Journal of Environmental Psychology最新文献

Reverse correlation (RC) is a data-driven method from social psychology that has been effectively shown to visualize the mental representations that humans hold regarding facial attributes. The method helps to understand what features are relevant in terms of the evaluation of faces, such as dominance or submissiveness. To the best of our knowledge, RC has solely been applied to faces within the area of psychology until this point. However, there are many other areas where it is of interest to understand how humans evaluate and visualize content, one of them being the evaluation of house facades. With this work, we extended the application of RC to architectural design, specifically focusing on the evaluation of house facades with respect to the psychological attributes of facelikeness, invitingness, and likeability. Furthermore, we propose a novel approach to create the base image, by utilizing a generative adversarial network. In an online study with a between-subject design, 121 participants completed the RC task, with 40 to 41 participants assigned to each of the three attributes. The resulting classification images (CIs) from the RC task unveil face-related features for the attribute facelikeness, signifying the potential extension of the RC methodology beyond the established domain of facial analysis to other domains, such as architectural design.

Theories of parallel memory systems suggest that flexible wayfinding (e.g., shortcutting) requires knowledge about the spatial structure of an environment, whereas automatic wayfinding (e.g., route-following) does not. Distal landmarks have widely been assumed to promote learning a spatial representation of an environment and, thus, flexible wayfinding through it. There is, however, little behavioural evidence to corroborate this assumption. In three experiments reported here, participants learned a circuitous route through a large-scale virtual garden maze, after which they completed orientation and wayfinding tests that measured their knowledge of the spatial structure of the environment and ability to shortcut through it, respectively. In Experiment 1, we found no evidence of a benefit to navigation in the presence versus the absence of distal landmarks when participants had continuous experience of the learned route, but pointing accuracy and shortcutting ability decreased when the learned route was complex compared to simple. In Experiment 2, participants learned a simple circuitous route in segments, and we observed superior knowledge of how the separately learned local spaces were aligned in the presence versus the absence of distal landmarks. Across all experiments, consistent with parallel memory systems, we observed that knowledge of the spatial structure of the environment was related to shortcutting but not route-following. This pattern of data suggests that distal landmarks promote the integration of separately learned local spaces into a coherent global representation, but do not promote learning of local spaces beyond what can be achieved by tracking self-motion.

A connection to nature can be healing and restorative for children, especially when they are coping with psychological symptoms. Better understanding the essence of this connection and investigating the associated variables can, therefore, prove useful. This research consisted of three studies measuring the connection to nature among youth in Turkey's unique, non-Western context. In Study-1 (n = 214), the 14-item Connection to Nature Index (CNI) was tested with confirmatory factor analysis. The results showed that the CNI was a valid and reliable instrument in the Turkish sample. Study-2 (n = 375) examined personal factors predicting children's connection to nature. Regression analysis showed that gender was a significant predictor of CNI. We also found that connection to nature increased as screen time decreased and the frequency of contact with nature increased. In Study 3 (n = 404), we found that hope and satisfaction with life acted as serial and complete mediators between CNI and psychological symptoms. Unlike the results of previous studies conducted in the West, this study highlights for the first time the importance of children's connection with the natural world in Turkey, an Eastern society.

Individual and household behaviors are key targets for climate change mitigation efforts, and studies suggest that people who enact more pro-environmental behaviors tend to experience higher levels of well-being. Yet these studies have typically used coarse-grained, retrospective reports that offer limited insight into the immediate impacts of specific behaviors. In three studies (total N = 8,522 observations, N = 1,353 US and UK participants) we adopted a highly fine-grained approach. Using the day reconstruction method, we zoomed in on particular moments in everyday life to examine links between specific behaviors and different aspects of well-being. This revealed generally positive associations, but also substantial variation. Pro-environmental behaviors are more closely and consistently associated with positive and especially “eudaimonic” dimensions of well-being. And more active, effortful, and social behaviors tended to show stronger positive associations. Although the relationships between pro-environmental behaviors and well-being are considerably more complex than prior research has indicated, these findings continue to suggest that ecological and individual well-being can be pursued in tandem.

Climate change is one of, if not the greatest, global challenges of this century, as its consequences can have a wide range of impacts on society, the environment, and the personal lives of many individuals. Consequently, many people experience severe psychological distress in the form of fears, anxieties, or worries, elicited by one, some, or all these different consequences. Thus, climate change distress can be conceptualized as a domain-specific construct. We conducted a literature review and a qualitative lay survey to develop the Domain-Specific Climate Change Distress Scale (DCCDS), with a generic climate change distress domain and six sub-domains (ecology, existence, food supply, future generations, society, and wealth). In the first study, we validated this structure with a bifactor-(S-1) model and refined the scale according to its psychometric properties. In a second study, we showed convergent and discriminant validity with the respective constructs. In a third study, we demonstrated the external validity of the scale by investigating the relation of its sub-domains to fear reactions to real-life news excerpts and willingness to donate to different charity organizations. Each sub-domain showed incremental validity over the generic domain. The scale had adequate psychometric properties and stability over three measurement timepoints in German gender-balanced convenience samples. We thus conclude that the domain-specific conceptualization of climate change distress yields important diagnostic benefits and could provide important insights into the future handling of climate change distress on a political, socio-cultural, and personal level.

This study investigated the restorative effects of repeated listening to natural sounds indoors in real-life settings. Previous studies have mainly been cross-sectional and laboratory studies. We designed an online field experiment lasting seven days, in which we assigned 166 university students to one of four intervention groups: (1) listening to natural sounds, (2) sitting in silence (i.e., another means of restoration), (3) reading news online (i.e., a prevalent but not necessarily restorative activity), or (4) no intervention (i.e., the control). Self-reported restorative experience was measured both before and after the daily intervention (but once a day in the no-intervention group), and the weekly-measured perceived stress and state mindfulness were assessed at the beginning and end of the intervention week. Linear hypothesis tests based on a linear mixed-effects model (LMM) showed that, at the day level, natural sounds were the most restorative, followed by silence, while reading news proved not to be restorative. In addition, the daily restorative effect of natural sounds was carried over to later days and its seven-day accumulation was half as great as the general daily restorative effect, although the within-day pre-post change ostensibly diminished over time. An ANCOVA and paired t-tests revealed that a reduction in the weekly-measured perceived stress and an increase in the weekly-measured mindfulness took place after listening to natural sounds or sitting in silence, with the former intervention type having stronger effects, aligning with the results for the restorative experience. Our findings suggest that the carryover effect of repeated listening to natural sounds for psychological restoration may more than compensate for the diminishing returns in within-day pre-post changes over the course of a week.

Promoting prosocial behavior toward future generations is crucial to combat societal challenges such as climate change and the depletion of natural resources. Here, we invoke a social dilemma lens to predict and promote future-oriented prosociality in four preregistered online experiments (total N = 2407). Integrating research on temporal preferences with research on social preferences, we show that (i) individuals are willing to make self-costly contributions to future beneficiaries without personal return on investment; (ii) universally prosocial preferences predict such future-oriented prosociality most strongly, and (iii) individuals with weakly or strongly parochial preferences can also be motivated toward future-oriented prosociality if the future beneficiary of their contributions is aligned with their social preferences, i.e., when the future beneficiary is part of an in-group. This is true for both minimal groups (Studies 2–3) and real-world groups (Study 4). Our findings suggest that policies aimed at promoting people's future-oriented prosociality could be made more effective by tailoring to the beneficiary of their prosociality in the future.

Augmented reality (AR) technology has the potential to transform how individuals interact with real-world environments, offering individuals the unique capability to induce virtual changes in a place. In two studies (N_total = 2305), we investigated the relationship between place attachment and willingness to use different types of AR applications: informative (focused on providing information about the place's past and future) and transformative (altering the appearance of a place or the way it is used). We used different measures of place attachment, distinguished by the personal significance attributed to the place. We found that traditional place attachment and place dependence were negatively correlated with willingness to use informative AR applications; the opposite relationship was observed for active place attachment and place identity. Transformative AR applications were more accepted by individuals with high active place attachment; however, we did not observe the expected negative relationship between traditional place attachment and this type of AR. Our study is the first to show how various forms of attachment shape willingness to implement virtual alterations in real locations, offering a preliminary understanding of whether these changes are perceived as positive or negative.