Brief portrait of environmental psychology

“The description and explanation of human experience and behavior” - this is how psychology defines its field of activity in the canon of scientific disciplines.

As one of its specialist areas, environmental psychology researches environment-related experience and behavior. Both basic research and application-oriented work characterize this - relatively small - sub-discipline.

The thematic spectrum is broad and touches on numerous basic and applied areas of psychology, such as noise research, mobility behavior and environmentally relevant decisions (energy, resources).

Like no other psychological sub-discipline, environmental psychology has numerous interfaces with the natural, economic and social sciences, which leads to interdisciplinary work on current environmental issues.

An orientation of application-oriented environmental psychological topics towards social psychology as a basic discipline means an extension of the classic interrelationship person <-> environment to person <-> environment <-> person.

For example, we are interested in how people influence the behavior of others by shaping their environment. The former have a conditional responsibility for the latter's degree of freedom of behavior. Hence they are key actors for innovation.