Arnaud : Hello and thank you for being here. The purpose of this interview is firstly to talk about what brought us to social psychology and what are our future projects…Secondly, we’ll discuss the proponents of environmental psychology, which is our main common interest.
Can you tell me how you get here ? What was your path before getting in this Master ?
Alizée : Waw it’s a big question ! Let’s see…I became interested in psychology because I wanted to understand the functioning and the interactions of people, I always observed a lot and I just wanted to understand what I had observed.
I also had an interest in biology, which explains another type of human functioning.
So, social psychology almost imposed itself on me, almost on the same level as cognitive psychology. However studies lead to practice, and the practice of social psychology suits me better
Concerning my path it is rather classical, I well-read a lot before joining the license of psychology, and once embarked, I wanted to continue until the master, I was so interested.
I’m talking, I’m talking but what about you? What motivated you to join this master and how did you succeed?
Arnaud : Hmm…At the beginning, I actually chose psychology quite radomly… I mean, I didn’t have a clear reason, I was interested in understanding people, quite like you, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do…I’m lucky, because I enjoyed it immediately ! Especially when I discovered social psychology. It gives so many clues to understand how groups and societies are functioning… That’s really fascinating…
But what really decided me to go to this master was discovering the field of environmental psychology I think, but we may discuss it later in the interview !
Do you know which job you would like to do once you will graduate ?
Alizée : That’s a good question because I’m not sure yet, haha. If I have, or rather if I take the opportunity, I would like to find work in the field of environmental psychology, and otherwise turn to human resources. I would like to work as a consultant to vary the environment and missions. But I repeat, I’m not sure…
Maybe you have a better idea than mine for you ?
Arnaud : Actually, it was quite foggy until now but it gets clearer month after month ! I think I want to do a PhD in environmental psychology, to become really an expert of ecological behavior. However, I need a PhD grant to do it…I hope I will get one ! Once I’ll be a doctor (If I suceed), I’m not one hundred percent sure. My dream job would be to work at college but it is tough to get a stable job as an associate professor ! My other plan, like you, is to work as a psychologist, as a consultant in environmental and social psychology. My job would be to help organizations to promote responsible behaviors (reducing waste, this kind of thing). And may be trying later, like in ten years, to become a researcher in social psychology !
Now that we know each other a bit more, I would like to discuss about environmental psychology, which is a field that we both are very interested into. Why are you interested in it ?
Alizée : That’s right, I’m very interested about-it. To be honest, I didn’t know that psychology and environment could be linked. It was in class that I learned this discipline, and so my interest grew, especially for ecology.
This is probably because it is a concept that touches me and that on a daily basis, I started to change my behavior towards a more environmentally friendly way of functioning. This is very important and I think that everyone should be interested.
Arnaud : I can only agree with you ! My story is quite similar, I didn’t know psychology could support the climate transition before going to this class ! Even psychologists, actually a lot of our colleagues, do not know this field….But, as experts of the behavior, we can provide a huge support to organizations or governments in their politics !
We know that if we want a behavioral change, we need to do more than just asking people like “can you please no throw in nature your trash ?”. We know it’s more complex !
Do you have any previous experiences related to environmental psychology ? Like a internship or a research that you conducted ?
Alizée : Yes ! Last year, I worked on a course project where we were supposed to do some sort of group research. The name of this work is : Pro-environmental behavior and personality traits in adolescents. I wasn’t sure about personality traits, but we don’t always have a say in group work. So i worked mostly on behaviours that reduce the negative impact on the environment, and we tried to create a scale measuring the environmental behaviours of students. We had several problems related to our lack of experience in research and the lack of time so our results were not very good. But I enjoyed working in this field. And this year I decided to do my research for the master in environmental psychology as well.
But you must have had some interesting experiences with environmental psychology, can you tell me about it ?
Arnaud : Yes ! I had the opportunity to enroll in several experiences related to environmental psychology !
Firstly, I worked on a research project called COM2SICA, leaded by Oscar Navarro, during my third and fourth year. It is a research that tries to understand better how people react to natural disaster : we used Virtual reality to simulate a tsunami !
My master’s thesis is also about environmental psychology, more specifically about green eating ! The purpose of my research is to assess the extent to which the connectedness to nature can contribute to ecological food behaviors. I built a scale to measure these behaviors and the results show that a high level of connectedness can explain a high level of ecological eating.
And… My end-of-course internship will be to construct and test an intervention in order to reduce waste in organisations !
I would like to conclude our interview by discussing the reasons why we think that environmental psychology is important, especially for the future. What is your point of view ?
Alizée : This question could be the subject of a full interview ! but I will try to be brief… Already at birth we are interacting with the environment, whether social or physical.
Unfortunately, we tend not to pay attention to it, and if we continue like this, we will have to deal with many environmental disasters. We even already face it ! We can see it with the rise of water, noise and air pollution, the accumulation of waste, etc… This is why environmental psychology is important, it allows us to understand our interactions with the environment, and to help us adapt our behaviors so that they respect it.
Arnaud : I agree ! We know now that some huge changes must be realized in order to reduce our CO2 emissions! In that kind of global crisis, all sciences, including psychology, have to work as much as possible to face this massive challenge. Then, environmental psychology can be very useful to accompany and support our evolution toward a more green and sustainable society.
Thank you for your time ! This was very interesting ! We understand better how we can help, as young people and as psychologists ! Now it’s time to act !
Alizée : Yes ! Thank you for your time !