The Brain's Call of the Wild
My article on the psychology of nature just came out in the May APS Observer. Some fascinating research in this area that I plan to post more about here soon. For now, I leave you with the opener:
Today, Central Park seems as essential to Manhattan as the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, or Woody Allen. But when the street grid for the island was first mapped out in 1811, no plans were made for the 843-acre green sanctuary at its center. The commissioners in charge of designing the city set aside remarkably few parcels of parkland. They didn't think the residents would need it. After all, they reasoned, the Hudson and East rivers that flank Manhattan render the island "in regard to health and pleasure ... peculiarly felicitous."
A few brave souls — we'll call them "brave," though other descriptors come to mind — find recreation in these waters today. The rest of us are fortunate that the city reconsidered, and that the man who designed Central Park had an understanding, far ahead of his time, of nature's psychological impact. "It is a scientific fact," wrote Frederick Law Olmsted in 1865, seven years after his plan for the park was chosen, "that the occasional contemplation of natural scenes of an impressive character ... is favorable to the health and vigor of men" (Hartig, 2007).
As awareness of humanity's relationship with the environment has increased in the past few decades — buoyed of late by the larger popular concern about climate change — so has empirical evidence for nature's psychological benefits. Back in 1865, Olmsted thought exposure to natural environments would prevent a "softening of the brain," "irascibility," and "melancholy." Nearly 150 years later, scientists now know that nature has a remarkable ability to restore attention, that it soothes aggression, and that it may even ease mild depression.
