The affective, cognitive, and social benefits of interacting with nature

Abstract

The surrounding environment influences how people feel, think, and behave. This effect is apparent when examining the multitude of ways interactions with natural environments impact people psychologically. In this Research Dialogue, we discuss work by ourselves and others that demonstrate the benefits of spending time in nature or interacting with natural stimuli, across three psychological domains. First, we discuss affective benefits, such as improved mood and decreased stress and rumination. Then, we discuss cognitive benefits, such as improved working memory. Lastly, we discuss social benefits, such as prosocial and proenvironmental attitudes. We introduce several environmental psychology theories that try to explain why these benefits occur. We present our own work that attempts to determine what characteristics of natural environments cause or are related to these effects by quantifying distinguishing characteristics of natural versus built environments along a variety of dimensions. We then investigate how these dimensions influence the psychological experience in a more natural versus a more built environment. We end by outlining the implications of the benefits of interacting with nature in influencing consumer behaviors.