A comparison of nature and urban environments on creative thinking across different levels of reality
Introduction
Extensive research has demonstrated the beneficial effects of exposure to nature, indicating that nature environments can have restorative effects on emotional, physiological, and cognitive properties (e.g., Grinde and Patil, 2009, Gullone, 2000, McMahan and Estes, 2015). There is much evidence that being in natural environments, or just looking at nature, improves cognitive functioning, such as attention and memory (Berman et al., 2008, Berto, 2005, Berto et al., 2010, Raanaas et al., 2011), and promotes recovery from self-reported and physiological stress (de Kort et al., 2006, Hartig et al., 1991, Hartig et al., 1996, Herzog et al., 1997, Jiang et al., 2014, Tyrväinen et al., 2014, Ulrich, 1981, Ulrich et al., 1991, Valtchanov and Ellard, 2010, Van den Berg et al., 2003).
Studies examining health and workplace satisfaction have shown that office spaces with views of nature (e.g., trees, vegetation, plants, foliage, or even posters of nature) can improve job satisfaction and overall well-being, reduce stress and anger, and induce fewer sick-days compared to office spaces without such views (Bringslimark et al., 2007, Heerwagen and Orians, 1986, Kweon et al., 2008, Leather et al., 1998, Shibata and Suzuki, 2004). It has also been shown that hospitals with views of nature can improve patient recovery, reduce patient stress, and diminish perceptions of pain after undergoing surgery (Beukeboom et al., 2012, Lechtzin et al., 2010, Ulrich, 1984).
One explanation for the restorative properties of nature comes from Attention Restoration Theory (ART; Kaplan, 1995, Kaplan, 2001), which proposes that human cognitive capabilities evolved in natural environments. ART states that interaction with inherently fascinating stimuli, such as nature environments (e.g., trees, beaches, waterfalls, sunsets), captures involuntary attention effortlessly, allowing it to wander freely while directed attention mechanisms can recover and replenish. Conversely, urban city environments (e.g., bright lights, neon signs, loud vehicles, construction sounds) contain stimuli that command attention dramatically, dissuading it to wander or disengage from the stimuli. Thus, urban city environments, unlike nature environments, require directed attention mechanisms that are cognitively taxed in order to disengage from the stimuli, causing the environments to be less restorative (Berman et al., 2008, Berto, 2005, Berto et al., 2008).
The restorative effects of nature have been demonstrated using exposure to real nature (Berman et al., 2008, Bratman et al., 2015), images of nature (Valtchanov & Ellard, 2015), videos of nature (de Kort et al., 2006, Van den Berg et al., 2003), and immersive virtual reality (VR) nature environments (Valtchanov and Ellard, 2010, Valtchanov et al., 2010).
Although many studies have indicated that exposure to nature can reliably improve cognitive functioning, enhance emotional affect, and reduce stress, less research has studied the enhancement of creativity with exposure to nature environments (Atchley et al., 2012, Ceylan et al., 2008, Shibata and Suzuki, 2004; see also; Oppezzo & Schwartz, 2014). Creativity can elicit many positive outcomes (Plucker, Beghetto, & Dow, 2004), including healthy psychological functioning, social and emotional well-being (Davis, 1989, Kin and Pope, 1999, McCracken, 1991, Russ, 1998, Terr, 1992), the maintenance of romantic relationships (Livingston, 1999), and scholastic and workplace success (Tierney et al., 1999, Torrance, 1972, Torrance, 1981). Thus, it follows that improvements in creativity may be valued by society for its potential benefits to health, well-being, and life satisfaction.
Previous research that has examined the restorative effects of nature on creative thinking has used exposure to real nature environmental elements (Atchley et al., 2012, Oppezzo and Schwartz, 2014, Shibata and Suzuki, 2004) or photographs of natural elements (Ceylan et al., 2008). For example, Atchley et al. (2012) showed that a group of hikers who spent four days in nature yielded higher performance on a creative problem-solving task than a group of hikers before they began their backpacking trip. Oppezzo and Schwartz (2014) demonstrated that university students developed more novel responses on a creativity test when being outside along a campus pathway than when being situated indoors. Shibata and Suzuki (2004) showed that female undergraduate students achieved higher creative task performance when sitting in a room with an indoor plant compared to sitting in a room with a magazine rack. Lastly, Ceylan et al. (2008) demonstrated that managers from a manufacturing company rated photographs of offices with more plants and windows as having higher creative potential (i.e., the perception that new ideas could be generated to solve problems) compared to photographs of offices without those elements.
These studies have demonstrated that creativity can be boosted when viewing nature elements across a variety of mediums. The present research extends these findings by investigating whether the restorative effects of nature enhances creativity performance differently depending on the level of reality and psychological immersion within the environment, using videos (indoors) and real-life (outdoors) settings. For instance, displaying environments in monoscopic 2-dimensional (2D) video formats may elicit a lower sense of psychological immersion than in stereoscopic 3-dimensional (3D) VR formats (Cummings and Bailenson, 2015, McIntire et al., 2014), which in turn, may also elicit a lower sense of immersion than in outdoor real-life environments. Hypothetically, a higher level of reality and immersion may increase the restorative benefits of nature and enhance creative thinking, yet no research has examined this theory in a direct comparison across environmental contexts.
Across two experiments, creativity was measured using a widely accepted task that focused on divergent creative thinking and cognitive flexibility, the Alternate Uses Test (AUT; Guilford, 1967). The AUT involves participants generating alternate uses for common objects (e.g., button, paperclip, tire) in a fixed amount of time. In both experiments, participants were asked to generate as many alternative uses as possible for a brick, which could include, for example, “a paperweight”, “a doorstop”, or “to save water in a toilet tank”. The AUT has been shown to be a reliable and valid indicator of divergent thinking and creative potential (Gibson et al., 2009, Harrington et al., 1983, Kaufman et al., 2008, Renner and Renner, 1971, Runco and Acar, 2012, Stimson, 1968).
Section snippets
Experiment 1
Experiment 1 examined whether and to what extent creative thinking was enhanced when viewing nature versus urban environments through either 2D (i.e., mobile tablet) or 3D (i.e., VR headset) mediums. While indoors, participants viewed the same 360° videos of live recordings across mediums. For creativity performance, a main effect of environment was predicted, such that nature videos were expected to facilitate enhanced creative thinking compared to urban videos. Furthermore, this effect was
Results and discussion
Creativity was analyzed with a series of 2 (environment: nature, urban) x 2 (medium: 2D, 3D) between-subjects factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) using each of the 4 components for creativity (fluency, flexibility, elaboration, originality) as dependent variables, to evaluate differences in the various factors of creative thinking.
Fig. 2 shows the mean creativity scores for each of the four test conditions in Experiment 1. For fluency, a main effect of environment was found (F(1,
Experiment 2
Experiment 2 examined whether and to what extent creative thinking was enhanced when viewing nature versus urban environments through either a video representation with a 2D mobile tablet (i.e., video condition) or real-life outdoor settings (i.e., real-life condition). Participants in the real-life conditions sat in a live outdoor setting of either a forest-surrounded park (i.e., nature condition) or on the corner of a busy city street intersection (i.e., urban condition). 360° video
Results and discussion
Creativity was analyzed with a series of 2 (environment: nature, urban) x 2 (medium: video, real) between-subjects factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) using each of the 4 components for creativity as dependent variables.
Fig. 4 shows the mean creativity scores for each of the four test conditions in Experiment 2. For fluency, an interaction of environment and medium was found (F(1, 93) = 5.845, p = 0.018). Independent samples t-tests revealed that more responses were generated for the nature
Conflicts of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to all of the participants, project members, supporters, and researchers at Klick Inc. for the successful development, implementation, and evaluation of this research.
References (60)
- et al.
Inducing physiological stress recovery with sounds of nature in a virtual reality forest—results from a pilot study
Physiology & Behavior
(2013) Exposure to restorative environments helps restore attentional capacity
Journal of Environmental Psychology
(2005)- et al.
An exploratory study of the effect of high and low fascination environments on attentional fatigue
Journal of Environmental Psychology
(2010) - et al.
Do eye movements measured across high and low fascination photographs differ? Addressing kaplan's fascination hypothesis
Journal of Environmental Psychology
(2008) - et al.
The benefits of nature experience: Improved affect and cognition
Landscape and Urban Planning
(2015) - et al.
Enhanced divergent thinking and creativity in musicians: A behavioral and near-infrared spectroscopy study
Brain and Cognition
(2009) - et al.
Reflection and attentional recovery as distinctive benefits of restorative environments
Journal of Environmental Psychology
(1997) - et al.
A dose of nature: Tree cover, stress reduction, and gender differences
Landscape and Urban Planning
(2014) The restorative benefits of nature: Toward an integrative framework
Journal of Environmental Psychology
(1995)- et al.
What's wrong with virtual trees? Restoring from stress in a mediated environment
Journal of Environmental Psychology
(2006)
Stereoscopic 3D displays and human performance: A comprehensive review
Displays
Residential exposure to visible blue space (but not green space) associated with lower psychological distress in a capital city
Health & Place
Benefits of indoor plants on attention capacity in an office setting
Journal of Environmental Psychology
The influence of urban green environments on stress relief measures: A field experiment
Journal of Environmental Psychology
Stress recovery during exposure to natural and urban environments
Journal of Environmental Psychology
Cognitive and affective responses to natural scenes: Effects of low level visual properties on preference, cognitive load and eye-movements
Journal of Environmental Psychology
Environmental preference and restoration: (How) are they related?
Journal of Environmental Psychology
Creativity in the wild: Improving creative reasoning through immersion in natural settings. PLoS ONE
The cognitive benefits of interacting with nature
Psychological Science
Stress-Reducing effects of real and artificial nature in a hospital waiting room
The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine
Psychological benefits of indoor plants in workplaces: Putting experimental results into context
HortScience
Can the office environment stimulate a manager's creativity?
Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing
How immersive is enough? A meta-Analysis of the effect of immersive technology on user presence
Media Psychology
The use of art therapy and group process with grieving children
Issues in Comprehensive Pediatric Nursing
Creativity evaluation through latent semantic analysis
Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
Biophilia: Does visual contact with nature impact on health and well-Being?
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Creativity: Yesterday, today and tomorrow
Journal of Creative Behavior
Alternate uses: Manual of instructions and interpretations
The biophilia hypothesis and life in the 21st century: Increasing mental health or increasing pathology?
Journal of Happiness Studies
Predicting creativity in preadolescence from divergent thinking in early childhood
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Cited by (62)
Enablers for accelerating biophilic design adoption in Australian buildings
2024, Journal of Building EngineeringThe Impact of Video Meeting Systems on Psychological User States: a State-of-the-Art Review
2024, International Journal of Human Computer StudiesNature exposure and social health: Prosocial behavior, social cohesion, and effect pathways
2023, Journal of Environmental PsychologySoundscapes, music, and memories: Exploring the factors that influence emotional responses to virtual nature content
2023, Journal of Environmental PsychologyVirtual nature and psychological and psychophysiological outcomes: A systematic review
2023, Journal of Environmental Psychology