Ecological psychology

Ecological psychology is a term claimed by a number of schools of psychology. However, the two main ones are one on the writings of James J. Gibson, and another on the work of Roger G. Barker, Herb Wright and associates at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Whereas Gibsonian psychology is always termed Ecological Psychology, the work of Barker (and his followers) is also sometimes referred to as Environmental Psychology. There is a considerable amount of overlap between the two schools, although the Gibsonian approach tends to be more philosophical.

Barker's work was based on his empirical work at the Midwest Field Station. He wrote later: "The Midwest Psychological Field Station was established to facilitate the study of human behavior and its environment in situ by bringing to psychological science the kind of opportunity long available to biologists: easy access to phenomena of the science unaltered by the selection and preparation that occur in laboratories." (Barker, 1968). The study of environmental units (behavior settings) grew out of this research. In his classic work "Ecological Psychology" (1968) he argued that human behaviour was radically situated: in other words, you couldn't make predictions about human behaviour unless you know what situation or context or environment the human in question was in. For example, there are certain behaviours appropriate to being in church, attending a lecture, working in a factory etc, and the behaviour or people in these environments is more similar than the behaviour of an individual person in different environments. He has since developed these theories in a number of books and articles.

Gibson also stressed the importance of the environment. He argued that animals and humans stand in a 'systems' relation to the environment, such that, to fully explain some behaviour it was necessary to study the environment in which this behaviour took place. The aphorism: "It's not what is inside the head that is important, it's what the head is inside of", is supposed to capture that point. However, especially in his later work, Gibson concentrated more on the nature of cognition itself. He rejected indirect perception, in favour of 'direct perception'; and also rejected the information processing and cognitivist views of human behaviour.

Both schools emphasise 'real world' studies of behaviour as opposed to the artificial environment of the laboratory.

See also

• Community Psychology
• Urie Bronfenbrenner
• Environmental Design Research Association
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Situated cognition

Further reading

Encyclopedia entries

• Mace, William/Harry Heft (2010): Ecological Approach. In: E. Bruce Goldstein (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Perception, London: SAGE, pp. 375–380.
• Neisser, Ulric (1999): Ecological Psychology. In: Robert A. Wilson/Frank C. Keil (Eds.), The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, pp. 255–256.
• Shaw, R./Turvey, M. T./Mace, W. M. (1982): Ecological Psychology: The Consequence of a Commitment to Realism. In W. Weimer/D. Palermo (Eds.), Cognition and the Symbolic Processes II, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 159–226.
• Turvey, Michael T. (2003): Perception: The Ecological Approach. In: Lynn Nadel, Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, London: Nature Publishing Group. Vol. 3, pp. 538–541.

Books

• Gibson, J.J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.ISBN 0898599598 (1986)
• Gibson, E. J. & Pick, A. D. (2003). An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Heft, H. (2001) Ecological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of William James's Radical Empiricism. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Reed, E.S. (1988). James J. Gibson and the psychology of perception. New Have: Yale University Press.
• Reed, E.S. (1996a). Encountering the World: Toward an Ecological Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Articles

• Reed, E.S. (1987). James Gibson's Ecological Approach to Cognition (pp. 142-173). In A. Costall & A. Still (Eds.). Cognitive Psychology in Question. Sussex: Harvester Press.
• Reed, E.S. (1996b). James J. Gibson: Pioneer and iconoclast (pp. 247-261). In G. Kimble, C. Boneau, & M. Wertheimer. (Eds.), Portraits of pioneers in psychology (Vol. 2) Hillsdale, NJ: APA & Erlbaum.

External links

• Direct Perception.; A good introduction to the ideas of direct perception by C. Michaels and C. Carello.

There is a special journal named Ecological Psychology

Ecological Psychology ISSN: 1532-6969 (electronic) 1040-7413 (paper) Publication Frequency: 4 issues per year