Influence Of The Physical Environment On Human Behavior

The purpose of this volume is to explore theory, problem formulation, and methodology in "experiencing the environment. " In this embryonic field, the writings of a number of individuals already stand out as representative of dis tinctive viewpoints. In order to facilitate further development of the field, a conference! was proposed to gather in one place representatives of a number of major viewpoints with regard to the embryonic field of "environmental psychology. " It was hoped that a colloquy among such representatives would facilitate a clarification of the similarities and differences between the various perspectives, and might enable proponents of any given point of view to benefit from the insights of others with different orientations. Hopefully, it might also promote a greater articulation for this emerging field of inquiry. With these ends in mind, the sponsors of the conference asked the various prospective participants to present their theoretical positions and representative research illustrative of those positions. Some of the perspectives represented at the conference emphasized the point that the construal of phenomena depends heavily on the values and needs of perceivers. Implicit in this kind of position is the thesis that anyone who seeks to describe a complex happening is likely to shape it in terms of presup positions, biases, etc. , that may not be shared by others.

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Sociology - Basics and General, grade: 4.0, University of Ghana, Legon, course: Archaeology and the Natural Environment, language: English, abstract: The natural environment is the phenomenon of all natural things that encompasses humanity. This means that the natural environment entails all living and non-living things which occur naturally on earth without the influence of human beings. The natural environment includes the Physical environment and the Biological environment. The physical environment entails all physical features occurring naturally on earth. It includes the atmosphere (layer of gases surrounding the earth), hydrosphere (liquid component of the earth) and lithosphere (solid layer covering the earth). The biological environment includes the natural biological factors as in animals, plants and bacteria that affect human life in a particular place or period. According to Wikipedia, human behaviour on the other hand refers to the range of actions or attitudes exhibited by humans. This means that every action, speech, gestures and mannerisms employed by humans consist of our human behavior. Human behaviour is influenced by our culture, emotions and the natural environment. As the culture of a particular society influences the conduct or behaviour of an individual, so does the natural environment also influences human behaviour. It does influence the human behaviour because even the water, climate, soil, animals and plants we interact with do affect our attitude towards life and at times influence our cultural traits. The natural environment has influenced human behavior from the beginning of humankind up till the present. It has influenced us in our behaviour towards our food, shelter, clothing, vocabulary acquisition and ideology.

The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.

The papers comprising this second volume of Human Behavior and the Environment represent, as do their predecessors, a cross section of current work in the broad area of problems dealing with interrelation ships between the physical environment and human behavior, at both the individual and the aggregate levels. Considering the two volumes as a unit, we have included papers covering a broad spectrum of problems ranging from the theoretical to the applied, and from the disciplinary-based to the interdisciplinary and professional. Approxi mately half of the papers are written by psychologists, with the remainder coming, in part, from such other disciplines as sociology, geography, and from such diverse applied and professional fields as natural recreation, landscape architecture, urban planning, and opera tions research. The volumes thus provide an overview of work on current topical problems. Yet, as the field is developing, specialization is inevitably increasing apace, and the editors as well as the publisher have become convinced of the desirability for futu're volumes in this series to be organized along topical lines, with successive volumes devoted to different aspects of this rather sprawling field. Thus, Volume 3, currently in the planning stage, will be devoted exclusively to the interaction of children with the physical environment, considered from diverse viewpoints, again including authors from diverse fields of specialization.

The field of "Environment-and-Behavior" This bibliography is aimed at the researcher and advanced student working in the field of environmental psychology, as it has come to be designated over the past decade. A more appropriate term might be "environment-behavior studies," to suggest the important characteristic of this field as one that transcends the province of the psychologist, and brings together workers, as well as problems, methods, and concepts from a great diversity of disciplines and professional fields. Among these we may include geography and sociology, architecture, landscape architecture and planning, forestry, natural resource management and leisure and recreation research -- to name only the most important of the diverse fields from which material for this bibliography has been drawn. This is in fact one of the primary reasons for our belief in the value of such a volume. The literature in the environment-behavior field is scattered through the most diverse sources, including not only the major periodical and monographic literature in each of the above-mentioned disciplines and professions (and others as well), but also a variety of more specialized publications of varying degrees of accessibility. Thus it seemed to us helpful to the researcher, teacher and student in this area to bring this far-flung literature together in a single volume, that might be used as a guide to the field. We aimed at a comprehensive treatment, including both basic and applied aspects, and relations of behavior both to the man-made or artificial and to the natural environment.

Environmental sustainability is a necessity for all countries worldwide, and it is strongly related to human quality of life. Given that sustainability problems largely result from human-environment interactions, social and behavioral research is developing as a necessary complement to natural-science and technological studies of environmental problems. To demonstrate this, the various authors address key theoretical, methodological and policy-making questions about the behavioral dimensions of environmental sustainability. Successively considered are the appreciation of environmental risk, citizens’ annoyance from environmental noise, the evaluation of urban environmental quality, the restorative significance of nature experiences, fundamental behavioral processes and environmental motivations, and unsustainable-behavior change and the roles of technology therein. The usefulness of multidisciplinary research is emphasized. Finally explicated is psychology’s drive and potential for analyzing and supporting environmental sustainability as a long-term human social and economic interest.

Much of the current rhetoric surrounding climate change focuses on the physical changes to the environment and the resulting material damage to infrastructure and resources. Although there has been some dialogue about secondary effects (namely mass migration), little effort has been given to understanding how rapid climate change is affecting people on group and individual levels. In this Element, we examine the psychological impacts of climate change, especially focused on how it will lead to increases in aggressive behaviors and violent conflict, and how it will influence other aspects of human behavior. We also look at previously established psychological effects and use them to help explain changes in human behavior resulting from rapid climate change, as well as to propose actions that can be taken to reduce climate change itself and mitigate harmful effects on humans.

The second edition of "Integrative Nursing" is a complete roadmap to integrative patient care, providing a guide to the whole person/whole systems assessment and clinical interventions for individuals, families, and communities. Treatment strategies described in this version employ the full complement of evidence-informed methodologies in a tailored, person-centered approach to care. Integrative medicine is defined as healing-oriented medicine that takes account of the whole person (body, mind, and spirit) as well as all aspects of the lifestyle; it emphasizes the therapeutic relationship and makes use of appropriate therapies, but conventional and alternative. -- From publisher's description