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DATE: May 15, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: A classic psychology study on the calming effects of nature just got a massive update
New research published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology suggests that watching videos of natural environments, such as forests, helps people recover from stress more effectively than watching videos of urban environments. The findings provide evidence that nature imagery can positively influence a person’s emotional state. This offers a simple way to support mental well-being in spaces where actual nature is out of reach.
Scientists conducted this study to test the reliability of a highly influential experiment from 1991. That older experiment introduced the idea that simply looking at natural scenes could help the human body and mind recover from stress. Since the publication of that original paper, many hospitals, offices, and schools have used nature pictures to help calm people down.
Agnes van den Berg, an environmental psychology researcher at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, led this new collaborative effort. “Although the original study is still widely cited as foundational evidence that exposure to natural environments, compared to urban environments, supports stress recovery, it had never been directly replicated across multiple sites using contemporary methods,” van den Berg noted. “We wanted to examine how robust and reproducible these effects are today, using a preregistered multisite design with a larger and more diverse sample.”
“One aspect we value about this project is that it contributes to the broader movement toward replication and transparency in people-environment research,” van den Berg added. “Classic studies can strongly shape scientific fields and public discourse, so it is important to revisit influential findings with modern open science practices and collaborative methods.”
Ten different research teams across the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden joined forces for this project. They recruited a total of 959 participants for the experiment. The sample was nearly evenly split between men and women, with an average age of 22 years. The scientists assigned each participant to watch a specific set of videos while hooked up to physical monitoring equipment.
First, all participants watched a 10-minute video designed to cause a moderate amount of stress. This video featured reenactments of industrial workplace accidents, such as people slipping or being struck by heavy objects. The scientists added ominous background music to the video to ensure it effectively raised the viewers’ stress levels.
After the stress-inducing video, the scientists randomly assigned participants to watch one of six 10-minute environmental videos. Two of these videos featured natural settings, specifically a forest and a stream. The other four videos showed urban settings, which included busy and quiet pedestrian areas, as well as busy and quiet traffic areas.
Throughout the process, the researchers measured the participants’ psychological and physical reactions. To track emotional states, the scientists asked participants to fill out a questionnaire at three different times. They answered questions before the stress video, right after the stress video, and after the environmental video. The questionnaire measured feelings of fear, anger, sadness, positive emotion, and attentiveness.
To track physical reactions, the researchers used a specialized monitoring device attached to the participants’ bodies. This device measured two different parts of the autonomic nervous system, which is the system that controls involuntary bodily functions. One part is the sympathetic nervous system, often called the fight-or-flight response. This system speeds up the heart and increases sweating during moments of danger or stress.
The researchers measured this fight-or-flight response by tracking changes in skin moisture and heart timing. The second part of the autonomic nervous system is the parasympathetic nervous system, often called the rest-and-digest response. This system helps calm the body down after a threat has passed. The researchers measured this calming response by tracking variations in the time between heartbeats, a concept known as heart rate variability.
The researchers found that the stress video worked exactly as intended. After watching the workplace accidents, participants reported feeling less positive and more afraid, angry, and sad. Their physical sensors also showed increases in the fight-or-flight response, confirming that they were experiencing a bodily state of stress.
During the recovery phase, the psychological results generally matched the findings from the original 1991 study. Participants who watched the natural environments reported a much larger increase in positive emotions compared to those who watched the urban scenes. They also experienced a greater decrease in feelings of anger and aggression after watching the forest or the stream.
The physical results presented a more complicated picture. The measures of the fight-or-flight response showed that stress levels decreased for everyone during the recovery phase, regardless of which environment video they watched. Unlike the original study, the nature videos did not lead to a faster reduction in this specific physical stress response.
However, the physical measures associated with the rest-and-digest response did show differences based on the video type. Participants who watched the forest video showed a much faster activation of their body’s calming system. This suggests that the forest setting specifically helped their bodies return to a physically relaxed state more quickly than the urban settings did.
“Our findings suggest that merely viewing nature can support recovery from acute stress, both psychologically and physiologically,” van den Berg told PsyPost. “One does not need to go into real nature to enjoy these effects. The effects were not dramatic or magical, but they were consistent across several measures and across research sites.”
“The findings also provide insight into the mechanisms behind the effects,” van den Berg noted. “In particular, the physiological effects seem to be driven by activation of the so-called ‘vagal brake’, a feedback signal from the stress system that tells the body that all is safe now.”
The researchers hope the public recognizes the accessibility of these benefits. “The broader message is that everyday contact with nature, even if it only involves looking out of the window or at a poster on a wall, may play a meaningful role in supporting mental and physical well-being,” van den Berg said.
Interestingly, the rapid relaxation response was most intense during the first three minutes of the nature videos. Van den Berg admitted she did not expect the physical effects to be so noticeable in a modern demographic. “To be honest, I was kind of surprised that part of the findings regarding the physiological effects of viewing nature were still present in the results,” van den Berg said.
“The sample consisted of nearly a thousand students who are used to viewing videos on social media such as TikTok and Instagram,” van den Berg added. “For this ‘Gen Z’ generation, I expected that it would be rather boring to view a video of a forest for 10 minutes, shot from a stationary point of view.” Despite these modern viewing habits, the physical effects persisted. “Indeed, the ‘all is safe now’ response to nature was strongest in the first 3 minutes of viewing the video,” van den Berg said.
The video of the natural stream did not produce this same calming physical effect. The rest-and-digest response of participants who watched the stream looked very similar to the response of those who watched the busy city streets. The researchers suspect this happened because the stream video featured the loud, fast-moving sound of rushing water, which the participants might have found disturbing rather than relaxing.
While the study provides evidence that viewing nature can aid in stress recovery, the researchers noted some caveats. “One important point is that this study does not imply that nature is a substitute for medical or psychological treatment,” van den Berg explained. “The effects observed were relatively modest short-term recovery effects following an experimental stressor.”
It is also important not to interpret the results as proof that all city environments are harmful. “It is also important not to oversimplify the findings into a strict ‘nature good, city bad’ narrative,” van den Berg added. “Urban environments can also provide a wealth of social, cultural, and psychological benefits, which are not captured by the videos used in our study.”
Future research could expand on these findings by testing a wider variety of natural and urban scenes. “Across the world many researchers are already following up on this seminal study,” van den Berg noted. “Much of this recent work has moved beyond exposure to simulated nature to more ecologically realistic and longitudinal approaches.”
“Preliminary findings provide insight into some of the characteristics of environments that matter most for recovery,” van den Berg explained. “For example, environmental characteristics such as biodiversity, water, soundscapes, perceived safety, familiarity, and cultural meaning may all play a role.”
Van den Berg plans to focus on the personal traits that change how individuals react to natural settings. “Personally, my research interests involve the role of individual factors that may make people more open to the beneficial effects of nature, such as gender, age, levels of acute and chronic stress, childhood nature experiences, and connectedness to nature,” van den Berg said.
Van den Berg shares much of her ongoing work online, including through her agency, Nature4People, and she also contributes to a large European project called Resonate focused on building human resilience through nature-based therapies.
The study, “Psychophysiological recovery from viewing nature and urban settings: A multisite replication,” was authored by A.E. Van den Berg, K. Dijkstra, D. Meuwese, F. Beute, P.M. Darcy, S. Dewitte, B. Gatersleben, C.J. Gidlow, C.M. Hägerhäll, J.A. Hipp, Y. Joye, Y.A.W. De Kort, S.C.M. Lechner, C. Neale, Å. Ode Sang, J. Roe, D.T. Scheepers, K. Smolders, H. Staats, R.S. Steensma, K.J. Wyles, and S.L. Koole.
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