Environmental Psychology elective at Leiden University (2020-2021)

Lecture 2: Going Into Town (the urban environment)

Pros and cons of living in an urban environment

+ More employment opportunity 

+Cities are exciting, lively and diverse

+More cultural, educational and medical resources

- Crowdedness, information overload. 

- High density

-Pollution

-Crime

Crowdedness and density

• Crowding is a personally defined, subjective feeling that too many others are around
• Density: people per square meter. Not identical to the subjective state of crowdedness
• Proximity to others can have even more adverse effects than density because of personal space invasion. Example: having to sit next to people on the train.
  • Study about this phenomena: Evans, G.W., & Wener, R.E. (2007). Crowding and personal space invasion on the train: Please don't make me sit in the middle.
• Crowding became interpreted and studied as a specific stressor, involving:
  • Antecedents
  • Affective reaction
  • Behavorial response

Antecedents

• Goal blocking (traffic jam, waiting in line)
• Threat of resource loss (food, shelter)
• Loss of control (unwanted interaction)

Affective reaction:

How to deal with crowding?

• Residences: e.g. installing screens or walls

• Amusement parks: queuing devices

• Campings: zoning (grouping of like minded people)

• Prisons: huge differences between one- and more-person cells. Size is relatively unimportant. So, it is better to have one person cells, even if they are smaller

Information overload

Article on information overload in cities: Milgram (1970). The experience of living in cities.

• Decrease time per input
• Ignore low-priority input
• Shift to a more passive approach
• Impede access

Change in social responsibility:

Study: Allow strangers in the home; as a function of city size and gender (DV=% access allowed):

• Civility: less or different in character in cities
• Anonymity: blessing or curse? Anonymity makes people trust eachother less, but there is also less social pressure on people (less gossiping etc)

Article: Moser, G., & Corroyer, D. (2001). Politeness in the urban environment: Is city life still synonymous with civility?:

• Slightly different premise: Civility is an urban phenomenon
• Tacit rules (social norms) governing social behaviors regulate social interaction
• Civility is a form of politeness
• Impersonal, practiced in interaction with unknown others, different from helping, which is based on perception of individual characteristics
• To be found in public spaces of cities
• “Behavior in the city is, in fact, paradoxical: The individual has to cooperate socially to maintain his anonymity.”

Empirical test: holding open door for next visitor:

• Two hypotheses:

  • Politeness is less frequent in large compared to smaller city (confirmed)

  • Politeness is not sensitive to immediate population density (not confirmed)

• Design: 2x2x2
• Size (Paris vs. Nantes)
• Density (high vs. low)
• Social norm by example (holding door open vs. not)
• Method: observations
• Findings: 
  • Civility suffers in large cities
  • Density lowers civility
  • Social norm buffers the negative effect of large cities on civility

Privacy and civility: waiting room observation study:

• Context: in a row of chairs, where do people sit? seat 2 is closest to where the other person sits, seat 8 is the farthest away
• Seat 4 was most popular sitting location. Why?
  • It is impolite to sit too far away, but also privacy is important. Implicit norm for civility and privacy

Article: Canter & Larkin (1993). The environmental range of serial rapists:

• Crimes are committed in a way that is environmentally/spatially meaningful
• Two options:

1. Criminal acts are done at a specific location away from the criminal’s home area (e.g., city center or regular routes)
2. Criminal’s home forms a base area for the criminal acts

• Testing and outcome
  • Sample: 45 rapists
  • Outcomes: Circle hypothesis: 91% of crimes committed within circle (defined by two most distant crimes) with home as base within Circle.
  • Range hypothesis: max. distance to crime from home is strongly correlated with max. distance between crimes (r = .93).
  • This confirms Marauder model

Drug dealing study by Bernasco & Jacques (2015):

When dealing, drugs dealers:

• Walk, don’t stand
• Use stash spots to hide drugs
• Interact a lot with police officers patrolling - how come? they don't want to stand out and be in less crowded places
• Are aware of relevant, very small differences in physical features, social conditions, camera angle, time 

Kuo & Sullivan (2001). Aggression and violence in the inner city. Effects of environment via mental fatigue.:

Premises:

• Life in inner city is taxing, especially for the less privileged:
  • Living in poor quality housing (small, noisy, unsafe)
  • Low income --> few resources
  • Crowded
• This creates, among other things, mental fatigue
• In the study, people were moved out to their homes to different locations. Some to a natural environment, some towards a more urban environment
• Aggression toward partner less in Nature condition
• Aggression toward child less in Nature condition
• Attentional functioning (DSB):
  • worse in No Nature condition
  • related to aggression
  • mediator of Nature – Aggression relation
• Mediation by attentional fatigue:

Natural vs non-natural environment --> attentional fatigue --> aggression

Keizer, K., Lindenberg, S., & Steg, L. (2008). The spreading of disorder:

"Broken windows theory”:Stating (1) that disorder is more likely when descriptive norm is in conflict with injunctive norm and (2) that disorder may spread to other forms of behavior: “cross-norm inhibition”

• Experiment 1: Does graffiti increase littering? Yes, littering went from 33% to 69%
• Experiment 3: Do unreturned shopping carts increase littering? Yes, from 30% to 58%
• Experiment 6: Does littering increase theft? Yes, from 13% to 25%

If a norm is broken in a public place, other social norms are more easily broken also. The effect has long-term consequences also (see: Dur & Vollaard (2015). The Power of a Bad Example: A Field Experiment in Household Garbage Disposal)