Consequences of Time in Nature

Joye and teammates report that they “tested the ‘nature-as-reward hypothesis’, which suggests that superior cognitive task performance following nature exposure reflects a general performance improvement, driven by the reward value of beautiful things. . . .  participants viewed either beautiful or less beautiful images for 10 s, comprising beautiful mountain photos (vs. less beautiful mountain drawings) in Study 1 and beautiful fractals (vs. less beautiful pixelated images) in Study 2. . . . . participants ticked more boxes over all ticking rounds after viewing images of beautiful fractals compared to less beautiful pixelated images. In line with the nature-as-reward hypothesis, these findings show that brief exposures to beautiful (nature) images can motivate to work.”

Yannick Joye, Florian Lange, Asta Lisauskiene, and Diana Makauskaite. 2024. “Watching (Natural) Beauty Boosts Task Performance: Testing the Nature-As-Reward Hypothesis.” Psychological Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01922-9