:28So,
9:29uh as for me, uh like I said, I came to
9:31UCI back in 1973,
9:34uh straight out of grad school. I didn't
9:35really expect to stay here too long
9:37because the campus was so new and
9:39undeveloped, and social ecology,
9:41frankly, a lot of my advisers thought
9:43that it was sort of a a
9:45you know,
9:46flaky-sounding topic. Why would you go
9:48to a social ecology program rather than
9:49a psychology department? So,
9:51I had to really wrestle with that when I
9:53decided to come here. And one of the
9:55things that really excited me about the
9:57campus was that
9:58there was a lot of opportunity to build
10:00from the ground up. It was extremely new
10:02campus.
10:03There was the chance to do
10:05interdisciplinary things without being
10:07pigeonholed within a particular
10:08discipline.
10:10So, I came thinking I'd stay a few years
10:11and you know, that's that's some decades
10:14ago.
10:15But, my PhD is in social psychology with
10:19minors in city planning, sociology, and
10:22research in public health. So, this was
10:23a really
10:24good place for me to to be able to come
10:26to.
10:27I grew up in Miami, Florida. Went to
10:29college at the University of Chicago.
10:31Grad school at North Carolina, Chapel
10:33Hill. And then came out to UCI.
10:37Now,
10:39in this slide, I really want to
10:41encourage you to make our website your
10:43friend because there's a lot of great
10:45information
10:47on the website. You can find out more
10:50about your TAs, their background. You
10:51can find out a lot about environmental
10:54psychology resources under the links
10:56page.
10:57But, also in terms of your day-to-day
10:59work in the course, there's going to be
11:00study guides for each week that you can
11:02download. There's four take-home
11:04assignments that constitute 10% of your
11:06grade, and those can be downloaded from
11:08the website.
11:10You've got the course schedule.
11:13You've got the syllabus that you can
11:14download from the website.
11:17And emphasize that email address up
11:20there. So, right up here,
11:22we're going to be covering this email.
11:25It's a Gmail account. And we're going to
11:27be covering it on a daily basis. So, if
11:29you want timely response, and we're
11:32going to try to get back to you the same
11:33day or within a day,
11:35send the email query to that address,
11:38okay? Because if you send it to each of
11:40us individually, we we get a lot of
11:43email. We tend to get kind of stacked up
11:44with it. It takes a little bit longer to
11:46respond.
11:47But, we're definitely going to stay on
11:49top of that. So, if you have questions,
11:52the other thing is we offer some extra
11:54credit opportunities in the class to do
11:56a poster presentation
11:59or a
12:01some kind of a YouTube video or blog.
12:05And so, what we would like you to do is
12:07to send your idea for an extra credit
12:09project, if you want to do one, to that
12:11email address. And then we'll get back
12:13to you with an approval
12:14or if we have any questions about it,
12:16you know, whether or not to go forward.
12:18Um
12:20there's some examples of extra credit
12:22projects there.
12:24Um
12:24there's a little bit about the history
12:26of our school. This is what the reader
12:28looked like a few years ago where
12:30students were paying a hundred something
12:32dollars for a reader.
12:34And we realized that we had to kind of
12:36get out of the business of
12:38these printed texts that students had to
12:40pay a lot of money for. So, we've got
12:42all of the
12:43readings, the required readings and many
12:45of the optional readings
12:47loaded into a webfiles folder. You can
12:49go there and get all the readings for
12:50free. So, that's that little link there,
12:53link to course readings. And then after
12:56each lecture, I'll upload the slides,
12:58the PowerPoint slides.
13:00So, typically I upload them after class
13:03because sometimes we vary them and we
13:04change them around a little bit during
13:06class. So, these links are really
13:08important. Um
13:10Also,
13:11Mark, Hiroshi, Beth, and Shipman have
13:14posted office hours as do I. So, you can
13:17reach us
13:18face-to-face during those times as well.
13:21So, definitely get to know the website
13:23and use it because you're going to get a
13:24lot of good information. And stay on top
13:27of the syllabus and the course schedule
13:28because that'll keep you current with
13:30the readings and what's due each week.
13:34And this is what the webfiles folder of
13:36readings is going to look like when you
13:37get into it. You can see they're all
13:39there alphabetically.
13:40Um
13:41and just go to that that link there. If
13:44any of you have trouble with that, send
13:45us an email to the the class email.
13:48I believe you have to have an a webfiles
13:50account at UCI, but it's a very easy
13:53thing to register. Just go to
13:55webfiles.uci.edu
13:57and you can register.
14:00These are the
14:02texts for the class. They're paperback
14:04books.
14:05They're on sale at the bookstore.
14:07But, we will also put copies on library
14:09reserve if you want to just check them
14:11out from reserve. I also have a set of
14:13copies, multiple copies in the planning
14:16policy and design department office.
14:18So, you can go in there and check them
14:20out as well.
14:21And as as a matter of fact, the reader
14:23that I showed you is also in that office
14:25if you ever need to to check on that.
14:28Now, what is this class about? So, I
14:30told you a little bit about some of the
14:32course
14:33themes and how it relates to social
14:35ecology. One of the things the course is
14:37about is what we'd call hard
14:39architecture.
14:41And some of you might look around in
14:42this classroom and say, "Well, this is
14:43sort of hard architecture because the
14:45seats are bolted. I can't really swivel
14:47my seat. I can't adjust the height of
14:49the seat. Everything is sort of
14:51pre-fixed."
14:52But, if you compare this room to some
14:54classrooms that I taught in back in the
14:56'70s and '80s, this is sort of an
14:58improved version cuz you've got
15:00different kinds of lighting and you've
15:01got comfortable seats, not these really
15:03hard things. But,
15:05hard architecture is architecture that
15:07resists human imprint. And you can think
15:10of or or any kind of human influence.
15:12You can think of a prison environment.
15:15Or you can think of some kind of a a
15:17low-income poverty environment where you
15:19don't have a lot of
15:20wherewithal to change the environment.
15:22It just changes you and it impinges on
15:24you, but you can't work back and modify
15:26it. And that's what Robert Sommer means
15:28by hard architecture. And you if you
15:30look over here in his book,
15:33he shows our engineering tower building.
15:36And what that's about is he came out to
15:38UCI during the late '70s and he did like
15:40a he did a lecture here, but he also did
15:42sort of a photo inventory of the campus
15:44and published this book and said, "The
15:46UCI campus is like San Quentin Prison
15:50because it's so hard. It's so uninviting
15:52to people. It's just, you know,
15:54monstrous concrete structures."
15:56And in fact, in his preface, this is
15:59what he says about the Irvine campus. He
16:01says,
16:02"The obvious conclusion is that San
16:04Quentin, Pruitt-Igoe, we'll talk about
16:05the Pruitt-Igoe buildings in St. Louis,
16:07and the Irvine campus of the University
16:09of California should never have been
16:11constructed in the first place. The
16:13scale, the scope, the impermeability of
16:15the architecture is oppressive to the
16:17human spirit.
16:18Build a university 20 miles from a city,
16:21arrange the offices and classrooms so
16:22that people can never meet, put the
16:24money into parking lots instead of
16:26lounges, develop an incentive system
16:27around individual achievement rather
16:29than common effort, and the result will
16:30be an alienating campus."
16:32Now, in the 1970s, the campus was not as
16:35built out. We didn't have a student
16:36center. We had these ring of, you know,
16:39these hard architecture buildings around
16:41Aldrich Park, but there wasn't much
16:43beyond that.
16:44So, partly in response to this
16:46criticism, the campus planners here at
16:49Irvine got to work and they started
16:51really augmenting the architectural
16:54offerings on the campus with some
16:55improved buildings. And they they took a
16:57look at the classrooms and there was a a
16:59committee of the academic senate that
17:01went to work on developing guidelines
17:03for for improving learning environments.
17:05So, you know, these kind of critiques
17:07can make a difference. But, that's what
17:09we mean by hard architecture. And I
17:11think as you go through the course,
17:13you'll see examples of architecture
17:15which isn't so oppressive, architecture
17:17which actually invites you in or which,
17:18you know, makes you feel better. But,
17:20the ambient the the broad-scale
17:22environment can have a huge influence on
17:23how we feel about ourselves, how we
17:25behave. So, Aldrich Park was sort of the
17:28pivot point for the whole campus from
17:30the beginning on.
17:31And when Chancellor Aldrich and Ray
17:34Watson, the first president of the
17:35Irvine Company, who by the way got his
17:37degree in urban regional planning, his
17:39master's at Berkeley,
17:41and he came out of some courses there
17:42that talked about environmental
17:43psychology and some of the work by Kevin
17:46Lynch on urban imageability.
17:48And he and Chancellor Aldrich designed
17:51the campus in that circular pattern so
17:53there would be a focal point with a nice
17:55natural environment in the middle. So,
17:56that's been here from the very
17:57beginning. Yeah. You know, I think
17:59before fields like environmental
18:01psychology got going, people took
18:03buildings for granted. A lot of
18:04architects decided it was their whim and
18:07their
18:08prerogative to design whatever looked
18:11cool, and it didn't have to fit people's
18:13needs. But, as long as it was
18:14aesthetically striking, it would be
18:16great. And in fact, the Pruitt-Igoe
18:18housing complex in St. Louis, which was
18:20later demolished because people wouldn't
18:22live there,
18:23won all kinds of architectural awards
18:25before it was built. And it was only
18:26after people moved in and the structure
18:29of it was so alienating and so
18:31oppressive that people couldn't live
18:32there. So, I think before the '60s and
18:34'70s, before this field, there wasn't a
18:36lot of sensitivity about human needs in
18:40large-scale environments. And there's
18:43another organization called the
18:45Environmental Design Research
18:46Organization, which started in 1970.
18:48They had their first conference.
18:50And they're they've been going yearly
18:52ever since. And it's all it's a
18:54combination of multidisciplinary people
18:56that get together
18:57and they present research on
19:00environment behavior issues from a
19:02geographical perspective to an
19:03architectural, sociological, etc.
19:07Here what we've got are some of these
19:08classroom environments that are a little
19:09bit rigid.
19:11And you know, nowadays, it's a sea of
19:13computers. If I go back in the room and
19:15sort of take a look at all the screens
19:17from Facebook to NBA playoffs to this,
19:19that, and the other.
19:20We're not in the playoffs yet, but
19:22it's a little daunting, you know.
19:24We like to think of ourselves up here as
19:26sort of imparting information and being
19:28the focus of attention. But, you know,
19:29it's very humbling when you go back and
19:31look at all the screens.
19:33But, uh
19:34you know, now here's a a small lecture
19:37class,
19:38a graduate class, where you have people
19:40sitting around the table.
19:42And there's not as much of that sort of
19:44computer um
19:46emphasis. And it's a little bit more
19:48interactive, face-to-face. But, we're
19:50going to be in this type of classroom
19:51here. and you know, I want to say a
19:53couple of things about sort of civility
19:56and and principles in the classroom. My
19:59view of things is that we're in a kind
20:01of digital era, and I'm not one to sort
20:04of police computer use. I mean, I I
20:06think all of you are adults. You have a
20:08choice to make. If you come to class, if
20:10you want to text and chat and, you know,
20:13do Facebook in class, it's your choice.
20:15I'm I'm not going to police that. The
20:17only thing I would say is if you're
20:19being disruptive, like you put something
20:21up on the screen and some of you are
20:22huddled and you're laughing about it and
20:24you're you're disrupting other students,
20:26then we'll call you out on that because
20:27it's really important that
20:29you respect your fellow students and you
20:32respect whoever's giving the lecture,
20:34um you know, to be polite. But I hope
20:37that you'll pay attention to the lecture
20:39because I think you'll get a lot out of
20:40it, and I also understand some of you
20:42take notes during the lecture, so you're
20:44using the computer to sort of
20:46go along with what we're talking about
20:48here. But uh we're you know, some
20:50classes say turn them off, you know,
20:52close them up. We're not going to do
20:53that. I mean, when I go to conferences,
20:54I use my computer, I check my email, so
20:56I'm not going to be, you know, sort of
20:58holier-than-thou and say you can't do
21:00that. But um
21:01the main thing is not to be disruptive
21:03each of each other. That's the key
21:05thing, just to be respectful when you're
21:06in the class. Uh there are principles of
21:09community and honesty at one of the web
21:11links up on the homepage, and definitely
21:13review those. Um they're UCI standard
21:16policies.
21:18One thing I want to say about these
21:20rooms in environmental psychology, if I
21:22go over here
21:24and I
21:27Where is the Where is the light switch?
21:29Oh, yeah. Why don't you dim them? All
21:30off? Yeah.
21:33So, one of the things we know in
21:34environmental psychology is that
21:36lighting in a class in a situation like
21:38this, we're all huddled together and
21:40you're elbow to elbow with other
21:41students, when we turn the lighting
21:43down, you become less self-consciously
21:45aware.
21:46And so, often environments, whether you
21:48go into a restaurant or some other
21:50place, a lounge, they turn the lights
21:52down lower so that people don't feel as
21:54self-conscious. Okay, so you can turn it
21:56back up. So, you know, when you've got
21:58the glare of all those lights,
22:00um it's a little bit more you feel more
22:03conscious about it. Uh we also know that
22:06if you look at the height of this
22:07ceiling,
22:08you know, there's one thing uh
22:11you know, if you look at a room and say,
22:13"Well, it has X number of square
22:14footage." But there's also cubic footage
22:17to our environments. And we know that as
22:19you increase cubic footage, not just
22:21square footage, cubic footage, the sense
22:23of crowding goes down. The lower the
22:25ceilings, the more the sense of
22:27crowding. And just as if you compress
22:29people in smaller square footage, more
22:31sense of crowding. So, you know, we're
22:34going to look at some of those kinds of
22:35phenomena in this class because they're
22:38they're all around us. We don't usually
22:39think about them,
22:41but I think this class will sort of
22:42change how you see the world um as you
22:46assimilate some of this information
22:47because you'll see examples of this when
22:49you walk around the campus, when you go
22:51home,
22:52uh when you're in a healthcare setting,
22:53what have you. How is that environment
22:56affecting you directly, and how do you
22:58work back and change the environment?
23:00Another theme of the class is functional
23:02versus dysfunctional environments. These
23:05are some examples of some dysfunctional
23:07environments or those that obstruct
23:09rather than support the activities and
23:11needs of their occupants.
23:13And we call that low person-environment
23:15fit. An environment where you fit or
23:18that's congruent with you, there's a
23:19kind of a harmony between what you need,
23:21what you want, and what the environment
23:23dishes out. And if you're a child going
23:26to school under the flight path of the
23:27Los Angeles Airport,
23:30you're hearing 350 overflights a day at
23:3390 to 120 decibels.
23:35That's a lot of noise, and that does
23:37affect the children's blood pressure, it
23:39affects their academic performance
23:40because we've actually done studies to
23:42test that.
23:43Here you've got the Pruitt-Igoe
23:45buildings in St. Louis, the ones that
23:46won those uh architectural awards, and
23:50they later had to be totally demolished
23:51about 16 years after they're constructed
23:53because half of them were empty. People
23:55would just refuse to live there. There
23:57was so much vandalism, so much crime.
23:59And yet those buildings were praised as
24:01a innovative solution to low-income
24:04housing in St. Louis. So, what that did
24:06is it wasted a huge amount of resources.
24:08There was a lot of money that was put
24:11into building these structures, and then
24:12they had all be torn down. So, one of
24:14the things we're talking about in
24:15environmental psychology is how do you
24:17avoid those design mistakes, and how do
24:19you avoid creating dysfunctional
24:21environments? How can we take the
24:23information from the research that we
24:25cover in this class and apply it to
24:27improving those environments so we don't
24:28make as many bad environments and
24:30mistakes. We're also going to talk about
24:32something called environmental justice,
24:34and it so happens that that school under
24:36the flight path is in a low-income uh
24:39racial minority neighborhood in Los
24:40Angeles. And there is this phenomenon of
24:44environmental justice or injustice,
24:47environmental racism, which has been
24:49found in many different cities, and what
24:51that is is that the worst land uses and
24:54the most contaminated parts of cities
24:57typically are reserved for the most
24:59vulnerable populations because they
25:00don't have the economic or political
25:02wherewithal to turn that around. So,
25:05those undesirable land uses get foisted
25:07on their neighborhoods. So, we're going
25:09to talk more about how that's an example
25:11of environmental injustice, and what can
25:13be done through public policy to try to
25:14turn that trend around.
25:16Urban stress. How many of you are
25:18familiar with the term stress?
25:20Yeah, you probably use it on a daily
25:22basis. I certainly use it during my
25:24week. And uh this is an example of how
25:27environments can cause us stress. We can
25:29be stressed with our partner, we can be
25:32stressed with a friend, or, you know, we
25:34get a bad grade. But in environmental
25:36psychology, we're going to be talking a
25:37lot about urban environmental stressors
25:40like noise, crowding, pollution,
25:42and how those affect our physiology, how
25:45they affect our well-being. Whether
25:46you're sitting on the 405 Freeway here
25:48in rush hour, or you're in a very
25:50crowded environment like Times Square in
25:52New York, or you're dealing with the
25:54pollution in large urban areas, and, you
25:57know, whether we have grown up in a
25:59large city in the US or Mexico City or
26:01Beijing or wherever, you know, we're
26:03grappling with, you know, very
26:05tremendous pollution challenges today.
26:08So, we'll be talking about stress. What
26:09makes us stressed? How do we avoid
26:11stress?
26:12We're going to talk about environmental
26:14cognition and behavior. In this example,
26:17you see the Seattle Space Needle, and
26:19according to one theory of environmental
26:21imageability or how people form clear
26:24images of their urban surroundings, uh
26:27they use these kind of landmarks, and
26:29they use the path system. So, when you
26:31first came to Irvine to go to school
26:32here, you probably had to figure out,
26:35you know, how do I get around Irvine
26:36whether I have a car I don't have a car.
26:38What's the street structure or the
26:40street system? You know, what are the
26:41key landmarks? If I'm walking around
26:43campus and I want to get to the Bren
26:45Center, I look for that maybe I look for
26:47that anteater statue outside the Bren
26:49Center.
26:50Or if you go by our Social Ecology 1
26:52building, you'll see a kind of uh funny
26:54colorful sculpture, which gives you a
26:56landmark. And people use these landmarks
26:59to form images of their cities and to
27:02find their way around cities. So, that
27:04is something we call urban wayfinding in
27:06environmental cognition. Here what
27:08you've got is dressing up this trash can
27:12to not just be more visible because you
27:14put a bird on it and people notice it.
27:17There's also a kind of social prompt
27:19here, be a little bit thoughtful. And
27:21when you put these kind of decorated
27:23trash cans in shopping malls, and you
27:25compare how much trash people put in
27:27these cans versus in non-decorated cans,
27:29you know, your standard non-decorated
27:31trash receptacle, these draw
27:33significantly more pounds of trash. So,
27:35people see the trash can, they're
27:37intrigued by it, they put the trash in
27:38the trash can. So, again, it's an aspect
27:41of our environment we wouldn't think to
27:43look at or think about, but it's having
27:45that influence on us nonetheless.
27:47Planned communities and new towns. My
27:50kids grew up in Irvine, they talk about
27:51growing up in the bubble, you know, this
27:53planned community. But what is it about
27:55planned communities? Are they really
27:56ideal?
27:57Um are they good places to live because
27:59they're green, they're healthful,
28:01safe, or do people kind of get tired of
28:04them because they're kind of uniform,
28:06they're not diverse enough? I'd rather
28:07live in Westwood or Laguna Beach than in
28:09Irvine, that kind of thing. And people
28:11have different preferences about
28:13environments depending on where they
28:14grew up, their personalities. I'm going
28:16to show you a little uh Mark's going to
28:18run a a YouTube clip here on uh what
28:21it's like to be in Irvine.
28:25Okay.
28:27Sorry if that offended anybody, but
28:28that's one take on what it what it's
28:30like to live in a planned community.
28:33But clearly, places have these
28:35personalities or these feels to them,
28:38and people can feel like they belong in
28:39a place like Irvine, or they can feel
28:41like misfit, and not that they're
28:43they're congruent with a place like
28:45that. So,
28:46uh what is it about, you know, our
28:48environments that that acquire these
28:50meanings, these symbols? One of the
28:52things Irvine does have is it's got a
28:54lot of green space, a lot of uh parks,
28:56or what urban planners sometimes call
28:58greenbelts. And we know from research
29:02that we'll be studying in this class
29:03that
29:04just as environments can stress us out,
29:07environments can also reduce stress. And
29:10one of the things we know is that
29:11exposure to wilderness, exposure to
29:13nature,
29:14uh is a very effective way of lowering
29:18our stress level. It's uh some people
29:20refer to these as restorative
29:21environments. Uh because they allow us
29:24to go into a setting where we're not
29:26focusing so much on a directed task,
29:28like having to take notes in a class or
29:31study for an exam, but we let our mind
29:33wander and follow a flight of pack of
29:35birds uh going through the sky, or hear
29:38a a waterfall, or whatever. And so, you
29:41know, we can distinguish between what
29:43might be called voluntary focused
29:44attention and involuntary or spontaneous
29:47attention.
29:48And natural environments give us
29:51opportunities for this kind of
29:52involuntary, spontaneous attention.
29:55So, nature has is, you know, there's a
29:58lot of research showing that it has this
30:00restorative power.
30:01Um
30:02And this is a actually a tree in Irvine
30:05that I took a picture of on a
30:06particularly beautiful sunset. This is
30:08Harmony Lake in British Columbia.
30:10Um
30:11So, no matter where that natural setting
30:13is, even if it's some landscaping near
30:16your apartment or your home,
30:17it can have a very profound effect on
30:19our well-being. And we'll talk about
30:21some low-income communities where
30:23comparisons have been made between
30:26housing areas that have sufficient
30:28foliage and landscaping those that
30:30don't, and how the children are affected
30:31by those environments.
30:33When I talk about using these principles
30:36to change our environments, and and want
30:38to be mentioned that, you know, there've
30:39been changes in our buildings as we
30:41learn more about environmental
30:43psychology,
30:44these are some examples of how that
30:45principle of restoration, restorative
30:47environments are being incorporated into
30:49work environments.
30:50So, you've got this Google office here
30:52where the employees can go into a
30:54meditation room and sort of look at
30:56aquaria, the lights are very low,
30:58and they relax and you know, it's a it's
31:01a kind of break from the stress-filled
31:03day.
31:04Uh this is another office in Madrid
31:06where they've built the environment they
31:07built the the office right into a kind
31:09of forest setting where all the views
31:11are of nature.
31:13Uh this one here in Slovenia, the same
31:14kind of idea. And then this is a
31:17workplace meditation area designed by a
31:19fabric designer named Taliha Draeheim in
31:22Northern California. And some companies
31:24now are including these kind of breakout
31:26environments where you can go and you
31:28can take a break from your regular work
31:29day.
31:32One of the articles assigned for today
31:35is about the effects of looking out the
31:38window of a hospital
31:40as a surgery patient, and how that view
31:43of what you see, whether it's a park or
31:45the wall of another building, a hospital
31:47building, how that affects your request
31:49for pain medication, how it affects your
31:52speed to recovery, to checking out of
31:54the hospital, how you get along with the
31:56nursing staff.
31:57And this was a very
31:59influential study published in the
32:01journal Science by Ulrich, which found
32:04that
32:05for gallbladder patients, and there were
32:07about 200
32:09patients in this study, more than 200
32:10patients who were assigned to hospital
32:12rooms that had a view of nature or view
32:15of another building,
32:16he measured after day of day one of
32:18surgery,
32:19uh you know, what was their request for
32:21pain medication?
32:23And you can see that
32:25as time goes by in the tree group, the
32:28people looking out the window at the
32:29trees,
32:30they're requesting more weak doses of of
32:32pain medication, whereas the people in
32:34the wall group are requesting more
32:36strong doses of medication, and you see
32:38that trend uh throughout. And this is
32:41kind of what the experimental
32:42environment looked like where you had
32:44the hospital rooms, some viewing nature
32:47and some viewing a brick wall.
32:49So, this is part of our ambient
32:51environment. We say ambient because it's
32:53outside of our usual awareness. It's,
32:55you know, you're a patient in a
32:57hospital, you're thinking about your
32:58illness or your injury, not the
33:00environment outside.
33:01And yet these views, these view
33:04amenities we would call them, looking
33:05out the window,
33:07do play a role in your recovery. They
33:08become part of the therapeutic
33:10environment, which is kind of
33:11interesting. Before this study, nobody
33:13quite realized that.
33:15How many of you have rooms that look,
33:17well, let's say this one, which is more
33:19decorated. How many of you have that?
33:22Now, some of you may have the more
33:24sparsely
33:25decorated rooms.
33:27This
33:28impulse that people have to sometimes
33:30personalize their environments. If you
33:32look around this room, this classroom,
33:34you don't see any personal
33:36personalization in terms of where you
33:38are, you know, is this the School of
33:40Social Sciences, who has classes in
33:42here?
33:43But if you go into some
33:45offices or some bedrooms, there's very
33:47little
33:48use of that space to convey who's there.
33:52You know, people sometimes put up
33:53posters of their favorite bands or they
33:54put up their political party
33:56affiliations and things like that.
33:58And a study at the University of Utah
34:00found that for freshman students,
34:04those that didn't decorate their room in
34:06the first semester of freshman year
34:09tended to drop out of college at a much
34:11more significant rate at the end of the
34:13first year than students that went ahead
34:16in the first couple of weeks and
34:18decorated their rooms. So, there's
34:20something about sort of making your
34:21imprint on that environment and kind of
34:24bonding with it so that it reflects your
34:26identity,
34:28uh where the students who are have rooms
34:30like this tend to stay in that
34:31university longer. They also have, you
34:34know, pictures that reflect the campus
34:35environment rather than just pictures
34:37that reflect their pining away for some
34:39environment that's far away that they
34:41miss.
34:43So, it's a very interesting example of
34:45what we call environmental
34:46personalization. And if you think about
34:48your rooms and your environments, you
34:49can think about, you know, what's your
34:51style in terms of whether you put up a
34:52lot of stuff about yourself or
34:55whether you tend, you know, not to be so
34:57explicit, you know, in terms of what you
34:59put up. But a lot of companies have
35:00trouble with this because if they have
35:02environments
35:03that are like a blank slate, like the
35:05walls of this room,
35:06the employees go into a conference room
35:08to have a meeting, but there's nothing
35:09that tells them that reinforces their
35:11group identity, their team identity.
35:13So, you know, one of the things that we
35:15see in these slides here,
35:18and this is a
35:19a meal area for an office of the UCI
35:22Medical Center,
35:24uh where there's really nothing on the
35:26wall. It's kind of a drab situation. And
35:28here you've got a environmental planning
35:30firm in Irvine where they used to have a
35:32situation like this, but they put a lot
35:35of investment into sort of dressing up
35:37their
35:38their environment inside the office and
35:40putting up, you know, posters of their
35:42projects, putting some green plants in
35:44here,
35:45uh using some different colors to make
35:47it a more interesting, inviting space.
35:50Here again, you've got a conference room
35:52that tells the workers nothing about
35:55where they're working or what their team
35:56identity is, whereas here,
35:58in this same environmental planning
36:00firm, they've put a lot of attention to
36:02putting up pictures of the employees on
36:04the wall, showing the awards that the
36:06company has won. So, when you go into
36:08their conference room, you get that
36:09reinforcement of who's there and what
36:11they're about. So, that's what we mean
36:12by environmental semiotics, which is a
36:15fancy word for environmental symbolism.
36:17You know, how do we use
36:18the environment to communicate something
36:20about our individual or our group
36:23identity?
36:27So, these are some examples of how
36:28companies do that. Um this is Pacific
36:31Care in Cypress, California, where they
36:34put a vision and a value statement on
36:36the wall in the lobby. So, you walk in
36:37there and they're telling you what their
36:39vision and values are.
36:41And it's always an issue of, well, do
36:43they are they living up to that
36:44environment stuff and all the good
36:46values? But nonetheless, they're taking
36:48some they're they're putting it out
36:49there and for to be evaluated on the
36:51basis of whether their employees feel
36:52they're living up to that.
36:55Here you've got the what I just showed
36:57you, the example of
36:59sort of celebrating the
37:01collective team achievements.
37:04Here in Pixar,
37:06this is a recreational area in Pixar
37:08where they've put up some symbols of
37:09some of the movies they've developed.
37:11So, when people come in there, they pick
37:12up the identity of Pixar that they're
37:14known for Toy Story or they're known
37:17for, you know, whatever films have been
37:20smash hits.
37:21And this is another example of where
37:24uh they are are conveying some shared
37:26values and identity by making this a
37:28very playful work environment. It's
37:30almost like a kids play area uh where
37:32you go into this Pixar
37:35teamwork environment. So, there's some
37:36computers there, but there are all these
37:38other kind of things that make it an
37:39interesting place. So, that's one of the
37:41ways that
37:42companies are trying to take these
37:44principles and make the environments
37:46more interesting and inviting to their
37:49employees so that the employees stay,
37:50they don't have as much employee
37:51turnover, they don't have as much
37:53employee stress. They give them
37:54meditation rooms, and they also give
37:56them some economic things that are good
37:58in terms of, you know, stock sharing and
38:00good meals and things like that.
38:02But, you know, back before the '60s and
38:04'70s and before you had any interest in
38:06environmental psychology, companies
38:07didn't really care that much about their
38:09environment. It was seen as a cost
38:10center.
38:11If I put money into the outside shell of
38:14my building or I I paint the colors
38:16paint the walls different inside the
38:18building or I give people a an
38:20interesting meal area, it was seen as a
38:22way of using up company revenue rather
38:25than as a strategic investment in
38:27productivity or in team morale. So,
38:30we've got a different era now. Even
38:32though we're in a recession, we have
38:34some some very forward-looking
38:36companies, whether it's it's Pixar or
38:38it's Google or it's even Facebook's
38:40environment, their corporate
38:41environment, where
38:43they give the employees a lot of
38:44messages about who they are as a team.
38:47One of the terms you'll hear about this
38:48quarter is called
38:50sociopetal versus sociopetal
38:53environment. Think of centrifugal and
38:55and centripetal force in physics. It's a
38:58centrifugal force is where you have a
38:59satellite going around the earth and
39:00it's trying to get away from the earth's
39:02gravity. It's trying to break away. So,
39:04a sociopetal environment is pushing
39:06people away. It's like a library
39:08environment where they don't want you to
39:10talk too much, so they put you in these
39:11carrels with rigid walls.
39:14And some would say that this classroom
39:16is a little bit of a sociopetal
39:17environment because you're all facing
39:19one direction, you can't turn around
39:20easily and have a conversation, although
39:22we're going to change that later in the
39:23course,
39:24and you'll see how that works. But
39:27uh sociopetal then, like centrifugal,
39:29means sort of
39:30pushing people apart. So, you've got
39:32this elderly care facility where the the
39:34seats are back-to-back, the people can't
39:37talk to each other. It's a kind of an
39:38alienating situation. Or in this airport
39:41here, where you've got this guy sitting
39:42here, but all the you know, you've got
39:44hard seats that are pointed opposite
39:46each other. It's not a It's not
39:47conducive to social interaction.
39:49Here in in Ghirardelli Square, San
39:52Francisco, you've got more of a
39:53sociopetal situation. You were saying
39:55like a circular pattern brings people
39:57together more.
39:58So, the the satellite is being pulled in
40:00by the Earth's gravity. By the same
40:02token, people are being pulled together,
40:04drawn together by that environment. You
40:06can think of a lounge in your dormitory,
40:08which might be a sociopetal environment.
40:10You can think of this public space where
40:13people tend to socialize and mingle.
40:16And we're going to see examples of how
40:18companies sort of balance
40:20those different types of environments.
40:22And not just companies, but healthcare
40:24settings and a lot of other types of
40:25environments. I'm I'm just giving you
40:26some examples from work environments
40:28today. So, here you've got some
40:31sociopetal environments. You've got this
40:32sort of couch space here at Pixar. I'm
40:35picking on Pixar today because they have
40:36a lot of good visual examples. They've
40:38got a ping pong table, billiards set up
40:40near their meal area. So, employees can
40:43go over there and recreate,
40:46get away from sort of their work
40:47routines. Here at Facebook, they give
40:49you a kind of sound system. You can play
40:51music, queue up music here. You can play
40:54basketball and other sports out there.
40:56And this is Google Zurich where they've
40:58got, you know, kind of a recreational
41:00area as well. So, what these
41:01environments do is they bring the
41:03employees together.
41:05And one of the things that Steve Jobs
41:07insisted on when he was designing
41:09helping to design the Pixar
41:11headquarters. How many of you have read
41:12the biography of Steve Jobs?
41:14Okay, it's a really interesting book for
41:16those of you who are
41:18interested in and use Apple products,
41:20where all that stuff came from. But
41:22Steve Jobs insisted on creating a
41:25centripetal or sociopetal environment at
41:28Pixar where the restrooms were located
41:30in the middle of the building,
41:32the meal areas where people went to get
41:34their food was located in the middle of
41:35the building, these kinds of
41:38recreational spaces where people could
41:40sort of
41:42you know, engage in sort of
41:44downtime activities. All of that was in
41:46the middle of the Pixar headquarters in
41:48Emeryville. And so,
41:50what he was trying to do there is get
41:51people to bump into each other and
41:53interact. And that's what we mean by a
41:54sociopetal environment. And as you go
41:57through your day-to-day routines, you'll
41:59see some environments that are pretty
42:01alienating or push people apart, keep
42:03them apart. And you'll see others that
42:04tend to bring people together.
42:07We mentioned music. And one of the
42:09reasons we're going to do a lot of music
42:11in this class
42:12is it's a great example of how people
42:15express their relationships to places
42:17and environments through lyrics. Also,
42:20different types of music make us feel
42:22different in terms of, you know, whether
42:24we have a fast tempo
42:26and we're listening to a rap tune or
42:28we're listening to classical music or
42:29we're listening to classical rock.
42:31All of those,
42:33you may have very different preferences
42:34for those, but they they tend to invoke
42:36different kind of
42:38feelings, different kinds of states.
42:40Some of you have heard some of these
42:42playing for change videos. We'll play
42:43some of them later. But it I'd like you
42:46to think about kind of songs in your
42:48life and sort of how they reflect these
42:51connections between you and your
42:52environment or between the lyricist, the
42:55composer and their environment. You can
42:57think of so many examples. In the
42:58Beatles, for example, John Lennon wrote
43:00around his hometown and composed um
43:05the song about places. There are places
43:07in my life and song's called In My Life.
43:10And it's really a reflection on his
43:12connection
43:13to
43:14that environment where he grew up.
43:17Um and it's expressing that those
43:20emotional connections through that song.
43:22There are a lot of examples like that.
43:23So, we'll talk about those as we go
43:24through.
43:25Environmental planning. How many of you
43:27are urban studies or planning
43:29enthusiasts in this class, majors?
43:31Okay.
43:33If you look around how the city of
43:35Irvine is laid out and planned, you're
43:38going to One of the things you'll see is
43:40the number of fast food restaurants per
43:42capita
43:43in Irvine. And we're going to talk about
43:46the obesity crisis, especially in the
43:48next lecture, but there's a couple of
43:50articles today assigned if you should
43:52pick up on those.
43:53But one of the things that influences
43:56intake of fast food, which tends to be
43:59higher fat content,
44:01a little bit more prone toward obesity,
44:04is access to and proximity to fast food
44:07restaurants. And we know that in many
44:08low-income communities in the US,
44:11they are they have so many fast food
44:13restaurants. There are no Trader Joe's,
44:15there's no
44:16Whole Foods, that kind of thing. You get
44:18those in more affluent communities. And
44:20some people point to this as a kind of
44:22environmental injustice, but they don't
44:25have as much access to good food. So,
44:26there's a lot more consumption of, you
44:29know, In-N-Out Burgers and things like
44:31that. I mean, I'm not, you know, panning
44:32In-N-Out Burgers and my kids, you know,
44:35always wanted to go through here and get
44:36an In-N-Out Burger when they were
44:38growing up. But the fact that we have so
44:40many so much opportunity to do that,
44:42whether it's Del Taco or it's it's other
44:44fast food in the area, it's even more
44:48predominant and prevalent in low-income
44:50communities. Now, it's not just the
44:52physical environment that affects our
44:53health. Um and there's a big interest
44:56now in combining urban planning with
44:59public health. You know, how we plan our
45:01communities, access to good food, fast
45:03food,
45:04how that affects health outcomes. But
45:06it's also the social environment. And
45:08we're going to read today there's some
45:10web links I'd like you to look at on the
45:11syllabus
45:13where they've studied the social
45:14contagion of obesity.
45:17And what this means is that
45:19if you look at this social network over
45:2225 years and you and they've done
45:24time-lapse
45:25research on the networking
45:27relationships, what happens is that
45:30heavier people tend to gravitate toward
45:33or hang out with heavier people. If your
45:36friend gets heavier, you tend to get
45:37heavier. Now, that's, you know, you
45:39wouldn't think that's the case. But
45:41there's this kind of contagion of
45:42obesity that they found. And that's
45:44controlling for, you know, time and and
45:47people's weights before and after over a
45:49period of time. The more yellow these
45:51circles or the the
45:54people located in those nodes within a
45:56network, the heavier they are in terms
45:58of their body mass.
45:59And where you see these green clusters
46:01of dots, those are people who are
46:03leaner, not as heavy.
46:05So, we're going to talk a little bit
46:06more about this and there's a
46:09a link that you can go to on the
46:10syllabus or the homepage where you can
46:12actually see this time-lapse play out
46:15with their data.
46:16This is a quick kind of overview of how
46:19the ecological paradigm, I talked about
46:22social ecology, which has evolved here
46:24at UCI, but it started in biology,
46:28bioecology, which is the study of the
46:29relations between organisms and their
46:31environments. So, that's what we mean by
46:33ecology, study of organisms and their
46:36environment relations.
46:38The Chicago School of Human Ecology in
46:40the 1920s took the biological principles
46:44of, you know, bioecology and plant and
46:46animal biomes and how they reach reach
46:48equilibrium in natural systems.
46:51And they applied it to human communities
46:53and they called this human ecology,
46:55study of the relations between people
46:57and their urban ecosystems with an
46:59emphasis on biological and economic
47:01processes of adaptation and the spatial
47:04distribution of health and behavior
47:06problems.
47:07And to give you an example of their
47:09research, we'll talk more about this
47:10next week, they developed what they
47:12called a concentric zone model of
47:14Chicago where they found this
47:17pattern of
47:20higher crime rates and deviance and and
47:23health disorders in the middle of
47:25Chicago in the Loop area near Lake
47:27Michigan. And as they went out to the
47:29more affluent suburban areas, those
47:31rates of disorder dropped off.
47:34And so, this came to be known as the
47:35concentric zone model of urban disorder
47:39based on the Chicago School of Human
47:40Ecology. That was a pretty simplistic
47:43interpretation. We know that a lot of
47:44communities, if you try to plot
47:47behavioral disorder and disease in Los
47:49Angeles, it doesn't work that way
47:50because you have a multi-node city where
47:53you have several different sort of urban
47:54centers within the LA basin.
47:57So, not all cities are like Chicago
47:59where you have this monolithic huge
48:01downtown area.
48:03But even so, in that city, you know,
48:06these relationships, this was kind of
48:08preliminary insight back in the '20s,
48:11but what has happened since then is that
48:13we've had a broadening of the ecological
48:15paradigm applied to people, applied to
48:17humans, as the study of the relations
48:19between people and their environments
48:20from a broad interdisciplinary
48:22perspective where we're giving greater
48:24attention to social, psychological,
48:26institutional, cultural contexts of
48:29people-environment relations than
48:31earlier human ecology research did. So,
48:35now we're talking not just about
48:36economic drivers of those spatial
48:39patterns of disorder, but we're talking
48:41about how
48:42people's symbolism and their attachment
48:44to environments sort of sometimes trump
48:48economic incentives and motives and
48:52account for how people react to their
48:54environments or protect their
48:55environments even more so than economic
48:57theory. So, you have places in the
48:59Boston area like Beacon Hill where
49:03in the
49:041920s and '30s, there were a lot of
49:06proposals to come in and and build
49:09high-rise apartment buildings and retail
49:11shopping centers. And the people in that
49:13neighborhood would have benefited by all
49:15the jobs and all the income flowing in.
49:17And yet they resisted that and felt that
49:20that would diminish the the historical
49:22and symbolic value of their
49:24neighborhood. So, they decided to resist
49:27that and this led to a famous paper by
49:29Walter Firey on sentiment and symbolism
49:32as ecological variables. So, it was not
49:34just about economic and biological
49:37processes, but also cultural symbolic
49:39processes. So, this is a kind of quick
49:41overview of some of the different
49:43schools of ecology and what we mean by
49:45social ecology at UCI as it's developed
49:48here as a much broader
49:50multi-disciplinary field than what it
49:52started out with in biology and later in
49:55Chicago in sociology. Social ecology is
49:58a pretty going concern around the world.
50:00There's a lot of new social ecology
50:02programs sprouting up in Europe,
50:04Australia,
50:06and uh
50:07So, Irvine was quite a sort of a
50:09precursor here, but it's it's really
50:11been a movement that's that's spread
50:12more widely.
50:14This fairly involved slide, what this is
50:16saying is that
50:18our local environments and what goes on
50:20in our local environments are very
50:21connected to what's going on globally.
50:23So, we see a lot of change and trends in
50:26the global sphere
50:27uh in terms of the prevalence and
50:30predominance of the internet, which is
50:32connecting people all over the world. We
50:34see certain uh violence and
50:37international and ethnic tensions that
50:40are continuing around the world. We
50:41haven't figured out a way to get rid of
50:43genocide and violence and terrorism. So,
50:45there's all of that
50:47socio-political conflict. And then,
50:50there's also the geophysical changes,
50:52you know, planetary warming and uh ozone
50:55depletion. So, those global sources of
50:58change in our environments
51:00are affecting a lot of changes in our
51:02local environments. So, when you sit in
51:03a classroom now, you know, you've got to
51:05be wired. There are these virtual links
51:07between local and global environments.
51:09We have hybrid environments now. Our
51:11home is not just a refuge anymore from
51:14work,
51:15but now it's a base of multitasking. We
51:17do online banking, we download movies,
51:20we do our work from home, we do our
51:22domestic stuff at home. So, home has
51:24become a multi-functional
51:26uh polyfunctional or hybrid environment.
51:28It's not just home It's not just family,
51:31it's work and family now and recreation.
51:34So, what this these changes in our local
51:36environments are doing
51:38is that they're creating certain
51:40psychological effects on us.
51:42Uh there's a lot more distraction and
51:44information overload. Many of you get
51:46scores of emails, text messages,
51:49cell calls every day,
51:51uh much more than we had to process
51:52maybe 20 years ago
51:54or 15 years ago.
51:56Continuous partial attention, the fact
51:58that people are always scanning the
52:00environment. You know, you're working on
52:02a paper on your computer, but then
52:03you're checking email, you're checking
52:05Facebook, and you're checking Google
52:07Plus. And there's this tendency for us
52:09to want to be in touch with just about
52:11everything, to take in as much
52:13information as we can.
52:15But what this means is that we can't
52:16focus as well
52:18on sort of dedicated tasks. And we have
52:21less time maybe for meditation or less
52:23time for that that sense of focus. So,
52:26we're becoming a little bit more
52:27fragmented in our behavioral routines.
52:30Uh when you're working in an office now,
52:32you might be interrupted 13, 14 times a
52:34day because of different uh cell calls
52:38you get or emails or faxes. And
52:40actually, there's a professor in
52:41information computer sciences here at
52:43UCI, Gloria Mark, who has studied
52:46knowledge workers' interruption rates
52:48and how fragmented their behavior has
52:49become because of all of these virtual
52:51interruptions.
52:53Uh we talk about the state of absent
52:54presence, changing notions of
52:57friendship. You know, I can be on a cell
52:58phone call
53:00and whoever I'm talking to is absent.
53:02They might be you know, my son's in
53:04China. Now, he might be calling me on
53:06Skype
53:07and uh
53:08he's not here physically present.
53:11Uh he's absent, but he's psychologically
53:12present. And by the same token, if I'm
53:14doing that in the middle of my lecture,
53:16I'm going to be less present to you,
53:19more absent to you because I'm engaged
53:21in that virtual conversation. So, there
53:24are these little conflicts that are
53:25creeping up between our place-based
53:27environments
53:28and our virtual environments. And you've
53:30got employees at work surfing the net
53:32and their their bosses get mad or their
53:34co-workers get mad because they're not
53:35focusing on the job, you know, they're
53:37they're recreational surfing.
53:39Or sometimes in classrooms, a situation
53:41will come up where, you know, using the
53:44internet for non uh class reasons
53:46creates certain
53:48uh discrepancies. So, that's what we
53:51mean by absent presence. You know,
53:53somebody may be virtually present, but
53:55they're absent physically, and we may be
53:57absent psychologically in a particular
53:59environment even though we're standing
54:01very close to somebody in that same
54:02place.
54:04You know, there are feelings of
54:05powerlessness that we're having now
54:08because we're exposed to so much
54:11immediate media coverage of tsunamis and
54:14tornadoes
54:16and violence in the Middle East and
54:18other places, and it's very hard to
54:20ignore that. It's affecting our stress
54:22levels. We we it's you know, we're so
54:24interconnected now.
54:26I just want to uh read you a passage,
54:29a quote by Deepak uh Chopra, who's the
54:32spirituality and wellness author.
54:34And uh he said that we are living in a
54:36very interesting time. What is emerging
54:39is that you cannot separate yourself
54:40emotionally or in any other way from
54:42what is happening anywhere in the world.
54:45We are a global community. We need to
54:47feel this pain. We need to act upon it.
54:49We need to realize that we are now
54:51entangled with everything that happens
54:53everywhere.
54:56And he speculates that, you know, if
54:57people saw those bombs going off in
55:01Hiroshima and
55:05that time, real time, just as we can
55:08witness the Indian Ocean tsunami or the
55:11Japanese earthquake and tsunami or some
55:14other scary event, you know, traumatic
55:17and disastrous event, we see that in
55:19real time. It has a huge effect on our
55:21psyche.
55:22So, that's what we're meaning here that,
55:24you know, the global
55:26changes that are going on in our world
55:27really have immediate uh local
55:30consequences and effects on us.
55:32And we call these synergistic changes
55:35between these different global trends
55:36because they reinforce each other. So,
55:39people are becoming more aware of these
55:42global trends because they have the
55:43internet. They can get that all of that
55:45data through video, through YouTube,
55:47through everything else at our disposal.
55:49And we're seeing the widening
55:51disparities between
55:53different socioeconomic, racial,
55:54religious, and ethnic groups. And in
55:56this country, there's a lot of talk now
55:57about income inequality. So, all of this
56:01increased salience or awareness because
56:03of the internet and because of our media
56:05uh contact with the information has this
56:08effect on us.
56:09We're more sensitized to, you know, the
56:11consequences of global problems. We
56:13wonder how individuals perceive and
56:15experience and react to these global
56:17threats. What toll does that take on our
56:19health? How do we identify and mobilize
56:21psychological and situational
56:22circumstances to move from just feeling
56:24powerless and anxious to some kind of
56:26collaborative constructive action. So,
56:28these are some of the questions that
56:29come up when we are witnessing on a
56:31daily basis um really powerful traumatic
56:34events globally.
56:36And here you can see how in our own
56:37environment, the effects of global
56:39warming are starting to change what kind
56:41of automobiles Detroit carmakers are
56:43turning out. You know, we've got battery
56:45cars, we've got hybrids, we've got cars
56:48that are responding to these needs in
56:50terms of global warming and carbon use.
56:52This is the president of GM at the time
56:54where, you know, they were about to go
56:56bankrupt and they had to be bailed out.
56:58That guy was pretty stressed.
56:59Fortunately, things have turned around
57:01in Detroit quite a bit,
57:02but these global events have tremendous
57:05impact on us. The fact that our cars
57:07weren't selling relative to Japanese
57:09cars or other carmakers, you know, how
57:11how is this our carmakers how are they
57:13going to be more competitive? What did
57:15they need to do to change their
57:16products?
57:18On our local campus, you see how this
57:21the global environment affects our local
57:23uh interactions. We have this Olive Tree
57:26Initiative here at UCI, which takes the
57:28Middle East crisis
57:30and the tensions between Israelis and
57:32Palestinians and it brings
57:34Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu
57:37students and students of other religions
57:38together for collaborative discussions.
57:41And they also take trips to the Middle
57:43East where they visit Israel, they visit
57:45Palestine,
57:46and there are opportunities for more uh
57:48getting to know each other on a
57:50face-to-face basis. So, some of these
57:52global events are actually affecting
57:55what goes on on the campus in terms of
57:56how we deal with these issues here. Now,
57:59I mentioned the the effects of the
58:00internet on our psyche and how that's
58:02become a study in environmental
58:03psychology, a focus of our study. These
58:05are data for 2010 where there were about
58:071.6 billion internet users in the world,
58:11and now there over 2 billion internet
58:13users and over 5 billion cell phone
58:16users. And there's almost 1 billion cell
58:18phone users just in China alone. The
58:20virtuality of our lives
58:23has changed dramatically. It's it's
58:24really pervasive now.
58:26Some would argue that this is a good
58:28thing. Negroponte wrote a book, Being
58:30Digital. He said that living digitally
58:32will include less and less dependence on
58:34being in a specific place or a specific
58:36time, and the transmission of place
58:38itself will start to become possible.
58:40So, we don't have to come to a
58:41university to get educated. We can go
58:43online
58:44and take a distance education course and
58:46get the same value. It's more
58:47democratic, you don't have to get into
58:50UC or Harvard or some other place.
58:53And we'll talk about well, what are some
58:54of the tradeoffs between digital and
58:57place-based education. But nonetheless,
58:59there's some real fans of virtuality
59:01saying it makes us more efficient.
59:03We'll talk about third places as a nexus
59:07or bridge between first and second
59:08places. A first place is your home or
59:10family environment. A second place is
59:12your work environment. Third places are
59:15things like coffee shops, you know,
59:17Peet's Coffee or a bookstore or a bar
59:20where people go to kind of let down
59:22their hair and interact informally with
59:24strangers sometimes as well as with
59:26friends. Oldenburg, who came up with
59:28this theory of third places, claims that
59:30for cities that don't have third places,
59:32they're not very interesting places to
59:34be because people don't have that
59:35variety between home and work. They
59:37don't have enough third-places. And you
59:39can look at the city of Irvine and say,
59:40do we have enough third-places in Irvine
59:43where students can go or people of
59:45different
59:47preferences and backgrounds can go? And
59:49that's an interesting question. We have
59:50a very planned community, but do we have
59:52enough diverse third-places?
59:55We also have hybrid places, which is to
59:57say that our first places now are
1:00:00morphing into hybrids of work, home,
1:00:02family, recreation. Even our workplaces
1:00:05now, employees are demanding meditation
1:00:08environments, good food. They want
1:00:10childcare settings, daycare settings for
1:00:12their kids. So, it's not just going to a
1:00:15work headquarters. It's a work {dash}
1:00:17family kind of or domestic environment.
1:00:19So, that's what we mean by hybrid places
1:00:22where you're getting these combinations
1:00:23of
1:00:24second and third places, first and
1:00:25second, etc. You've got the offices at
1:00:27home that are wired or you've got the
1:00:29Starbucks where everybody's on their
1:00:30computer rather than interacting with
1:00:32each other socially. They're all sort of
1:00:33isolated working on their own laptops.
1:00:36What's happened with our communication
1:00:37is that we've gone from local
1:00:40synchronous, which means face-to-face
1:00:42communication,
1:00:43to more asynchronous remote where we're
1:00:46leaving messages for each other through
1:00:48email, voicemail.
1:00:50And when you look at local asynchronous,
1:00:52that is something that happens at
1:00:54different times. You can leave a note on
1:00:55a colleague's desk if they're not in
1:00:57their office. Or here you've got
1:00:59synchronous remote where you have a
1:01:01video conference with people are located
1:01:03remotely in different places. But
1:01:05generally, there's been this trend from
1:01:06face-to-face local real-time interaction
1:01:10to more of this
1:01:12asynchronous remote. So, that's a trend
1:01:13that we're going to
1:01:15look at a lot in this class.
1:01:17We talked about continuous partial
1:01:19attention. People are monitoring Twitter
1:01:21feeds, are monitoring email, they're
1:01:23getting cell phone calls, faxes. There's
1:01:25a lot of tendency to engage in
1:01:27continuous partial attention.
1:01:29You know, trying to pay continuous
1:01:30attention to everything around us so
1:01:32that we don't miss anything.
1:01:34Always on, anywhere, anytime, anyplace.
1:01:38And this is leading to behavioral
1:01:39fragmentation. We mentioned
1:01:40multitasking, distract distraction. You
1:01:43know, texting while driving. You You all
1:01:45know some of the examples of what that
1:01:47can lead to.
1:01:49And one last slide here I want to leave
1:01:50you with. It's not just the virtual
1:01:52environment that distracts us and causes
1:01:55this continual partial attention.
1:01:57But here you've got a apartment building
1:02:00in New York City built over an
1:02:01expressway.
1:02:02And there have been studies of the kids
1:02:04living on the lower and the upper floors
1:02:06of this building. And they find a lot of
1:02:09learning problems among the kids that
1:02:11live on the lower floors that have the
1:02:12higher noise levels from the freeway.
1:02:15They don't do as well in school. They
1:02:17can't decipher between different words
1:02:19that sound alike.
1:02:21So, this is a kind of source of
1:02:23dysfunction
1:02:25as well in our our daily environment.
1:02:26It's not just the virtual intrusions,
1:02:28but also the place-based distractions
1:02:31that we have.
1:02:32All right. Have a good evening and we'll
1:02:33see you on Thursday.

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