Irwin Altman

University of Utah | UOU · Department of Psychology

Place attachments are the positive bonds people form with places, arising from affective, behavioural, and cognitive ties between individuals or groups and their sociophysical settings. Across the lifespan people frequently form profound attachments to homes and neighbourhoods, which facilitate stability, identity, and positive experiences. Place a...

This entry includes the following topics: types of territories; social regulation function; territory and identity; applications of territoriality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

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As part of our graduate student recruitment process, we routinely send copies of key articles to prospective students. It gives them an opportunity to see current work and anticipate what they might do as graduate advisees. Over the years, some students have taken a rather dim view of our work on transactional world views and philo­sophical underpi...

This chapter raises the question as to whether the now 25-year-old venture known as environment-behavior studies is or can ever be a distinctive “field” of study. In analyzing this issue, I will conclude that environment-behavior studies do not presently constitute a traditional “field” or “discipline.” However, this does not mean that scholars and...

In this intriguing book, social psychologist Irwin Altman and anthropologist Joseph Ginat examine husband-wife and wife-wife relationships in contemporary Mormon polygamous families. They describe how husbands and wives in plural families cope with their complex lifestyle in various facets of everyday life, including courtship, weddings, honeymoons...

This article analyzes the present state of higher education and psychology in relation to the future needs of society. On the basis of the assumption that higher education has historically addressed social issues, it is proposed that our educational system and society negotiate a new "contract" that is appropriate to the coming decades. A model of...

This article analyzes the present state of higher education and psychology in relation to the future needs of society. On the basis of the assumption that higher education has historically addressed social issues, it is proposed that our educational system and society negotiate a new "contract" that is appropriate to the coming decades. A model of...

This thirteenth volume in the series addresses an increasingly salient worldwide research, design, and policy issue-women and physical environments. We live in an era of worldwide social change. Some nation-states are fracturing or disintegrating, migrations are resulting from political up­ heavals and economic opportunities, some ethnic and nation...

Discusses the potential for research on the topic of dialectical processes that occur in intraindividual, interpersonal, and intergroup relationships. Of particular interest to the author is intergroup dialectical processes, as viewed from a cross-cultural perspective, since personal relationships are integrally linked to a variety of social and cu...

Summarized an ongoing research program on contemporary Mormon polygynous families. Husband-wife and wife-wife relations in plural families are examined from dialectical and transactional world views. Key research issues center on (a) how husbands and wives achieve viable dyadic and communal relationships, and (b) how dyadic and communal issues are...

This article calls for more research that embeds dyadic relationships in their physical, social and temporal contexts. We use ethnographic accounts of courtship, wedding and placemaking practices in two different societies and find that: (1) social and environmental rituals often make salient the couple members' relationship to one another and thei...

This article overviews a program of research that has explored the implications of a transactional worldview for research on personal relationships. In particular, the present article emphasizes the role of the physical environment in relationships. It briefly describes our theoretical perspective and delineates the methods by which we study person...

Discusses the transactional world view (TWV). The TWV encompasses the following principles: People and psychological processes are embedded in and inseparable from their physical and social contexts; time, continuity, and change are intrinsic aspects of psychological phenomena; and TWVs assume a distinctive approach to inquiry and knowledge. This a...

There is a long history of cultural assumptions regarding children’s special affinity or bond for certain places, much of it antedating modern psychology. Within psychology, the subject is more ambiguous. The term attachment evokes a long history of theory and research that has measured the degree to which young children seek to keep a primary care...

I was born on July 16, 1930, in New York City. My parents, Ethel and Louis Altman, were first-generation Americans whose parents emigrated to this country in the late 1800s from the Soviet Union and Hungary, respectively. My wife Gloria and I were married in 1953 and have two children. Gloria was a primary-school teacher for several years but has w...

This eleventh volume in the series departs from the pattern of earlier volumes. Some of those volumes addressed research, design, and policy topics in terms of environmental settings, for example, homes, communities, neighborhoods, and public places. Others focused on environmental users, for example, chil­ dren and the elderly. The present volume...

This tenth volume in the series addresses an important topic of research, de­ sign, and policy in the environment and behavior field. Public places and spaces include a sweeping array of settings, including urban streets, plazas and squares, malls, parks, and other locales, and natural settings such as aquatic environments, national parks and fores...

The present paper introduces a transactional framework for studying the temporal aspects of computer-mediated interaction. The transactional world view is an approach to understanding phenomena which proposes that events are best viewed as holistic unities. From this perspective, persons, environments, and temporal qualities are inseparable and mut...

Proposes a reformulation of the traditional distinction between basic and applied research in terms of fundamental units of analysis of psychological phenomena. The analysis derives from a taxonomy of world views in psychology described by I. Altman and B. Rogoff (1987). Social psychology has traditionally considered social processes as its primary...

Presents a historical perspective on the field of psychology using principles of transactionalism/contextualism and dialectic philosophy. It is argued that psychology presently exists in a disciplinary, educational, and societal context in which centrifugal factors prevail over centripetal trends, thereby increasing the possibilities for divergence...

With a background primarily in social and environmental psychology, I am not wholly informed about the present state of community psychology on the occasion of its 20th birthday. At the same time, I am beginning to feel like somewhat of an expert on "crises" in psychology, having participated in the "crisis in social psychology" in the 1960s and 19...

Our study of "Christmas Street" (Oxley et al., 1986) was an illustration of the kind of research that might be undertaken within a transactional worldview. In the present article, we review some central philosophical principles of that worldview, how they differ from assumptions and principles of other worldviews, and how these principles influence...

This ninth volume in the series deals with a fascinating and complex topic in the environment and behavior field. Neighborhoods and com­ munities are in various stages of formation and transition in almost every society, nation, and culture. A variety of political, economic, and social factors have resulted in the formation of new communities and t...

A transactional approach to research was illustrated through an analysis of social networks on a street. Patterns of interrelationships among multiple dimensions of networks were identified in summer and at Christmas. The assessment revealed relative continuity in social relationships, but change in the way in which social, affective, and environme...

There are many ways of studying homes, each focusing on a different aspect, such as physical qualities, satisfaction, use patterns, and phenomenological experiences. Our thesis is that, central to any of these aspects of homes, and therefore integral to the distinction between house and home,are the temporal qualities of linear and cyclical time an...

The present volume in the series focuses on homes, residences, and dwellings. Although many fields have had a long-standing interest in different aspects of home environments, the topic has recently come to the forefront in the interdisciplinary environment and behavior field. Researchers and theorists from many disciplines have begun to meet regul...

This collection of papers on environment and aging comes more than 20 years after formally designated research in the area first began. Rather than serving as a comprehensive review of research, the present volume has two major purposes: to integrate knowledge on promising research topics and to identify and fill in some of the empirical and theore...

The present volume in our series follows the format of the immediately in dealing with a topical theme of considerable impor­ preceding ones tance in the environment and behavior field. In view of current and projected demographic trends, it is a certainty that a broad-ranging set of issues concerned with the elderly and the physical environment wi...

Previous research on territoriality suggests that territorial intrusion is associated with particular territorial demarcations. In the present study the use of territorial displays involving symbolic barriers, actual barriers, detectability, traces and social climate is related to the territorial intrusion of residential burglary. The five classes...

The theme of the present volume concerns people' s response to the natural environment, considered at scales varying from that of a house­ hold plant to that of vast wilderness areas. Our decision to focus on this particular segment of the physical environment was prompted in part by the intrinsic interest in this subject on the part of a diverse g...

Territorial behaviour is one of the mechanisms used to regulate privacy. Primary, secondary and public territories are distinguishable in terms of durability, marking qualities and defensive responses, among other characteristics. Neighbourhoods, streets, sites and houses communicate different degrees of territoriality to the intruder. A potential...

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for analyzing social-psychological features of homes. Homes from various cultures are described in terms of two dialectic dimensions: 1) identity/communality, or the degree to which homes display the bonds between residents and their community and culture, and the uniqueness or distinctiveness of people fr...

The long-term development of social bonds, including their growth and deterioration, their interaction processes that occur over the history of social relationships, and their holistic systems like qualities, are examined in the chapter. The chapter integrates and extends the social penetration theory and the privacy regulation theory. It introduce...

The present volume in our series, Human Behavior and Environment, is devoted to a specific topic, continuing the pattern established in the last two volumes. The current theme is behavioral science aspects of trans­ portation. This topic was chosen to exemplify a problem area of practical import to which psychologists, sociologists, and other behav...

Examined privacy regulation in terms of (a) mechanisms used by college students to make themselves more or less accessible to one another; (b) dormitory room decorations; and (c) the relationships between privacy regulation, personal displays, and short- and long-term adjustment to a university setting. 102 freshmen completed a questionnaire that a...

Following upon the first two volumes in this series, which dealt with a broad spectrum of topics in the environment and behavior field, ranging from theoretical to applied, and including disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and professionally oriented approaches, we have chosen to devote sub­ sequent volumes to more specifically defined topics. Thus, V...

A number of people wrote letters to B. Latan6 commenting on and responding to his "Notes for a talk on our scientific publication -system". Excerpts are reproduced with the writers' permission.

In the first two volumes of the series we elected to cover a broad spectrum of topics in the environment and behavior field, ranging from theoretical to applied, and including disciplinary, interdiscipli­ nary, and professionally related topics. Chapters in these earlier vol­ umes dealt with leisure and recreation, the elderly, personal space, aest...

This article examines privacy as a generic process that occurs in all cultures but that also differs among cultures in terms of the behavioral mechanisms used to regulate desired levels of privacy. Ethnographic data are examined from a variety of cultures, particularly from societies with apparently maximum and minimum privacy, and from analyses of...

Some 10 years ago Edward T. Hall, a cultural anthropologist, wrote The Hidden Dimension (Hall, 1966),2 a book that focused on how different cultures used space and the physical environment. This book appeared during a period when social and behavioral scientists and environmental-design professionals were joining forces to study the relationship be...

This chapter describes an approach to research on environment and behavior that also has implications for social-psychological research in general. I will not offer a “theory,” in terms of hypotheses and testable propositions, nor will I present a “methodology,” in the sense of procedures or techniques. Rather I will set forth a general strategy fo...

The papers comprising this second volume of Human Behavior and the Environment represent, as do their predecessors, a cross section of current work in the broad area of problems dealing with interrelation­ ships between the physical environment and human behavior, at both the individual and the aggregate levels. Considering the two volumes as a uni...

Theoretical formulations concerning the relationship of nonverbal behavior to the social penetration processes, i.e., the development of interpersonal relations (Altman & Taylor, 1973) were examined via acted, videotaped conversations in which subjects role played good friends (GF) or casual acquaintances (CA) discussing intimate (I) or nonintimate...

This study examined personalization of college dormitory rooms. Walls in college dormitories were photographed on two occasions, at the beginning and end of the first quarter in which new students were in residence. Decorations were content analyzed in terms of the following categories: personal relationships, values, abstract, reference, entertain...

This paper is a reply to comments made by Epstein, Proshansky and Stokols on my earlier article, "Environmental Psychology and Social Psychology." My remarks are directed to the historical professional generations they and I represent, their extensions and modifications of my ideas, our agreements and disagreements on "diagnosis" and "prognosis" of...

This paper examines the newly developing field of Environmental Psychology and its relationship to Social Psychology. Some major research topics concerned with environment and behavior are summarized, along with an analysis of dominant research values of this emerging field. The paper also considers some possible ways in which Environmental Psychol...

This paper presents a ,theoretical analysis of the concept of privacy which emphasizes its role as an interpersonal boundary control process. The paper also analyzes mechanisms and dynamics of privacy, including verbal and paraverbal behavior, personal space, territorial behavior, and culturally based responses. Finally, several functions of privac...

Reviews the book, Behavioral Research Methods in Environmental Design edited by William Michelson (1975). The book contains chapters written by authors from throughout the environment and behavior fields, including psychologists, sociologists, architects, planners, and other types of environmental designers. Each chapter is written according to a c...

This article reviews research concerning interpersonal distance as a function of interpersonal relationships, attraction, and reactions to spatial invasion. To integrate research findings, we propose a simple model, based on the idea that people seek an optimal distance from others that becomes smaller with friends and larger for individuals who do...

Discusses concepts of territories, privacy, and boundary control in offices in North America, and describes the application of these concepts in an organization of about 2,000 workers. Territories within the organization are categorized as public, general, group, or individual, depending on the number of people using them, and analogous areas in re...

Privacy is conceptualized as a dynamic, interpersonal boundary control process which regulates access to the self. Coupled with desired and achieved privacy levels, a series of social interaction cases are described involving satisfactory and unsatisfactory input-output relationships with others. Mechanisms used to implement desired levels of priva...

This is the first in a series of volumes concerned with research encompassed by the rather broad term "environment and behavior. " The goal of the series is to begin the process of integration of knowledge on environmental and behavioral topics so that researchers and professionals can have material from diverse sources accessible in a single publi...