Feeling Stressed and Ugly? Leave the City and Visit Nature! An Experiment on Self-and Other-Perceived Stress and Attractiveness Levels.

Claudia Menzel,Fiona Dennenmoser,Gerhard Reese

doi:10.3390/ijerph17228519

Claudia Menzel, Fiona Dennenmoser + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17228519

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Abstract

Natural environments, compared to urban environments, usually lead to reduced stress and positive body appreciation. We assumed that walks through nature and urban environments affect self- and other-perceived stress and attractiveness levels. Therefore, we collected questionnaire data and took photographs of male participants’ faces before and after they took walks. In a second step, female participants rated the photographs. As expected, participants felt more restored and attractive, and less stressed after they walked in nature compared to an urban environment. A significant interaction of environment (nature, urban) and time (pre, post) indicated that the men were rated by the women as being more stressed after the urban walk. Other-rated attractiveness levels, however, were similar for both walks and time points. In sum, we showed that the rather stressful experience of a short-term urban walk mirrors in the face of men and is detectable by women.

Highlights

To cope with everyday stress, stays and walks in natural environments have received increasing attention in research and media during the last decade (e.g., “forest bathing” or “shinrin-yoku”).In most scientific studies, the effects of nature walks are compared to walks in an urban environment.Thereby it is repeatedly found that the former has beneficial effects on mood, working memory, attention, self-reported restoration, brain activity, and one’s own body image [1,2,3,4,5,6]
The comparison of the Restoration Outcome Scale (ROS) scores revealed that walkers felt more restored after a nature walk compared to an urban walk (t[19] = 3.18, p = 0.005, d = 0.61)
Post-hoc tests showed that stress was lower after a nature walk (p = 0.026) and was lower compared to an urban walk (p = 0.029; Figure 4)

Summary

Introduction

To cope with everyday stress, stays and walks in natural environments have received increasing attention in research and media during the last decade (e.g., “forest bathing” or “shinrin-yoku”).In most scientific studies, the effects of nature walks are compared to walks in an urban environment.Thereby it is repeatedly found that the former has beneficial effects on mood, working memory, attention, self-reported restoration, brain activity, and one’s own body image [1,2,3,4,5,6]. As discussed by Swami and colleagues [6,14], the elevation of body appreciation after an experience in nature may be due to a reduction of negative thoughts and affective states, as well as due to a shift in attention. These and the other beneficial effects of nature briefly reviewed above are in line with two major theories in the field, namely stress recovery theory

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