The Environmental Dispositions of Environmental Decision-Makers

Abstract

A new interdisciplinary field of research has recently emerged which studies how persons comprehend the everyday physical environment, how they use it, how they shape it and how they are shaped by it. In seeking an objective understanding of the behavioral aspects of the total personal-societal-environmental system, professional environ mental decision-makers, such as architects, urban planners and natural-resources managers, are strategic choices for psy chological study. Within this context of environmental design and management, research is being directed toward clarifying the implicit assumptions about environmental behavior held by decision-makers, overcoming social and administrative distances from clients, and conducting systematic follow-up evaluations of the behavioral consequences of planning and design decisions. However, subtle and precise study of man-environment relations will require the development of psychological techniques providing a comprehensive and dif ferentiated description of any person's orientation to the everyday physical environment. Methods for measuring indi vidual differences in environmental dispositions are reviewed and their potential usefulness for advancing knowledge of the interplay between human behavior and the physical envi ronment is illustrated.