On The Methodology Of Ecological Psychology

With the development of scientific psychology, ecologicalpsychology, a new research trend, comes into being and develops rapidly.It not only inherits and develops the scientific psychology, but alsocriticizes and exceeds it. In the first half of 20th century, with theecology's progressing, especially in redefining and reviewing the humaneecological nature and world view, the viewpoints of ecology have beeninfluencing the other natural sciences and a current of reviewing therelations among human, nature and social relationships came into being.In acclimation with this current, the ecological psychology drives thedevelopment of the ecological methodology in psychological research.The methodology of ecological psychology takes the interrelationsbetween human and their environments in the daily life as the subject,emphasizes the importance of relations and their mutual-relyinginfluences, and redefines the human and environment based on thehypothesis that human's behaviors cannot be separated from theirsurroundings. Having an open and democratic research attitude, theecological psychology advocates the flexibility in adopting researchmethods according to the different research aims and problems andproposes Ecological Momentum, Ecological Reliability, and Interactionbetween Human and Environment, etc. to improve the methodology ofmainstream psychology. Therefore, the methodology of ecologicalpsychology breaks the limitations of so-called "enclosed psychology".On the basis of reviewing ecological psychological papers, the thesissynthesizes the orientation, connotation and development in themethodology of ecological psychology, analyzes its limitations, diseussesits theoretical status in psychology and predicts its bright future. Thethesis points out that although the ecological psychology openedpositively a wide space for the ecological development of psychology inhumanity and methodology, there are many disputes and shortcomings inecological psychology itself, therefore it is necessary to improve and perfect the ecological research which are advocated by ecologicalpsychology.Psychology proposes that the research of psychology should be moreecological and near to the human's practice to reach a "balancedzoology "in environments and thus to develop psychology itself into avarious and united one by adjusting and adapting.