Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, 5848 S University Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
Northern Research Station, U.S. Forest Service, 1033 University Place, Suite 360, Evanston, IL 60201, USA.
Cognition. 2018 May;174:82-93. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.01.011. Epub 2018 Feb 9.
Prior research has shown that the physical characteristics of one's environment have wide ranging effects on affect and cognition. Other research has demonstrated that one's thoughts have impacts on mood and behavior, and in this three-part research program we investigated how physical features of the environment can alter thought content. In one study, we analyzed thousands of journal entries written by park visitors to examine how low-level and semantic visual features of the parks correlate with different thought topics. In a second study, we validated our ecological results by conducting an online study where participants were asked to write journal entries while imagining they were visiting a park, to ensure that results from Study 1 were not due to selection bias of park visitors. In the third study, we experimentally manipulated exposure to specific visual features to determine if they induced thinking about the same thought topics under more generalized conditions. Results from Study 3 demonstrated a potential causal role for perceived naturalness and high non-straight edges on thinking about "Nature", with a significant positive interaction. Results also showed a potential causal effect of naturalness and non-straight edges on thinking about topics related to "Spiritual & Life Journey", with perceived naturalness having a negative relationship and non-straight edges having a positive relationship. We also observed a significant positive interaction between non-straight edge density and naturalness in relation to "Spiritual & Life Journey". These results have implications for the design of the built environment to influence human reflection and well-being.
先前的研究表明，一个人的环境的物理特征对情感和认知有广泛的影响。其他研究表明，一个人的想法会对情绪和行为产生影响，在这个三部分的研究计划中，我们调查了环境的物理特征如何改变思维内容。在一项研究中，我们分析了数千名公园游客的日记条目，以研究公园的低水平和语义视觉特征与不同的思维主题之间的相关性。在第二项研究中，我们通过进行一项在线研究来验证我们的生态研究结果，在该研究中，要求参与者在想象自己在公园的情况下写日记条目，以确保研究 1 的结果不是由于公园游客的选择偏差造成的。在第三项研究中，我们通过实验来操纵对特定视觉特征的暴露，以确定在更一般的条件下，它们是否会引起对相同思维主题的思考。研究 3 的结果表明，感知的自然性和高非直线边缘对思考“自然”主题具有潜在的因果作用，两者之间存在显著的正相互作用。结果还表明，自然性和非直线边缘对思考与“精神与生命旅程”相关的主题具有潜在的因果效应，感知的自然性与思考这些主题呈负相关，而非直线边缘与思考这些主题呈正相关。我们还观察到非直线边缘密度与自然性之间与“精神与生命旅程”相关的显著正相互作用。这些结果对影响人类反思和幸福感的建筑环境设计具有启示意义。
