Page No 162-174
Aninha Lobo, Hemalatha Ramachandran and Arpit Tiwari
Sophia College for Women, Mumbai.
Recent research in environmental psychology has focused on the benefits of natural
versus urban settings for people. According to Stress Recovery Theory, being with nature
decreases stress induced psychological and physiological arousal. Attention Restoration
Theory sees the sensory experience with nature as initiating a shift from top-down to
bottom-up processing, which restores the individual’s capacity to direct attention. To
examine the effect of viewing urban and nature pictures on affect and cognition, a 4
(nature of pictures) x 2 (task groups) randomized design was used. E-Prime 2.0, a
psychology software programme was used for stimulus presentation and data collection.
No significant differences were obtained on the ratings of feelings. However, significant
differences were obtained on response latency. On a complex task, the largest number
of errors was seen in the Nature-Pleasant condition. Positive moods induced more
superficial processing, whereas negative moods, more analytical or focused processing