What is ecological psychology? |

Introduction

Respected scientific organizations have been warning of pending and even imminent ecological disasters in their publications. Exemplary among these are the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, established by the United Nations (Climate Change 2013, 2008), the National Research Council of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society (“Understanding and Responding to Climate Change,” 2014), the international Union of Concerned Scientists ("How to Avoid Dangerous Climate Change," 2007), and the Worldwatch Institute (State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?, 2013). Such conclusions have even been heralded in the popular media, for example by Al Gore in his 2006 book and film An Inconvenient Truth, for which he won the Nobel Prize.

Problems cited include global climate change caused by greenhouse gases; weakening of plant and aquatic life by acid rain; the destruction of the ozone layer by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs); the chemical pollution of soil and groundwater and, increasingly, even oceans; the consequences of deforestation for global warming and depletion of oxygen; the exhaustion and destruction of fisheries and other habitats; and the consequent species extinction and reduction in planetary biodiversity.

The field of ecology, or environmentalism, arose over the last third of the twentieth century to solve these problems before they become cataclysmic. Psychologists have joined this quest, forming an interdisciplinary approach that brings psychological expertise to ecological issues. This collaboration was formed on the basis of several different aims, with the result that the field has divided into branches pursuing a variety of goals. The primary impetus driving the rapid growth of this collaboration was the simple recognition that environmental problems are caused by human action. Once environmental destruction was linked to human behavior, the attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs underlying those behaviors became a subject of great interest. That interest soon led to the realization that the dynamics of these behavior-guiding attitudes are the least understood aspect of these problems and therefore solving the environmental crisis requires addressing its underlying human basis, a project for which psychology is uniquely situated.

Developments

The field of ecological psychology has just begun to coalesce and is still defining itself—even naming itself—so no univocally accepted tasks or even labels yet exist. Support for particular developments emerges and changes quickly. Nevertheless, it appears the field has attained three major branches, with a conservation, therapeutic, and holistic focus. Each direction offers richly innovative prospects that will probably become increasingly significant.

The Conservation Focus

Conservation, the largest of these emphases, is devoted to researching the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that contribute to the environmental crises and to discovering how to change them to effectively promote the key conservation actions: reduce, reuse, and recycle. Before psychology’s involvement, most efforts to bring about such behavioral change were simply information-intensive mass media advertising campaigns to promote greater participation in sustainable living. These campaigns made little use of psychological research or expertise and were generally ineffective.

The involvement of psychological researchers led to clarification of the roles of beliefs and assumptions in environmentally relevant behaviors. Among these findings are the effects of cognitive presuppositions and perceptual biases on the persuasive efficacy of warnings of environmental consequences, on assessments about risk, and on judgments and prejudgments about relative cost-benefit issues. Such research shows how these presuppositions and biases lead to misjudgments that ultimately culminate in choices and behaviors that undermine conservation. Common biases include, for example, failing to include the indirect costs in considering the environmentally destructive potential of one’s actions and unduly discounting the significance of the long-term consequences by overrating the importance of the short-term consequences. As research proceeds, a variety of controversies are emerging, which are yet to be resolved. Among these debates are the relative importance for behavioral change of shifting a person’s values and beliefs versus altering the behavioral contexts in which a person operates, and the relative impact of individual versus corporate actions in worsening environmental problems.

Among many prominent researchers in this area are George Howard, Paul Stern, Stuart Oskamp, and Doug McKenzie-Mohr. More typically called "environmental psychology," the focus of this branch is the least controversial and so is already widely accepted by mainstream psychology. For example, American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association (APA) often publishes related articles and dedicated a special issue in May–June 2011 to global climate change and psychology's role in dealing with it. In addition, the association’s initiative on what it termed “society’s grand challenges” includes a segment devoted specifically to global climate change. Other examples of the scope of this branch include such publications as the Journal of Environmental Psychology, Robert B. Bechtel’s Handbook of Environmental Psychology (2003), and The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology (2012).

The Therapeutic Focus

The second major branch of ecological psychology emphasizes the therapeutic value of the relationship of the person with the natural world. This focus, sometimes called "ecotherapy," extends beyond mainstream psychotherapy and draws heavily from work in humanistic psychology. It is based on understanding the importance of a person’s relationship with the natural world for the individual’s psychological well-being. Ecotherapy holds that a deficiency in the person-world relationship can make a person psychologically dysfunctional and that enhancement of this relationship may improve an individual’s psychological deficiencies.

Features of the natural world that facilitate mental health include awe, harmony, balance, aliveness, at-homeness, and openness. Research has shown that deepening a person’s relationship with the natural world can result in the relief of a wide range of psychopathological symptoms, including anxieties, depressions, addictions, and violence. In addition to benefiting people with mental health problems, a therapeutic connection with the natural world has been found to provide many generally beneficial psychological changes, such as empowerment, inner peace, aliveness, compassion, decreased fatigue, mental clarity, enhancement of creativity, relaxation, stress reduction, restoration of well-being, and relief of alienation. Such work with more psychologically healthy people is sometimes called "ecoeducation." Research has begun to explore the benefits of a therapeutic relationship with nature for healthy child and adolescent development.

Researchers in this branch develop, apply, and assess practices designed to enhance the quality of a person’s relationship with the natural world, with the idea of developing a repertoire of effective modalities. These usually take the form of specific sets of exercises intended to train or enhance a person’s capacity for more deeply, fully, and openly sensing specific features of the natural world. Often these exercises are undertaken during extended stays outdoors in wilderness settings. Some practices are also borrowed from indigenous cultures whose relationships with the natural world are not as altered by the artifices of modern life in the more industrialized world. For example, some practices include a “vision quest” component, in which a portion of the person’s time in the wilderness is spent alone, with the aim of discovering a significant insight. Sometimes, therapeutic goals are achieved by the enactment of a reciprocal interaction, in which one is both “nurtured by” the earth and “nurturing of” earth.

Among the most prominent innovators in this branch are Michael Cohen, founder of the Institute of Global Education and the director of Project Nature Connect; John Davis and Steven Foster, directors of the School of Lost Borders; Laura Sewell; Paul Shepherd; and Howard Clinebell. Universities that offer programs in ecological psychology, such as Naropa University, City University of New York, the Institute of Global Education, and John F. Kennedy University, , tend to emphasize this area.

The Holistic Focus

In contrast with the other two branches, both of which are applied in one way or another, the third branch represents “deep” ecological psychology: a fundamental inquiry into the foundational meanings and significance of the relationship between humans and nature. The holistic focus aims at nothing less than the study of the depletion and restoration of the fullness of the human spirit by healing the disconnection of person and world. This radical ontological inquiry typically takes the name ecopsychology and aligns with the movement within environmentalism known as deep ecology as formulated by Arne Naess in his article in Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century (1995), edited by George Sessions. It also draws from developments in contemporary physics that emphasize a systems approach or wholeness perspective. Two physicists have contributed greatly: Fritjof Capra, founder of the Center for Ecoliteracy and author of The Hidden Connections: Integrating the Biological, Cognitive, and Social Dimensions of Life into a Science of Sustainability (2002), and David Bohm, the author of Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1981).

As the most radical approach, this holistic focus is the least established within traditional psychology; it tends to draw support mainly from phenomenological and transpersonal psychologists. Its basic premises, increasingly demonstrated by research, are the interconnectedness of all aspects of the world within a reciprocal and synergistic whole and the value of experiencing this holism as a way to overcome the dualistic perspective that disconnects humans from nature, an alienation in which nature is seen as a sort of storehouse of commodities to be exploited. This alternative holistic vision has a breadth and depth that extends to offering and receiving implications from spiritual traditions, especially the more explicitly nondualistic ones. These have most commonly been the Native American, Wiccan, and Buddhist traditions, although they have increasing involved Christianity as well.

Longstanding leaders are Theodore Roszak, the founder of the Ecopsychology Institute at California State, Hayward, who coined the term “ecopsychology”; Ralph Metzner, the founder of the Green Earth Foundation; and Joanna Macy, a Buddhist activist and ecofeminist. Scholars of note include Elizabeth Roberts, Andy Fisher, Warwick Fox, Mary Gomes, and Allen Kanner. Many organizations, including the International Community of Ecopsychology, have formed to support this work.

Bibliography

Clayton, Susan D., ed. The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. Print.

Fisher, Andy. Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life. 2nd ed. Albany: State U of New York P, 2013. Print.

Gardner, Gerald, and Paul C. Stern. Environmental Problems and Human Behavior. 2nd ed. Boston: Pearson, 2002. Print.

Howard, George S. Ecological Psychology: Creating a More Earth-Friendly Human Nature. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1997. Print.

Metzner, Ralph. Green Psychology: Transforming Our Relationship to the Earth. Rochester: Inner Traditions, 1999. Print.

Roszak, Theodore, Mary Gomes, and Allen Kanner, eds. Ecopsychology. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1995. Print.

Sewell, Laura. Sight and Sensibility: The Ecopsychology of Perception. Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1999. Print.

Winter, Deborah D. Ecological Psychology: Healing the Split between Planet and Self. Mahwah: Erlbaum, 2003. Print.

Winter, Deborah D., and Susan M. Koger. The Psychology of Environmental Problems: Psychology for Sustainability. New York: Psychology, 2011. Digital file.