A comparison of nature and urban environments on creative thinking across different levels of reality

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.04.006Get rights and content

Highlights

  • 2D and 3D nature videos elicited higher creativity compared to urban videos.

  • Real-life nature and urban environments elicited equally high creativity.

  • Urban stimuli watched indoors diminished creativity performance versus nature stimuli.

  • Being outdoors in general was enough to stimulate creativity.

Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated that exposure to nature environments, as opposed to urban environments, can help restore depleted cognitive resources and reduce emotional and physiological stress. The present research examined the restorative properties of nature on creativity, and also whether this effect was moderated across different levels of reality and psychological immersion of the environment, using 2-dimensional (2D) videos, 3-dimensional (3D) virtual reality (VR), and real-life outdoor settings. Across two experiments, it was predicted that higher levels of reality would increase the restorative benefits of viewing nature environments and enhance creative thinking compared to viewing urban environments. Creativity was evaluated using the Alternative Uses Test when viewing the different environments. Experiment 1 showed that nature videos facilitated higher creativity compared to urban videos, across mediums of viewing stimuli through a 2D mobile tablet and a 3D VR headset. Experiment 2 replicated the first experiment by showing enhanced creativity for nature stimuli compared to urban stimuli using a 2D mobile tablet, but for real-life outdoor environments, both nature and urban conditions evoked the same relatively high level of creativity. The results suggest that the restorative properties of nature are most apparent for creativity when viewing stimuli indoors, however, being outdoors in general may be enough to stimulate creativity, regardless of being surrounded by nature or a busy urban environment.

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.

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