Unreasonable behavior (e.g., being irresponsible, uncooperative, intolerant, unpleasant) seems to be proliferating in fast-paced, high-consuming industrialized societies. One might conclude that such behavior is humans’ standard operating condition. Fortunately, many years of psychological research shows this conclusion to be wrong. Environmental psychologists Rachel Kaplan and Stephen Kaplan suggest that the difference between reasonable and infuriatingly unreasonable behavior may be partly explained by the environments in which people find themselves. To this observation that the context of behavior makes a difference they note two other key facts: that humans have a remarkable facility to process information, and that information and affect are in a close adaptive relationship with each other. Taken together these provide the basic premise of the reasonable person model. Namely that people are more likely to be reasonable and cooperative in environments that support their informational needs (Kaplan and Kaplan 2005).
Before outlining these informational needs, it is useful to make clear what is meant by information. Information, much more than money or social interaction, is the foundation of our lives. As Kaplan (1995) points out, humans are information-based organisms, “[w]e yearn for it, we hoard it, we are overwhelmed by it, we trade it, we hide it. We ask questions such as ‘How do I get there?’ ‘How does that thing work?’ and ‘What happened?’” Information surrounds us. While much information comes from spoken and written material, the environment in all its many forms conveys vast amounts of information (e.g., the behavior of others, the array of objects we encounter, the events that unfold).
- See more at: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rdeyoung/envtpsych.html#sthash.QEq8hrAg.dpuf