An academic research page.
Using environmental, social, and positive psychology to promote stronger connections to the world around us.
Tag: nature
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Longing for nature: Nostalgia & Nature Connectedness
If you think back to your childhood and recall an experience in nature—especially a nice one—odds are you’ll feel something that is an odd mix of fondness but also longing to experience that exact moment again. A sweetness shaded with a slight bitterness knowing that the moment is gone. Nostalgia. Our recent research suggests that…
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Relational Environmental Values might be shared across cultures
The world now recognizes that there are three primary reasons that people view nature as valuable. People can—and do—value nature because it (a) provides benefits to people (i.e., it has instrumental value), (b) is inherently valuable for its own sake (i.e., it is intrinsically valuable), or (c) because of the unique relationship between people and…
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Societal factors that influence nature connectedness
For the most part, psychologists tend to study individuals. And, for this reason, most nature connection research has tended to focus on the specific factors in individual’s lives (e.g., time outside, age, screen time, etc) that influence individual’s levels of nature connectedness. This is, of course, very important as the world is made up of…
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Desire for wilding? The factors that predict support for more ecologically conscious land management.
Mowing, as it turns out, is one of the most harmful activities that we do in terms of its impact on biodiversity—something that extends to our land management practices more generally. Yet, when we talked to our local council about considering a reduced mowing schedule, they indicated some reluctance because of the number of complaints…
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The Features of Nature That Connect Us
In our most recently accepted paper, Mile’s Richardson, Jack Hughes, and myself did some more network analyses. This time, instead of focusing on emotions and activities, like we did in our first network study, we instead focused on the natural features that seemed to most distinguish highly nature-connective experiences from ones that were a bit…
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The most ‘nature connective’ emotions and activities
Nature connectedness is influenced by an incredibly complex array of factors, from the activities we engage in, to the features of the places in which we engage them (paper forthcoming), and even to the emotions those places and activities evoke (see this paper for a thorough review). To put it simply, there is a web—or…
