Behavioral adjustment and the physical environment

The present paper focuses attention on attributes of the external environment and the capacities of living organisms to adjust to them. Environmental management involves “trade-offs” between the biological limits within which man can adjust to changes in his ecosystem and the social cost-benefits which he perceives as contributing to the quality of his life. Psychobiological mechanisms involved in the plasticity of behavior during acute and chronic exposures to such changes are analyzed and the limits they set on adjustment, discussed. Examples are given of research designed to study both the plasticity and the limits based upon the strategies of environmental epidemiology, clinical investigation, and experimental psychobiology.