A study by researchers at North Carolina State University tested how visual and auditory features of environments shape emotions and perceived restoration. Participants sat while wearing noise-cancelling headphones in one of two settings: a reclaimed nature trail isolated from development or a busy urban area. The headphones played either traffic noise or birdsong, and both the location and the soundtrack were randomized for each participant. This design let the team separate the effect of place from the effect of sound.
After the sessions, participants reported changes in stress and how refreshed they felt, a measure the researchers call restorativeness. Lead author Nils Peterson of the NC State College of Natural Resources reported that the effects of natural sights and sounds were immediate and pronounced. When people were in green space and listened to birds, positive emotions rose, negative emotions fell, stress decreased, and perceived restoration increased more than in any other place–sound combination. By contrast, people in the urban area who heard car sounds experienced the opposite pattern, while mismatched combinations produced mixed results.
The authors suggest the findings go beyond a simple preference for quiet: altering urban spaces to include natural features and sounds could reduce stress and improve people’s experiences in otherwise gray areas. The research highlights bird sounds and notes that other studies support using water sounds and similar natural audio cues. The paper appears in the journal Environmental Conservation; the study and its summary were reported by North Carolina State University, and the post first appeared on Futurity.
Difficult words
- reclaim — land returned to a natural or useful statereclaimed
- auditory — relating to the sense of hearing
- randomize — assigned to groups by chancerandomized
- restorativeness — quality that helps recovery and refreshment
- pronounced — clearly noticeable or strongly expressed
- mismatch — not correctly paired or not matchingmismatched
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Discussion questions
- How could city planners use natural sounds or features to improve people’s experiences in urban areas? Give specific examples.
- Describe a time when a natural environment changed your mood. How does that example relate to the study’s findings?
- What limitations might result from testing participants while they wore noise-cancelling headphones, and how could future studies address this?
