Environmentally Focused Psychologies

Abstract

In a telephone roundtable interview and discussion, five psychologists discussed their professional backgrounds and their work in areas such as environmental, population, and conservation psychology, ecopsychology, and the psychology of fostering sustainability. Participants were selected based on their upcoming involvement in a series of conversation hours on the future of environmental psychology sponsored by Division 34 of the American Psychological Association, the Society for Environmental, Population, and Conservation Psychology, to be held in Washington, DC, in August 2011. Common themes that emerged in the discussion included the key roles that mentors and colleagues played in the psychologists' professional development and current activities, a shared enthusiasm for collaboration and public service, and a desire to create practical solutions to conservation, public health, and sustainability problems. Participants differed on the relative importance or primacy of targeting personal health, environmental consciousness, or behavior change in their efforts, in their approaches to teaching and scholarship, and in their involvement in humanitarian or policy-level interventions.