Greetings Everyone!
This week’s topic for Lesson 4 of Psych 424 was the Environment! I know some people may think, what does the environment have to do with Psychology? The fact is, our environment will affect a lot of our behavior, attitudes and feelings. Our environment is crucial to our daily lives.
Think about this small example: You wake up in the morning and leave for work or school. It’s cold, raining and now you are stuck in traffic and could potentially be late! These variables are just enough damper anyone’s mood. That initial negative mood from the beginning of the morning could be enough to cause a domino effect for the rest of the day. Our personal feelings influence our behavior, our behavior influences the environment, and essentially the environment will influence our personal feelings. This triangular affect is what psychologist, Bandura, described as triadic reciprocal determinism (1986).
The previous example was minor compared to this week’s lesson, which discussed how individuals must choose between their own interests and that of the greater community (Stangor, 2012). The lesson’s commentary gave the examples of the resource dilemma of water consumption with the vast number of consumers on the planet and how every individual’s use of water must be considered. Also, the example of the amount of children families have, may appear as a social dilemma because some believe that the planet’s natural resources are depleting quickly and there are not enough to support society.
While some individuals feel that people should do what they choose, others may agree with the equity theory. Stangor, 2012 explains that equity theory focuses on the thought that people’s behaviors are influenced by other individual’s views and social cost and rewards should be fair (pg. 320). This may present the question, do individuals stop and think about their implications on society and the environment and how they may help or harm it?
This lesson focused a lot about what role people play in the environment and vice versa, and what strategically can be done to better society for everyone. Hopefully as a whole and with the benefits of applied psychology, a positive solution will be made to ease environmental concerns.
Best Regards!
References:
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A. & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied Social Psycholgy. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA SAGE Productions, Inc.
References:
Coutts, L. M., Gruman, J. A., & Schneider, F. W. (2012). Applied Social Psycholgy:Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications
Good Afternoon,
Thank you for your blog! I will admit that I was one of those people that did not exactly notice the effect the envirnonment has on our psyche, although my mood changes drastically with weather changes. Your very real life example was a great emphasis on this point, especially for those skeptical of this notion on the connection of environment to psychology.
Answering your question, I believe that there are a lot of people that consider the long term effect of their actions on society and the environment. But, not nearly enough to create a big change. So many of us are impulsive in our actions, even if we don’t think of them as impulsive. As noted in our text Garrett Hardin points out that “most (too many) individuals will act in ther short-term self-interest” (Coutts, Gruman, and Schneider, 2012, p.302). However, in relating the environment to psychology, I think that encouraging self-control and heavily emphasizing the benefits of less impulsive action can possibly invoke a widespread change.
V/R,
Leana Mason