Social Climate

Introduction

After introducing the conceptual and historical underpinnings of social climate, we describe three key sets of dimensions that characterize it, set out the development and psychometric procedures involved in constructing scales to assess social climate, and cover such issues as scale construction criteria, participants' and observers' perspectives, and environmental preferences. We then review applications, including comparing and contrasting environments and identifying determinants and assessing the impacts of social climate. Next, we consider broader issues involving cross-cultural generalizability, person-environment matching models, and viewing social environments in an ecological perspective. We close by noting that social climate assessment promotes a transactional perspective on the interplay between person and environment.

The social climate is the ‘personality’ of a setting or environment, such as a family, a workplace, a classroom, ...