Today’s Goals

  • Mini-review: Accomplishment
  • Catching up: Creativity
  • Become familiar with the effects of nature exposure (cognitive, emotional, etc.)
  • Understand the construct of ‘nature relatedness’
  • Become familiar with the correlates of nature relatedness

 

Mini-Review

  • What are the three main subtypes of ability that are typically tested?
  • How strongly do ability types and interests correlate?
  • What does the ‘people—things ‘ dimension describe?
  • What are the three criteria used to determine that something is creative? Usefulness, nonobvious, novel

 

Nature Relatedness and the Happy Path to Sustainability

 

Canada Today

  • Wealthy
  • Technologically Advanced
  • Happy
  • Ecological Challenges
  • Insecure
  • Stressed & Depressed

Rates of anxiety and depression seem to be increasing

 

In a Nutshell

  • Exposure to nature and subjective connections with nature are associated with o Cooperative, sustainable attitudes/behaviour o Subjective well-being (happiness)
  • Nature may provide a happy path to sustainabiilty

 

Theory

  • O. Wilson’s Biophilia Hypothesis
  • Our Evolutionary History

 

Biological Preparedness

  • Spider vs. plug

 

Biophilia

  • Innate Need to Affiliate with Other Living or ‘Lifelike’ Things
  • Suggestive Evidence o Gardening, zoos, pets, camping, etc.
    • Empirical benefits of nature

 

Environmental Satisfaction Studies

  • Natural vs. built Ottawa photos

 

Nature is Good for You

  • Attention Restoration
  • Stress/Pain/Illness
  • Creativity

 

Mortality

Mood Boosts

 

Disconnection from Nature

  • Consider modern living environments
  • Disconnection may be creating unhappy and unhealthy people…
  • …and contributing to environmental problems

 

Campus Walking Studies

  • Method
    1. Random assignment to walk inside or outside
    2. Self-reports of mood
  • Why are people walking inside?
  • Random assignment to predict or experience
    • People prefer the outdoor walk
    • People under-predict the benefits of outdoor walks
    • Mood benefits of nearby nature are underestimated
    • This may result from general disconnection
    • Forecasting error also occurs ‘within-person’
    • Mindfulness instruction enhances benefits

 

Beyond Individual Benefits of Nature

  • Less Aggression & Crime (property & violent)
  • More Social Activity
  • More Pro-social (intrinsic) Aspirations
  • More helping behaviour
  • Cooperation

 

Nature and Cooperation

  • Cooperation essential to human survival
  • Cooperation essential to broad sustainability
  • Commons dilemmas as an explicit link
  • Experimental lab analogs

 

FISH 3.1 Microworld

Fishing Behaviour

Fishing Behaviour II

 

Lab FISH Studies

  • Nature seems to promote sustainable fishing
  • Nature videos produce pleasant moods…
  • … but no evidence of mood as mediator
  • Is this sustainability? (demand?, explicitly?)

 

Location vs. Valence

 

New Outcomes

  • Social Value Orientation Slider
  • Allocate points to self and others
  • Willingness to Engage in Sustainable Behaviours o Rate willingness across transportation, energy use, social advocacy, tax support, and regulation support

 

Nature Effects

May extend to explicit sustainability

Also to generic pro-social allocations

  • Not simply due to pleasant moods

 

Subjective Connectedness and Individual Differences

  • Nature Relatedness o A person’s affective, cognitive, & physical relationship with nature; or nurtured biophilia

 

Validity/Associations

  • Time spent outdoors & ‘in nature’ (ESM)
  • Being vegetarian, having pets
  • Participating in environmental organizations
  • Purchasing organic
  • Response to ‘campus walk’ studies
  • Petition signing (Ottawa recycling)
  • Environmental attitude measures

 

Nature Relatedness and Happiness

  • Meta analytic averages o Various nature relatednesss measures o k = 30, n = 8,496
  • Positive Affect: r = .21
  • Vitality: r = .24
  • Life Satisfaction: r = .17

Nature relatedness correlated with positive affect, life satisfaction, etc.

 

Nature Relatedness and Well-Being

  • Personal Growth o I have the sense that I have developed a lot as a person over time.
  • Autonomy
    • Being happy with myself is more important to me than having others approve of me.
  • Purpose
    • I have a sense of direction and purpose in life

 

Distinct Importance of Nature Relatedness

  • Compared to Psycho-Social Connections o attachment style, interdependence, loneliness, general belongingness, collective identity Social connections very important – good indicators of happiness
  • Compared to other Environmental Attitudes o Ecology scale (commitment, affect); New Ecological Paradigm; New Environmental Consciousness

Individual differences

Do people feel committed to the environment

 

Increasing Nature Relatedness • NR predicts lots of good stuff

  • Can we increase it?

 

Definitely!

(in the short term)

  • Campus walk studies
  • Inclusion of Nature in Self

 

Long Term Change?

Can we increase ‘trait’ nature relatedness?

30 x 30 Challenge

  • Education Study o Sustainable behaviour?
    • Happiness?

 

Change in Vitality & Sustainable Attitudes

 

 

Found not significant results in all groups

Rate of happiness decreased from Sept to November – season as effect?

 

Summary

  • Exposure to nature and subjective connections with nature are associated with:
    • cooperative, sustainable attitudes/behavior o subjective well-being (happiness)
  • Nature may provide a (happy) path to sustainability

Continued to be studied – helpful hints along to way in how to proceed

 

Future Directions and Applications

  • Intervention Studies Urban Design

Include some kind of green space – park, forest, etc.

  • Personal Choices

Personal choice to walk outside vs. inside tunnels

Underestimation in how much walking outside changes thing • Messaging