Freedom of choice and behavior in a physical setting.

Abstract

For the social sciences, particularly those concerned with man's relations to other men, the physical environment has been conceived as a given, rather than as a source of parameters for understanding human behavior. Urban settings, for example, are distinguished from suburban or rural settings, or the "ghetto" from the more affluent areas of a community, but more for their contrasting properties as social systems or complex social contexts than for the differences between them as organized physical settings. The scientific literature abounds in descriptions of ghettos as a prelude to examining them as sociocultural systems generating given sets of values and relevant behaviors. But systematic studies of the behavioral consequences of ghettos as physical settings are rare indeed.Even at a more circumscribed level of analysis-a neighborhood, an apartment, or a business office-the physical setting is no less taken for granted. It is assumed to set the stage for and perhaps define the actors' roles with respect to particular human relationships and activities; but for any given setting there are countless variations in design and substance that are generally ignored in the attempts to establish the factors that facilitate or hinder the prescribed behaviors.It is reasonable to ask why [the] physical setting has been neglected in the theory and research of social scientists. In our judgment, it is rooted in more Harold M. Proshansky received his PhD in social psychology from New York University in 1952. He is currently a Professor of Environmental Psychology and Social Psychology in the Graduate Division of the City University of New York, where he also serves as Dean of the division. His major research during the last 10 to 12 years has been in the field of environmental psychology, with particular interest in privacy and territoriality in hospital, school, and other urban settings.William H. Ittelson received his PhD in 1950 from Princeton University. He is currently a Professor of Environmental Psychology and Codirector of the doctoral program in environmental psychology of the Graduate Division of the City University of New York.

A Social-Psychological Model of Human Crowding Phenomena

“…According to Brehm (1966), such an awareness should provoke "psychological reactance," that is, a motivational state involving feelings of preemption and infringe-80 ment, and resulting in behavior directed toward the reestablishment of threatened or eliminated freedom. A similar conclusion is reached by Proshansky, Ittelson, and Rivlin (1970), who consider crowding to be a situation involving the restriction of an individual's behavioral choice. They point out that a person's reactance against crowding will be especially intense if his restriction of freedom is due to the presence of other persons who infringe upon his privacy.…”

“…As a preliminary definition, we will assume that a state of crowding exists, and is perceived as such by an individual, when the individual's demand for space exceeds the available supply of such space. A similar conceptualization of crowding has been proposed by Kwan (1967) and by Proshansky, Ittelson, and Rivlin (1970).…”

The Experience of Crowding in Primary and Secondary Environments

“…Many psychologists have become disenchanted with theoretical approaches that overemphasize person variables while giving little attention to environmental determinants of behavior (see Brunswik, 1949;Heider, 1958;Lewin, 1951;Murray, 1938). In addition, growing societal concern over the quality of the environment has contributed to the development of a bur geoning body of research detailing the impact of the physical environment on behavior (see Craik, 1973;Newman, 1972;Proshansky et al, 1970).…”

Reflexive and automatic violence: a function of aberrant perceptual inhibition.

“…In humans and animals with well-developed frontal cortices, these impulses are not always acted on because of an inhibitory reflex prevents action from being automatic. This reflex is primed by the social context and the milieu [22]. A useful term for contextual inhibition is found in foundational environmental psychology literature: it is the behavior setting -a concept first articulated by Barker and Wright [23].…”