Walking in nature improved affect, not cognition, for California undergraduates This experimental study examined how 20-minute walks in three different environments impacted the change in undergraduate students’ affect/mood as well as their post-walk performance on cognitive tasks. Previous research has indicated that natural environments have inconsistent effects on cognitive performance. To understand the mechanisms by which nature might benefit people both affectively and cognitively, the study compared participants’ pre- and post-test scores on affective scales, and post-test scores on moderate and high intensive cognitive tasks, under three experimental conditions: (a) walking in an indoor environment with no visible nature, (b) walking in an urban outdoor environment with limited nature, and (c) walking in an outdoor nature environment. They tested the hypotheses that (1) the outdoor nature environment would be the most restorative and the indoor environment the least restorative, (2) the outdoor nature environment would result in the greatest increase in positive affect and decrease in negative affect from pre- to post-walk. (3) Those walking in the indoor environment would have the smallest increase in positive affect and smallest decrease in negative affect from pre- to post-walk. (4) The outdoor nature walk group would perform better on moderate attention tasks that those in the urban outdoor and indoor groups.
To test these hypotheses, participants completed a moderate 20-minute walk after being randomly assigned to one of three environments: the indoor group, the urban outdoors group, and the outdoor nature group. Participants in each group completed pre-walk and post-walk measures for positive and negative affect. Measures of perceived restoration and cognitive tests of memory, working memory, and executive function were administered only post-walk. The researchers then used statistics to compare each group’s average scores on each measure to determine significant differences in affect, restoration, and cognition for each experimental condition.
Here are key findings from this experiment. For affect, positive affect scores were higher post-walk than pre-walk; while all three conditions showed increases in positive affect from pre-walk to post-walk, the positive effect was large for the outdoor nature group, moderate for the urban outdoor group, and small for the indoor group. The same pattern held for negative affect. While all conditions showed decreases in negative affect from pre-walk to post-walk measures, the outdoor nature group decreased the most in negative affect, and the indoor group decreased the least. For restoration, each location differed significantly from the other locations. As predicted, the outdoor nature environment was the most restorative, and the indoor environment was the least restorative. For cognitive measures, the statistical analysis found no significant differences between the outdoor nature group, urban outdoor group, and indoor group on the post-walk attention, memory, and executive function tests. There were also no significant age or gender effects.
Overall, these findings demonstrated that walks in nature improved affect but did not have significant effects on cognition. In order, a 20-minute walk in outdoor nature was more beneficial than a 20-minute walk in the urban outdoors, which was more beneficial than a 20-minute indoor walk in terms of improving positive affect, lowering negative affect, and restoration. Importantly, the inclusion of the urban outdoor and indoor conditions revealed that differences in affect were partially, but not entirely, due to the effect of being outdoors. The quality of the natural environment also appears to increase the benefits of being outdoors. Future research should continue to unpack the effects of natural environments from the effects of being outdoors versus indoors.
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