Definition of Environmental Psychology

The psychologyconventional deals with the individual's emotional conflicts and how to overcome them through some type of therapy. However, environmental psychology focuses on a specific dimension and that we could express with a question: in what way does physical space affect human beings? emotions human?

The feeling of belonging to a place

The house in which we live and the place where we interact with others is much more than a physical space. In fact, we feel an obvious emotional connection to what surrounds us, be it our home, our neighborhood or our city.

In the field of environmental psychology, the emotional reactions triggered by different spaces are analyzed. Thus, all people experience an intense emotional attachment to the place in which they live. In this sense, it is worth remembering that when we feel good in a place we say that "we are at home" and when we are away from home we feel homesick. On the other hand, we all like to return to our neighborhood of the childhood, because in our memory we keep indelible memories.

In the same way, we do not want to visit the places associated with bad personal experiences. It could be said that all space acquires a value symbolic for the individual. Thus, there is an emotional identification with all those places in which we develop our lives, be it the school, the parents' house or the workplace.

An area of ​​psychology with a multidisciplinary character

Environmental psychology does not focus on a single dimension of the human being. In this sense, this discipline is related to ecology, town planning, the design indoor or architecture. All these areas of knowledge are projected onto emotions and behaviors and environmental psychologists study the connections between physical spaces and the human psyche.

Older people can feel rejection by those places with which there is no type of emotional connection

In nursing homes the physical and psychological needs of the elderly are cared for. However, these centers are sometimes designed with highly functional criteria that are far removed from the idea of ​​a family home. For this reason, psychologists must evaluate the conditions of the residences so that there is an adequate adaptation of the people to the physical space.

Photo: Fotolia - Alistair Cotton