A forty-year conversation about perception and action.
Founded in 1981 to connect the students and colleagues of James J. and Eleanor J. Gibson, the ISEP has grown into a worldwide community advancing the ecological approach to psychology.
What is ecological psychology?
The science of perception, action, and cognition founded on the premise that organism and environment form a single system — and that meaning is found, not constructed.
The shared commitment of ISEP members is to foster the development of psychology as a science of behavior from an ecological point of view. The focus is on principles that underlie the organization of organism–environment systems at multiple time scales, ranging from phylogeny and ontogeny to learning and acting.
From the outset, ISEP has broadened its approach to include perception, the control and coordination of action, cognition, dynamical systems, developmental systems, social systems, human-centered design, and the arts. Underlying its continuing growth is James Gibson's admonition that ecological psychology's terms and concepts are subject to revision as the approach becomes clear.
The ISEP is a scientific organization that welcomes all interested researchers and scholars, and promotes participation by people of all genders, races, religions, and nationalities in the study of ecological psychology.
From a single conference to a society spanning twenty countries.
The Society was founded in the fall of 1981, in the wake of the First International Conference on Event Perception, held at the University of Connecticut that summer. At the closing dinner, Joe Lappin rose to announce he liked it so much he would hold one at Vanderbilt — a gesture that transformed a single conference into a series.
Meanwhile, the idea of a journal had been discussed for years. The founders learned that Lawrence Erlbaum Associates could best help if a clear nonprofit organization stood behind it. A meeting was rapidly organized at Trinity College in Hartford on September 26, 1981, where Robert Hoffman started the momentum by publicly offering to pay the first dues.
The Society advertised itself very little; most growth has been by word of mouth. It now has several hundred members representing more than twenty countries, with regional groups in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, and across Europe — convening from Australia to Brazil to Asia and back.
The people behind the Society
Four officers and an international board of directors steward the journal, the conference, and the Society's work.
The Board of Directors of the International Society for Ecological Psychology stands with our students, colleagues, and fellow citizens who are standing up for racial justice. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, "When you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity, … then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait."
Fifty-seven years later, racism and killings continue, but the world-wide outpouring of multiracial solidarity gives us hope. We commit, and we urge members and colleagues to commit, to work actively as scientists and citizens to dismantle the structures of white supremacy within the ISEP and in our universities, workplaces, and communities.