Leanne G. Rivlin

The Neighborhood, Personal Identity, and Group Affiliations

People have lived in communities since prehistoric times. Whether in caves or clustered settlements, congregate shelter has had the same survival qualities found in the flocks, prides, schools, gaggles, and herds of animal species. The survival functions of communities in contemporary times is much more complex than in the past and in many ways is less well understood. This Chapter deals with affiliations with others and the role they play in neighborhood life. It will consider the variety of neighborhood types and their functions from a perspective that includes the physical surroundings, individual development, and social group identity. By looking at the lives of two kinds of people that depart from conventional life-styles, neighboring will be examined in light of the profound social and cultural diversity that marks the fabric of the urban experience.

Educational issues, school settings, and environmental psychology

Abstract This paper reviews selected research on classroom and school environments, using a framework that views schools from three perspectives—as places for learning, as places for socialization and as places for psychological development. Studies are included that deal with the impact of noise and classroom design on learning; the relationship between seating position, achievement and status; spatial cognition; the classroom environment and sex role stereotyping; privacy; and density. The need for classrooms to enhance childrens feelings of competence, security and self-esteem is also stressed. The goal of the paper is to point out ways in which environmental psychologists can contribute to the improvement of the educational system and to the quality of life in schools.

Home-Making: Supports and Barriers to the Process of Home

The process of home-making changes over a lifetime. For many, including newly resettled homeless people, the home-making process is difficult, challenging, and sometimes unsuccessful. This paper draws on research concerning the experiences of homeless individuals and families in New York and studies of single homeless adults in London and Dublin. It argues that there are supports and barriers to the home process, which include social, physical, environmental, financial, and practical factors. Central conclusions are that home does not arrive with a roof over a persons head, but rather that home-making is a complex social psychological process. Developing supports to home-making may offer tangible ways to enable this process to flourish.

The Early History of a Psychiatric Hospital for Children Expectations and Reality

When a new building is completed and occupants begin to move in, there occurs, in a very real sense, a test of the planning process. Yet in the excitement of the premiere, seldom do occupants or designers consider this rare moment, and when they do, they generally concentrate on mechanical or convenience problems-toilets that do not function properly, roofs that leak, difficulties in ventilating the building-all very important for the comfort of the consumer or client, but perhaps secondary to the larger questions of functional success both in terms of the designer’s conception of the way his building would be used and the occupants’ needs within the new structure. Our own work over the years, mainly in adult psychiatric hospitals ( Ittelson et al., 1970a), has pointed out how essential it is to look at details of what actually takes place within the built environment. Even more important is the task of

Olhando o passado e o futuro: revendo pressupostos sobre as inter-relações pessoa-ambiente

This paper examines some of the assumptions that guided early work in environmental psychology and reviews them in light of contemporary perspectives. Many of these assumptions continue to have relevance to later work but some additions and modifications are needed to address developments in thinking and research, over the years. There is a need to go beyond cross-disciplinary research and to engage in interdisciplinary thinking and collaborative research with people of other disciplines; to broaden the attention to ethical concerns; to examine the role of technology in peoples lives; and to recognize the holistic nature of person-environment transactions with attention to the diversities created by age, gender, ability/disability level, culture and economics.

Reflections on the Assumptions and Foundations of Work in Environmental Psychology

In my teaching, a frequent admonition to students when they are reviewing literature is that they consider the authors’ implicit and explicit assumptions as a way of understanding its origins, methodologies, and interpretations. This is not a simple task and is even more difficult when applied to one’s own work. However, at this stage in the development of environment-behavior studies some reflection by researchers on the underpinnings of our work can be valuable both to ourselves and the field with which we identify.

The Institutions in Children’s Lives

This chapter is a reflection on 15 years of work focused on children in institutional environments, including schools, psychiatric facilities, and day-care centers.* We have attempted to understand the relationships between the stated goals of a particular place; the administrative, educational, and therapeutic programs developed to attain these goals; the physical, social, economic, and political environments in which these programs were implemented; and the eventual impact on the lives of the children housed within them. On the basis of our work, we have tried to extract generalizations concerning the child-environment relationship. In doing so, it has been impossible to ignore the powerful developmental implications of such places, especially their socializing power for children.

Environmental Psychology and Action Research: Lewin’s Legacy

Environmental psychology developed out of research that began in the late 1950s and 60s, focusing on the impact of the physical environment, an area that had been largely neglected by social scientists. Much of this work came out of a period of building, of expansion, a time of questioning and environmental activism. Some social scientists found that designers and planners also were raising questions about the people/ environment interrelationship and a number of disciplines embarked on a collaboration that has persisted into the present. Despite its name, environmental psychology has drawn on a wide range of social sciences, including anthropology, sociology, economics, geography, political science and history—as well as the design and planning specialities—architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and urban planning.

Paths toward Environmental Consciousness

Much of my life has been spent in the Borough of Brooklyn in New York. A graduate of its public schools and Brooklyn College, I went to Teachers College, Columbia University, for a PhD in developmental psychology that I received in 1957. While a graduate student I taught in the psychology department at Brooklyn College. After completing my degree, I was a research consultant on a 2-year study of creativity at Hunter College High School. With the termination of this project, I began my association with Bill Ittelson and Hal Proshansky in their environmental research that was based first at Brooklyn College, then at the Graduate School of the City University of New York in Manhattan.

SPECIAL ASPECTS OF CROSS‐CULTURAL RESEARCH

Four papers form the basis of these reflections, Dr. Morsbach’s “An Intensive ‘Triangular’ Study (Japan-US-Europe) of Socio-Psychological Variables,” the Adlers’, “The ‘Fruit-Tree Experiment’ as a Cross-Cultural Measure of the Variations in Children’s Drawings Due t o Regional Differences,” Dr. Irwin’s, “The Problem of Establishing Validity in Cross-Cultural Measurements” and that of Dr. Lifshitz, “Person Perception and Social Interaction of Jewish and Druze Kindergarten Children in Israel.” Three of these papers deal directly with a double problem comparisons across cultures (the theme of the conference) and the equally difficult assessment of developmental differences. In a real sense, this represents two cultural comparisons, if we view children as a subculture within a specific group. We might even add cross-sex and cross-age comparisonsjas additional factors since these are included in the papers. It seems critical t o mention these intracultural factors, for they further complicate an already difficult problem and remind us that specific cultural groups under study are not monolithic. In order t o pursue the meaning of these internal and external comparisons, let us first consider the two “empirical” studies, and then examine the other papers for some methodological considerations. Dr. Lifshitz’ paper provides some stimulating material and some questions as well. In considering the social base of person perception among Druze kindergarten boys and girls in comparison with Jewish children, a variety of information is gathered. In a sense, the work represents a study of social spatial factors in two different social groups; one is very traditional, a minority within the Israeli setting, and a minority among Muslim sects, secretive in its ritual, but from current accounts, slowly changing as we1l.l The other group is the majority within Israel, but except for the information that the children came from middle class backgrounds, we d o not have details on length of residence in Israel or the family’s country of origin. The study addresses a series of questions regarding perceptual and conceptual development, with particular concern for sex differences within the groups. In bringing a personal set of concerns to my reading, a number of issues come t o mind. First, the measures used certainly do point up differences, pinpointing the consequences of background on the tests and measures involved. Yet there is a gnawing question regarding the meaning of measured differences for the two groups under study. Kindergarten children were selected with the reasonable assumption that they were: (1) a t the beginning of their formal education and at the onset of “institutionalized implementation of social values and practices” and (2) they were at “a stage of perceptual development where sensori-motor and conceptual processes interact closely.” Presumably, this placed each group at the same point in their development history. Although one can only speculate f rom the limited information on the two groups, the details that are available (and, I might add, that are used t o explain some of the results) suggest that, in fact, the initial experiences of the two groups differed greatly, despite similarities in age and school history. There is a strong possibility that the Jewish