Visual landscapes and psychological well‐being

Abstract

Summary and Discussion The findings suggest that stressed individuals feel significantly better after exposure to nature scenes rather than to American urban scenes lacking nature elements. Compared to the influences of the urban scenes, the salient effect of the nature exposures was to increase Positive Affect — including feelings of affection friendliness, playfulness, and elation. The increase in positive affect produced by the nature scenes is consistent with the finding that the nature exposures also significantly reduced Fear Arousal. According to psychological theories, a reduction in arousal or activation produces pleasurable feelings if an individual is experiencing stress or excessive arousal (Berlyne, 1971, pp. 81–82). In contrast to the nature scenes, the urban views tended to work against emotional well‐being. The major effect of the urban scenes was to significantly increase Sadness. There was also a consistent but non‐significant tendency for the urban scenes to‐aggravate feelings of Anger/Aggression, and for the nature scenes to reduce such feelings. The urban exposures also held the attention of subjects somewhat less effectively than the nature exposures. These findings were stable across sexes, and applied to subjects who had grown up in either rural or urban environments. The urban and nature scenes produced different changes in psychological states despite the fact that the complexity levels of the slide samples were similar. Largely on the basis of laboratory studies by psychologists using ‘non‐landscape’ stimuli, complexity has received considerable emphasis as a variable influencing emotional activation. The findings here suggest the possibility that other visual properties — related to nature versus man‐made differences — are also of importance. It should also be pointed out that the sample of urban scenes, compared to most American urban landscapes, contained a disproportionately large number of nonblighted, relatively aesthetic views. For example, the urban collection included only one slide of a roadside strip development; ‘strips’ are one of the most common, as well as visually blighted, features in American urban areas. The nature sample, on the other hand, contained an unrepresentatively large number of high complexity scenes that were ‘scruffy’ and relatively unaesthetic in appearance. This meant that the experiment was a conservative test of the effects of nature versus urban scenes. If the slide collections had been selected using a geographical sampling technique rather than a procedure that favoured the urban scenes, it is likely that the differences among the effects of the nature and urban scenes would have been even more extreme. The findings have a number of implications for environmental planning and design. At the most general level, the results suggest that outdoor visual environments can influence individuals’ psychological well‐being, and therefore should be given explicit attention in planning and design decisions. Most planners have some sensitivity for aesthetic aspects of environments, and in fact there exists some direct empirical evidence showing that aesthetic benefits can be of considerable importance (e.g. Ulrich, 1974; Shafer and Mietz, 1969). The findings here imply that the importance of visual landscapes is by no means limited to aesthetics, but also includes a range of influences on emotional states. More specifically, an individual's experiences in terms of his degree of visual contact with nature or urban scenes may influence his feelings, and in some instances have distinctly positive or negative effects on his well‐being. Although the findings clearly favour nature scenes vis‐a‐vis American urban views, the results should not be construed as an indictment on psychological grounds of urban landscapes in general. It is likely that the differences between the effects of the two landscape categories would have been less if the urban scenes had contained large amounts of nature elements, and perhaps if the forms and materials of the built structures were different. For planners, the results support the notion that the benefits of providing landscaping or nature‐like views in urban areas extend beyond aesthetics to include such psychological ‘payoffs’ as higher levels of positive affect. A related implication is that location and design decisions for some activities and institutions — such as high stress workplaces and hospitals — should assign considerable importance to providing ‘through the window’ contact with nature. Does a pre‐operative hospital patient experience less anxiety if his window overlooks a park rather than, say, a motorway or vegetationless parking lot? Do school children feel more anxious in windowless classrooms than in classrooms having window views of nature? Does an individual recuperate more quickly at home after a stressful workday if, for example, his apartment complex has been planned to allow visual contact with a forest or lake? The potential of visual landscapes to reduce or heighten anxiety, and to influence other aspects of emotional states, should be considered in attempts to achieve more holistic evaluations of planning effects. In this regard there will likely emerge a demand for landscape researchers to develop procedures for assessing the psychological, as well as aesthetic, ‘resources’ of visual landscapes. This study has been intended as an exploratory first step, and many research questions remain. To what extent do the results apply to people of different ages, levels of education, culture, etc? Do the differences which characterise psychological response to nature and urban views vary seasonally? How do people respond to scenes containing water? Are nature views more therapeutic than urban scenes for individuals experiencing boredom and understimulation rather than anxiety and high arousal? Is a scene's aesthetic value related to its influence on emotional well‐being? What man‐made forms, textures, and materials evoke responses similar to those to nature elements? These and other unresolved questions underline the fact that the general issue of differential human response to nature and built elements is of central importance to landscape research and planning.

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