Environmental Cognitive Sets

Abstract

This article reports the results of a longitudinal experiment exploring environmental cognitive sets (ways of perceiving or thinking about one's surroundings) that were designed especially to promote awareness of environmental problems and possibilities but also to induce aesthetic experience, environmental understanding, and a playful and creative orientation toward environmental experience. The results of our project indicate that (1) imagining improvements in an environment (the "IMG" set) led subjects to notice and remember more human-induced environmental problems than did normal viewing; (2) although IMG tended to be rated as more interesting and enjoyable than normal viewing for filmed scenes, subjects who were instructed repeatedly to use IMG seemed to tire of its imposed use over an extended period of time; (3) nevertheless, a much higher proportion of these subjects than of subjects with less experimental exposure to IMG reported using this set on their own after the conclusion of the experiment; (4) our specially devised instructions "for being more creative" in imagining environmental changes were very effective in helping college students imagine changes of higher (blind-rated) quality; (5) our research procedures at this stage of development had no discernible systematic effects on overall environmental concern, ability to devise new cognitive sets, or feelings of perceptual control; (6) subjects who freely chose several cognitive sets to use at visited locations showed a highly significant tendency to find at least one experimental set for each location that was more interesting and enjoyable than normal viewing (even though normal viewing at these locations was itself rated as both interesting and enjoyable and as significantly easier than the experimental cognitive sets).