“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it”
-Robert Swan
Environment has a huge effect on human behaviour. When baby is born, the behaviour patterns are making significant long lasting effect of the child right from temperature to noise. The child learns the language spoken by his or her parents and ultimately it becomes the native language. Adults also can not escape from predominant effects of environment. For instance if you want to shape your body like sportsman or develop you physique like that of body builder, it is not possible if you are living in inadequate climate where temperature always remains below 15 to 20 degree. Even plants does not grow in a natural way. Different environment produces different kinds of plants, leaves or fruits. For instance, certain fruits like apple and cherry can be grown in colder climates only. There are so many examples of music on growth of plants. There are influences of music on the growth of plants. Same watering but some plants were allowed to grow with music and some were not. The plants with music grew better than the plants which were deprived of music. The effects of music on man, animal, and plants which could be seen from the EEG reports, hormone levels, and cell growth respectively.
Repeated Stimuli Is Responsible
Whether it is short or long behaviour patterns, there is a typical effect on the way living things grow or behave. The rat of Skinner refrained from touching lever repeatedly after getting electrical shock from the apparatus. But the another rat was taken to the task of touching the lever that provided food. The responses became automatic after certain repetitions. In the same way when human is repeatedly asked to carry out certain task his behaviour turns to be in favourable expectations.
Physiological Aspects
When an experiment was carried out on children, the hungry children overestimated the size of bread. In same experiment when children were chosen according to the financial status of parents, the children from lower middle class estimated the size of coin bigger than the children of upper middle class. Generally the estimation of food requirement in marriage party is not assigned to the person who is hungry.
One olden days man was living in the caves and protected himself from the sun light, thunder or sun light. Caves also protected him from wild animal like lions and tigers. Whenever there was need he fought with there animals and saved himself. These kind of external threats were induced the stress but with hiding, running and fighting he externally saved from wild animals and these kind of fears must have been internally but unconsciously been maintained by regulating stress hormones. The immune system of man have become weak during present time due to subject stress which are induced in the body due to fear of rejection, fear of illness, fear of taxation, fear of defeat, fear of loss of job etc. Due to these reasons man has physically and mentally become weaker in spite of lot of facilities.
Love And Belongings
The need for love and belonging from home or society encompasses caring, compassion, empathy, a sense of having a place in the world, being part of a community, feeling accepted and approved of versus rejection and disapproval, attention, and affection.
Michael Jackson, the American entertainer who spent over four decades in the public eye, employed number of doctors for his health ad fitness and had few limbs in spare as he was affluent and wished to live for 150 years.
It is believed that he was physically and psychologically abused by their father Joe Jackson. The whippings deeply traumatized Jackson and may have led to the onset of further health problems later in his life. Physicians speculated that he had body dysmorphic disorder.
During 1990s,Jackson had become gradually dependent on prescription drugs, mainly painkillers and strong sedatives. The drug use was later linked to second- and third-degree burns he had suffered years before.
While preparing for a series of London comeback concerts scheduled to begin in July 2009, Jackson died of acute intoxication after suffering cardiac arrest on June 25, 2009. His personal physician was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in his death and sentenced to four years in prison.
Self-Esteem
Psychologically speaking, self-esteem is an individual’s subjective evaluation of their own worth. This is also known as self-worth, self-regard, self-respect or self-integrity. It encompasses beliefs about oneself. For instance, “I am deprived of facilities”, “I am unworthy” etc. or it can be “I am successful”, “I am able to explore possibilities” etc.
Emotional state may be such as triumph and pride or despair or shame. It is matter of positive or negative evaluations of the self, as in how we feel about it. Self-esteem is an important psychological construct because it predicts certain outcomes, such as academic achievement, happiness or satisfaction in marriage and relationships, It may be outcome such as abnormal or criminal behaviour too. Self-esteem can apply to a specific attribute like “I believe I am a good sportsman and I feel very excited about that”) or differently like, “I believe I am a failure, and I feel dejected about myself.”
American psychologist Abraham Maslow included self-esteem in his hierarchy of human needs. He described two different forms of “esteem”: the need for respect from others in the form of recognition, success, and admiration, and the need for self-respect in the form of self-love, self-confidence, skill or aptitude.
Respect from others was believed to be more fragile and easily lost than inner self-esteem. According to Maslow, without the fulfilment of the self-esteem need, individuals will be driven to seek it and unable to grow and obtain self-actualization. Maslow also states that the healthiest expression of self-esteem “is the one which manifests in the respect we deserve for others, more than renown, fame, and flattery”. Modern theories of self-esteem explore the reasons humans are motivated to maintain a high regard for themselves.
Emotional Aspect Of Environment
Emotion is undeniably the fundamental aspect of environment. In communication, studies have shown that 38% of what is communicated between people is transmitted through tone of voice in comparison that of 3% which results out of words. So words are important but the intensity becomes more deeper with the tone who it is said. There can be 180 degree difference of opposite reaction with addition of subject tone.
I would like to explain it with an example. Suppose you are sitting at airport for boarding in aircraft for a pretty important meeting abroad and all of a sudden it was announced that the flight would be delayed for a couple of hours due to bad whether. You may get annoyed, rush to the announcer and break the window as it was very much necessary to reach in time for the meeting otherwise there might be heavy financial loss. This may be most might most likely an upsetting experience and might provoke anger and frustration. But when it was announced, you thought for a while that bad whether may invite air crash and you might be a victim or accident. You emotion is regulated through your ability to respond to and you managed emotional response.
In psychology there is an interesting term call defence mechanism. When something goes wrong against your will, you think differently and take decision and be satisfied for the good cause of happening just like that of jackal’s “Grapes are sour!” as there grapes were hanging at very high position.
Self-actualisation
Self is the answer to the questions of who we are, how we define, categorize, what do we think about ourselves, and why do we think in that way. Self is a system consists of eighty self-related phenomena due to three aspects as representing, effecting, and changing. Self is also interconnected in social, psychological, neural, and molecular levels of mechanisms. Self-discovery or self-image are constituted through experience of self-awareness or self-consciousness or may be deteriorated as self-deception or delusion.
From the environmental stance, the identities of people exist before birth ad continue after death. They are in the minds and memories of people even beyond physical existence. The impact remains through social interactions and behaviours they have constructed out of their multiple identities. Some of the great thinkers have impressed for better lives and inspired us even they are not present and effect continues even when they have left this planet. So the environmental effects internalizes even after decades.
Self-actualization is, in fact, an subjective experience. Maslow described self-actualization as striving for one’s reaching and fulfilling own potential. The psychological profile of self-actualized people consists of two dimensions as openness to experience (being aware of one’s emotions, having insight, empathy, and healthy interpersonal relations) and reference to self (being responsible for oneself, having a well-developed ethical understanding, and self-esteem, expressing oneself cognitively and emotionally and not being too much sensitive to other people’s ideas, influences, and criticisms).
These ways are feeling trust with an open attitude, choosing development instead of fear and
doubt, listening one’s sound inner voices, being honest to oneself, taking necessary steps for being satisfied, not only focusing on ultimate goals but also discovering the process of self-actualization, living peak experiences, exploring one’s secret psyche, and having courage to see and give up defense mechanisms. Thus, by these ways people can enhance their well-being.
