Chapter 9: Psychology in Relation to the Environment and Social Concerns
In the 1960s, an American scientist named John B. Calhoun built what he called a “universe” for rats. It was an enclosure with unlimited food, unlimited water and no predators — everything an animal could possibly need to thrive. Only one thing was limited: space. Then he let the population grow, and he watched.
At first the colony flourished. But as the enclosure filled and the animals were pressed closer and closer together, something disturbing began to happen. Normal behaviour started to fall apart. Some rats turned aggressive and attacked others for no clear reason. Some withdrew completely and refused to interact at all. Mothers stopped caring for their young. Many animals simply stopped mating. Calhoun gave this collapse a name: the “behavioural sink.”
What unsettled observers was that nothing was actually missing. There was plenty to eat and drink and no danger anywhere. The only thing in short supply was room — and that alone was enough to unravel an entire society. Calhoun’s rats were not people, and we must be careful about reading too much into them. But the experiment forced a serious question: if crowding could do this to animals, what is our own environment quietly doing to us?
This chapter takes that question seriously. It asks how the world around us — crowds, noise, pollution, disasters, even poverty — shapes the way we think, feel and act, and how we, in turn, shape that world right back.
Diagram
Fig. 9.0-1 – a two-way loop: on one side a human figure acting on the environment (building a city, generating noise, smoke and crowds); on the other side the environment acting back on the person (arrows pointing to a thought-bubble, a mood face, and a health symbol); double-headed arrows running between the two to show the reciprocal relationship
Keep these five questions in mind as you read. By the end of this chapter you will be able to answer every one of them.
9.1 Meaning and Nature of Counselling
This chapter opened with a simple idea: living well means learning to adjust to our surroundings while holding on to who we are. That adjustment is not always easy, and few of us manage it entirely alone.
When stress, confusion or a hard decision grows too heavy to carry by ourselves, one of the most dependable forms of help is counselling. It is not about being told what to do. It is about being heard, understood, and helped to think more clearly for oneself.
9.1.1 What Counselling Is and Its Elements
Counselling is a professional, purposeful helping process in which a trained counsellor works alongside a person to understand a difficulty and to reach the person’s own decisions about it. The counsellor guides the process; the person keeps the power to decide.
Notice that counselling is a relationship, not a lecture. The counsellor does not hand over ready-made answers, because a solution the person discovers for themselves is far more likely to be understood, accepted and acted upon than one imposed from outside.
Several features together give counselling its particular character. It is voluntary, so the person chooses to take part. It is confidential, so what is shared stays protected. It is client-centred, meaning the person’s needs, not the counsellor’s opinions, guide the work. And it is developmental rather than corrective — it helps ordinary people cope with the ordinary demands of living, not only those facing severe illness.
The elements of counselling
Every counselling situation is built from a few essential elements. Remove any one of them and the process stops being counselling.
- The counsellor — a trained, skilled helper who provides the structure, the skills and the safe space.
- The client, also called the counsellee — the person seeking help, who brings the concern and does the real work of change.
- The counselling relationship — the working bond between the two, resting on rapport, the sense of trust, warmth and comfort that lets a person speak openly.
- A shared goal — an agreed sense of what the person wants to understand, decide or cope with.
- A supportive setting — a private, confidential space, physical or emotional, in which honest talk is possible.
9.1.2 Characteristics of a Good Counsellor
Skills can be trained, but counselling also depends on the counsellor’s way of being with the client. Three qualities matter most, and a counselling relationship that lacks them tends to fail no matter how clever the techniques. As shown in Fig. 9.1-1, these three qualities are the ground on which the whole relationship stands.
Diagram
Fig. 9.1-1 – three pillars labelled Authenticity, Unconditional Positive Regard and Empathy, together supporting a platform on which a counsellor and client sit facing each other, with an arrow leading the client toward a goal marked “clarity and decision”
The first quality is authenticity, also called genuineness. An authentic counsellor is real rather than hiding behind a professional mask; what they show on the outside honestly matches what they feel inside. Clients quickly sense pretence, and a counsellor who seems false cannot be trusted with difficult truths.
The second is unconditional positive regard, a warm, non-judgemental acceptance of the person exactly as they are. The counsellor values the client as a human being regardless of what the client has done, felt or confessed. This does not mean approving of every action; it means the person’s worth is never in question.
The third is empathy, the ability to sense the client’s feelings and see the world as the client sees it, almost as if from the inside — and then to convey that understanding back. Empathy is what makes a person feel truly met rather than merely observed.
9.1.3 Communication Skills in Counselling
Good intentions are not enough; a counsellor also needs practised communication skills. These are the tools through which authenticity, acceptance and empathy actually reach the client.
The most important skill is active listening — listening fully to both the words and the feelings behind them, without interrupting, judging or mentally rehearsing a reply. Most everyday listening is half-attention; active listening is complete, focused presence.
Closely tied to this is attending, the skill of showing the client that they have your full focus. Attending means putting away distractions, facing the person, and remaining alert to their smallest cues, so the client feels the counsellor is entirely with them.
Paraphrasing is the skill of restating, in the counsellor’s own words, what the client has just expressed — “So it sounds like you feel let down by your closest friend.” Paraphrasing serves two purposes: it checks that the counsellor has understood correctly, and it shows the client they have truly been heard.
Speaking well matters too. The counsellor’s speech should be clear, simple, warm and well-timed, favouring open questions (“How did that feel?”) over closed ones that can be answered in a word. When to speak — and when to stay silent and let the client continue — is itself a skill.
Much of communication is wordless, so body language carries great weight. Eye contact, an open and relaxed posture, leaning slightly forward, nodding and a gentle facial expression all signal attention and acceptance; crossed arms or a wandering gaze signal the opposite.
The role of culture in listening
What counts as good listening is not the same everywhere, and a skilled counsellor adapts to the client’s cultural world.
9.1.4 The Counsellor’s Psychological Testing Skills
Listening tells a counsellor a great deal, but sometimes a clearer, more objective picture is needed. For this, counsellors draw on psychological tests — standardised tools that measure abilities, interests, personality or difficulties in a systematic way.
A counsellor might use an intelligence or aptitude test to help a student weigh career options, an interest inventory to explore what genuinely motivates a person, or a personality inventory to understand how someone typically thinks and reacts. Used well, these tests turn vague impressions into dependable information.
Testing, however, is a skilled task with four distinct parts. The counsellor must be able to select the right test for the question at hand, administer it under proper standardised conditions, score it accurately, and — most importantly — interpret and explain the results to the client in a supportive, understandable way. A test result handed over without care can confuse or wound rather than help.
Seen together, these skills — a genuine, accepting, empathic manner, sharp communication, cultural sensitivity and responsible use of tests — are what allow a counsellor to help a person cope with the pressures of living, including the environmental and social pressures that the rest of this chapter examines.
9.2 Environmental Effect on Human Behaviour
We are as much a part of nature as nature is a part of us. The world around us presses on our senses, moods and choices every waking moment, and we press back on it just as hard. This two-way relationship between people and their surroundings is studied in a branch of the subject called environmental psychology.
By environment we mean everything around us — not only the physical world but also our social, work and cultural settings. This surrounding comes in two broad forms. The natural environment is made of elements with little or no human construction, such as rivers, forests and hills. The built environment is created by people for their own convenience, and includes cities, roads, factories and even the parks and ponds we design.
This section looks first at how these environments shape us, and then at how the changes we make to the environment come back to shape us in turn.
9.2.1 How the Environment Shapes Behaviour
Our surroundings influence us in ways we rarely stop to notice. Five areas show this influence especially clearly, as summarised in Fig. 9.2-1: perception, emotion, occupation, lifestyle and attitude.
Diagram
Fig. 9.2-1 – a central circle labelled “The Environment” with five arrows radiating out to five boxes: Perception, Emotion, Occupation, Lifestyle, Attitude — showing one environment shaping five aspects of behaviour
Perception
How we perceive a place depends heavily on our past experiences with places like it. One person may feel a rush of joy near a lake because it revives happy childhood memories of swimming; another may feel dread at the same lake after a frightening near-drowning. The lake is identical; the perception is not.
Environmental cues such as lighting, sound and temperature therefore trigger different perceptual and emotional responses in different people, filtered through each person’s individual history.
Emotion
Environments carry emotional weight. Serene natural beauty tends to calm us, which is why so many people travel to hills, beaches or historic monuments to recover from stress. In contrast, studies find that people living in dirty, disorganised or slum surroundings report lower mood and higher rates of depression.
At the extreme, natural disasters can leave lasting emotional scars, contributing to conditions such as learned helplessness, depression and post-traumatic stress, a link explored later in this section.
Occupation
Where people live shapes how they earn a living. Communities on fertile plains crossed by rivers usually take up agriculture; those near the sea often turn to fishing; those in mineral-rich areas to mining; and those in the mountains frequently to animal husbandry and tourism. The land offers certain opportunities, and human occupations grow up around them.
Lifestyle
Occupation in turn shapes daily life. A farmer rises before sunrise and sleeps early, at the very hour a factory worker or office-goer is only returning home for the evening. A woman in a city fills water from a tap; a woman in a dry desert region may walk kilometres for it before the household wakes. Even diet follows suit: those doing heavy manual labour need more energy-rich food than those at a desk.
Attitude
Finally, the environment quietly moulds our attitudes — our settled ways of evaluating things. Several environmental forces do this work together.
- Family experiences shape attitudes towards tradition, relationships and social norms.
- The socioeconomic group a person, or even a nation, belongs to shapes what they worry about — wealthy societies may debate climate change while poorer ones still struggle for food, clean water and shelter.
- Personal experiences colour attitudes sharply: a night of loud firecrackers that kept an unwell elder awake can turn a whole family against them.
- Education and awareness of environmental problems can push people towards concern and towards seeking solutions.
- Adverse conditions such as pollution, dirt and noise tend to lower motivation and raise stress, souring a person’s outlook.
9.2.2 Human Influence on the Environment: Noise and Pollution
The relationship runs both ways. In making our lives more comfortable, human beings have altered the environment on a vast scale — releasing chlorofluorocarbons from refrigerators and air conditioners, burning fossil fuels that trap heat and warm the planet, clearing forests for cities, and using natural resources faster than they can be replaced. These changes now rebound on us, chiefly through noise and pollution.
Noise
Noise is unwanted, unpleasant sound that we find uncomfortable or irritating. Endured over long periods, it harms both mood and physical health, and beyond hearing loss it can reduce concentration and lower our performance on demanding tasks.
Interestingly, research shows the effect of noise depends on the task and on the noise itself. Simple, familiar tasks such as basic addition are barely affected, because we habituate to steady background sound. Deeply interesting tasks are also protected, since our full attention absorbs us and lets us tune the noise out. What disturbs us most is intermittent noise — sound that starts up suddenly and unpredictably — because we cannot get used to it in the way we adjust to a continuous hum.
Pollution
Pollution is the contamination of our air, water and soil by harmful substances, and its effects reach the mind as surely as the body.
- Toxic substances such as lead in soil and water can impair brain development in children, lowering cognitive ability and causing other lasting health harm.
- Long-term exposure to polluted air has been linked to a higher risk of anxiety and low mood, and to weaker memory and other cognitive functions.
- Air pollution is associated with raised stress and lowered concentration, and studies have connected it to reduced work performance.
The most troubling finding is that pollution’s effects are harshest on those least able to withstand them: children, whose brains are still developing, and older adults, whose systems are already weakening. Pollution is not only an outdoor problem, either — indoor smoke from tobacco makes non-smokers in the home passive smokers, breathing the same contaminated air.
9.2.3 Crowding, Crowding Tolerance and Competition Tolerance
In everyday speech “crowding” just means a lot of people in one place. In psychology it means something more specific. Density is the objective, physical fact — the number of people in a given space. Crowding is the subjective, personal experience — the feeling of discomfort that too many people can produce. The two are not the same, and that difference explains a great deal.
Because crowding is a perception, the same packed space can affect two people quite differently. A person delighting in a music concert with friends may feel no discomfort at all, while a neighbour jostled in the same crush feels stressed and hemmed in. When we feel crowded, we typically report discomfort, an unpleasant sense about the surrounding space, a loss of privacy, and a feeling of losing control over our own social interactions.
Indian psychologists have studied crowding closely, in densely populated cities across the country, precisely because our large population makes it such a significant everyday reality. Their findings, echoing the opening story of this chapter, show that crowding tends to raise stress, weaken performance on tasks that need memory and concentration, and increase both aggression and social withdrawal. Children growing up in very crowded homes often show poorer academic performance, less persistence and more conflict, while adults may face raised blood pressure, weakened immunity and disturbed sleep.
Two kinds of tolerance
People differ in how well they endure such pressure, and psychology names two abilities that explain the difference.
Crowding tolerance is a person’s ability to cope with a high-density environment without being overwhelmed by it.
Competition tolerance is a person’s ability to accept a situation as a competition and still perform well within it, rather than being distressed by the rivalry.
A person high in competition tolerance reacts with less negative emotion, and therefore less stress — someone who treats a tough job interview as an interesting challenge, not a dreaded ordeal, copes far better than someone who feels only threatened by it.
9.2.4 Natural Disasters
A disaster is an event so damaging to property, environment and life that the affected people cannot cope without outside help. Some disasters, such as wars and industrial accidents, stem from human action. Others — floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions — occur where humans have no direct hand, and these are called natural disasters.
How badly a disaster affects a person depends on three things: how severe it was and how much was lost, the person’s own traits and coping ability, and whether the person was already under stress before it struck. The effects unfold over three timescales.
Immediate effects
In the first hours and days, survivors are often disoriented, confused, and prone to denying the full scale of what has happened. Physically and cognitively they may struggle to sleep, feel exhausted, show a raised heart rate, lose the ability to concentrate, yet vividly re-run the frightening memory. Many suffer injuries, and some lose their lives. Disasters also expose people to further dangers — contaminated water, disease, extreme heat or cold — and cut off vital services such as healthcare and sanitation, so that treatment becomes hard to reach just when it is needed most.
Short-term effects
In the weeks that follow come psychological distress — fear, anxiety, grief, shock and trauma, the lasting psychological wound left by an overwhelming experience. Loss of homes and livelihoods can also force survivors to relocate; we often see villagers who, stripped of everything by a flood, migrate to cities and end up doing menial work and living on pavements. This displacement may be temporary if people can be resettled, but it can harden into a long-term crisis when rehabilitation fails.
Long-term effects
For some, the shadow of a disaster stretches for years. They may develop chronic anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. Many carry survivor’s guilt — a painful, remorseful sense that they should have done more to save others, or that they did not deserve to survive when others did not. Children are the most vulnerable of all: still developing, they bear the effects longest, facing not only illness and psychological harm but also disrupted schooling and the upheaval of relocation.
Efforts to minimise the effects
Disasters are sudden, but their damage can be reduced. Improved weather forecasting and broadcasting allow early warnings — telling fishermen to stay ashore or coastal residents to evacuate — which lowers the toll of death and injury. For less predictable events such as earthquakes, public awareness helps: drills in schools, information at fairs and community gatherings, and radio and television messages teach people what to do. Afterwards, help takes three forms — material aid such as food, clothing and medicine; counselling for individuals and groups to work through the trauma; and rehabilitation through employment so survivors can rebuild their lives. Financial and government support restores livelihoods, but only proper counselling and psychiatric care can help survivors recover psychologically and move forward.
9.2.5 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Most people who live through a terrible event manage, with time and support, to handle the memories and move on. But for some, the experience refuses to fade, and their daily life becomes more impaired with each passing month. These are the people living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
PTSD can follow many kinds of trauma, including natural disasters, serious accidents, violence, and combat. It was formally recognised as a distinct disorder in 1980, and in the classification followed here — the DSM-IV — it is grouped among the anxiety disorders. Professionals look for symptoms that continue for more than a month and clearly disrupt the person’s life, since a brief reaction to a shocking event is a normal part of recovery, not a disorder.
The features of PTSD fall into three broad groups, shown in Fig. 9.2-2.
Diagram
Fig. 9.2-2 – three linked boxes under the heading PTSD: (1) Re-experiencing — intrusive memories, flashbacks, nightmares; (2) Avoidance and numbing — avoiding reminders, emotional detachment; (3) Increased arousal — poor sleep, irritability, hypervigilance, startling easily
The first group is re-experiencing the trauma. Unwanted, frightening memories return again and again, and the person may relive the whole event in a flashback — a vivid sense that the trauma is happening once more. Distressing dreams, nightmares, and strong reactions to anything that recalls the event all belong here.
The second group is avoidance and numbing. The person tries hard to stay away from the places, people, thoughts and conversations that bring the memory back, and often becomes emotionally numb — detached from others, losing interest in activities once enjoyed, and no longer feeling close even to family.
The third group is hyperarousal, a state of being constantly keyed-up. The person may struggle to sleep or concentrate, become irritable and quick to anger, feel perpetually on guard, and startle easily at small things.
9.3 Promoting Pro-environmental Behaviour
The previous section left us with an uncomfortable picture: the environment shapes our minds and bodies, and the damage we do to it comes straight back to harm us. We cannot return to a simpler, pre-industrial life, but we can change how we treat the world around us. This is where psychology becomes genuinely useful — because protecting the environment is, at bottom, a problem of changing human behaviour.
Pro-environmental behaviour means any action that protects or benefits the environment, from switching off an unused fan to planting a tree.
9.3.1 How Pro-environmental Behaviour Is Encouraged
Knowing that a behaviour is good for the planet does not, by itself, make people do it. Psychology suggests several dependable ways to turn good intentions into settled habits.
The first is education and awareness. When people learn how their daily choices affect the environment, and are shown the real results of green actions, attitudes begin to shift. Building such awareness into the school curriculum plants these values early, when habits form most easily.
The second is habit formation through reward. Behaviour that is reinforced tends to be repeated, so rewards and incentives for green actions help them stick. Governments can use this in both directions: rewarding groups and individuals who behave responsibly, and penalising organisations that pollute, so that harmful behaviour carries a real cost.
The third is modelling and making green behaviour desirable. When admired figures publicly plant trees, cycle to work or refuse plastic, and advertising presents such acts as attractive, others learn by imitation and their attitudes change.
The fourth is often the most powerful: making the desirable behaviour easy. People recycle far more when bins are everywhere, and drive less when public transport is comfortable and affordable. Removing the effort barrier does more than any lecture. Real change therefore needs action at every level — individual habits, organisational systems, and government policy — working together.
9.3.2 Reducing Air and Noise Pollution
Air pollution is the contamination of air by gases, dust and smoke from vehicle exhausts, industry, wildfires, the burning of dry leaves, firecrackers and cigarettes, causing asthma, heart disease, cancer and climate change. Reducing it takes effort at two levels.
At the individual level, in daily life we can:
- walk or cycle short distances, and share carpools or use public transport instead of driving alone;
- keep a vehicle well maintained and fuel-efficient, and switch to an electric one where possible;
- build energy-saving habits from childhood — switching off idle appliances, choosing efficient products, and giving up smoking;
- reuse and recycle, choose eco-friendly products, and compost dry leaves instead of burning them;
- plant trees, which cool a place, beautify it and clean the air.
At the larger scale, governments and organisations can adopt renewable energy such as solar and wind, and encourage green initiatives by schools, businesses and local bodies.
Noise pollution is too-loud, unwanted sound from transport, industry, entertainment and construction, producing stress, hearing loss, irritability and heart problems. It too can be managed:
- maintaining or replacing noisy machines, and soundproofing the areas that house them;
- regulating needless honking and the use of horns near sensitive places such as schools and hospitals;
- controlling loudspeakers and public-address systems, especially at night;
- using personal protection such as earplugs, earmuffs or noise-cancelling headphones;
- planning airports, railway stations and industrial zones away from homes, building smoother roads, and growing dense trees and shrubs, which absorb sound as natural barriers.
9.3.3 Reducing Non-biodegradable Goods and Plastics
Some materials cannot be broken down by nature and linger on the earth for thousands of years, harming wildlife and ecosystems. Products made from them — glass, metal, synthetic fibres, styrofoam and plastic — are called non-biodegradable consumer goods.
The most workable way to manage them is the framework of the 3Rs — reduce, reuse, recycle — followed in that order of priority, as Fig. 9.3-1 shows.
Diagram
Fig. 9.3-1 – a priority triangle of the 3Rs from most to least preferred: Reduce at the top (widest), then Reuse in the middle, then Recycle at the bottom, each labelled with a quick example (skip the plastic bag / repair and restyle / segregate and process)
- Reduce comes first: avoid disposable cutlery, straws and plastic bags; choose reusable steel, glass or cloth; plan meals so packaged food is not wasted; and prefer natural fibres such as cotton and wool over synthetic ones.
- Reuse comes next: use a product in a new way (a glass jar for storage, a mug for a plant), repair and restyle instead of buying new, and donate usable goods.
- Recycle comes last, when reducing and reusing are no longer possible: segregate waste properly by category so it can be processed, and dispose of dangerous items such as batteries and e-waste only at designated points.
Plastic deserves special attention. Though only one part of the non-biodegradable group, its cheapness and versatility have made it one of the most hazardous pollutants of all. Individuals can cut plastic use by carrying their own reusable bags, bottles and cutlery and by storing food in glass or metal. Governments help through bans and high taxes on single-use plastic, and through investment in better recycling. At the organisational level, eco-friendly packaging of bamboo, paper or aluminium, along with research into improved recycling, can slow the mountain of plastic waste already choking the earth.
9.3.4 Garbage Management
Garbage is the waste generated in households, especially in the kitchen. Dumped carelessly, it makes a locality dirty and foul-smelling and invites disease, so managing its disposal matters for both health and appearance.
Garbage management runs through four stages — collection, transportation, treatment and disposal — and works far better when a further step is added at the start: segregation at source. When households sort their waste into groups — wet waste such as food scraps, dry waste such as plastic, paper and metal, and hazardous waste such as e-waste and surgical waste — every later stage becomes more efficient. Municipal workers then collect and transport the sorted waste, which is recycled, composted, sent to landfill or incinerated as appropriate. Industrial and hospital waste, being especially harmful, must be handled with particular care.
9.3.5 Planting Trees
Few pro-environmental acts do as much good as planting trees. Beyond their environmental value, trees soothe our stressed nerves and build a deep connection to nature, and they stand as a source of identity for many communities, especially tribal communities living at the edge of the forests.
Their environmental work is remarkable. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air, slowing global warming, and release oxygen that purifies it. Their roots act as natural filters that clean rivers and groundwater, and hold the soil in place, preventing erosion and landslides. To plant well, we should choose native species so that the area’s biodiversity — its variety of living things — is supported, and, crucially, care for the trees after planting so that they survive. Involving the local community in this care protects the trees and strengthens the community’s shared identity at the same time.
9.3.6 Laws on Construction and Environmental Design
Individual and community effort is essential, but it is not enough on its own. The relentless spread of the concrete jungle — building without regard for the ecology — has to be checked by law.
Governments therefore enforce rules on construction that require builders to respect environmental design: to protect green cover and water bodies, to obtain proper clearances, and to avoid damaging the ecological balance of an area. Individuals and organisations that violate these laws are penalised. Firm and fair enforcement of such laws is of the greatest importance if we are to hand on a healthy, liveable habitat to the generations that follow.
9.4 Adverse Effects of Poverty and Deprivation
Look out of a bus window in almost any Indian city and you will see it: people without homes, sleeping on pavements through every kind of weather, unable to afford food for their families. Poverty is not a distant statistic. It is a daily condition that shapes how millions think, feel and behave — which is why psychology, and not only economics, has something to say about it.
9.4.2 Effects on Cognitive Processes and Motivation
Poverty places the mind under continuous strain. Constant worry — about resources, about conditions at home, about what tomorrow will bring — occupies mental space that would otherwise be free for thinking. The result is measurable: attention, memory and the capacity to plan ahead all suffer, especially in children.
There is a second disadvantage on top of the stress. Children in poor households often lack cognitive stimulation — the books, games, conversation and varied experiences that exercise a developing mind. Studies find that severely deprived children perform worse than less deprived children on intellectual tasks such as classification, verbal reasoning, and the perception of time and depth.
These difficulties translate directly into lower academic scores, which in turn close the door to higher education — one of the mechanisms by which the poverty cycle reproduces itself.
The damage to motivation is subtler but just as serious. When effort repeatedly fails to improve one’s situation, a person begins to feel helpless and stops trying, and motivation falls. Because the future looks bleak, attention narrows to the present: immediate rewards are chosen over larger, later ones. It is important to read this correctly. This is not a defect of character. It is a rational-looking response to an environment where the future has proved unreliable — and it deepens disadvantage all the same.
9.4.3 Effects on Personality and Mental Health
A person constantly fending for basic needs, while feeling deprived and socially disadvantaged, tends to develop low self-esteem — a low evaluation of one’s own worth. Self-confidence falls with it, and the person may become withdrawn and hopeless.
The pressure of the present also produces what may be called a present-biased outlook: thinking of the here and now rather than the long term. This can lead to poor choices in food and health, and to risk-taking whose long-term consequences are not weighed.
Mental health suffers too. Chronic stress and anxiety, sustained over years, make depression and anxiety disorders far more likely. Many people in these conditions are also exposed to trauma — violence, or turmoil at home born of an insecure environment — and some go on to develop PTSD, discussed in Section 9.2.5.
The relationship then becomes circular. Poor mental health makes it harder to work, study and cope, which deepens poverty; deeper poverty worsens mental health. Mental illness is thus both a result of poverty and a cause of its continuation.
9.4.5 Major Causes of Poverty
Poverty rarely has a single cause. Several factors act together on a person’s financial condition, and they can be grouped under three heads.
Economic Factors
The most obvious economic cause is unemployment. When capital is scarce and few new enterprises start up, vacancies dry up, wages stay low, and even those with work live under the fear of losing it. An unequal distribution of wealth compounds this: when a few control most of a society’s wealth, a group with almost none is the inevitable counterpart. Sharp rises in the prices of essential goods push families that were just managing into hardship.
Environmental Factors
Both the political and the natural environment can impoverish a community. Conflict and war destroy infrastructure and displace people from their homes and livelihoods. Natural calamities such as floods and earthquakes do the same, and climate change is adding to the pressure as droughts and floods destroy crops and leave people short of food. Some geographical regions — a desert with few resources, for instance — offer little to live on. And poor infrastructure, such as the absence of usable roads or bridges, can cut a locality off from economic opportunities it would otherwise have had.
9.4.6 Measures to Reduce Poverty
The causes of poverty are many and tangled, which makes it hard to say which produces which. What is clear is that for the sake of social justice — and of a society that can live together contentedly — a serious effort must be made. Measures fall into three broad groups.
Economic Measures
Fighting poverty requires job creation and better wages. Supporting entrepreneurship and small and medium industries helps, since these generate more labour-based employment than white-collar sectors do; such enterprises often need credit to begin. Credit also allows farmers to obtain better technology and tools and raise their production. Encouraging trade, and with it economic growth, pushes back against poverty more broadly.
Governance Measures
Government can improve roads and communication, establish schools and colleges, and support the unemployed through special employment programmes — in India, schemes such as Antyodaya and MGNREGA. Providing quality health care and sanitation programmes contributes as well.
Two things deserve emphasis at the close. First, material measures alone are not enough: the mental-health difficulties that accompany poverty — depression, anxiety, PTSD — must also be addressed through access to counsellors, therapists and psychiatrists, which is where this chapter began. Second, this is where the whole chapter converges. Human behaviour is shaped by conditions that look, at first glance, to have nothing to do with psychology at all — the air we breathe, the noise around us, the space we live in, and the resources we can command. Looking after ourselves therefore means looking after those conditions, and looking after the people for whom they are hardest.
9.5 Summary
Counselling is a professional, collaborative and confidential process in which a trained counsellor helps a client understand their concerns, cope, and reach their own decisions. It does not hand out solutions; it helps people help themselves.
Its elements are the counsellor, the client, the relationship of trust and rapport, a safe confidential setting, and a shared goal. The relationship itself does much of the work, which is why rapport is built before anything else.
A good counsellor is marked by three attitudes: authenticity (being genuine, not masked), unconditional positive regard (accepting the client as a person of worth whatever they disclose), and empathy (understanding the client’s feelings from the client’s point of view). Empathy differs from sympathy, which looks at trouble from the outside.
These attitudes reach the client through communication skills — attention and active listening, paraphrasing, unhurried speaking with open questions, and body language. What counts as good listening varies with culture, so eye contact, silence and personal space must be read against the client’s background.
A counsellor also needs psychological testing skills: choosing the right test, administering it under standardised conditions, scoring it accurately, and interpreting results in the context of the whole person. A score is information, never a label.
Environmental psychology studies the two-way relationship between people and their surroundings — physical, social, work and cultural, both natural and built.
The environment shapes perception (the same scene is read differently depending on past experience), emotion (natural beauty restores; dirty, disorganised surroundings lower mood), occupation (land and resources set out the available work), lifestyle (work decides sleep, food and daily rhythm) and attitude (family, socioeconomic position, personal experience, education and exposure to pollution all mould it).
Noise is unwanted sound. It harms concentration, mood and health, but affects simple, well-practised or highly interesting tasks least; unpredictable, intermittent noise disturbs most, because we cannot habituate to it.
Pollution impairs brain development, is linked to raised anxiety and depression, and is associated with poorer memory, concentration and productivity. Children and the elderly are the most vulnerable.
Density is the objective number of people in a space; crowding is the subjective feeling of discomfort that density may produce. Crowding brings stress, poorer cognitive performance, aggression, withdrawal, social tension and physical effects such as raised blood pressure and disturbed sleep.
Crowding tolerance is the ability to cope with high density without much stress; competition tolerance is the ability to accept and perform in a competitive situation. Growing up in a collectivist, shared-space setting tends to raise crowding tolerance, though extreme crowding stresses everyone.
A natural disaster overwhelms a community’s ability to cope. Its effects run in phases: immediate (disorientation and denial, physical and cognitive reactions, injury, hazards, loss of services), short-term (psychological distress, homelessness) and long-term (chronic anxiety, depression, PTSD, survivor’s guilt, lasting harm to children). Impact depends on the disaster’s severity, the person’s traits and coping ability, and prior strain.
Effects can be reduced by early warning through forecasting and broadcast, by preparedness and drills, and by help on three fronts — material aid, counselling, and rehabilitation through employment.
PTSD, classified under DSM-IV as an anxiety disorder, may follow experiencing or witnessing trauma. Its features fall into three groups: re-experiencing (intrusive memories, nightmares, flashbacks), avoidance and emotional numbing, and increased arousal (sleep difficulty, irritability, poor concentration, being easily startled, hypervigilance), persisting beyond a month and disrupting daily functioning.
Vulnerability to PTSD is raised by prior chronic stress, family history of anxiety and depression, temperament, and the brain’s regulation of stress chemicals. Only a trained professional can diagnose it.
Pro-environmental behaviour is encouraged through three levers used together: awareness and education (observational learning), reinforcement of desirable behaviour, and making the environmentally sound choice easy through infrastructure and policy. Change needs individuals, organisations and government at once.
Air pollution is reduced by walking, cycling, carpools and public transport, efficient or electric vehicles, energy-saving habits, recycling, composting and, at scale, renewable energy. Noise pollution is reduced by quieter or maintained machinery, soundproofing, honking regulations, personal protection, planning noisy sites away from homes, better roads and dense planting.
Non-biodegradable goods are best managed by the 3Rs in order — reduce (avoid disposables, prefer durable and natural materials), reuse (repair, repurpose, donate), recycle (segregate by category; dispose of batteries and e-waste at designated points). Plastic needs individual restraint alongside bans, taxes and better recycling systems.
Garbage management is the collection, transportation, treatment and disposal of household waste. Segregation at source into wet, dry and hazardous waste is the crucial step; industrial and hospital waste needs special handling.
Trees absorb carbon dioxide and slow warming, release oxygen, filter water through their roots, and prevent soil erosion and landslides. Native species should be chosen to support biodiversity, and planted trees must be cared for, ideally by the local community.
Laws on construction that violates environmental design exist to maintain ecological balance, and are the structural complement to individual habit and community effort.
Poverty is the objective lack of resources for basic essentials; deprivation is the subjective feeling of not getting what one deserves; social disadvantage is the blocking of resources and opportunity for a whole group by the structure of society, arising largely from discrimination.
The poverty cycle runs from lack of education to fewer job opportunities to lack of money to continued lack of education, repeating across generations.
Poverty impairs attention, memory and planning through chronic stress, and slows cognitive development through lack of stimulation, lowering academic performance. Repeated helplessness lowers motivation and narrows choice to immediate rewards — a response to an unreliable future, not a defect of character.
It also lowers self-esteem and self-confidence, encourages present-biased choices, and raises the risk of depression, anxiety disorders and PTSD. Poor mental health then deepens poverty, making it both cause and consequence.
In social behaviour, poverty is linked to heightened aggression and reduced empathy, to social withdrawal, to vulnerability to antisocial recruitment, and among adults to family conflict, neglect, shrinking social life, and resentment towards the more affluent.
Its major causes are economic (unemployment, unequal wealth distribution, price rises), social (discrimination, restrictive traditions and systems, poor health services, the poverty cycle) and environmental (conflict and war, natural calamities, climate change, harsh geography, poor infrastructure).
Measures to reduce it are social (education above all, health care, nutrition, sanitation, women’s empowerment, support schemes), economic (job creation, better wages, support for entrepreneurship and small industry, credit, trade) and governance-related (infrastructure, schools and colleges, employment programmes, health and sanitation) — with access to mental-health support as an essential part of any serious response.
9.6 Key Terms
Active listening — Fully concentrating on what a client is saying, and on what they leave unsaid, rather than waiting for a turn to speak.
Air pollution — The contamination of air by harmful gases, dust and smoke from sources such as vehicles, industry and burning.
Authenticity — The counsellor’s quality of being genuine and real, so that what is shown outwardly matches what is felt inwardly.
Biodiversity — The variety of living things that share a habitat.
Body language — The silent signals of posture, eye contact, gesture, facial expression and tone that communicate attentiveness or its absence.
Cognitive stimulation — The books, games, conversation and varied experiences that exercise and develop a growing mind.
Competition tolerance — An individual’s ability to accept a situation as a competition and still perform well in order to obtain what is needed.
Counselling — A professional, confidential and collaborative process in which a trained counsellor helps a client understand their concerns, cope, and make their own decisions.
Crowding — The subjective feeling of discomfort a person experiences when they perceive too many people around them, whatever the actual number.
Crowding tolerance — An individual’s ability to cope with a high-density environment without experiencing much stress.
Density — The objective number of people occupying a given amount of space.
Deprivation — The subjective feeling that one is not getting what one deserves.
Discrimination — Treating people differently, and unfairly, on the basis of the group they belong to.
Ecological balance — The stable, self-sustaining relationship among living things and their surroundings that keeps an environment healthy.
Empathy — Understanding another person’s feelings from their point of view, and conveying that understanding back to them.
Environmental psychology — The branch of psychology that studies the two-way relationship between people and their environment.
Flashback — A vivid re-experiencing of a traumatic event in which the person feels it is happening again rather than merely remembering it.
Garbage management — The organised collection, transportation, treatment and disposal of household and other waste.
Low self-esteem — A low evaluation of one’s own worth as a person.
Natural disaster — A catastrophic natural event that damages lives, property and environment on a scale that overwhelms the affected population.
Noise — Unwanted, unpleasant sound that is annoying or irritating.
Non-biodegradable consumer goods — Goods made of materials nature cannot break down, which persist in the environment for thousands of years.
Paraphrasing — Restating a client’s message in the counsellor’s own words, to check understanding and show the client they have been heard.
Pollution — The contamination of air, water or soil by harmful substances.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — An anxiety disorder, under DSM-IV, that may develop after experiencing or witnessing trauma, marked by re-experiencing, avoidance and numbing, and increased arousal.
Poverty — The condition of lacking the financial resources to obtain life’s basic essentials with dignity.
Poverty cycle — The self-repeating loop in which lack of education leads to fewer jobs, less money, and continued lack of education across generations.
Pro-environmental behaviour — Behaviour that protects and sustains the environment.
Rapport — The easy, comfortable connection of trust between counsellor and client that makes honest sharing possible.
Re-experiencing — The PTSD symptom group in which the trauma returns as intrusive memories, nightmares and flashbacks.
Social behaviour — Our interaction with others in a group or society.
Social disadvantage — The unavailability of resources and opportunity to a group of people because of the structure of society.
Survivor’s guilt — The lasting remorse felt by those who survive a disaster while others did not.
The 3Rs — Reduce, reuse and recycle: the framework for managing non-biodegradable waste, applied in that order.
Unconditional positive regard — Accepting and respecting a client as a person of worth, whatever they say, feel or have done.
Unemployment — The condition of being without paid work despite being able and willing to work.
Waste segregation — Sorting waste at its source into wet, dry and hazardous categories so it can be treated efficiently.
9.7 Points to Ponder
If a counsellor never gives advice, in what sense is the client being helped at all — and could the same reasoning apply to how we listen to our own friends?
Crowding is a feeling rather than a count. Does that mean a city could reduce the psychological harm of density without reducing the number of people in it?
We accept that a polluted river is a public problem to be solved by law, yet we often treat a polluted mind as a private matter to be borne alone. Should mental health be thought of in the same collective way as clean air?
Knowing that plastic harms the environment rarely stops people from using it. If information alone does not change behaviour, what does that tell us about how much we can rely on awareness campaigns?
If choosing an immediate reward over a distant one is a reasonable response to an unreliable future, is it fair to call such choices “poor decisions” at all?
Poverty affects mental health, and poor mental health deepens poverty. When two problems each cause the other, where should a society intervene first — and how would you decide?
9.8 Objective Questions
The branch of psychology that studies the two-way relationship between people and their surroundings is called — [1 mark]
- Social psychology
- Environmental psychology
- Clinical psychology
- Developmental psychology
Crowding, in psychology, is best described as — [1 mark]
- The number of people per unit of space
- Any gathering of people with a common goal
- The subjective feeling of discomfort in the presence of too many people
- The inability to compete for scarce resources
Which type of noise is generally found to be the most disturbing? [1 mark]
- Steady continuous noise
- Intermittent, unpredictable noise
- Noise during an interesting task
- Noise during simple addition
Under DSM-IV, post-traumatic stress disorder is classified as — [1 mark]
- A mood disorder
- A personality disorder
- An anxiety disorder
- A neurodevelopmental disorder
A counsellor accepts and respects a client as a person of worth regardless of what the client discloses. This attitude is called — [1 mark]
- Authenticity
- Paraphrasing
- Empathy
- Unconditional positive regard
Which of the following is NOT one of the three attitudes identified as central to a good counsellor? [1 mark]
- Empathy
- Authenticity
- Giving expert advice
- Positive regard
In the framework of the 3Rs, the step that has the greatest effect and should come first is — [1 mark]
- Recycle
- Reuse
- Reduce
- Incinerate
The feeling that one is not getting what one deserves is called — [1 mark]
- Poverty
- Deprivation
- Discrimination
- Social disadvantage
The lasting remorse felt by those who live through a disaster in which others died is known as ______. [1 mark]
Restating a client’s message in the counsellor’s own words to check understanding is called ______. [1 mark]
Sorting household waste at its source into wet, dry and hazardous categories is known as waste ______. [1 mark]
The unavailability of resources and opportunity to a whole group because of the structure of society is called ______. [1 mark]
State True or False: Density and crowding mean the same thing. [1 mark]
State True or False: Children and the elderly are especially vulnerable to the effects of pollution. [1 mark]
State True or False: A person’s crowding tolerance is influenced by the culture and living conditions in which they grew up. [1 mark]
State True or False: PTSD can be reliably diagnosed by matching oneself against a list of symptoms in a textbook. [1 mark]
Match the terms in Column A with their meanings in Column B. [1 mark]
| Column A | Column B |
|---|---|
| a. Crowding tolerance | i. Understanding a client’s feelings from the client’s point of view |
| b. Competition tolerance | ii. The self-repeating loop of no education, no job, no money |
| c. Empathy | iii. Coping with high density without much stress |
| d. Poverty cycle | iv. Accepting a situation as a contest and still performing well |
- Match the phases in Column A with the effects of a natural disaster in Column B. [1 mark]
| Column A | Column B |
|---|---|
| a. Immediate effect | i. Chronic anxiety, PTSD, survivor’s guilt |
| b. Short-term effect | ii. Disorientation and denial |
| c. Long-term effect | iii. Homelessness and relocation for work |
- Assertion (A): The same crowded market may feel comfortable to one person and distressing to another. [1 mark] Reason (R): Crowding depends on how density is perceived rather than on the number of people present.
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
- A is true, R is false
- A is false, R is true
- Assertion (A): A counsellor builds rapport with a client before examining the problem in depth. [1 mark] Reason (R): A client who does not trust the counsellor will hold back, and counselling cannot progress.
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
- A is true, R is false
- A is false, R is true
- Assertion (A): Awareness campaigns alone are usually enough to produce lasting pro-environmental behaviour. [1 mark] Reason (R): People who know that an action harms the environment always stop performing it.
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
- A is true, R is false
- A is false, R is true
- Assertion (A): Poverty and poor mental health tend to sustain each other. [1 mark] Reason (R): Chronic stress raises the risk of depression and anxiety, and these in turn make it harder to work and study.
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
- A is true, R is false
- A is false, R is true
- Assertion (A): Trees planted in a locality help prevent landslides. [1 mark] Reason (R): Tree roots bind the soil and act as natural filters for water.
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
- A is true, R is false
- A is false, R is true
9.9 Check Your Concepts
Define counselling. [2 marks] (about 30 words)
What is meant by environmental psychology? [2 marks] (about 30 words)
State any two features a person is likely to experience when they feel crowded. [2 marks] (about 30 words)
Define a natural disaster and give one example. [2 marks] (about 30 words)
What is meant by the poverty cycle? [2 marks] (about 30 words)
List the three elements of the 3Rs framework in the order in which they should be applied. [2 marks] (about 30 words)
Differentiate between density and crowding. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
Differentiate between empathy and sympathy in the context of counselling. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
Differentiate between poverty and deprivation. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
Explain briefly why unpredictable, intermittent noise disturbs a person more than steady continuous noise. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
Give reasons why a counsellor must make the limits of confidentiality clear to a client at the very start. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
Explain, with an example, how the environment influences a community’s occupation and daily lifestyle. [4 marks] (about 100 words)
Describe the communication skills a counsellor uses, and explain why culture must be taken into account while listening. [4 marks] (about 100 words)
Explain how the environment influences the attitude of an individual. [4 marks] (about 100 words)
Differentiate between crowding tolerance and competition tolerance, and explain how upbringing can affect crowding tolerance. [4 marks] (about 100 words)
“A test score is information, not a label.” Evaluate this claim with reference to a counsellor’s psychological testing skills. [4 marks] (about 100 words)
Describe the psychological effects of pollution on human beings, and explain why children and the elderly are especially vulnerable. [4 marks] (about 100 words)
Describe the immediate, short-term and long-term effects of a natural disaster on an individual, and explain what determines how severely a person is affected. [6 marks] (about 150 words)
Discuss post-traumatic stress disorder — the kinds of events that may lead to it, the factors that make a person vulnerable, and the three groups of features by which it is recognised under DSM-IV. [6 marks] (about 150 words)
Discuss the ways in which pro-environmental behaviour can be promoted, showing why action is needed at the individual, organisational and governmental levels together. [6 marks] (about 150 words)
Describe the effects of crowding on an individual, and discuss why crowding is a particularly significant concern in Indian cities. [6 marks] (about 150 words)
Discuss the major causes of poverty under economic, social and environmental heads. [6 marks] (about 150 words)
Discuss the measures that can be adopted to reduce poverty, and explain why measures addressing mental health should form part of any serious response. [6 marks] (about 150 words)
Explain the adverse effects of poverty and deprivation on cognitive processes, motivation and personality, and discuss why these effects should not be read as failings of character. [6 marks] (about 150 words)
9.10 Case-Based Questions
- Meera has recently moved from a small town to a large city for work. Her flat overlooks a busy junction where traffic noise begins before dawn and horns sound constantly through the day. Over three months she finds that she sleeps badly, is irritable with her colleagues, and can no longer concentrate on the detailed reports her job requires. She notices that she manages simple, routine filing tasks perfectly well. [6 marks]
- Identify the environmental factor most likely to be affecting Meera, and explain what makes it especially disruptive.
- Explain why her routine filing is unaffected while her detailed reports suffer.
- Suggest two steps Meera or the city authorities could take to reduce this problem.
- Six months after a severe flood swept through his village, Ravi still has trouble sleeping. Sudden sounds make him jump, and he becomes distressed whenever heavy rain begins. He has stopped going near the river and refuses to talk about the night of the flood. His family says he seems distant and no longer enjoys things he used to. [6 marks]
- Name the psychological condition Ravi is likely to be experiencing.
- Identify the groups of features shown in his behaviour, giving one example of each from the passage.
- What support would you suggest for Ravi, and why is it important that any diagnosis be made by a trained professional?
- A colony beside a growing market area has no arrangement for waste collection. Households throw all their rubbish — vegetable peels, plastic wrappers, old batteries — into a single open heap at the end of the lane. Residents complain of smells, flies and frequent stomach illness, and children have stopped playing outdoors. [6 marks]
- Identify the environmental problem here and explain how it is affecting the residents’ wellbeing.
- Explain the process of proper garbage management that this colony is failing to follow.
- Suggest two measures, one at the household level and one at the municipal level, to improve the situation.
- Asha teaches Class VII in a government school. One of her students, who comes from a family struggling to meet basic expenses, has begun handing in incomplete work, rarely answers in class though he clearly understands, and sits alone during break. Asha is convinced he is capable but is not sure what is happening. [6 marks]
- Identify two effects of poverty and deprivation visible in the boy’s behaviour.
- Explain how deprivation can affect a child’s cognitive processes and self-esteem.
- Suggest two supportive steps the school could take, and explain why blaming the boy’s attitude would be a mistake.
- A Class XII student comes to the school counsellor unable to decide between two streams. Her parents want one; she is drawn to the other and feels guilty about it. The counsellor listens without interrupting, reflects back what she has said, and later suggests an interest inventory and an aptitude test. [6 marks]
- Name the two communication skills the counsellor uses in the session and explain what each achieves.
- Explain how the counsellor should use the test results in helping her decide.
- Which qualities of a good counsellor would be most important in this situation, and why?
Social Factors
Discrimination based on caste, ethnicity, religion or gender can bar people from jobs, education and essential services. Traditions and systems such as certain inheritance laws can concentrate resources and leave others with nothing. Poor health services and sanitation lower productivity and cost people their jobs, pushing them into poverty. And beneath all of these runs the poverty cycle described earlier — no money means no good education; malnutrition, stress and a lack of cognitive stimulation weaken academic performance even where schooling is available; that limits work to unskilled, low-paid jobs; and the cycle begins again.