Page 264 - DEDU502_GUIDANCE_AND_COUNSELING_ENGLISH

Guidance and counseling

Notes settings and problems being looked at. For example, factors that reduce feelings of crowding within
buildings include :
• Window - particularly ones that can be opened and ones that provide a view as well as light
• High ceilings
• Doors to divide spaces (Baum and Davies) and provide access control
• Room shape - square rooms feel less crowded than rectangular ones (Dresor)
• Using partitions to create smaller, personalized spaces within an open plan office or larger
work space.
• Providing increases in cognitive control over aspects of the internal environment, such as
ventilation, light, privacy, etc.
• Conducting a cognitive appraisal of an environment and feelings of crowding in different
setting. For example, one might be comfortable with crowding at a concert but not in school
corridors.
• Creating a defensible space (Calhoun)
Personal space and territory
Having an area of personal territory in a public, space, e.g,. at the office, is a key feature of many
architectural designs. Having such a ‘defensible space’ can reduce the negative effects of crowding
in urban environments. The term, coined by john B. Calhoun in 1947, is the result of multiple
environmental experiments conducted on rats. Originally beginning as an experiment to measure
how many rats could be accommodated in a given space, it expanded into determining how rats,
given the proper food, shelter and bedding would behave under a confined environment.
Under these circumstances, the males became aggressive, some exclusively homosexual. Others
became pansexual and hypersexual, seeking every chance to mount any rat they encountered. As a
result, mating behaviors were upset with an increase in infant mortalities. With parents failing to
provide proper nests, thoughtlessly ditching their young and even attacking them, infant mortality
rose as high as 96% in certain sections. Calhoun published the results as “Population Density and
Social Pathology” in a 1962 edition of Scientific American.
Creating barriers and customizing the space are ways of creating personal space, e.g., using pictures
of one’s family in an office setting. This increases cognitive control as one sees oneself as having
control over the competitors to the personal space and therefore able to control the level of density
and crowding in the space.
Systems oriented
The systems oriented approach to experimenting is applied to individuals or people that are a part
of communities, groups, and organizations. This approach particularly examines group interaction,
as opposed to an individual’s interaction and it emphasizes on factors of social are easy to recognize,
while others are not. Like every disorder, it is a combined involvement of certain characteristics.
The number of characteristics possessed and the degree to which these characteristics are present
will determine the extent to which an individual has this problem.

24.4 Environmental Consciousness

Leanne Rivlin theorized that one way to examine an individual’s environmental consciousness is to
recognize how the physical place is significant, and look at the people/place relationship.
Environmental cognition (involved in human cognition) plays a crucial role in environmental
perception. All different areas of the brain engage with environmentally relevant information. Some
believe that the orbitofrontal cortex integrates environmentally relevant information from many

258 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY