Lecture 7 Readings:

- Milgram, S., 1970, The experience of living in cities

Departure from Wirth’s (1938) sociological definition of city: large numbers, high density,
heterogeneity
◼ Psychological translation in Information overload (inability to process input, too many or
too fast)
◼ Adaptive responses:
◼ Decrease time per input
◼ Ignore low-priority input
◼ Shift to a more passive approach
◼ Impede access (see reactions to crowding)

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

ABSTRACT: This article examines the prevalence of politeness or civil behaviors in

Paris and a smaller French provincial city (Nantes). Do people entering a large department
store hold the door open for the person behind them?With a sample of 880 participants,
observed at the entrance of department stores, no significant sex differences
were found (for the participant or the person for whom the door could be held). Parisians
were significantly less civil than their provincial counterparts, and high-density
conditions reduced civil behavior in both settings. In the presence of a polite model
(the preceding person holding the door open for the participant), Parisians, but not the
provincial sample, are influenced by the preceding situation; the differences between
Paris and the provincial city are in this case minimal. Results are considered in terms
of social modeling: Being exposed to a polite behavior reactivates the cultural norm of
politeness in Parisians.

- Keizer, K., Lindenberg, S, Steg, L., 2008, The spreading of disorder

Imagine that the neighborhood you are living in is covered with graffiti, litter, and unreturned
shopping carts. Would this reality cause you to litter more, trespass, or even steal? A thesis
known as the broken windows theory suggests that signs of disorderly and petty criminal
behavior trigger more disorderly and petty criminal behavior, thus causing the behavior to
spread. This may cause neighborhoods to decay and the quality of life of its inhabitants to
deteriorate. For a city government, this may be a vital policy issue. But does disorder really
spread in neighborhoods? So far there has not been strong empirical support, and it is not
clear what constitutes disorder and what may make it spread. We generated hypotheses
about the spread of disorder and tested them in six field experiments. We found that, when
people observe that others violated a certain social norm or legitimate rule, they are more
likely to violate other norms or rules, which causes disorder to spread.

- Kuo, F. E., Sullivan, W. C., 2001, Aggression and violence in the inner city. Effects of
environment via mental fatigue
-
ABSTRACT: S. Kaplan suggested that one outcome of mental fatigue may be an increased
propensity for outbursts of anger and even violence. If so, contact with nature, which
appears to mitigate mental fatigue, may reduce aggression and violence. This study
investigated that possibility in a setting and population with relatively high rates of
aggression: inner-city urban public housing residents. Levels of aggression were compared
for 145 urban public housing residents randomly assigned to buildings with varying levels of
nearby nature (trees and grass). Attentional functioning was assessed as an index of mental
fatigue. Residents living in relatively barren buildings reported more aggression and violence
than did their counterparts in greener buildings. Moreover, levels of mental fatigue were
higher in barren buildings, and aggression accompanied mental fatigue. Tests for the
proposed mechanism and for alternative mechanisms indicated that the relationship
between nearby nature and aggression was fully mediated through attentional functioning.

- Van den Berg, A. E., Hartig, T., & Staats, H., 2007, Preference for nature in urbanized
societies: Stress, restoration, and the pursuit of sustainability.

Urbanicity presents a challenge for the pursuit of sustainability. High settlement density may
offer some environmental, economic, and social advantages, but it can impose psychological
demands that people find excessive. These demands of urban life have stimulated a desire
for contact with nature through suburban residence, leading to planning and transportation
practices that have profound implications for the pursuit of sustainability. Some might
dismiss people’s desire for contact with nature as the result of an anti-urban bias in
conjunction with a romantic view of nature. However, research in environmental psychology
suggests that people’s desire for contact with nature serves an important adaptive function,
namely, psychological restoration. Based on this insight, we offer a perspective on an
underlying practical challenge: designing communities that balance settlement density with
satisfactory access to nature experience. We discuss research on four issues: how people
tend to believe that nature is restorative; how restoration needs and beliefs shape
environmental preferences; how well people actually achieve restoration in urban and
natural environments; and how contact with nature can promote health. In closing, we
consider urban nature as a design option that promotes urban sustainability.

Lecture:
Program for today
◼ Life in the city: major characteristics
◼ Pro’s and con’s
◼ Density, heterogeneity, numbers
◼ Consequences
◼ Crowding, information overload, incivility, norms (Milgram, Moser & Corroyer, Keizer et al.)
◼ the poor in the city (Kuo & Sullivan)
◼ Sustainable cities:
◼ beauty, nature, restoration, health (Van den Berg, Hartig & Staats)

Con’s and pro’s of urban life

◼ Steady growth of urban population worldwide<->employment
◼ - Crowding, information overload
◼ - Crime and pollution
◼ + Cities are exciting, lively and diverse
◼ + Cities offer cultural, educational, medical resources (critical mass)

Many measures of density

- Inside vs outside density
- Density in home , apartment block, neighbourhood, city
- Density vs proximity

Crowding
‘Crowding is a personally defined, subjective feeling that too many others are around’
Crowding (subjective state) is not identical with density (people per square meter)

Importance of crowding as a problem

★ Increasing world population
★ Increasingly many large cities
★ Sociologists’ view on urban life
★ Animal studies
★ Early studies showing effects of density on divorce rate, suicides, diseases

But: ◼ Early studies had confounds (density related to income, education, unemployment
rate) ◼ People have more ways of coping than animals ◼ Sociologists developed other
models to explain city life (urban village)
Nevertheless
- High density (and its implications) is a salient phenomenon of modern life
- Crowding became interpreted and studied as a specific stressor, involving
- Antecedent
- Emotional reaction
- Behavorial response

Antecedents
❖ Presence of too many others causes:
❖ Goal blocking (traffic jam)
❖ Threat of resource loss (food, shelter)
❖ Loss of control (unwanted interaction)

Affective reaction
◼ Anger, annoyance (predominantly negative)
◼ Physiological reactions indicating increased arousal and stress
(See for example Evans, GW; Wener, RE (2007) Crowding and personal space invasion on
the train: Please don't make me sit in the middle. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 27,
90-94)

Behavorial response
◼ Withdrawal, avoidance; Filtering out information; Changing social environment by
increased selectivity in social contacts, creating norms; Changing physical environment by
partitioning space, putting up fences etc.

Applications of crowding research

◼ 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.

Milgram (1970. The experience of living in cities. Science, 167, 1461-1464

◼ Departure from Wirth’s (1938) sociological definition of city: large numbers, high density,
heterogeneity; Psychological translation in Information overload (inability to process input,
too many or too fast)
◼ Adaptive responses:
→ Decrease time per input
→ Ignore low-priority input
→ Shift to a more passive approach
→ Impede access (see reactions to crowding)
Change in social responsibility
◼ Willingness to trust and assist strangers
◼ Allow strangers in the home; as a function of city size and gender (DV=% acces allowed;
see Table 1,p.230 in Milgram, 1970)

City : Male 14, Female 14

Small town: Male 50, Female 93

Civilities: less or different in character (evolving from norm to respect privacy?)

Anonimity: blessing or curse (both?)

Moser & Corroyer (2001): Politeness in the urban environment: Is city life still synonymous
with civility? Environment and Behavior, 33, 611-625

Slightly different premise:

Civility is an urban phenomenon: “tacit rules governing social behaviors regulating social
interaction”(p.612)
Civility -> 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
Most beautiful sentence in the paper: “Behavior in the city is, in fact, paradoxical: The
individual has to cooperate socially to maintain his anonimity.” (ibid., p.613)

Moser & Corroyer (2001): Empirical study Two hypotheses:

◼ Politeness will be less frequent in large compared to smaller city. (why??)
◼ Politeness will not be sensitive to immediate population density (why??)

Empirical test: holding open door for next visitor

◼ Design: Size (Paris vs Nantes) x density (high vs low) x example (holding door open vs
not while pp entering)
◼ Method; observations
Results:
➢ City size: Nantes > Paris
➢ Density: low > high
➢ Door open/ closed: interaction effect: door opened only improved behavior in Paris
➢ No influence gender

Empirical test: holding open door for next visitor ◼ Conclusions: ◼ Civility suffers in large city
◼ Good example seems to reactivate norm in large city ◼ Immediate conditions affect
behavior (contrary to Hyp.2)

The spreading of disorder:

◼ “Broken windows theory”
◼ Stating (1) that disorder is more likely when descriptive norm is in conflict with injunctive
norm
◼ Stating (2) that disorder may spread to other forms of behavior: “cross-norm inhibition”
because higher level goals of behaving appropriately are in conflict with (a) hedonic goal, or
(b) resource gain goal.
Kuo & Sullivan (2001). Agression and violence in the inner city. Effects of environment via mental
fatigue. Environment and Behavior, 33, 543-571
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

Kuo & Sullivan (2001). Agression and violence in the inner city. Environment and Behavior, 33,
543-571
Hypotheses
❖ Mental fatigue reduces inhibition, increases agression
❖ Nearby nature may reduce this effect
❖ Through attention restoration

Kuo & Sullivan Design

◼ Apartment buildings with nature vs barren (Chicago; Robert Taylor Homes)
◼ Random assignment (!) of participants, 145 females, 69 in Nature, 76 in NoNature condition
◼ Profile of average participant: Age 34 Mother of three children Annual household income < $
10.000

Kuo & Sullivan: Measures…

Nearby nature; assessed by independent raters
Aggression; Conflict Tactics Scale
Attentional Functioning (DSB; Digit Span Backwards)

Kuo & Sullivan (2001) Outcomes

◼ Agression toward partner less in Nature condition
◼ Agression toward child less in Nature condition
◼ Attentional functioning (DSB):
worse in NoNature condition → related to agression → mediator of Nature – Agression relation

Kuo & Sullivan (2001): Dose – Effect relation

Natural vs nonnatural surroundings) —> Agression

Understanding an effect:

Natural vs non-natural surroundings) —> Attentional fatigue —> Agression

Environmental Aesthetics: three theories
1. Berlyne: collative properties + ….
2. Kaplan & Kaplan; Landscape preference model
3. Purcell & Whitfield : prototypicality

1. Berlyne’s stimulus properties Berlyne; stimulus properties that strongly determine beauty
Collative: properties based on comparisons a. between elements in the stimulus field: order,
complexity, congruity, diversity b. between succession of stimuli: newness, surprisingness

2. K&K’s Landscape Preference Matrix

Understanding Exploration
--------------------------------------------------------------
Immediate Coherence Diversity

Inferred, Legibility Mystery

Predicted
--------------------------------------------------------------

Coherence: “A coherent scene is orderly: it hangs together”

Diversity: “the number of different elements in a scene: its richness”

Legibility: “a well -structured space with distinctive elements, so that it is easy both to find one’s way
within the scene and to find one’s way back to the starting point”

Mystery: “the promise of further information if one could walk deeper into the scene”

3. Prototypicality-preference: linear or inverted U

◼ Preference for environment is dependent on distance to prototypical example of category
◼ Whitfield; the closer to prototype the more preferred
◼ Purcell: small distance between prototype and example is preferred most

National Health Council: advice on scientific evidence of relation (2004-2016)

nature → health

First indications of relationship: Epidemiological research 1

◼ Representative sample of Dutch population (N = 17.000)
◼ Result: significant positive relationship between presence of green in neighbourhood and self
reported health) (de Vries e.a. 2000)
Epidemiological research 2
◼ Japanese longitudinal study, older inhabitants Tokio (N= 3144)
◼ Results: significant positive relationship between presence of ‘ walkable green’ and lower
mortality within 5 years (Takano e.a, 2003)

Epidemiological research 3: The Lancet

Effect of exposure to natural environment on health inequalities: an observational population study
Dr Richard Mitchell PhD , Frank Popham PhD

“We postulated that income-related inequality in health would be less pronounced in populations
with greater exposure to green space, since access to such areas can modify pathways through which
low socioeconomic position can lead to disease.”
Findings: The association between income deprivation and mortality differed significantly across the
groups of exposure to green space for mortality from all causes (p<0·0001) and circulatory disease
(p=0·0212). Health inequalities related to income deprivation in all-cause mortality and mortality
from circulatory diseases were lower in populations living in the greenest areas.

Two Theories
Based on Biofilia hypothesis: evolutionary determined love for nature
▪ Psycho-evolutionary (or stressreduction) theory, Ulrich, 1983: perception of nature causes
reduction of negative feelings and psychophysiological recovery of stress
▪ Attention Restoration Theory, Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989: perception of nature causes recovery of
attentional fatigue

Experimental research:standard design ◼ Stress or attention fatigue induction ◼ Exposure to nature

or built environment (photographs, video, field situation ◼ Measuring cognitive, affective,
physiological recovery of stress or attentional fatigue
Recovery of stress or attentional fatigue
◼ In 2004 positive results from 19 (quasi-) experimental studies in lab or field settings (Dutch Health
Council).
◼ In 2014 complemented by at least 20 more experimental studies (see Hartig et al., Annual Review
of Public Health, 2014)
◼ Effects on cognitive tasks, mood, physiological measures

Nature enhances effects of physical exercise

◼ Research suggests that environmental characteristics enhance exercise
◼ Indirect evidence: Japanese study
◼ Recent meta-analysis: 25 studies on walking/running: ”Overall the studies are suggestive that
natural environments impact wellbeing….”(Bowler et al., 2013)

Facilitates social contact/behavior

◼ Limited evidence for relation (public ‘green’ in city quarters) in US
◼ Social meaning of gardens (‘volkstuinen’), communal gardens, volunteer work on ecological
restoration, etc.
◼ Epidemiological research in the Netherlands shows increase in social safety and social support
(Maas et al., 2009a en b)
◼ Increase in helpfulness (Zhang et al., 2014), generosity (Weinstein et al., 2009)

Enhancement of personal growth

◼ Natuur has symbolic meaning: source of ‘deep’ nature experiences, ‘environmental epiphany’
(Vining and Merrick, 2012)
◼ Reflection on meaning of life
◼ Feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness (basic needs for personal growth)
◼ Case studies, theoretical ideas, + the Outward Bound program (longer wilderness trips, partly
alone)

Nature and child development

- Lots of theory, speculations, and qualitative research
- Natural play environment stimulates psychological and motor development (Staempfli, 2009)
- Nature experiences during childhood seem to be unique and precious (sensitive phase?)
- Effects on health in later life? (suggested by Asah et al., 2012)
- But no longitudinal research

2 studies:
Ulrich, T. (1984). View through a window may influence recovery from stress. Science, 224, 420-421
- Archival study of 46 patients recovering from gallbladder surgery
- Records from 1972 to 1981. “Treatment”: assignment to room with wall view or nature view.
- Patients matched on age, sex, smoking, obesity, hospitalization history, floor level, room color
Hartig, T., & Staats, H. (2006). The need for psychological restoration as a determinant of
environmental preferences. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 26, 215-226. Research question ▪
How attentional fatigue influences environmental preference.

Leading theory for the study: Attention Restoration Theory (ART: Kaplan, 1995)
◼ Directed attention ◼ Consequences ◼ Restoration

ART: Directed attention vs. fascination

◼ Directed attention requires capacity for inhibition of distraction (inhibitory mechanism)
◼ When efforts to sustain directed attention are prolonged the inhibitory mechanism becomes
exhausted

ART: Consequences of attentional fatigue ◼ Poor concentration ◼ Easily irritated ◼ Inclined to make
errors ◼ Unwilling to help others
→ A need for restoration

ART: “Psycho-environmental” characteristics of restorative environments ◼ Being away ◼ Fascination

◼ Compatibility ◼ Extent
→ Earlier findings show that natural environments are generally more restorative than urban
environments

Premises
◼ Likelihood of restoration is greater in natural environment than in urban environment
◼ Restoration valued more by people in need of restoration, i.e., attentionally fatigued

Environmental preferences are determined by restoration opportunities and restoration needs

Interaction Hypothesis 1 Preference for natural environment over urban environment is higher in
state of attentional fatigue compared to a state of restedness

Method Experiment
◼ Swedish student participants (N=103)
◼ Design 2(Env.;Urban, Natural) x 2(Attentional state; rested, fatigued) between subjects
◼ Attentional fatigue induction: long lecture (1.5 to 3 hour)+ time of day (morning/afternoon)
◼ Series of slides (2 x 50) as environmental simulation for nature/urban walks
◼ Scales for likelihood of restoration and environmental evaluation(1-7)

Main result:
environmental preference: natural!Van den Berg, Hartig, & Staats conclude: ◼ A healthy, sustainable
city is a green city, that provides opportunities for the many functions nature has for its residents.