If I haven’t mentioned before I am a psych student, and currently I’m taking a course called Conservation Psychology. The past few weeks we have been looking at something called environmental identity (EI). This instantly caught my attention, because I have never considered nature to be part of who I am, nor do I consider myself one with nature. Psychologists from many different sub-fields – Social, Developmental, Personality etc. all like to talk about the self-concept. As reflected by the diversity of different psychological perspectives that study this, many different forces shape how we see ourselves and the identity we develop as we grow up. One of these forces is nature.
As we grow up, we deal with different challenges. If we are to look to psychologist Erik Erikson’s research, we can say that we deal with specific crises at different developmental stages. From birth to the age of 5 these are predominantly related to developing trust, autonomy, and initiative. Our environment plays a powerful role in the development of these. It can also act as an object of affection and attachment. A park can provide a place for exploration, in which a child can develop autonomy and initiative, even trust in and therefore fondness for nature. As we grow, nature remains a source of fulfillment – in developing identity, competence, even a sense of generativity. From building sandcastles, to having a romantic walk along the beach with your significant other, nature indeed appears to have a place in our development, if at the very least by enriching our experiences.
When you think back to your favorite moments as a child – do they include nature? Research shows that people’s favorite childhood memories typically include the outdoors, regardless of how much time they actually spent outdoors as child. Do you find the same pattern in your best memories?
(uccsda.org)
(mathforum.org)
It seems rational that how much you spent interacting with nature would affect your identity, particularly if its role was prominent throughout development. I’ll explore this further in upcoming posts, so stay tuned!
Also, if you are interested in finding out how much nature contributes to your self-concept, or simply need clarification on what EI is, check out Clayton’s 24-item Environmental Identity Scale. It has high internal reliability and does indeed relate to environmental behaviors and attitudes. Alternatively, try an implicit association test – which can measure your connectedness to nature at an unconscious level! I’ll leave a link to where you can find that here.
See you in the next one!
“when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves” – Andy Goldsworthy (sculptor, photographer, environmentalist) 
