The Human Relationship with Nature: Development and Culture
Peter H. Kahn. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999.

Reviewed by Thomas R. Coyle, assistant professor of psychology, University of Texas at San Antonio.

    In the first few months of his presidency, George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States, initiated a review of environmental regulations established by the Clinton administration. The regulations targeted for review set limits on arsenic concentrations in drinking water, prohibited building roads in national forests, and forced mining companies to pay for environmental hazards they created. President Bush also suggested that he would not abide by the International Kyoto Treaty, which was established to monitor and set international limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The Kyoto Treaty was (and is) widely supported by many industrialized nations in the European Union.

    The Bush administrationâs decision to review several policies on the environment provides an opportunity to think about our values concerning the environment and, ultimately, moral questions about the environment. Do people care about nature and the environment? Do people believe that respecting and protecting the environment is a moral obligation? Do different cultures have different values concerning nature and the environment? Peter H. Kahn, Research Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington, tackles these and other questions in his treatise on the environment and morality, The Human Relationship with Nature: Development and Culture.

    Kahn frames his inquiry in the context of the biophilia hypothesis, which he derives from E. O. Wilsonâs research on biophilia, a term Wilson used to characterize humansâ affiliation with nature and the environment. The central assumption of the biophilia hypothesis is that humans have a genetically based need and propensity to affiliate with life and nature, which, it is argued, can improve health and well being. Although Kahn fails to cite convincing evidence for a genetic predisposition for affiliating with nature, he musters considerable evidence in support of other aspects of the biophilia hypothesis. For example, Kahn cites research that humans prefer natural environments that include water, trees, and vegetation to urban, man-made environments. He also mentions that surgery patients who are briefly exposed to environmental landscapes, or even paintings of environmental landscapes, recover more quickly and have fewer post-operative complications, compared to patients who receive no such exposure. Kahn even notes that biophilia seems to affect our choices for recreation: more people visit zoos each year than all sporting events combined.

    Kahnâs book focuses on how the biophilia hypothesis might be related to peopleâs interests in and attitudes about nature and the environment. The main questions addressed by Kahn are: Will biophilia color peopleâs reasoning about the environment? If so, how will biophilia manifest itself in peopleâs reasoning about environmental issues? Will biophilic attitudes be the same across different cultures and age groups? To address these questions, Kahn collects data on peopleâs views about significant issues pertaining to their local environment, as well as their verbal reports about hypothetical situations concerning nature more generally. He unfortunately does not provide any independent behavioral data to verify and validate participantsâ verbal reports. The absence of behavioral data is, of course, a potential problem if peopleâs words do not match their deeds. However, the absence of such data does not minimize the value of Kahnâs contribution to understanding peopleâs views about the environment; rather, it limits his contribution to the verbal domain.

Kahnâs Approach for Studying Humanâs Relationship with Nature

    Following psychologists Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, both of whom were pioneers in the study of morality and moral development, Kahn collected data about childrenâs biophilic views using the structured interview technique. This technique involved asking participants a series of structured questions about their views and attitudes. In Kahnâs study participants were first asked whether they care about the environment. If they responded in the affirmative, participants were then asked about which aspects of the environment they care about. Those participants who expressed concern about the environment were also asked to explain why they care about the environment. Participantsâ explanations, which Kahn calls ãenvironmental justifications,ä are the meat and potatoes of his book, providing much insight into why people value the environment.

    Although the structured interview technique used by Kahn requires that participants are asked the same core set of questions, the experimenter does have the discretion to probe more thoroughly the participantsâ reasoning when their responses might be ambiguous or incomplete. The unfortunate consequence of this discretion is that it may introduce inconsistencies in questioning that potentially bias how participants respond. It may be argued, however, that any such bias would be offset by the additional data concerning participantsâ views.

    A few features of Kahnâs study deserve special mention. One noteworthy feature is Kahnâs use of a cross-cultural design in which participants are interviewed from such geographically and ethnically diverse locations as Houston, Texas, USA; Prince William Sound, Alaska, USA; Manaus and Novo Ayrao, Brazil; and Lisbon, Portugal. Moreover, Kahn asks participants in all locations the same questions about a polluted waterway in their neighborhood so that direct cross-cultural comparisons can be made. By holding constant the question set, but varying participant culture, Kahn utilizes a powerful method for detecting cross-cultural invariance (or differences) with respect to environmental views.

    Another particularly nice feature of Kahnâs analysis is that he examines the effects of age and gender on attitudes concerning nature. The potential importance of age is implicit in Jean Piagetâs theory of cognitive development, which figures prominently in Kahnâs analysis. Piaget argued that as children develop they acquire the ability to consider more than one idea at a time. Being able to consider multiple ideas might affect environmental awareness by, for example, allowing participants to compare their environment to some standard and render a judgment about the quality of their environment on the basis of that standard. The potential importance of gender is indicated by survey research on gender differences in environmental views, which indicate that ãmen tend to have greater knowledge about the natural world, but women tend to express greater concern for itä (Chawla 1988:17). Both the age and gender hypotheses, though plausible, received relatively little discussion in Kahnâs book due to the nature of his findings. I will comment on this surprising outcome at greater length in the section that follows.

Kahnâs Findings

    The single most important contribution of Kahnâs book is its interesting findings. The book is a treasure trove of data on childrenâs morality and reasoning about the environment. One particularly interesting finding concerned the distinction between anthropocentric and biocentric reasoning. Anthropocentric reasoning focuses on how the environment affects humansâ welfare and values nature for what it can do for humans. Bioncentric reasoning, in contrast, focuses on a larger ecological community and values nature in its own right. Kahn found that although the vast majority of participants in his study reported being concerned about the environment, participantsâ justifications for caring about the environment were overwhelmingly anthropocentric. Humans, it appears, care more about the environment for reasons related to their personal welfare than for reasons related to valuing nature for its own sake. Thus, although valuing nature as an end in itself may be an ideal to which humans can aspire, Kahnâs data suggest this ideal may, in practice, rarely be observed.

    A related set of findings concerned comparisons across the different geographical samples. It was possible that participants living in the different geographical regions would have different values about the environment because of their different relations with the environment. For example, the Brazilian Amazon participants, who fish the waters and plow the land for food, might have been predicted to show more concern about the environment than the Houston, Texas participants, who go to the supermarket for food. However, this was not the case. Participants in the different geographical samples held surprisingly similar (and positive) views of the environment. For example, the vast majority of participants in all geographic samples noted they cared about plants, animals, and parks and expressed concern about things that might harm the environment such as littering (p.188, Table 10.4). Although most participantsâ concern was often rooted in anthropocentric reasoning (p.158, Table 9.3), it was surprising that people from such diverse locations seemed to agree about the importance of the environment. Apparently, the different economic, social, and political systems in which the participants lived did not appreciably affect their perception of the importance of the environment (or their reasoning about why it was important): the consensus across all samples was that the environment was important.

    As a developmental psychologist, I eagerly anticipated the developmental data comparing the responses and justifications of different age groups. I found, however, scant data on the issue of the development of moral reasoning, with a few notable exceptions. In the Houston Child Study, older children (9- to 11-year-olds) were more likely than younger children (7-year-olds) to state that polluting a public waterway was ãnot all rightä and that an individual should not have the discretion to pollute, even if the law permitted him to do so. In the Prince William Sound Study, age-related increases in both anthropocentric and biocentric reasoning were observed.

    Together, these developmental findings suggest that the development of moral reasoning follows a simple developmental progression, with increases in the two main types of moral reasoning (i.e., anthropocentric and biocentric) as well as concern about the environment. These findings can be explained by an additive model of development, in which development is related to increased care about the environment and the addition of new justifications for caring about the environment. The findings do not support a Piagetian model of qualitative changes in reasoning, which would predict changes in the type of justifications given. Nevertheless, the lack of qualitative differences in reasoning should not obscure what was perhaps Kahnâs most notable developmental finding: the majority of children in all age groups and samples expressed concern for their environment.

    Kahn, as noted earlier, had little to say about gender differences in moral reasoning. The reason for his reticence was that few gender differences were observed, and those that were observed could have occurred by chance given the large number of statistical tests performed. The absence of consistent gender differences was surprising given the results of prior studies involving adult participants. Compared to men, women report greater humanistic views of the environment, more emotional attachments to animals, and are more likely to join groups opposed to the consumptive use of animals (Kellert 1996:Chapter 3).

    The apparent discrepancy concerning gender differences in Kahnâs study versus prior research is perplexing. The discrepancy might be attributed to the use of different samples, with Kahnâs study involving mostly children and prior studies involving mostly adults. The discrepancy might also be attributed to the use of different data-collection techniques, with Kahnâs study interviewing participants face-to-face, while prior studies asked participants to respond to written surveys. Unfortunately, these explanations for the discrepancy cannot be examined directly using the data provided in Kahnâs book.

    Perhaps more interesting than Kahnâs findings were their implications for environmental education. I live in San Antonio, Texas, home of frequent droughts and water shortages. Over 200 miles to the east is Houston, Texas, home of the worst air quality in the nation. How might we teach our children to respect our environment and natural resources so that they conserve water and are concerned about air quality? Kahnâs findings suggest that educators might attempt to induce in children a disequilibrium concerning environmental issues.

    Disequilibrium is a concept associated with Jean Piagetâs theory of cognitive development. It refers to a period in cognitive development when thought or reasoning is in flux and susceptible to change. The primary cause of disequilibrium is the consideration of two mutually exclusive ideas, which leads to an unstable state of cognition. Piaget argued that children find disequilibrium unpleasant and attempt to reduce it by integrating the two ideas, which results in cognitive development.
 Piaget attempted to induce disequilibrium, and hence cognitive development, by asking children to consider new ideas that were inconsistent with how they thought about the world. Kahn suggests that disequilibrium might be used as a vehicle to induce environmental awareness in children. To illustrate Kahnâs point, consider a child who is asked whether people should be allowed to water their lawn. If the child responds ãyes,ä he might then be asked whether people should be permitted to water their lawn when water is scarce. Being presented with the latter question might induce disequilibrium; that is, it might encourage the child to qualify his prior response and to reformulate her or his idea about what is and is not permissible to do. Inducing disequilibrium by asking participants to consider new ways of thinking seems like a particularly flexible method for encouraging them to adopt new views. The technique has been used and found to be successful in modifying childrenâs thinking about a variety of concepts, categories, and things; there is no reason to doubt that disequilibrium would not also be effective in enhancing childrenâs environmental awareness.

The Limitations of Kahnâs Study

    All studies have limitations and Kahnâs is no exception. Some of the limitations of Kahnâs study are related to his use of the interview technique and the validity of participantsâ responses. It is always possible in interview research that what people say may not be related to what they really believe or might actually do in practice. One reason for this is that participants have a tendency to give socially desirable responses when being asked questions. The tendency to give such responses may be particularly strong when participants are asked about environmental issues, which, one would hope, participants believe they ought to care about.

    How might Kahn have verified that participantsâ responses were valid? One approach would have been to collect independent data for comparison. For example, Kahn could have collected data about whether participants had been involved in environmental cleanups, had animals in their houses, or recycled. A somewhat different approach would have been to use an experimental design. For example, Kahn could have placed participants in a contrived situation in which they would be given an opportunity to litter and examined their behavior. The use of such techniques would have yielded valuable data that could be used to verify the validity of participantsâ verbal reports. Without such data the implications of Kahnâs findings for how participants might actually behave must be interpreted cautiously. Nevertheless, Kahnâs study still provides a glimpse into what people think of the environment and their relation to it÷a good starting point for doing follow-up studies that examine participantsâ behavior.

    Another quibble concerns the apparent unconstrained scope of the biophilia hypothesis, which figures prominently into Kahnâs inquiry. That hypothesis, you may recall, assumes that humans have a propensity to affiliate with nature, broadly construed as anything that occurs naturally in the world. So construed, nature or things related to nature can include an enormous number of concepts, categories, and things such as animals, plants, water, trees, litter, air pollution, and even malodorous smells. The fact that the term ãnatureä encompasses so many concepts may actually limit the scientific utility of the biophilia hypothesis. The central problem is that the hypothesis does not specify, a priori, with which aspects of nature humans should have a tendency to affiliate. Consequently, it is not clear which aspects of the environment are relevant for testing the biophilia hypothesis. One way to resolve this problem is to define clearly the scope of the hypothesis and its empirical boundaries, something that was not done in Kahnâs book.

Conclusion

    Although issues concerning the validity of participantsâ responses and the boundaries of the biophilia hypothesis may limit the conclusions of Kahnâs study, I nevertheless believe that Kahnâs book will become the archival starting point for investigations into humansâ relationship with the environment. I hold this belief for a number of reasons. First, Kahnâs study is the first, large-scale study to examine participantsâ views about the environment and, thus, represents an empirical starting point. Second, many of Kahnâs findings were interesting and compelling and are therefore likely to be cited in the future. Perhaps most interesting was Kahnâs finding of cross-cultural consistencies in peopleâs views of the environment: people in all the cultures Kahn studied expressed concern about and interest in the environment. Further, participantsâ explanations for why they valued the environment were overwhelmingly anthropocentric (i.e., focused on their own personal welfare) rather than biocentric (i.e., focused on valuing nature for its own sake). Such consistent findings across very different cultures are not likely to be attributable to stochastic or ephemeral sources of variance. Rather, Kahnâs cross-cultural data may very well represent universal psychological attitudes about the environment. Finally, Kahnâs study addresses a topic that many people care deeply about, as indicated by his data and by the American publicâs reaction to President George W. Bushâs proposal to review certain environmental regulations. Opinion poll data released following President Bushâs proposal show that a majority of Americans object to rescinding environmental regulations concerning water and air quality, a finding that could have been anticipated by Kahnâs data.

References Cited

Chawla, L.
    1988  Childrenâs Concern for the Natural Environment. Childrenâs Environments Quarterly 5(3):13-20.

Kellert, S. R.
    1996  The Value of Life. Washington, DC: Island Press.