Developmental
Psychology
Chapter 5
, 1. Describing Person-Environment Interactions:
» To appreciate the roles different environments, play in our lives, we need a framework for interpreting how
interact with them.
» Theories of person environment-interactions help us understand how people view their environments and
views may change as people age.
- These views have been described since the 1930s and have significant impact on the study of adults.
» Kurt Lewin, was the first psychologist to conceptualize person environment interactions as an interactive r
which he represented in the equation B= f (P,E).
- This relationship defining person-environment interactions means behavior (B) is a function of both the
the environment (E).
» More recent theories to Lewin’s equation and describe the components in the equation in more detail.
- Most of these models emphasize the importance of people's perceptions of their environments.