Welcome to this week’s Compassionate Nature post which considers the relationship between exposure to nature and prosocial behaviours.
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin”
Forgive the misuse of this line from Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. In the play Ulysses uses the word nature to mean the sense of comradeship through an emotional bond, referring to a common natural trait of humanity rather than the natural environment. It is widely misinterpreted quote though, a mistake which I will continue as a way introducing the consideration of whether exposure to nature helps promote greater prosocial behaviour.
In the last post the role of compassion and group norms upon prosocial behaviours was considered. Within psychology prosocial behaviours can be defined as intentional and voluntary acts that include helping others, which sometimes may come at a personal cost. These behaviours benefit others and the wider society, with what is perceived as beneficial often determined by the prevailing cultural or social norms
Picture the scene. It’s a lovely, sunny day and you are out walking and about to enter into a large urban park. Unnoticed, you drop a glove. Someone passing by, a stranger, spots this and alerts you to the loss. A simple act of kindness.
And an act that appears more likely to happen if the passer-by has already been in the park. The finding that exposure to nature increased the readiness to perform this simple prosocial behaviour was reported in a 2016 paper by Nicolas Guéguen and Jordy Stefan, which they termed “green altruism” based on two studies. The first study, which had a sample of 630 people split evenly between men and women, indicated that immersion in the natural environment was a statistically significant predictor of the helping behaviour. In the second study the research team stopped the passer-by and asked them a series of questions relating to mood and their inclination to help. From that sample of 400 people, again evenly split between women and men, those leaving the park self-reported more positive emotions and a greater desire to help others. One key limitation of the study is that the positive influence to helping and mood could also correlate to the level of physical activity those leaving the park had undertaken as much as having been in a natural environment.
Compassionate nature is a free, weekly reader supported publication. Please consider subscribing for free to support my writing and to never miss a weekly post.
That exposure to nature may influence prosocial behaviours is an intriguing idea and it is perhaps a less obvious consideration compared to the influence of compassion. The idea of “green altruism” left me wondering about a few things. What factors or elements of nature might influence helping others? What is the current evidence base for the link between nature exposure and prosocial behaviours? Does it matter how you are exposed to nature - are there differences between in-person or via a virtual method? And are there any differences from being in a green space or a blue space?
Going beyond ourselves.
Noah Costelo and colleagues 2021 paper provides one explanation based on a series of studies they undertook to explore the role of nature and prosocial behaviours as a result of the sense of self-transcendence, informed by the theoretical perspective of Abraham Maslow.
Psychology geek aside - You may have heard of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, often depicted as a pyramid although he never actually used that to illustrate his theory. Maslow’s hierarchy provides a framework to explain human motivations and behaviour, through a series of levels relating to an individuals needs. The bottom levels of the hierarchy are basic needs, such as physiological (e.g. food, water, sleep) and safety. The upper levels are more growth based, such as learning and developing new skills. At the top of the hierarchy is self-actualisation, which means being able to realise all of your potential, which Maslow expanded to include self-transcendence. Self-transcendence is used in psychology to describe when we sense a connection with all things and to something that is larger than ourselves. Aside from its use within psychology, the word transcendence can have other religious or philosophical definitions.
The research team hypothesised that when nature supports a sense of self-transcendence it leads to greater prosocial behaviour, which they tested within three studies. The first study considered if recalling a time in a natural environment would support helping behaviours using a sample of 200 adult Canadian participants, with an average age of 34 and of whom 55% were female. The participants were randomly allocated to one of two conditions - in the control group they were asked to recall what they had for breakfast and then completed an online survey presented with a neutral background, while in the experimental condition they were asked to recall a time spent in nature and the online survey had a natural image as a background. The results indicated that those in the experimental condition were more likely, with a medium effect size, to self-report that they would prioritise helping others. A field based study design was used for the other two studies. In the second study 72 hikers, mainly men with an average age of 38, were invited to enter a prize draw, when they could choose to win an iPad or have a donation made to charity. Half of the hikers were asked this before starting the hike, while the other half were asked after completing the hike. The results found a large effect size difference, with participants more likely to select the donation option after the hike. The participants also reported greater levels of self-transcendence after the hike. The third study repeated the second study, although in this version some of the participants were also asked to write a short note about a time they felt distinct from other people. These results supported the findings of study two, in showing that participants were more likely to donate after a hike than before. However those participants who wrote about a time that they had felt distinct were more likely to choose the iPad option, indicating that when individuals were encouraged to think of themselves the influence of nature exposure was restricted. The first study is limited by the use of a lab based memory recall exercise which may not reflect actual exposure to nature, while the two field studies used convenience samples of hikers, who may not be wholly representative of the wider population. However collectively these results suggest that when experiencing a sense of self-transcendence we are more likely to preform prosocial behaviours and that nature can help to provide that sense of being part of something larger than ourselves.
Making the case.
A 2023 integrative review from Katherine Arbuthnott helpfully provides an overview of the current evidence. Several experimental studies, including the two studies already mentioned, have considered both exposure to nature in person via field studies and via virtual methods. The field studies have often used similar formats, with the results indicating that a brief exposure to nature does increase the probability of an individual helping another person. Studies using virtual methods to experience nature, such as looking at pictures or a video clip, have shown that participants are more likely to be cooperative and generous within social dilemma scenarios. However these studies are often based around helping strangers through low cost acts of kindness and the majority of the studies have been within Western societies, with little research from other cultures.
There are also some real-world based studies, often correlational, that suggest long term exposure to green spaces promotes greater sense of social cohesion and civic engagement within the local community. Evidence for the positive relationship between green space and social cohesion has been provided from a number of different countries and cultures, suggesting it is something that is commonly experienced. There have been very limited opportunities to carry out more robust experimental designs on long term exposure however.
The review also considers how nature exposure may influence prosocial behaviour, with the self-transcendence suggestion being the most used hypothesis. A number of studies have suggested that emotions which are linked with transcendence, such as awe, wonder and gratitude, can be experienced within natural environments or from nature-based stimuli. Studies using virtual methods have helped to explore the link between these emotions and helping. In one study participants who watched a nature clip reported greater prosocial behaviours in comparison to a control group who watched a video on woodworking, while in another study participants reported more positive emotions and prosocial behaviours after looking at pictures of nature. That study also provides further insight on transcendence as it found a difference in the effect from different nature pictures. It was only if the picture had an extraordinary natural scene that the influence on prosocial behaviours was statistically significantly different to the control condition. Rather than transcendence, the role of place attachment may better explain greater social cohesion from longterm green space exposure. The psychological construct of place attachment relates to the emotional relationship and meaning that people feel towards a place. Such a sense of attachment has been linked to both prosocial behaviours and pro-environmental behaviours.
However the review highlights several limitations of the evidence. The results have low levels of generalisation due to the sample demographics and the role of cultural norms which are often not taken into account. The studies are primarily based on green spaces within urban settings with little research on rural areas. Finally there is little experimental data on the long term effects of nature exposure to prosocial behaviours, the majority of studies only consider a brief exposure. Given those limitations, the review concludes that the current evidence suggests that long term exposure through green spaces supports greater social cohesion while short term exposure to nature increases the probability of helping someone else.
Mix in the water.
A limitation I would add to the review findings is it did not include or find any studies on whether blue-spaces, an environment where water is the main natural feature, had similar effects on prosocial behaviours. A study published just after the review helps to address this gap. Jia Liu and colleagues (2023) from two universities in Beijing looked at the relationship of both green and blue space to prosocial behaviour and if the spaces aided social cohesion by addressing the perception of levels of crowded urban living. The study considered passive exposure to nature, such as looking out of the window or what might be encountered while walking down a street as opposed to active exposure, such as hiking. The team hypothesised that individuals living in large cities may have a perception of crowdedness as a result of the architecture and high levels of sensory stimuli, which places a burden on cognitive processing and may reduce mental wellbeing. Cognitive fatigue is linked to reductions in prosocial behaviours, while exposure to nature may offer a respite to that fatigue through the Attention Restoration Theory by Rachel and Stephen Kaplan (1989), which suggests that natural stimuli offer a restorative experience to cognitive process such as attention.
The study used a cross-sectional design of an online survey completed by 374 Chinese adults, average age of 32 and of whom 61% were female. The survey used self-report measures of the participants exposure to green and blue spaces in their local area and what was visible from a window, along with their sense of how crowded their area and room was. Their levels of prosocial behaviours was assessed using a standard measure of prosocial behaviours across six different types. The results suggested that both green and blue space positively correlated with increased prosocial behaviours and negatively correlated with perceptions of crowdedness. There was only one difference between green and blue space, which was that blue space did not correlate with the sub-type of public prosocial behaviour, while green space did, albeit that it was a small effect size. This suggests that the participants in this study were more motivated by intrinsic reasons rather than extrinsic, which ties in with separate research that suggests exposure to nature increases our intrinsic motivation. Green space was also found to have greater benefit on mediating the perception of crowdedness than blue space did. There are some limitations, the participants were provided with a definition of green and blue space which they may have misinterpreted or applied differently and the design is correlational, using self-report measures, so causality cannot be determined. That said, the results suggest that passive exposure to nature in our surroundings may increase levels of prosocial behaviour and offset the perception of living in a crowded area of a large city.
Exposure to nature may be helpful to our social wellbeing in addition to our mental wellbeing. These studies indicate that a brief exposure to nature may result in more acts of kindness and the increased probability of helping others, especially when the natural environment has provided moments of awe and wonder. Longer term exposure, which may be achieved passively in every day life, appears to support communities with social cohesion and may help to offset detrimental elements of city life. This may be as a result of nature exposure providing the opportunity to see ourselves as part of something bigger and through the restorative influence to mental processes that natural stimuli can provide. The evidence is limited though by sample demographics and studies are often correlational, so caution is needed in interpreting the findings.
“This our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything”
Shakespeare again, this time from As You Like It, illustrating what we might sense in a natural environment when we look with curiosity and attention. Despite the limitations of the current evidence, I like to think that exposure to nature does help us to feel more connected to the wider world and to each other more, to look beyond ourselves even if just for a few moments. Finding moments of awe and wonder in nature doesn’t require long hikes, views from tops of mountains or majestic woodland vistas. Moments of mini-awe can be found in the song of a bird, in the buds of a tree or in the intricacies of a spiders web.
If noticing nature a little more in our everyday life also results in a few more acts of kindness then perhaps the world may be a slightly better place.
Thanks ever so much for reading this edition of the Compassionate Nature research digest. If you think it would be helpful to someone else please do share on, it is a freely available public post.. I would also love to hear what you think, so please leave a comment, send me an email at TheCompassionateNatureHub@gmail.com or leave a reply if you see it via social media.
You can also support my work for free by subscribing and join over a hundred other subscribers in never missing a weekly post. Your support means a great deal as an aspiring writer - thank you.
References
Arbuthnott, K. D. (2023). Nature exposure and social health: Prosocial behavior, social cohesion, and effect pathways. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 90, 102109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102109
Castelo, N., White, K., & Goode, M. R. (2021). Nature promotes self-transcendence and prosocial behavior. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 76, 101639. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101639
Guéguen, N., & Stefan, J. (2016). “Green altruism” short immersion in natural green environments and helping behavior. Environment and behavior, 48(2), 324-342. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916514536576
Kaplan, R., & Kaplan, S. (1989). The experience of nature: A psychological perspective. Cambridge university press.
Liu, J., Sun, X., Chen, H., & Yang, Z. (2023). Passive nature exposure positively predicts prosocial behavior by alleviating perceived crowdedness. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 91, 102146. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102146
Maslow, A.H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054346
Excellent Chris. So much here I'm to re read slower and with a note pad!