ABSTRACT
How to conceptualize the environment of human action continues to be a problematic enterprise in contemporary psychology. The most basic psychological term for the environment—the stimulus—still eludes consensual definition (Gibson, 1960; Jessor, 1956); environmental descriptions borrowed from other disciplines—physics, geography, sociology—appear in psychological research as if their appropriateness were self-evident; and when environmental concepts at very different levels of abstraction are employed in a study, the analysis often fails to consider their causal or logical heterogeneity.
