Ecological Psychology
Some Recent and Prospective Developments
ALLAN W. WICKER Claremont Graduate School
ABSTRACT: Building on the pioneering work of
Barker and Wright, ecological psychologists have
demonstrated the relevance of behavior-setting theory
and research to issues in organizational, community,
social, and environmental psychology. They have used
a broad range of research strategies and have shown
increased interest in applied problems. Recent and
prospective developments in ecological psychology in-
clude streamlined descriptive surveys of community
and organization behavior settings; the study of. inter-
setting linkages and of the life cycles of settings;
applications of manning theory and research on stress
to work settings, particularly to settings that serve the
public; extensions of manning theory by drawing on
the literature on small-group performance and job
enrichment; and the development of a technology for
.improving human environments.
Over the past three decades, ecological psychology
has grown from a seminal idea into a recognized
branch of our discipline.1 Largely through the
efforts of Roger Barker, Herbert Wright, and a
few close colleagues (e.g., Barker, 1965, 1968;
Barker & Associates, 1978; Barker & Gump, 1964;
Barker & Schoggen, 1973; Barker & Wright,
19SS; Wright, 1967), many psychologists have
come to appreciate the importance of (a) study-
ing human behavior and experience in their natural
contexts and (b) analyzing human environments
at a level more molar than that of the stimulus.
Many social scientists have viewed ecological
psychology as an isolated and somewhat esoteric
area of study, with its own terminology, methods,
and concepts. However valid such a view may
have been in the past, it is no longer appropriate.
Contemporary developments in ecological psy-
chology suggest close conceptual ties with other
areas of psychology and use a broad range of
research methods (including laboratory experi-
ments)/ They also show a concern with direct,
practical applications of research. I want to dis-
cuss some of these recent developments and to sug-
gest promising areas for future research. As a
Vol. 34, No. 9, 7SS-76S
prelude to .the discussion, I briefly sketch several
major contributions of Barker and his colleagues
on which the present work builds.
Early Work in Ecological Psychology
BEHAVIOR SETTINGS
The basic environmental unit in ecological psy-
chology is the behavior setting. It may be helpful
to think of behavior settings as miniature social
systems whose basic function is to carry out set-
ting programs. For example, a public lecture is a
behavior setting. Its program includes the chair-
person's introducing the speaker, the speaker's
delivering his or her talk, and the audience's sit-
ting quietly (or laughing and applauding, or what-
ever the case may be). To facilitate the pro-
gram, behaviors of people and arrangements of
physical objects within the boundaries of the set-
ting are highly coordinated. The members of the
This article is an adaptation and extension of an in-
vited address presented at the meeting of the Western
Psychological Association, San Francisco, April 21, 1978.
I am indebted to Joseph McGrath and Daniel Stokols
for helpful comments on an earlier draft of the manu-
script.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Allan W.
Wicker, Faculty in Psychology, Claremont Graduate School,
Claremont, California 91711.
1
Readers should be aware that ecological psychology
and environmental psychology are not simply different
labels for the same subarea of psychology. The concepts,
theories, and findings of ecological psychology summarized
in this article represent one of several bodies of research
generally considered within the larger domain of en-
vironmental psychology. Among the other concerns of
environmental psychology are human spatial behavior,
territoriality, privacy, crowding, environmental percep-
tion, and ecologically responsible behavior. The scope of
environmental psychology can be seen in recent over-
views of the field (e.g., Craik, 1973, 1977; Proshansky &
Altman, 1979; Stokols, 1978), textbooks (e.g., Bell, Fisher,
& Loomis, 1978), and books of readings (e.g., Proshan-
sky, Ittelson, & Rivlin, 1976; Stokols, 1977).
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • SEPTEMBER 1979 • 755
Copyright 1979 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
0003-066X/79/3409-0755$00.75
audience stop conversing when the chairperson
approaches the lectern. All of the seats in the
lecture hall have been placed facing the front so
that those in attendance can see and hear the
speaker. The boundaries of a setting are both
physical (the walls of the lecture hall) and tem-
poral (the scheduled hour and day of the lecture).
Barker views behavior settings as self-regulating
systems whose inhabitants will take the steps
necessary to preserve their programs. For ex-
ample, if some essential component of a setting
(whether a person or an inanimate object) is miss-
ing, occupants of the setting will seek it out and
bring it in. And if a component isn't functioning
properly (that is, in accordance with the program
of the setting), it will be either corrected or re-
moved. For example, if there were no chairs in
a lecture hall, some would be carried in or some
other adjustment would be made. If a member
of the audience began to talk so loudly that others
could not hear, he or she would probably be asked
to quiet down or to leave.
Much of the empirical work on behavior settings
conducted by Barker and his colleagues has been
devoted to identifying and describing the publicly
available behavior settings in two small towns: Os-
kaloosa, Kansas (population 800, called Midwest)
and Leyburn, England (population 1,300, called
Yoredale). Literally hundreds of behavior settings
occurred in each town during the one-year survey
periods. Among the settings identified were shoe
repair shops, Bible study classes, chess club meet-
ings, banks, court sessions, and high school bas-
ketball practices. Each setting in the survey was
described in numerous ways, including how long
it lasted, the age and sex of the participants,
and the extent to which the setting program in-
volved such processes as thinking, talking, and
showing emotion (Barker & Schoggen, 1973;
Barker & Wright, 1955).
These community surveys revealed much about
life in the two towns. To illustrate, survey data
documented restrictions on females' participation
in the. public settings of both Midwest and Yore-
dale and confirmed some of the biases to which
feminists have objected. Females spent less time
in the public settings of their communities than
did males, yet females were overrepresented in set-
tings controlled by churches and schools and in
settings where talking and expressing emotion were
prominent activities. They were underrepresented
in business and governmental settings and in set-
tings where physical activity was prominent. Nu-
756 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • SEPTEMBER 1979
merous other facets of the communities, including
their child-rearing systems, degree of local con-
trol over public settings, quality of life for the
elderly, and leadership patterns, were also induced
by Barker and Schoggen (1973) from such be-
havior-setting surveys.
THE THEORY OF UNDERMANNING
From their earliest observations in Midwest,
Barker and his colleagues were struck by the ex-
tensive participation of residents—including ado-
lescents and children—in community behavior set-
tings. The participation was so extensive, in fact,
that citizens were thinly spread over numerous,
diverse settings. They appeared to be overcom-
mitted. Barker's attempt to explain the claim of
the town's settings on residents' time and efforts
led to his theory of undermanning 2 (Barker, 1960,
1968; Barker & Schoggen, 1973). The theory
builds on the idea that behavior settings counter-
act threats to their programs and that one fre-
quent specific threat is the lack of enough people
to carry out a setting program in a smooth and
proper manner.
Settings may be undermanned (that is, have too
few active participants to carry out the setting's
program properly) or optimally manned (that is,
have the right number of people to handle the
setting's program). An example of an under-
manned setting would be a crowded restaurant
with fewer waitresses than needed. (Below, I
discuss overmanned settings, and the fact that the
staff and clientele of a setting generally have
complementary manning levels.)
According to Barker, any undermanned setting
generates forces that act on its occupants to keep
the setting functioning. The occupants sense that
the setting's program is threatened, and they re-
spond by acting more vigorously, by taking up a
wider range of tasks, and by prodding others to
do the same. Participants in undermanned set-
tings have to deal with tasks that are more im-
portant to the setting than do people in optimally
manned settings. If a person's contribution to an
undermanned setting is inadequate, he or she re-
ceives corrective inputs from others present but
2
The term manning theory is not intended to connote
the masculine gender; it applies to both sexes. I use
the term here to keep terminology consistent with that
used in Barker's work. Staffing theory is perhaps a better
term.
is not usually rejected. Only as a last resort is
a poor performer asked to leave an undermanned
setting. These events lead participants in under-
manned settings to feel that they serve in impor-
tant and valued roles, that is, to feel more in-
volved.
The first attempt to study the theory of man-
ning was conducted in several Kansas high schools
(Barker & Gump, 1964). The research indicated
that students from small schools, whose behavior
settings were presumably undermanned, had many
more positions of responsibility in voluntary school
activities such as football games and band concerts
than did students from a larger school, whose set-
tings were presumably optimally manned. More-
over, students fr,om the small schools—even mar-
ginal students—reported more pressures from peers
to participate and more feelings of involvement
than did students from the large school. These
and related differences associated with organization
size have generally been confirmed by subsequent
research in schools (Baird, 1969; Wicker, 1968,
1969a; Willems, 1967) and in churches (Wicker,
1969b; Wicker & Kauma, 1974; Wicker & Mehler,
1971).
Extensions of the Early Work
-\
DESCRIPTION OF BEHAVIOR SETTINGS
Barker has argued the value of descriptive studies
of human environments and behaviors primarily oh
scientific grounds: the need for ecologically valid
base-rate data. Records that describe conditions
existing in people's everyday lives can, for ex-
ample, allow researchers to make comparisons of
psychologically relevant events in different cul-
tures and in different historical periods. They
can provide clues to the processes of acculturation
and personality formation and can be helpful in
formulating theories that would not be developed
from laboratory experiments (Barker, 1965;
Barker & Associates, 1978; Barker & Wright
1949).8
Aside from the Barker group's own work, how-
ever, very few surveys of behavior settings have
been conducted on entire communities. Perhaps
psychologists have not been convinced of the sci-
entific benefits of such endeavors. Or perhaps
potential researchers have lacked the requisite
resources (knowledge, skills, time, money) for the
work, The levels of time and effort required to
identify, and particularly to describe, all of the
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST * SEPTEMBER 1979 • 757
behavior settings of a community are awesome.
Barker's survey procedures required 13 data
sheets, approximately 230 data entries, for each
behavior setting identified—and there were more
than 800 settings in Midwest in a single year.
Each descriptive dimension was applied to each
setting. The processing of these data was further
complicated by the fact that most of the descrip-
tors were not linked to any explicit theoretical
framework. Most of the survey findings were
left to stand alone or were used for simple com-
parisons, such as contrasts between Midwest and
Yoredale (Barker & Schoggen, 1973). /
Ecological psychologists are currently sensitive
to the problem of accumulating excessive amounts
of data with no theoretical underpinnings. Sur-
veys of behavior settings have been streamlined
in several ways. In some instances survey periods
have been shortened from one year to a few
months or weeks. The physical areas surveyed
have been confined to selected portions of a com-
munity or an institution. Moreover, practical and
theoretical criteria have guided the selection of
descriptors to be applied to settings. To illus-
trate, LeCompte and Willems surveyed only the
treatment sector of a large rehabilitation hospital.
They described each setting in terms of such prac-
tical concerns as the types of treatment activities
and the amounts of time spent in them by various
staff groups (Le Compte, 1972a, 1972b; LeCompte
& Willems, 1970; Willems, 1976).
Representative surveys of entire communities
can be conducted more efficiently with representa-
tive samples than with exhaustive ones. Price
and Blashfield (197S) shewed that many of Bark-
er's descriptors could be reduced to a smaller
number of dimensions. Their factor analysts of
Barker's data on a small Kansas town reduced 43
descriptors to nine interpretable factors that ac-
counted for 62% of the variance. They also did a
cluster analysis on the same data, which yielded
several clusters of behavior settings that had simi-
lar descriptive profiles. Future researchers might
use the smaller number of descriptors Price and
Blashfield identified, and they might sample set-
tings from the clusters rather than include the
entire population of settings in a community.
It seems clear that descriptive studies of the
behavior settings of communities and organizations
8
Lazarus (Note 1) recently expressed a similar view-
point in the context! of stress and coping research.
can serve both scientific and practical purposes. • Shared clienteles: Which settings serve the
In the future, surveys of behavior settings may be same clients, and how extensive is the overlap?
more application oriented. Their potential uses • Economic dependencies: Which settings depend
include assessing the social impact of governmental on other settings for their financial resources?
agencies or other types of institutions on a com- • Flow of information: Which settings are linked
munity, analyzing organizations intensively, and by formal and/or informal channels of communi-
evaluating designed environments. Examples of cation to other settings?
such uses are available in the literature. The • Flow of goods and services: Which settings
behavioral opportunities provided by the churches provide goods or services to other settings?
of Midwest and Yoredale and by the County Ag- (Miller's, 1972, analysis of the information-pro-
ricultural Extension Service in Midwest have been cessing and matter-energy-processing subsystems
reported (Barker, Barker, & Ragle, 1967; Ragle, in organizations might be a helpful source for re-
Barker, & Johnson, 1967). As noted above, Le- searchers interested in the last two types of links.)
Compte and Willems have analyzed the treatment The relationships of behavior settings to the
environments of a rehabilitation hospital (Le- formal organizations of which they are a part
Compte, 1972(a, 1972b; LeCompte & Willems, should also be examined. Supersystems generally
1970; Willems, 1976), and Bechtel (1977) has constrain the behavior variance of their component
described an evaluation of a public housing project. systems (Katz & Kahn, 1978, p. 63). Aspects of
(These and other uses have been further discussed larger systems that may constrain behavior set-
by Wicker, 1979.) tings include control systems; management-defined
I would like to suggest two additional ap- missions; resource limitations, such as lack of
proaches to describing community and organiza- capital or technology; and division of labor, that
tional settings that could have both scientific and is, the assignments of organizational tasks to dif-
practical value. According to the ecological view- ferent branches and departments (cf. Blau, 1974).
point, behavior settings are components of larger, To give but one example, as a result of a corpo-
more complex social systems such as communities rate board's decision to discontinue one product
and institutions. But the various ways in which line and introduce another, some behavior settings
behavior settings are linked to one another and at a much lower organizational level will be al-
to such supersystems remain largely unexplored. tered, some will be eliminated entirely, and some
In their descriptive surveys, Barker and his col- new ones will be created.
leagues have usually considered behavior settings A second, related way that ecological psycholo-
as firmly bounded, discrete units, and they have gists could contribute to the understanding of
attended primarily to the internal characteristics communities and institutions is by studing the life
of settings. An exception is the classification of cycles of important behavior settings within them
behavior settings according to the authority sys- —the circumstances that bring settings into be-
tems (schools, churches, governments, business, or ing, the ways settings adapt to changing external
voluntary associations) that control them (Barker, conditions, and the factors that contribute to their
1968; Barker & Schoggen, 1973). eventual demise.4
Oth6r kinds of connections among community Unfortunately, existing methods for surveying
and organization behavior settings should also be behavior settings are not appropriate for studying
examined. Here are some links that researchers the development of individual settings. The stan-
might consider: dard surveys are cross-sectional; that is, they
• Interpersonal links: To what extent are occu- identify all of the settings that occur within spe-
cified time-and-space boundaries without consid-
pants (leaders, workers, clients) of a given setting
ering how long the settings have existed or whether
acquainted with occupants of other settings? (See
they are in a transitional stage. A variety of
Sarason, Carroll, Maton, Cohen, & Lorentz, 1977, other techniques, including some from related so-
for an introduction to the literature on social net- cial science disciplines, will be required to under-
works.) stand the life cycles of behavior settings. Such
• Shared leadership: Which settings share lead-
ers, and how extensive is the overlap? (See Bind-
ing, 1970, for an analysis of shared leadership in *Stokols (1978, in press) also recently suggested this
Midwest's behavior settings.) line of inquiry.

758 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • SEPTEMBER 1979

procedures as content analysis, participant ob-
servation, in-depth interviewing, and historical
and archival analysis might be used, either alone
or in combination with more traditional survey
and systematic observational methods (cf. Bou-
chard, 1976; Schatzman & Strauss, 1973; Camp-
bell, Note 2).
Such methods may be applied to a variety of
provocative issues. For example, how are be-
havior settings "born"? Are there periods when
settings are especially vulnerable? Is there any
way to detect "old age" or "senility" in a behavior
setting? Do setting programs become so elabo-
rated over time that the setting's regulatory mech-
anisms respond slowly or not at all? And how is
the fate of behavior settings influenced by such
factors as new technologies, changes in the econ-
omy, unsatisfied wants and needs of people in
the system, changing laws and social customs, and
rapid shifts in clientele?
An idea of how research might proceed can be
gotten from considering the question of how be-
havior settings come into being. The earliest
stages in the birth of some behavior settings may
be the unfilled needs or wants of one or a few
members of an organization or a community. The
people who are unsatisfied, or others who see their
need, may first conceive of and then act to create
a fulfilling setting. For example, citizens of a
small town may see the need for local medical
care and seek to establish a clinic, or parents who
believe their children should have music training
may attempt to have music added to the curricu-
lum of local schools. Information on such nascent
behavior settings might be obtained from surveys
of community residents and from interviews with
community leaders. (See Sarason, 1972, and Sara-
son, Zitnay, & Grossman, 1971, for a discussion
of how one group planned a service institution.)
Not all behavior settings arise from grass-roots
needs, however. Settings may also be created by
actions of persons or agencies outside a community
or organization. To illustrate, real estate specula-
tors may build and promote shopping centers,
motel chains may locate facilities near freeway
exits to accommodate travelers rather than the
local populace, legislative committees may schedule
hearings at convenient field locations. The con-
ception of such externally imposed behavior set-
tings might usefully be studied by participant ob-
servers in boardrooms and administrative offices.
Subsequent development of these settings could
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • SEPTEMBER 1979 • 7S9
be traced by interviewing local government offi-
cials, realtors, developers, and other entrepreneurs.
Important data on the origins of some mature
behavior settings may be obtained from such
governmental and organizational records as appli-
cations for building permits, environmental im-
pact reports, requests for zone changes, and min-
utes of hearings and meetings. Local newspapers
and organizational memos might be content ana-
lyzed. Retrospective reports could be obtained
from persons who played important roles in the
creation of settings. An analysis of local com-
munity politics will undoubtedly be essential for
an adequate understanding of the birth and growth
of some behavior settings.
New concepts and methods may also be required
to understand some of the important ways in
which behavior settings adapt to changing ex-
ternal conditions. An early conceptual problem
will be to develop a working definition of the
meaningful environment of behavior settings. Re-
sidual definitions, such as "external factors im-
pinging on the setting," are not useful, for they
provide no guidelines for measurement. An ade-
quate working definition must take into account
links among behavior settings as well as relation-
ships between settings and their supersystems.
The links that affect the fate of behavior settings
must be identified from among the much larger
number of links that undoubtedly exist. It may
also be useful to distinguish varying degrees of
dependencies among settings. For example, a de-
cision to close a factory would have immediate
and final consequences for the work behavior set-
tings in the plant. A tavern across the street
from the factory might be seriously but less im-
mediately affected. Community businesses and
voluntary organizations might also experience im-
portant but less drastic consequences.
Further elaboration of these ideas and the de-
velopment of new methods and new combinations
of methods for studying them may provide us
with tools for better understanding communities
and organizations as dynamic systems.
EXTENSIONS OF MANNING THEORY
Several years ago, Joseph McGrath and I sug-
gested some amendments to Barker's theory of
undermanning (Wicker, McGrath, & Armstrong,
1972). We proposed that level of manning be
regarded as a continuum with three critical re-
gions—undermanning, adequate (or optimal) man-
ning, and overmanning—and we specified how
each level should be denned. The conceptual
separation of overmanning from adequate or op-
timal manning was a distinction not clearly made
by Barker. We also suggested that manning
levels should be determined for individual be-
havior settings in organizations, and that if level
of manning is to be calculated for entire organiza-
tions, it should be based on summations of data
from individual settings. (In the early research
on schools and churches [e.g., Barker & Gump,
1964; Wicker, 1969b; Willems, 1967], organiza-
tion manning levels were inferred from two sta-
tistics: number of members and number of be-
havior settings in an organization.) We further
suggested that manning should be calculated sepa-
rately for (a) people who have responsible posi-
tions in a setting (workers or staff) and (b) those
who are merely members, clients, or onlookers.
For example, a crowded physician's office would be
undermanned at the staff level and overmanned at
the patient level.
The example of a physician's office also illus-
trates my more recent interest in certain behavior
settings in service institutions: settings in which
entrepreneurs or paid employees (staff) provide
a service to customers, patients, or clients. Such
settings can be under-, adequately, or overstaffed,
and they can be under-, adequately, or overpopu-
lated with clients. Their staffing levels and client
population levels tend to be in a complementary
relation: A setting overpopulated with clients is,
by definition, understaffed; an underpopulated set-
ting often is overstaffed.
My work on service settings has been influenced
by the literature on stress and sensory overload,
as well as by manning theory. I have assumed
that departures from adequate staffing and ade-
quate client population can be stressful for both
types of setting occupants, and I have used Mc-
Grath's model of social psychological stress (Mc-
Grath, 1976) to analyze their coping strategies.
The literature on sensory overload (e.g., Milgram,
1970) was the source of predictions about such
residual consequences of chronic understaffing as
staff members' tendencies to become cynical I about
their work and their tendencies to apply negative
stereotypes to clients (Wicker, 1979; Wicker &
Kirmeyer, 1976).
Several colleagues and I have conducted labora-
tory experiments on these recent conceptual ex-
tensions of manning theory. These studies have
confirmed the expected inverse relationship be-
760 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • SEPTEMBER 1979
tween manning levels and involvement with a
group task (Petty & Wicker, 1974; Wicker, Kir-
meyer, Hanson, & Alexander, 1976; Hanson &
Wicker, Note 3). (People in overmanned condi-
tions report less involvement than people in un-
dermanned conditions.) It also appears from our
work that manning levels mediate some effects
previously attributed to differences in group size.
That is, we find differences in experiences that
are supposed to result from differences in group
size under conditions where size is constant but
manning levels differ. Another provocative finding
from these experiments is that manning levels
have carry-over effects on people's judgments
about the number of people required for a task.
For example, groups of research participants who
were shorthanded oil a group task judged a sub-
sequent task to need fewer people than did groups
of participants who had more than enough help
on the prior task. It appears that people's adap-
tation levels (Helson, 1964) for personnel require-
ments shift as a function of their exposure to dif-
ferent levels of manning. Perhaps this finding
reflects the pervasiveness of Parkinson's law: Work
expands to fit the time (and personnel) available
for its completion (Parkinson, 19S7).
We have also applied the extended manning
theory to behavior settings in service institutions,
specifically to work stations of Yosemite National
Park rangers (Wicker, 1979; Wicker & Kirmeyer,
1976). In some analyses we used the number
of people entering the park on a given day as our
index of staff load (and presumably of manning
level). We correlated this (objective) load mea-
sure with rangers' perceptions of their work loads,
their strategies for coping with departures from
adequate manning, and their job involvement on
specific work days. In general, heavier work loads
were associated with more coping strategies being
considered and enacted and also with greater feel-
ings of challenge and being needed on the job.
However, the positive relationship between work
load and quality of work experience declined over
the course of the summer. By the end of the
season, days when work loads were heavy were
characterized more by feelings of physical and
emotional fatigue than by job involvement.
These and other findings, as well as 6ur work-
ing model of service behavior settings (Wicker,
1979; Wicker & Kirmeyer, 1976), suggest that
staff members may suffer negative residual conse-
quences from having to cope with inadequate
staffing levels. Promising research along these
lines has recently been undertaken by ecological
and social psychologists. Kirmeyer (1978) found
that the spacing of client demands over the work
day—that is, the patterning of busy and slack
periods—is a better predictor of the quality of
staff members' work experiences than is the total
number of demands. Longer term consequences of
understaffirtg and other stressful conditions ex-
perienced by human-service providers are being
explored in Maslach's program of research on
burnout, the emotional disengagement of staff from
clients and their problems (Maslach, 19 7 6, Note 4).
Further extensions of manning theory might
draw on research in two other areas of psycho-
logical inquiry: small-group performance and job
enrichment. Most behavior-setting programs are
carried out by small, task-oriented groups of peo-
ple in face-to-face interaction. But with few
exceptions (e.g., McGrath, 1976; Petty & Wicker,
1974; Steiner, 1972; Weick, 1970; Wicker et al.,
1976), the ecological and small-group literature
have not been linked. The potential benefits of
association are substantial, and they would flow
both ways. The longitudinal study of people car-
rying out behavior-setting programs and coping
with such threats as understaffing can be used to
supplement, if not to supplant, the current domi-
nant pattern of investigations using closed, ade-
quately manned, ad hoc groups of college students
working for part of an hour on intellectual prob-
lems assigned by researchers.
Below, I sketch a few points of convergence
between the developing concerns of ecological psy-
chology and the literature on group performance.
The examples are drawn from Steiner (1972);
further examples could be developed from other
aspects of Steiner's work and from such sources
as Hackman (1976), Hackman and Morris
(1975), and McGrath and Altman (1966).
The first point of convergence draws on Stein-
er's discussion of the ways groups organize to per-
form divisible tasks. The programs of behavior
settings are, to varying degrees, the products of
organizing processes of setting occupants. The
occupants must determine whether they are free
to divide the setting program into distinct tasks
(job assignments) or whether the tasks to be done
have already been specified or constrained in im-
portant ways. The occupants must also deter-
mine whether they are allowed to match (assign)
persons to tasks or whether the matching has been
specified. Behavior settings can be placed in three
categories based on these two organizing factors:
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • SEPTEMBER 1979 • 761
(1) settings for which both tasks and matching are
specified (many behavior settings in industry
would fall ift this category), (2) settings for which
tasks are specified but matching is not (certain
behavior settings under the aegis of national vol-
untary organizations such as the Red Cross and
some churches would be included here), and (3)
settings for which neither tasks nor person-to-task
matches are specified (activities of small busi-
nesses and local voluntary organizations are ex-
amples, cf. Steiner, 1972, chap. 3). (More refined
conceptions of the division of labor and matching
in behavior settings might take into account de-
grees of specification rather than using dichoto-
mies.)
Steiner's discussion of group composition calls
attention to a class of variables that has been
neglected by ecological psychologists: the personal
characteristics of individuals. The knowledge j
skills, and social and personal dispositions of
occupants of behavior settings affect how well,
and in some cases whether, settings function. The
particular occupant characteristics that are im-
portant may, of coqrse, vary from one setting to
another. Settings also vary in the degree to
which it is desirable for occupants to be similar
on relevant characteristics. The division of labor
in a particular setting might, for example, make
it desirable for workers to have diverse technical
abilities yet to be similar in sociability.
The above derivations from the literature on
group performance are similar to points that can
be drawn from the literature on job enrichment.
Many job-enrichment programs attempt to reduce
the division of labor in work settings so that work-
ers use a wider variety of skills to perform a
larger portion of the whole task, that is, the be-
havior-setting program. And several researchers
have noted the importance of individual differences
in workers' reactions to enlarged jobs (e.g., Hack-
man, 1977; Hackman & Oldham, 1975; Wanous,
1977).
These considerations bear on manning theory.
The severity of consequences of undermanning
and overmanning of workers should be directly
related to the degree to which tasks, and also
matching, are specified. If jobs or assignments
are rigidly specified, the absence of a key worker
can incapacitate a behavior setting. But in set-
tings where tasks and matching are unspecified,
overmanning can be dealt with (at least to some
extent) by dividing the program into smaller
pieces and giving more people something to do
 (cf. Wicker et al., 1976); undermanning (at least
within some range) can be handled by combining
jobs. In fact, a reduction in the division of labor
of behavior settings may be necessary if the hy-
pothesized psychological consequences of under-
manning are to occur. For example, workers may
feel involved and challenged when undermanning
leads to restructured jobs, but they may not have
these experiences when undermanning merely re-
sults in more work to be done in the usual man-
ner (cf. Hackman & Oldham, 1975).
The quality of workers' experiences in behavior
settings may also depend on their various sensitivi-
ties to departures from adequate manning. Some
workers may find moderate or brief levels of un-
derstaffing to be stimulating and challenging, but
others may find the same condition aversive. Pre-
liminary research suggests that workers' reactions
to overstaffing may be related to individual differ-
ences in tolerance for waiting (Wicker et al.,
1976). The distribution of such sensitivities
among setting occupants may affect how well the
setting program is carried out.
Other implications can be drawn for the study
of the life cycles of behavior settings. When a
setting is created, the decisions made regarding
its division of labor and method of matching per-
sons to tasks presumably reflect current conditions
(e.g., organization rules, union contracts, available
space and equipment, abilities of available per-
sonnel). When conditions change, are correspond-
ing adjustments made in the division of labor and
in personnel assignments, or is there a progressive
drift toward ineffectiveness? The life expectancy
of a behavior setting may depend on the degree to
which its occupants monitor changing conditions
and on the degree to which they are free to adjust
work tasks and assignments.
A Future Direction for Ecological
Psychology
Several of the trends discussed above depart from
Barker's description of the ecological psychologist
as a scientist who seeks to understand human
behavior and environments by unobtrusively ob-
serving events that he or she has not constrained in
any significant way (Barker, 1965, 1968). In this
section I propose an even more radical departure
—that ecological psychologists develop a technol-
ogy for deliberately intervening in behavior set-
tings to improve setting functioning and to in-
762 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • SEPTEMBER 1979
crease the satisfaction and well-being of the people
(both staff and clients) who occupy them.
Our first attempts at behavior-setting technology
were designed as experiments in which we sought
as much control as possible over extraneous events.
We wanted to learn whether the specific interven-
tions we made could account for certain changes
in the experiences and behaviors of setting occu-
pants. One such project was the introduction of
a queuing device (an arrangement of posts con-
nected by chains) to channel passengers onto buses
at a heavily used bus stop in Yosemite National
Park (Wicker, 1979). The device was designed
to make the boarding process safer and more
equitable. Another project sought to reduce per-
ceived waiting time and stress among walk-in pa-
tients at a hospital emergency facility. Signs
were posted to inform patients of the facility's
priority system for processing patients (e.g., am-
bulance arrivals were given, first priority), infor-
mation was posted to apprise patients of their
place in line, and silent movies were shown to
provide an entertaining distraction (Vieth, Note
5). (Note that steps taken to improve setting
functioning need not exploit staff or clients; these
steps are designed to aid both staff and clients
in executing the program of the setting.)
In both experiments our interventions produced
some desirable outcomes. Passengers boarded
faster and more equitably. Patients perceived
their waiting times to be shorter. But in retro-
spect, the experimental model may not be the
best one for behavior-setting technologists to use.
Behavior settings are not static, and the require-
ment that conditions be held constant throughout
the course of an experiment cannot be met in
most settings. Moreover, rarely does the re-
searcher/technologist know enough about a setting
to plan an intervention that is worth being con-
tinued without change throughout the course of
an experiment. Very often something will happen
duripg an experiment to moderate the effect of
the treatment or to make the pretreatment period
incomparable with the post treatment period. For
example, clerks may complain about conditions of
reduced lighting required for showing movies, and
the administration may decide that the lights must
be returned to pretreatment levels.
A more suitable approach for behavior-setting
technologists is a "fine-tuning" procedure that re-
sembles the formative evaluation-research model
(Campbell, Note 2 ) . According to this model,
new social programs are continuously monitored
 from their inception, and when it is obvious that
certain aspects of a program are unworkable or
ineffective, they are promptly revised or aban-
doned. Campbell noted that "many errors in
planning are visible to the naked eye" and do not
have to be confirmed by full-blown quantitative
experimentation.
Innovations in behavior settings could be treated
in a similar fashion, as I discuss below. Before
any intervention is made, however, the recipient
behavior setting must be carefully analyzed. It is
in this assessment phase that behavior-setting
technologists are likely to make their most dis-
tinctive contributions. They will bring to the
task a sensitivity to both the structural and the
dynamic features of settings, as well as a respect
for the intricate interdependence among the hu-
man and nonhuman setting components. Their
tools will allow them quickly to establish the
boundaries of the environments they are dealing
with and to focus on the heart of these environ-
ments: behavior-setting programs. They will also
understand that behavior settings afford a variety
of satisfactions and dissatisfactions to setting occu-
pants and that the perspectives of all types of
participants should be assessed.
In this assessment stage, behavior-setting tech-
nologists would observe the setting in operation
during its busy, normal, and slack periods; ob-
tain the perspective of both staff and clients on
the setting—its functions, any dysfunctions they
see, and the satisfactions and dissatisfactions the
setting provides; and where possible, spend some
time actually participating in the various staff
and client roles in the setting. The technologists
would also scrutinize the required behaviors, physi-
cal facilities, and their arrangements, standard
operating procedures, and workers' abilities, in
order to identify any instances of poor fit among
these aspects of the setting. (Some guidelines for
analyzing behavior settings, their programs, and
certain other setting features are given in Wicker,
1979.) Additional inquiries should establish what
features must remain as they are.8
This broad initial assessment should suggest
ways to improve the setting's functioning and the
outcomes for setting occupants. Only changes
that could feasibly be incorporated into the setting
program on an enduring basis should be introduced
—behavior settings should not be whimsically
tinkered with. All innovations should be consid-
ered provisional and should be continuously moni-
tored. Elements of an intervention package that
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • SEPTEMBER 1979 • 763
obviously don't work can be dropped after a rea-
sonable trial period. Faltering adjustments can
be modified. When warranted, apparently success-
ful innovations can be more rigorously evaluated
by experimental procedures.
Some aspects of this fine-tuning approach are
currently being applied by Donald Lemmex at a
venereal disease clinic located in a county health
facility. He initially assessed1 the setting by ob-
serving its operation, interviewing the staff, and
seeking to learn the concerns and anxieties of
patients visiting the clinic. Among the modifica-
tions he is introducing are partitions to screen
patients in the waiting room from the view of
passersby in the hall, signs that make it clear to
people entering the setting that they are entering
the VD clinic, rearrangement of the furniture in
the waiting room to accommodate couples and
children, and a change in receptionist procedures
(from asking patients "What are you here for?"
to asking '"Are you here for a VD test?"). It
seems likely that some of these innovations will
require further adjustments, and some may be
abandoned altogether, depending on how they seem
to work during the period they are continuously
monitored.
The main benefit from behavior-setting tech-
nology is likely to be improved conditions for
people who occupy the settings where the tech-
nology is applied. But another kind of payoff is
possible. If an effective technology for improv-
ing a diversity of behavior settings does develop,
it could provide insights that would advance
theory in ecological psychology (cf. Bass, 1974).
These comments on ecological psychology's re-
cent past and its near future reflect the percep-
tions of only one participant. Other prescriptions
for the field are available (e.g., Barker & Associ-
ates, 1978, chap. 19; Stokols, 1978; Willems, 1974,
1977). However, I believe that most ecological
psychologists recognize the value of developing
closer links with related branches of psychology
5
Behavior-setting techniques might also be combined
with the methodologies of environmental assessment as-
sociated with other paradigms of environmental research
(e.g., environmental cognition, environmental attitudes,
operant approaches, assessment of social climate). Such
combinations might prove more powerful than the con-
cepts and methods associated with a single paradigm.
Environmental interventions have been proposed and
described by researchers from a variety of backgrounds
(e.g., Cone & Hayes, 1977; Craik & Zube, 1976; Hoiahan,
1978; Ittelson, Pfoshansky, & Rivlin, 1970; Leff, 1978;
Sommer, 1969, 1974; Steele, 1973).
and with other social science disciplines. And they
would surely agree that the benefits of closer as-
sociation would flow in both directions.
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