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Frontiers in Psychology 2022The interrelated concepts of place attachment and place meaning are antecedents to pro-environmental behavior and essential for supporting decisions that foster...
The interrelated concepts of place attachment and place meaning are antecedents to pro-environmental behavior and essential for supporting decisions that foster relationships between people and places. Previous research has argued that affect is instrumental in conceptualizing place-related phenomena but has not yet been considered in terms of discrete emotions. We disentangled the empirical relationships between concepts of place and the emotions of pride and guilt to understand how they collectively contributed to individuals' decisions about environmental sustainability. Specifically, we conducted an online survey of residents living in the Midwestern US and asked questions about their attachments to places and their place-related behavior. We then tested a latent variable path model with first- and second-order factors that shaped the behavioral intentions of survey respondents, as well as evaluated the psychometric properties of a place meaning scale, to uncover the range of reasons why human-nature relationships were formed. Our findings show that multiple place meanings predicted place attachment, which in turn predicted the discrete emotions of pride and guilt. Place attachment, pride, and guilt positively correlated with pro-environmental behavior. We also observed that the relationships between multi-dimensional conceptualizations of place attachment and behavioral intentions were partially mediated by pride but not guilt, as hypothesized in response to the broaden and build theory of positive emotions. This study develops theoretical insights to clarify how cognitive-emotional bonding can lead people to behave in more environmentally friendly ways.
PubMed: 36743649
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1084741 -
Relationships between Personal and Collective Place Identity and Well-Being in Mountain Communities.Frontiers in Psychology 2017The aim was to investigate the relationships between landscape-related personal and collective identity and well-being of residents living in a Swedish mountain county (...
The aim was to investigate the relationships between landscape-related personal and collective identity and well-being of residents living in a Swedish mountain county ( = 850). It was shown that their most valued mountain activities were viewing and experiencing nature and landscape, outdoor recreation, rest and leisure, and socializing with friends/family. Qualitative analyses showed that the most valued aspects of the sites were landscape and outdoor restoration for personal favorite sites, and tourism and alpine for collective favorite sites. According to quantitative analyses the stronger the attachment/closeness/belonging (emotional component of place identity) residents felt to favorite personal and collective sites the more well-being they perceived when visiting these places. Similarly, the more remembrance, thinking and mental travel (cognitive component of place identity) residents directed to these sites the more well-being they perceived in these places. In both types of sites well-being was more strongly predicted by emotional than cognitive component of place-identity. All this indicates the importance of person-place bonds in beneficial experiences of the outdoors, over and above simply being in outdoor environments.
PubMed: 28197112
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00079 -
Australian and New Zealand Journal of... Aug 2022This study aims to understand the context of place associated with smoking in urban Hamilton parks from a Te Ao Māori perspective (the worldview of Māori, the...
OBJECTIVE
This study aims to understand the context of place associated with smoking in urban Hamilton parks from a Te Ao Māori perspective (the worldview of Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand).
METHODS
Our study approached smokefree environments in Hamilton through a Māori lens, undertaking interviews with family groups and people from organisations involved in the local Smokefree environments policy.
RESULTS
The majority of the 26 adult participants identified as Māori, with 30% being current smokers. Parks had a place in the sporting memories of participants. Smoking was merged with these memories. Important features of places that influenced smoking behaviours were raised, with signage a key talking point.
CONCLUSIONS
The colonial construct of parks do not make visible Māori values and historical associations with the land, nor do they set a framework that would promote Māori ways of being and doing, including enacting smokefree spaces and places.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PUBLIC HEALTH
This study provides the incentive to address change in parks and reserve management that would support Māori aspirations for their health and wellbeing associated with ancestral land, and give meaning to smokefree environments.
Topics: Adult; Humans; Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; New Zealand; Smoke-Free Policy; Smoking
PubMed: 35678963
DOI: 10.1111/1753-6405.13228 -
Placemaking and infrastructure through the lens of levelling up for health equity: A scoping review.Health & Place Mar 2023The planning and delivery of infrastructure influences how places create health equity. The scholarship on place and health has recently been developed into 'levelling... (Review)
Review
The planning and delivery of infrastructure influences how places create health equity. The scholarship on place and health has recently been developed into 'levelling up' principles for equity focussed policy and planning. We conducted a scoping review of the literature on infrastructure through urban regeneration and placemaking interventions. We interrogated the 15 final selected articles for their use of one or more of the five 'levelling' up principles. No article encompassed all five principles. It was most common to find two or three principles in action. Reviewing the articles against the principles allows a deeper explanation of how infrastructure planning practice can positively impact on health equity. We conclude that applying all the principles in standard infrastructure planning practice has great potential for creating places that are positive for health equity.
Topics: Humans; Health Equity; Environment
PubMed: 36774810
DOI: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2023.102975 -
Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric... Dec 2016Our surroundings affect our mood, our recovery from stress, our behavior, and, ultimately, our mental health. Understanding how our surroundings influence mental health... (Review)
Review
OBJECTIVES
Our surroundings affect our mood, our recovery from stress, our behavior, and, ultimately, our mental health. Understanding how our surroundings influence mental health is central to creating healthy cities. However, the traditional observational methods now dominant in the psychiatric epidemiology literature are not sufficient to advance such an understanding. In this essay we consider potential alternative strategies, such as randomizing people to places, randomizing places to change, or harnessing natural experiments that mimic randomized experiments.
METHODS
We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these methodological approaches with respect to (1) defining the most relevant scale and characteristics of context, (2) disentangling the effects of context from the effects of individuals' preferences and prior health, and (3) generalizing causal effects beyond the study setting.
RESULTS
Promising alternative strategies include creating many small-scale randomized place-based trials, using the deployment of place-based changes over time as natural experiments, and using fluctuations in the changes in our surroundings in combination with emerging data collection technologies to better understand how surroundings influence mood, behavior, and mental health.
CONCLUSIONS
Improving existing research strategies will require interdisciplinary partnerships between those specialized in mental health, those advancing new methods for place effects on health, and those who seek to optimize the design of local environments.
Topics: Biomedical Research; Environment; Humans; Mental Health; Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic
PubMed: 27787585
DOI: 10.1007/s00127-016-1300-x -
Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience... 2021Animals navigate within their surrounding environment to find food, shelter, and mates; this behavior forms one of the most basic means of survival. The vertebrate...
Animals navigate within their surrounding environment to find food, shelter, and mates; this behavior forms one of the most basic means of survival. The vertebrate hippocampus acts as an integration hub for varied dynamic processes such as attention, memory, perception, and decision-making. This ultimately allows an animal to move efficiently in its surroundings in search of food or to escape from predators. Place cells are neurons located within the hippocampus which are triggered in response to an animal entering specific places in its local environment. John O' Keefe first described the firing patterns of these cells in 1976 in a paper published in Experimental Neurology. This was a pioneering effort in combining the efficacy of electrophysiological recordings with the value of behavioral approaches in freely moving animals. The author also presented testable hypotheses of plausible mechanisms governing place cell activation which in turn provided a conceptual scaffold for a diverse range of subsequent work in the field. This is an excellent paper for undergraduate education because it provides the historical context to an important research avenue while simultaneously showing how clear and concise hypotheses can emerge from studying how neural activity correlates with animal behaviour.
PubMed: 34552444
DOI: No ID Found -
Leveraging the metacoupling framework for sustainability science and global sustainable development.National Science Review Jul 2023Sustainability science seeks to understand human-nature interactions behind sustainability challenges, but has largely been place-based. Traditional sustainability... (Review)
Review
Sustainability science seeks to understand human-nature interactions behind sustainability challenges, but has largely been place-based. Traditional sustainability efforts often solved problems in one place at the cost of other places, compromising global sustainability. The metacoupling framework offers a conceptual foundation and a holistic approach to integrating human-nature interactions within a place, as well as between adjacent places and between distant places worldwide. Its applications show broad utilities for advancing sustainability science with profound implications for global sustainable development. They have revealed effects of metacoupling on the performance, synergies, and trade-offs of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) across borders and across local to global scales; untangled complex interactions; identified new network attributes; unveiled spatio-temporal dynamics and effects of metacoupling; uncovered invisible feedbacks across metacoupled systems; expanded the nexus approach; detected and integrated hidden phenomena and overlooked issues; re-examined theories such as Tobler's First Law of Geography; and unfolded transformations among noncoupling, coupling, decoupling, and recoupling. Results from the applications are also helpful to achieve SDGs across space, amplify benefits of ecosystem restoration across boundaries and across scales, augment transboundary management, broaden spatial planning, boost supply chains, empower small agents in the large world, and shift from place-based to flow-based governance. Key topics for future research include cascading effects of an event in one place on other places both nearby and far away. Operationalizing the framework can benefit from further tracing flows across scales and space, uplifting the rigor of causal attribution, enlarging toolboxes, and elevating financial and human resources. Unleashing the full potential of the framework will generate more important scientific discoveries and more effective solutions for global justice and sustainable development.
PubMed: 37305165
DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwad090 -
Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 2014Studies of amygdala functioning have occupied a significant place in the history of understanding how the brain controls behavior and cognition. Early work on the... (Review)
Review
Studies of amygdala functioning have occupied a significant place in the history of understanding how the brain controls behavior and cognition. Early work on the amygdala placed this small structure as a key component in the regulation of emotion and affective behavior. Over time, our understanding of its role in brain processes has expanded, as we have uncovered amygdala influences on memory, reward behavior, and overall functioning in many other brain regions. Studies have indicated that the amygdala has widespread connections with a variety of brain structures, from the prefrontal cortex to regions of the brainstem, that explain its powerful influence on other parts of the brain and behaviors mediated by those regions. Thus, many optogenetic studies have focused on harnessing the powers of this technique to elucidate the functioning of the amygdala in relation to motivation, fear, and memory as well as to determine how the amygdala regulates activity in other structures. For example, studies using optogenetics have examined how specific circuits within amygdala nuclei regulate anxiety. Other work has provided insight into how the basolateral and central amygdala nuclei regulate memory processing underlying aversive learning. Many experiments have taken advantage of optogenetics' ability to target either genetically distinct subpopulations of neurons or the specific projections from the amygdala to other brain regions. Findings from such studies have provided evidence that particular patterns of activity in basolateral amygdala (BLA) glutamatergic neurons are related to memory consolidation processes, while other work has indicated the critical nature of amygdala inputs to the prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens (NA) in regulating behavior dependent on those downstream structures. This review will examine the recent discoveries on amygdala functioning made through experiments using optogenetics, placing these findings in the context of the major questions in the field.
PubMed: 24723867
DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00107 -
Brain Structure & Function Jan 2023Proper names are an important part of language and communication. They are thought to have a special status due to their neuropsychological and psycholinguistic profile....
Proper names are an important part of language and communication. They are thought to have a special status due to their neuropsychological and psycholinguistic profile. To what extent proper names rely on the same semantic system as common names is not clear. In an fMRI study, we presented the same group of participants with both proper and common names to compare the associated activations. Both person and place names, as well as personally familiar and famous names were used, and compared with words representing concrete and abstract concepts. A whole-brain analysis was followed by a detailed analysis of subdivisions of four regions of interest known to play a central role in the semantic system: angular gyrus, anterior temporal lobe, posterior cingulate complex, and medial temporal lobe. We found that most subdivisions within these regions bilaterally were activated by both proper names and common names. The bilateral perirhinal and right entorhinal cortex showed a response specific to proper names, suggesting an item-specific role in retrieving person and place related information. While activation to person and place names overlapped greatly, place names were differentiated by activating areas associated with spatial memory and navigation. Person names showed greater right hemisphere involvement compared to places, suggesting a wider range of associations. Personally familiar names showed stronger activation bilaterally compared to famous names, indicating representations that are enhanced by autobiographic and episodic details. Both proper and common names are processed in the wider semantic system that contains associative, episodic, and spatial components. Processing of proper names is characterized by a somewhat stronger involvement these components, rather than by a fundamentally different system.
Topics: Humans; Semantics; Temporal Lobe; Brain; Language; Entorhinal Cortex; Magnetic Resonance Imaging
PubMed: 36372812
DOI: 10.1007/s00429-022-02593-9 -
Journal of Environmental Psychology Dec 2020The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted a reconsideration, perhaps even a fundamental shift in our relationships with place. As people worldwide have experienced 'lockdown,'...
The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted a reconsideration, perhaps even a fundamental shift in our relationships with place. As people worldwide have experienced 'lockdown,' we find ourselves emplaced in new and complex ways. In this Commentary, we draw attention to the re-working of people-place relations that the pandemic has catalysed thus far. We offer insights and suggestions for future interdisciplinary research, informed by our diverse positionalities as researchers based in different continents employing diverse approaches to people-place research. The article is structured in two sections. First, we consider theoretical aspects of our current relationships to place by proposing a framework of three interdependent axes: emplacement-displacement, inside-outside, and fixity-flow. Second, we identify six implications of these dialectics: for un-making and re-making 'home'; precarity, exclusion and non-normative experiences of place; a new politics of public space; health, wellbeing and access to 'outside' recreational spaces; re-sensing place, virtual escapes and fluid places, and methodological and ethical considerations. Across these topics, we identify 15 key questions to guide future research. We conclude by asserting that learning lessons from the global pandemic is necessarily tentative, requiring careful observation of altered life circumstances, and will be deficient without taking relationships with place into account.
PubMed: 36540651
DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101514