Environmental Effects on Human Behaviour

Environmental Effects on Human Behaviour
1.    Environmental influences on perception 

• Some aspects of the environment influence human perception. 
• For example, a tribal society of Africa lives in circular huts i.e. in houses without angular walls. They show less error in a geometric illusion (the Muller-Lyer illusion) than people from cities, who live in houses with angular walls. 

2.    Environmental influences on emotions 

• The environment affects our emotional reactions as well. For example, 

1. Watching nature in any form, whether it is a quietly flowing river, a smiling flower, or a tranquil mountain top, provides a kind of joy that cannot be matched by any other experience. 
2. Natural disasters, such as floods, droughts, landslides, quakes on the earth or under the ocean, can affect people’s emotions to such an extent that they experience deep depression and sorrow, a sense of complete helplessness and lack of control over their lives. 

Such an influence on human emotions is a traumatic experience that changes people’s lives forever, and can last for a very long time after the actual event in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

3.    Ecological influences on occupation, living style and attitudes

• The natural environment of a particular region determines whether people living in that region rely on: 

1. Agriculture (as in the plains), or 
2. Hunting and gathering (as in forest, mountainous or desert regions), or 
3. Industries (as in areas that are not fertile enough for agriculture) 

• In turn, the occupation determines the lifestyle and attitudes of the residents of a particular geographical region. For example,

1. An agricultural society has to depend on the collective efforts of its members. Therefore, the members of an agricultural society develop an attitude of cooperativeness, and consider group interests more important than the individual’s wishes. They are also closer to nature, more dependent on natural events such as the monsoon, and may face situations in which necessary natural resources such as water are in limited supply. Accordingly, the members of an agricultural society may become more fatalistic in their beliefs. 
2. On the other hand, highly industrialised societies feel less close to and less dependent on nature. Members of industrialised societies may value independent thinking, develop an attitude of competitiveness, and cultivate a belief of personal control over what happens to them.

Human Influence on the Environment

• Human beings also exert their influence on the natural environment for fulfilling their physical needs and other purposes. 
• All the examples of the built environment express human influence over the environment. For example, the human being started building something called ‘houses’ by changing the natural environment in order to provide shelter for herself/himself. 
• Some of these human actions harm and damage the environment, and ultimately harm themselves, in numerous ways. For example, 

• Human beings have brought about these effects in order to exhibit their control and power over the natural environment. 
• It is somewhat paradoxical that human beings are using technology to change the natural environment in order to improve the quality of their life but, in reality, they may actually be worsening the quality of life. 
• Noise, pollution, crowding, and natural disasters are some examples of environmental stressors, which are stimuli or conditions in the environment that create a stress for human beings. 

Noise

• Any sound that is annoying or irritating, and felt to be unpleasant is said to be noise. 
• Noise, especially for long periods of time, is uncomfortable, and puts people in an unpleasant mood. 
• Exposure to noise for a long period of time may lead to hearing loss. 
• Noise has negative effects on mental activity because it reduces concentration. 
• Three characteristics of noise have been found to determine its effect on task performance: 

• Effects of noise on human beings: 

a)  When the task being performed is a simple mental task, such as addition of numbers, noise does not affect overall performance, whether it is loud or soft. In such situations, people adapt, or ‘get used’ to noise. 

b)  If the task being performed is very interesting, then, too, the presence of noise does not affect performance. This is because the nature of the task helps the individual to pay full attention to the task, and ignore the noise. This may also be one kind of adaptation. 

c)  When the noise comes at intervals, and in an unpredictable way, it is experienced as more disturbing than if the noise is continuously present. 

d)  When the task being performed is difficult, or requires full concentration, then intense, unpredictable, and uncontrollable noise reduces the level of task performance. 

e)  When tolerating or switching off the noise is within the control of the person, the number of errors in task performance decreases. 

f) In terms of emotional effects, noise above a certain level causes annoyance, and can also lead to sleep disturbance. These effects are also reduced if the noise is controllable, or is necessary as a part of the person’s occupation. However, continued exposure to uncontrollable and annoying noise can have harmful effects on mental health. 

• The stressful effects of noise are determined by: 

a) high or low intensity of the noise
b) the extent to which people are able to adapt to it
c) the nature of the task being performed
d) predictability of noise 
e) controllability of noise

Pollution

• Environmental pollution may be in the form of air, water, and soil pollution. 
• Waste or garbage that comes from households or from industries are a big source of air, water, and soil pollution. 
• Any of these forms of pollution is hazardous to physical health as well as psychological health. 
• Any form of environmental pollution may affect the nervous system because of the presence of toxic substances and, to that extent, influence psychological processes in some way. 
• Another form of influence is seen in the emotional reactions to pollution which, in turn, create discomfort, and have consequences such as: 

1. Decreased work efficiency
2. Lowered interest in the job
3. Increase in anxiety level
4. Decrease in the ability to concentrate
5. Unpleasant mood

• The presence of dust particles, or other suspended particles, may result in:

1. Feeling of suffocation 
2. Difficulty in breathing
3. Respiratory disorders

Air Pollution

• People living in the industrial area reported greater tension and anxiety than those living in a non-industrial residential area. 
• The presence of pollutants such as sulphur dioxide in the air was found to decrease the ability to concentrate on a task, and lowering performance efficiency. 
• Pollution caused by leaks of dangerous chemical substances can cause other kinds of harm. The infamous Bhopal gas tragedy of December 1984 that claimed many lives, also left behind psychological effects because of the gas. 
Many of those who had inhaled the poisonous gas, methyl-isocyanate (MIC) along with other substances, showed disturbances in memory, attention and alertness. 
• There can be harmful air pollution in the home and office environment (indoor environments) also. 
For example, tobacco smoke pollution, that is, pollution through cigarette, cigar or beedi smoking, can also cause psychological effects. Such effects are supposed to be more dangerous for the smoker; however, those who inhale tobacco smoke (passive smoking) can also suffer the negative effects. Inhaling tobacco smoke can increase the aggression level of individuals. 
• Another source of toxicity is household and industrial waste, or garbage, which are non-biodegradable. Common examples of such waste are plastics, tin or any metal container. 
This kind of waste material should be destroyed or burned through special techniques, and the smoke should not be allowed to escape into the air that people breathe.

Water and Soil Pollution

•  The presence of polluting substances in water and soil are hazardous for physical health and, some of these chemicals can also have damaging psychological effects. 
•  The presence of specific chemicals such as lead can cause mental retardation by affecting brain development. 
•  Such toxic substances affect human beings through various routes, i.e. through water, or through soil by being absorbed by vegetables grown in polluted soil. 
Therefore, there is absolutely no doubt that all forms of pollution need to be curbed, as toxic chemicals in the air, water and soil may lead to harmful effects not only on normal psychological functioning, but may also cause serious mental disorders.

Crowding

• Crowds are large informal groups of persons coming together temporarily without any particular goal. 
• Crowding refers to a feeling of discomfort because there are too many people or things around us, giving us the experience of physical restriction, and sometimes the lack of privacy. 
• Crowding is the person’s reaction to the presence of a large number of persons within a particular area or space. When this number goes beyond a certain level, it causes stress to individuals caught in that situation. 
• The experience of crowding has the following features: 

a)  Feeling of discomfort
b)  Loss or decrease in privacy
c)  Negative view of the space around the person
d)  Feeling of loss of control over social interaction

• The experience of crowding is brought about not merely because of the large number of persons as such, nor merely because of the shortage of space. 

It is related to density i.e. the number of persons within the available space. 
Crowding is not necessarily always experienced in high density settings, and all people do not experience its negative effects to the same extent.

Effects of Crowding and High Density:
1. It may lead to abnormal behaviour and aggression. An increase in population has sometimes been found to be accompanied by an increase in violent crime. 

2. It leads to lowered performance on difficult tasks that involve cognitive processes, and has adverse effects on memory and the emotional state. 
These negative effects are seen to a smaller extent in people who are used to crowded surroundings. 

3. Children growing up in very crowded households show lower academic performance. 
They also show a weaker tendency to continue working on a task if they are unsuccessful at it, compared to children growing up in non-crowded households. 
They experience greater conflict with their parents, and get less support from their family members. 

4. The nature of social interaction determines the degree to which an individual will react to crowding. For example, if the interaction is on a happy social occasion, such as a party or public celebration, the presence of a large number of persons in the same physical setting may cause no stress at all. Rather, it may lead to positive emotional reactions. At the same time, crowding, in turn, also influences the nature of social interaction. 

5. Individuals differ in the degree to which they show negative effects of crowding, and also in the nature of these reactions. Two kinds of tolerance that may explain these individual differences are Crowding Tolerance and Competition Tolerance.

6. Cultural characteristics may determine the extent to which a particular environment is judged to be subjectively more crowded or less crowded. 
They may also affect the nature and extent of negative reactions to crowding. 
For example, 
-    In cultures that emphasise the importance of the group or collectivity over the individual, the presence of a large number of people in the surroundings is not taken as an undesirable state. 
-    On the other hand, in cultures that emphasise the importance of the individual over the group or collectivity, the presence of many other persons in the environment around us may make us uncomfortable. 
Overall, though, regardless of whether the culture considers the group more important than the individual, or the other way round, it is clear that in all cultures, crowding is experienced as being stressful.

7. Personal space, or the comfortable physical space one generally likes to maintain around oneself, is affected by a high density environment. 
In a crowded context, there is a restriction on personal space, and this can also be a cause of negative reactions to crowding. 

PERSONAL SPACE

• People respond to the physical environment in terms of space. 
• In social situations, human beings like to maintain a certain physical distance from the person with whom they are interacting. This is called interpersonal physical distance.
• Interpersonal physical distance is a part of a broader concept called personal space, i.e. the physical space we like to have all around us. 
• One reason for the negative reactions to crowding is the decrease in personal space. 
• Personal space can vary between people, between situations and settings, and between cultures. 
• Edward Hall, an anthropologist, mentioned four kinds of interpersonal physical distance, depending on the situation:

  

  These distances are maintained voluntarily, keeping in mind the comfort experienced by the persons involved in the interaction. 
• However, when there is a shortage of space, people are forced to maintain much smaller physical distance from each other (for instance, in a lift, or in a train compartment where there are too many people). 
• In such cramped spaces, an individual is likely to feel crowded, even though objectively, the number of persons is not very large. 
• People react to available space as a part of the physical environment. 
• The person experiences stress and responds negatively — with a bad mood, or aggressively, and tries to leave the situation as soon as possible when the following are not maintained:

1. freedom of movement
2. sense of privacy
3. personal space 

• The concept of personal space is important because: 

1. It explains many of the negative effects of crowding as an environmental stressor. 
2. It tells us about social relationships. 
3. It gives us some idea about how physical space can be modified in order to reduce stress or discomfort in social situations, or to make social interaction more enjoyable and fruitful. 

Natural Disasters

• Natural disasters are stressful experiences that are the result of nature’s fury, i.e. the consequence of disturbances in the natural environment. Examples — earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, cyclones, and volcanic eruptions. 
• These events are called ‘disasters’ because: 

1. They cannot be prevented
2. They usually come without any warning
3. They result in immense damage to human lives and property

• Natural disasters also lead to a psychological disorder, called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 
• Science and technology have now progressed sufficiently to make it possible for human beings to predict these events, to some extent. 
• Effects of Natural Disasters:

a) They leave people poverty-stricken, homeless, without any resources, usually along with a loss of everything they owned. 
b) The sudden loss of all their belongings as well as their dear ones leaves people shocked and stunned. 
This is sufficient to create a deep-seated psychological disorder. 
Natural disasters are traumatic experiences, i.e. emotionally wounding and shocking to those who survive the disaster. 
PTSD is a severe psychological problem that results from traumatic events such as natural disasters. 
PTSD has the following features:
1. The immediate reaction to a disaster is commonly one of disorientation. 
People take some time to understand the full meaning of what the disaster has done to them. They may actually deny to themselves that something terrible has happened. 

2. Physical reactions, such as: 
•    bodily exhaustion even without physical activity
•    difficulty in sleeping 
•    change in the eating pattern
•    increased heartbeat and blood pressure
•    getting startled easily can be found among the victims. 

3. Emotional reactions, such as: 
•    grief 
•    fear
•    irritability
•    anger (“Why should this happen to me?”)
•    helplessness
•    hopelessness (“I could do nothing to prevent this event”)
•    depression
•    sometimes absolute lack of emotion (numbness)
•    guilt feelings for having survived while someone else in the family died
•    blaming oneself
•    lack of interest in even routine activities

4. Cognitive reactions, such as: 
•    worry
•    difficulty in concentration
•    reduced span of attention 
•    confusion
•    loss of memory
•    vivid memories that are unwanted (or nightmares of the event)

5. Social reactions, such as: 
•    withdrawal from others
•    getting into conflict with others
•    having frequent arguments with even loved ones
•    feeling rejected or left out
Surprisingly, very often, in the midst of severe emotional reactions to stress, some survivors may actually help in the healing processes. Having been through the experience, yet survived it and staying alive, these persons may develop a positive outlook on life and, with empathy, pass on this attitude to other survivors. 

• These reactions may last for a long time, in some cases throughout life. However, with proper counselling and psychiatric treatment, PTSD can be remedied at least upto a level where the victims can be motivated, and helped to start life afresh. 
• The poor, women who have lost all their relatives, and orphaned children who are survivors of natural disasters need special treatment and care. 
• People react with different intensities to natural disasters. In general, the intensity of reaction is affected by: 

a)    The severity of the disaster
b)    The loss incurred (both in terms of property and life)
c)    The individual’s general coping ability
d)    Other stressful experiences before the disaster. For example, people who have experienced stress before may find it more difficult to deal with yet another difficult and stressful situation.

•  Although we are aware that most natural disasters can be predicted only in a limited way, there are ways of being prepared to minimise their devastating consequences in the form of: 

1.   Warnings
-    On radios, advertisements are broadcasted that mention about what people should do when it is announced that some natural disaster, such as a flood, is likely. 
-    When cyclones or high tides are predicted, fishermen are asked not to venture into the sea.

2.  Safety measures that can be taken immediately after the event 
-    Unfortunately, in the case of some natural disasters such as earthquakes, even if prediction is possible, the events come too suddenly for people to be warned or to be mentally prepared.
-    Therefore, tips are given beforehand about what to do when there is an earthquake.

3.  Treatment of psychological disorders
-    This includes self-help approaches as well as professional treatment. 
-    Following are the steps in the treatment:
i.   Providing material relief in the form of food, clothing, medical help, shelter, and financial help.
ii.  Counselling at the individual and group level. 
This can take many forms, such as encouraging the survivors to talk about their experiences and emotional state, and giving them time for their emotional wounds to heal. 
In PTSD, one of the key attitudes to be developed in the survivors is that of self-efficacy, i.e. the belief that ‘I can do it!’, or ‘I can come out of this phase successfully.’ 
iii.  Psychiatric help may be needed for those showing extreme stress reactions. 
iv.  Rehabilitation in the form of employment and a gradual return to the normal routine should be undertaken. 
v.   Follow-up of the victims and survivors is also needed in order to ensure that they have, indeed, recovered sufficiently from their traumatic experience.