LEC.

3 / Aspects related to Question (1) EB Theories

FALL 2022/2023
Dr. Hala Ghanem

Environment-Behavior
Theories
Human Behavior In Architecture
Fall 2021

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

• Functions of Theories
• Theory: Consists of a set of concepts plus a set of
statements relating the concepts to one another.
• Basic functions of theories:
– Predict relationships between variables
– Summarize large amounts of data
– Generalization of concepts and relationships
• The theories to be covered predict the effects of
environmental conditions on behavior: arousal,
load, adaptation level, behavior constraints, stress
and ecological psychology

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

1. Arousal

• Arousal: a state of mental and physical preparedness for action

• Berlyn (1960) characterized arousal as lying on a continuum anchored at
one end by sleep and at the other end by excitement
• Increased arousal can be measured:
– Physiologically: heightened autonomic activity (increased heart rate,
blood pressure, respiration rate, adrenalin secretion)
– Behaviorally: increased motor activity
• Arousal is hypothesized to be a mediator or intervening variable in many
types of behavior
• Useful in explaining some behavioral effects of some environmental
factor: temperature, crowding and noise

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

1. Arousal

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

1. Arousal

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

1. Arousal

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

1. Arousal

• Pleasant and unpleasant stimuli heighten arousal

• Effects of arousal change on behavior:
– Leads people to seek information about their internal states:
interpret the nature of arousal and the reasons for it
– Seek the opinion of others : compare actions with others to judge
if our actions are appropriate and to see if we are better off or
worse off than others termed social comparison

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

1. Arousal
• Arousal effects on performance
through Yerkes-Dodson law
• A law describing the
relationship between the
amount of arousal and the
performance quality on a task
• Performance is maximal at
intermediate levels of arousal
and gets progressively worse as
arousal either falls below or
rises above this optimum point

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

1. Arousal

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 Environment-Behavior Theories
1. Arousal
• The relationship between performance and arousal varies as a
function of task complexity
• For complex tasks optimum level of performance occurs at a slightly
lower level of arousal

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 Environment-Behavior Theories
1. Arousal

• Hans Eysenck’s Theory of Arousal

Eysenck’s theory states that the brains of extroverts
are naturally less stimulated, so these types have a
predisposition to seek out situations that will stimulate
arousal. Therefore introverts are naturally over-
stimulated, so they avoid intense arousal.

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 Environment-Behavior Theories
2. Environmental load

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

2. Environmental load

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 Environment-Behavior Theories
2. Environmental load

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 Environment-Behavior Theories
2. Environmental load

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

2. Environmental load (overstimulation)

• Useful to describe reactions to novel or unwanted stimuli
• Derives from research on attention and information processing and
can be described in five parts:
– Humans have limited capacity to process incoming stimuli and
can invest only a limited effort in attending to inputs at any one
time
– When the amount of information from environment exceeds the
individuals capacity to process all that is relevant information
overload occurs. The reaction for overload is tunnel vision;
ignore inputs that are less relevant to task at hand an devote
more attention to those that are relevant

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

2. Environmental load (overstimulation)

– When a stimulus occurs that may require some sort of adaptive
response the significance of stimulus is evaluated by a
monitoring process and a decision is made about which coping
response to apply
– The amount of attention available is not constant and may be
temporarily depleted after prolonged demands; the amount of
attention may suffer from overload or directed attention fatigue
resulting in increased mental errors, difficulty concentrating and
irritability.

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

2. Environmental load (overstimulation)

– Attention fatigue can be ameliorated through reduced demands
on information processing or through restorative environments

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

2. Environmental load (overstimulation)

• Stimuli most important to the task at hand is given more attention
and less important stimuli is ignored
• If a task requires a wide range of attention like when there is a need
to do two things at the same time, performance on less important
task will deteriorate
• George simmel attributed behavioral pathologies in large urban
areas to a type of overload
• Milgram suggested that the deterioration of social life in large urban
areas is caused by ignoring peripheral social cues and a reduced
capacity to attend to them because of the increased demands of
everyday functioning

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

3. Understimulation
• Occurs when there's not enough going on in our environments to
keep our attention or keep us interested
• Many environment-behavior problems result from understimualtion;
too little stimulation
• Sensory deprivation: depriving individuals of all sensory stimulation
can lead to severe anxiety and other psychological anomalies
• Example: Solitary sailing or being an aircrash survivor can generate
a sensed presence of another individual even when no such person
exists
• The environment should sometimes be made more complex and
stimulating in order to restore excitement and a sense of belonging
to individuals’ perceptions of their environment

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

3. Under stimulation
• Parr(1966) natural environments contain an unending variety of
changing patterns of visual stimulation, while urban areas contain
the same patterns repeated on every street, many structures resemble
one another. Lack of stimulation leads to boredom which may cause
urban ills:
– Juvenile delinquency
– Vandalism
– Poor education

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 Environment-Behavior Theories
4. Adaptation level theory (optimal stimulation)
• Put forward by wohlwill (1974)
• Humans prefer an optimal level of stimulation
• Three categories of environment –behavior relationships confirm to
this optimal level assumption:
– Sensory stimulation
– Social
This stimulation
theory states that an individual's basis of judgment of a stimulus
is based on their prior experiences as well as their recollections of
– Movement
how they perceived similar stimuli in the past.
• These categories in turn varies along three dimensions:
– Intensity
– Diversity
The theory holds that individuals adapt to particular levels of
stimulation
– Patterning:in certain environmental
the degree contexts. contains both
to which a perception
structure and uncertainty (parallel streets vs. complex layouts)

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 Environment-Behavior Theories
4. Adaptation level theory (optimal stimulation)
• Each person has an optimum level of stimulation based on past
experience and change with time
• Adaptation : a shift in our judgmental or affective responses to a
stimulus following continued exposure to it
• Sonnenfeld (1966) used the term adjustment
• Adjustment: a mechanism by which we change the environment;
changing the stimulus (using air conditioners for hot climate)
• When given a choice between adaptation and adjustment , humans
take the course that causes least comfort
• This theory has a broad range of generalizability, and knowing
more about the adaptation process will help in solving many
environmental problems

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 Environment-Behavior Theories
5. Behavior constraint
• Excessive or undesirable environmental stimulation may lead to the
loss of perceived control over a situation which is the first step in
the behavior constraint model
• Constraint: some thing about the environment is limiting or
interfering with things we wish to do
• A constraint can be:
– Actual impairment from the environment
– Belief that the environment is placing a constraint on us
• The model Assumes three steps:
– Perceived loss of control
– Reactance
– Learned helplessness

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 Environment-Behavior Theories
5. Behavior constraint
• Perceived loss of control: cognitive interpretation of a situation as
being beyond your control that leads to discomfort and negative
affect
• Psychological reactance: trying to reassert control over a situation
seeking to regain freedom of action, it may be triggered by an
environmental constraint or anticipation of it.
• Learned helplessness: the ultimate consequence of loss of control,
beginning to think that actions have no effect on the situation that
leads to end effort to regain control – learn that its helpless.

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 Environment-Behavior Theories
5. Behavior constraint
• Types of control:
– Behavioral control: a behavioral response that can change the
threatening environmental event (turning off a loud noise)
– Cognitive control: process information about the threat in a way
to consider it as less threatening or understand it better (deciding
that a contaminant in a cup of water is not toxic)
– Decisional control: having a choice among several options
(choosing to live in a quiet rather that a noisy neighborhood)
• The behavior constraints approach places emphasis on individual
reactions and minimize the need to look at the entire setting

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

6. Environmental Stress
• View many elements of the environment as stressors
• Stressors: are considered to be annoying circumstances that threaten
the well being of the person
• Stress: the reaction to those annoying circumstances it includes
emotional, behavioral and physiological components.
• Lazarus and cohen (1977) classified stressors into three categories:
cataclysmic events, personal stressors and background stressors
• They vary according to:
– Severity of impact
– Ease of coping and adaptation process in response to them

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

6. Environmental Stress
• Cataclysmic events: unpredictable and powerful threats that affect
large number of people touched by them (natural disasters, war,
nuclear accidents or fires), characteristics:
– Sudden
– Powerful impact
– Draw out universal response
– Require a great deal of effort for effective coping
– Evokes a freezing or dazed response by victims initially
– Coping is difficult and may bring no immediate relief
– The severely threatening period ends quickly and recovery
begins
– They effect a large number of people; social support

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

6. Environmental Stress
• Personnel stressors: events that are powerful enough to challenge
adaptive abilities for a person or a small number of people (illness,
death of a loved one or loss of one’s job).
– Affect fewer people at one time
– May or may not be expected
– Point of severest impact occurs early
– Coping can progress once the worst is over
– Lack of social support

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

6. Environmental Stress
• Background stressors: less powerful, more gradual and almost
routine stressors
• Divided into two types, Rotten(1990):
– Daily hassles (micro stressors): are stable, low intensity
problems encountered as part of one’s routine (losing things,
maintenance). Unique each day and affect a specific individual
– Ambient stressors: are lasting global conditions of the
environment that place demands on us to adapt or cope
(pollution, noise, crowding). Impact a large number of people.

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 Environment-Behavior Theories

6. Environmental Stress
• Physiological response to stress
• Part of the response to stressful stimulus is automatic
• Selye’s (1956) general adaptation syndrome (GAS): stress
adaptation process consists of three stages: (Similar
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to behavior-constraint model)

– The alarm reaction: causes autonomic processes to speed up

(heart rate, adrenalin)
– The stage of resistance: trying to cope with the stressors, The
coping strategy is a function of individual and situational
factors, may consist of : flight, physical or verbal attack or
compromise
– The stage of exhaustion: can no longer resist stressors

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 Environment-Behavior Theories
7. Barker’s Ecological Psychology
• Barker (1968) ; studying the environment where behavior occurs
• The behavior setting consists of the interdependency between
standing patterns of behavior and a physical milieu(environment)
• Standing pattern of behavior represent the collective behaviors of
the group
• The behaviors are unique to the setting
• Example: the behavior setting of a classroom
– Standing patterns of behavior: lecturing, listening, observing,
sitting, taking notes, raising hands and exchanging questions and
answers
– Physical milieu: a room, a lectern, chairs, a whiteboard, projector
and screen
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 Environment-Behavior Theories
7. Barker’s Ecological Psychology
• Knowing about the physical setting tells us about the behaviors that
occur there
• Useful in assessing environmental design
• Staffing theory: explores the effects of behavior settings being
either understaffed or overstaffed
• Understaffing there are not enough people in the behavior setting,
whereas overstaffing is the overabundance of people
• When there are fewer people in a behavior settings, there is pressure
on individuals to take on more responsibilities
• Funneling is one way to regulate entrance into an overstaffed
behavior setting

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