DEA 1500/1501 Lecture Outline 4/17/13
EARTH
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Note that most of our discussion and analysis of HER processes has examined how:
o Physical Environment → Human Health and Well being
o In this last place, Earth, we are going to give equal time to the opposite direction of
the arrow:
o Human Behavior/Decision Making → Earth (environmental quality)
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RESTORATION [HER Process]
o Long history and interest in the notion that there is something special about the
healing powers of nature.
 Vacation, even momentary escape from daily life.
 Gardening as most popular American recreational activity (if u don’t count
TV!)
 Sunshine and fresh air as good for your health (UK practice during 1940 and
50’s baby outside)
Theory


Attentional Restoration (Kaplan &Kaplan)
Biophilia (Wilson)

Kaplan & Kaplan distinction between voluntary or effortful attention (“pay” attention) and
involuntary or effortless attention (curiosity, intrinsically interesting)
o Much of modern life puts a premium on paying attention.
 This comes at a high cost, however, not only in environmental stress as we
have seen already but also in terms of the depletion of attentional capacity.
o Cognitive fatigue.
 One of the most effective ways to restore voluntary, attentional capacity is to
switch over to involuntary attention.
 How? Being away, change in scenary.
 Reflection/contemplation, quieting the mind
 Fascination
 Coherence/extent underlying structure, sense of being in, enveloped
by
o Biophilia
 nature is inherently theraputic because it more closely resembles the env we
evolved in as a species.
 Green, water, open space with something at our back are intrinsically
comforting, security
Research

Gardening as most popular activity and lots of anecdotal data of pleasure, way to unwind, …
o Mang Backpack study
 (stress that all subjects were backpackers and use as way to help remind them
of problem of selection bias e.g maybe in the gardening studies, people who
o
chose to garden are already different so rather than gardening producing the
therapeutic effect, something about the person)
 but in this case, all are backbackers
Hartig studies of recovery from stress.
 Use the stroop task (say the color of the ink the word is written in) to induce
cognitive fatigue.
 Then recover with a brief walk in an ok (not awful) urban setting or in an ok
(not spectacular) nature setting.
 Happier and less negative affect.
 Similar experiment only adds measures of blood pressure during recovery
phase.

Ulrich hospitalization study.
o All patients getting same surgery (galbladder). Randomly assign to view of nearby
park or brick wall.

Prisoners who are randomly assigned to cells with view of inner courtyard vs. surrounding,
rural area.

Lab studies where you have to do a computer task. Plants, no plants (random assignment)

Study of high schools with or without views of natural surroundings.
o Better grades.
o Schools are closely matched by socioeconomic status (SES)

Inner city chicago, public housing.
o Play behavior of children who live close to “natural” vs. no nature playgrounds.
o Randomly assign.
Neuroimaging study of brain nature and non nature sounds and views:freeway and ocean. As can be
seen, the noise levels (dBA) are closely matched. ie., effects not noise but content/quality of image
and sound. Brain activity altered with more connection, integration of sound and scene for nature
vs. freeway with medial frontal cortex (MFC). This part of your brain is related to tranquility, resting,
meditative states. Self reflection, calm.
Baby sound preference study. Very young babies (30 – 90 days old) appear to indicate a preference
for natural sounds. Biophilia?
LANDSCAPE ASSESSMENT What makes something beautiful? Is beauty really in the eye of the
beholder or is there something systematic about what we like and don’t like? We will begin by
looking at this in terms of landscapes and then move more generally into the issues of aethetics.
Can one come up with a theory (or even theories) of beauty?
Also practical, we set aside places of special scenic beauty (parks, scenic corridors) also spend a good
deal of $ to enhance natural elements . The national environmental protection act (NEPA) requires
that any development involving federal funds do an Environmental Impact Report (EIR). In addition
to things you would expect like water quality, air quality, species habitat, endangered species, etc. a
mandated component of an EIR is scenic quality assessment. So how do you do it?
Baby sound preference study suggests something might be “wired in”
NOTE: ALTERNATIVELY YOU COULD USE THIS STUDY UP ABOVE UNDER RESTORATION. PROBABLY
RIGHT BEFORE OR AFTER BABY SOUND STUDY.
Pictures on offices. More pictures without windows than with windows (control for wall space).
And even more interesting, theme of what people put on the wall.
Elements that enhance scenic beauty:
Water and especially active, moving water.
Slight influence of human activity on the landscape. (BRIE IF YOU HAVE TIME, PHOTO SHOP THE
SLIDE WITH THE BARN ON THE MEADOW, REMOVING THE BARN AND SIGNS OF HUMAN
INFLUENCE). Then show the two slides. One with barn is rated higher in scenic beauty.
[Aside probably master of all time doing this was Frank Loyd Wright the building and its relationship
to the natural surroundings were critical to him]
Superior view, especially vistas where your back is protected, covered. Appleton, landscape
architect, called this prospect and refuge. Sound familiar? How about high visual access and low
visual exposure. Appleton tied this to evolution. Adaptive to be able to see your surroundings from
a perch where you were also protected.
Degree of compatability of adjacent land use. More abrupt, uglier.
Topography. Higher relative relief-greater change and variety in elevations.
Bio: Kaplan, R. The nature experience.
AESTETHICS [HER Process]
The study and analysis of human preference. What makes something more beautiful?
The landscape assessment work suggests something that some of you may find a bit unnerving or
even objectionable – the idea that one could come up with a model for beauty simply plug in the
numbers and up pops a pleasant natural scene. Well if this is true, why not the same thing for art,
music, or design?
Of course, its much more complicated than that. It is true that there does appear to be underlying
principles of aesthetics, commanalities in elements and their composition that are associated with
high aestethic value. However it is equally true that we are a very long way from having even a
reasonably good handle on exactly how this works or on explaining much of the variability in
judgments.
It turns out this general idea has been around for a very long time. There is even a branch of
philosophy as well as psychology that is concerned with aesthetics. Bio: Berlyne Aesthetics and
psychobiology.
Aesthetic Theory and Principles
Complexity
Possible explanation is physiological arousal. Moderate level of arousal is more comfortable and
preferable. Too little, sleepy and bored, too much overload, and anxious. Note the same shape for
complexity:preference function and arousal: pleasure function.
Study showing that people who prefer more sensation, high information levels, arousal
seekers, feel better in situations with more complexity
Study showing that preference for complexity increases if immediately prior experience is
very low levels of information. If I show same stimuli over and over again to make you bored, you
prefer more complex stimuli than if I show you heterogeneous set of images.
Mystery
Proportion
Golden section origins unknown but eerie link between certain portions and many natural
forms (even the human body!) Biophilia?
Information theory of Aesthetics Steve Kaplan
Basic idea here is a balance between be able to comprehend (make sense) and things being
interesting
Humans are inforvores: love to solve problems. We want prediction to be possible but not trivial.
If too hard frustrating, if too easy frustrating. Need a balance. Settings that provide this balance are
high in preference.