Nature and Nurture?

Koivisto and Grassini conclude “that humans may have an inherited hard-wired tendency to respond with positive affects [moods] to nature, whereas the affective responses to urban scenes are more influenced by individual factors. . . . The higher the self-rated exposure to nature during childhood was, the less positive were the affective [emotional] responses to the urban environments; conversely, the lesser the exposure to nature was during childhood, the more positive were the responses to urban environments. . . . individuals with low nature exposure during childhood showed equally positive affective responses to urban scenes than to nature scenes. . . . individuals who have had less than average nature exposure during childhood may have emotionally adapted to nature-deprived environments (i.e., urban settings), learned positive associations with them, and therefore they do not respond as negatively to urban scenes as individuals who have grown up mostly in nature-rich environments.”

Mika Koivisto and Simone Grassini.  2022. “Affective Responses to Urban But Not to Natural Scenes Depend on Inter-Individual Differences in Childhood Nature Exposure.”  Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol. 82, 101840,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2022.101840