The Ecological Approach to Perceiving and the Dynamics of Environmental Esthetics: A Research Agenda

Abstract

Research attempting to identify the perceptual basis for environmental preference began four decades ago, but advances have been limited in ensuing years as the research focus shifted without critically revisiting its initial assumptions. This paper does that by reconsidering the basis for environmental preference and psychological well-being from the perspective of the ecological approach to perceiving. With its emphasis on perception-action and dynamic events, the ecological approach highlights dynamic perceptual phenomena that were overlooked due to previous theoretical presuppositions. When the ecological approach is applied to the study of environmental preference, it reveals foundational dynamic properties of environmental perception that immediately implicate affective experience. A research agenda based on an ecological perspective is suggested, and also the prevailing essentialist distinction between natural and built environments is challenged.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Julia Blau and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 James highlights this point of view in one of his best known ‘popular’ essays, ‘On A Certain Blindness of Human Beings’ (James, 1958). There he begins, “If we were radically feelingless, and if ideas were the only things our mind could entertain, we should lose all our likes and dislikes at a stroke, and be unable to point to any one situation or experience in life more valuable or significant than any other.” (1899, p. 149). The ‘blindness’ James refers to here is rooted in the difficulty we may have in understanding what is of interest to others, but is of little interest to us, in our otherwise shared experience.

2 Damasio (1994, 1999) has been making this kind of argument with respect to cognitive processes for years.

3 Withagen also draws heavily on Dewey’s writings on affective experiences.

4 It is important to add that the actor brings a developmental history to the encounter, and acknowledgement of that allows us to enrich any account of the environment—person relationship, without admitting subjective states. It refers to the bodily history of the person, that is, a situated history. Explication of that claim goes beyond the scope of this paper (see, Heft, in press).

5 Moreover, R. Kaplan and Kaplan (1989) point out that “[m]uch of the information that we consider all the time reaches us by means of two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional settings” (e.g., television, pictures), and yet individuals do not report such cases as deceiving (p.16). But whether or not one is deceived is an entirely different matter than whether such representations adequately convey the essential and distinctive qualities of everyday environmental perceiving.

6 After Wohlwill’s premature death in 1987, the Kaplans became the most influential psychologists in this research area for several decades.

7 Brief tachistoscope and other time-limited displays also attempt to control for eye movements.

8 Although extreme viewing angles or anamorphic projections can introduce distortions.

9 There are exceptions, however. For example, Kaplan & Kaplan identified a variable in photographic displays that they call ‘mystery’ (to be described below) which offers a suggestion of more to be seen if only the perceiver could ‘travel’ further into the two-dimensional scene.

10 Of course, this circumstance is complicated by the fact that when the background is empty (e.g., viewing an object against a feature-less sky), size and distance are confounded.

11 Stable features, such as large rocks and various rock formations, as well as caves and tunnels are commonplace and have been used for such purposes. But the visual appearance of those features and built structures are typically differentiable on perceptual grounds.

12 Researchers who have considered such a location as a stationary viewing position, rather than over time along a path, describe it as being valued because it affords seeing ‘out’ without being seen.

13 Of course, optic flow is only one of the effects produced by these installations, vestibular effects being another notable consequence. Here I focus only on the linkages between vision and affect.

14 In fact, these kinds of actions had been well-known and well-documented for decades in the developmental psychology literature, typically referred to as primary circular reactions – persistent actions that appeared to be self-reinforcing. Some of these cases, such as thumb sucking, were accounted for hedonically as a means of ‘self-soothing’ when an infant is under distress; but not all cases could be written off as a means of controlling felt emotions. Some actions seemed to be carried out in order to meet some environment-organism criterion that lacked any obvious hedonic qualities (see, Kalnins & Bruner, 1973).