Ecological psychology is a term claimed by a number of schools of psychology. However, the two main ones are one on the writings of
J. J. GibsonJames Jerome Gibson , was an American psychologist who received his Ph.D. from Princeton University's Department of Psychology, and is considered one of the most important 20th century psychologists in the field of visual perception...
, and another on the work of
Roger G. BarkerRoger Garlock Barker was a social scientist, a founder of environmental psychology and a leading figure in the field for decades, perhaps best known for his development of the concept of behavior settings....
, Herb Wright and associates at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Whereas Gibsonian psychology is always termed Ecological Psychology, the work of Barker (and his followers) is also sometimes referred to as
Environmental PsychologyEnvironmental psychology is an interdisciplinary field focused on the interplay between humans and their surroundings. The field defines the term environment broadly encompassing natural environments, social settings, built environments, learning environments, and informational environments...
. There is a considerable amount of overlap between the two schools, although the Gibsonian approach tends to be more philosophical.
Barker's work was based on his empirical work at the Midwest Field Station.
Ecological psychology is a term claimed by a number of schools of psychology. However, the two main ones are one on the writings of
J. J. GibsonJames Jerome Gibson , was an American psychologist who received his Ph.D. from Princeton University's Department of Psychology, and is considered one of the most important 20th century psychologists in the field of visual perception...
, and another on the work of
Roger G. BarkerRoger Garlock Barker was a social scientist, a founder of environmental psychology and a leading figure in the field for decades, perhaps best known for his development of the concept of behavior settings....
, Herb Wright and associates at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Whereas Gibsonian psychology is always termed Ecological Psychology, the work of Barker (and his followers) is also sometimes referred to as
Environmental PsychologyEnvironmental psychology is an interdisciplinary field focused on the interplay between humans and their surroundings. The field defines the term environment broadly encompassing natural environments, social settings, built environments, learning environments, and informational environments...
. There is a considerable amount of overlap between the two schools, although the Gibsonian approach tends to be more philosophical.
Barker's work was based on his empirical work at the Midwest Field Station. He wrote later: "The Midwest Psychological Field Station was established to facilitate the study of human behavior and its environment
in situ by bringing to psychological science the kind of opportunity long available to biologists: easy access to phenomena of the science unaltered by the selection and preparation that occur in laboratories." (Barker, 1968). The study of environmental units (
behavior settingsBehavior settings are theorized entities that help explain the relationship between individuals and the environment - particularly the social environment. This topic is typically indexed under the larger rubric of 'Ecological Psychology'...
) grew out of this research. In his classic work "Ecological Psychology" (1968) he argued that human behaviour was radically
situatedSituated cognition posits that knowing is inseparable from doing by arguing that all knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts ....
: in other words, you couldn't make predictions about human behaviour unless you know what situation or context or environment the human in question was in. For example, there are certain behaviours appropriate to being in church, attending a lecture, working in a factory etc, and the behaviour or people in these environments is more similar than the behaviour of an individual person in different environments. He has since developed these theories in a number of books and articles.
Gibson also stressed the importance of the environment. He argued that
animalAnimals are a major group of mostly multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously...
s and humans stand in a '
systemSystem is a set of interacting or interdependent entities forming an integrated whole....
s' relation to
the environmentThe biophysical environment is the symbiosis between the physical environment and the biological life forms within the environment, and includes all variables that comprise the Earth's biosphere. The biophysical environment can be divided into two categories: the natural environment and the built...
, such that, to fully explain some behaviour it was necessary to study the environment in which this behaviour took place. The
aphorismThe word aphorism denotes an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and easily memorable form....
: "It's not what is inside the head that is important, it's what the head is inside of", is supposed to capture that point.
However, especially in his later work, Gibson concentrated more on the nature of cognition itself. He rejected 'indirect' (cognitivist)
perceptionIn philosophy, psychology, and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information. It is a task far more complex than was imagined in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was predicted that building perceiving machines would take about a decade,...
, in favour of '
direct realismDirect realism, also known as naïve realism or common sense realism, is a theory of perception that claims that the senses provide us with direct awareness of the external world. In contrast, indirect realism and representationalism claim that we are directly aware only of internal representations...
'; and also rejected the
information processingInformation processing is the change of information in any manner detectable by an observer. As such, it is a process which describes everything which happens in the universe, from the falling of a rock to the printing of a text file from a digital computer system...
and cognitivist views of human behaviour.
Both schools emphasise 'real world' studies of behaviour as opposed to the artificial environment of the
laboratoryA laboratory is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. The title of laboratory is also used for certain other facilities where the processes or equipment used are similar to those in scientific laboratories...
.
See also
- Urie Bronfenbrenner
Urie Bronfenbrenner was an Russian American psychologist, known for developing his Ecological Systems Theory, and as a co-founder of the Head Start program in the United States for disadvantaged pre-school children....
- Environmental Design Research Association
The Environmental Design Research Association is an international, interdisciplinary organization founded in 1968 by design professionals, social scientists, students, educators, and facility managers...
- Evolutionary Psychology
Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, that is, as the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection. Adaptationist thinking about physiological mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, and immune system,...
- Situated cognition
Situated cognition posits that knowing is inseparable from doing by arguing that all knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts ....
Further reading
- Gibson, J.J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.ISBN 0898599598 (1986)
- Gibson, E. J. & Pick, A. D. (2003). An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Heft, H. (2001) Ecological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of William James's Radical Empiricism. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
- Reed, E.S. (1987). James Gibson's Ecological Approach to Cognition (pp. 142-173). In A. Costall & A. Still (Eds.). Cognitive Psychology in Question. Sussex: Harvester Press.
- Reed, E.S. (1988). James J. Gibson and the psychology of perception. New Have: Yale University Press.
- Reed, E.S. (1996a). Encountering the World: Toward an Ecological Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Reed, E.S. (1996b). James J. Gibson: Pioneer and iconoclast (pp. 247-261). In G. Kimble, C. Boneau, & M. Wertheimer. (Eds.), Portraits of pioneers in psychology (Vol. 2) Hillsdale, NJ: APA & Erlbaum.
External links
- Direct Perception.; A good introduction to the ideas of direct perception by C. Michaels and C. Carello.