The Field Broadly Defined

“Our work, broadly defined, addresses the relationships between people and place. This includes the social, cultural, psychological and political issues involved in the production, use, design, and occupation of space, place, and nature.

This field draws on work from a number of disciplines including anthropology, geography, sociology, psychology, history, political science, planning, architecture, urban studies, and design.” ~(as noted on the Environmental Psychology Program webpage at the Graduate Center)

We included details on the Environmental Psychology Wikipedia page which you can read here

And finally, my simple, working definition that I offer when people inevitably ask me “Now, just what is Environmental Psychology?

I explain Environmental Psychology as the study of the interaction between people and their environment. Be it a natural setting like the woods or the beach, a built environment such as an office, school, a city, apartment or a park, we study the ways the people come to understand, or what conceptualizations they hold, or how they navigate though, behave or relate to people and objects within their environment. In my particular instance, this project is the study of how nature is conceptualized within the context of auto advertising in National Geographic. Thus, nature is a type of virtual environment that I am study, while I simultaneously engage with our hefty theoretical base about the production or social construction of nature.