Beyond blue-sky thinking: Diurnal patterns and ephemeral meteorological phenomena impact appraisals of beauty, awe, and value in urban and natural landscapes

Smalley, Alexander J.; White, Mathew P.

doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.101955

Cited by 11 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 97 publications

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“…In these pictures, the percentage of clouds in the sky was on average 44% and the sky sometimes appeared darker, for example, due to nimbostratus clouds. This aligns with studies showing that inclement weather conditions or ephemeral phenomena such as thunderstorms lead to lower landscape preferences [41,43]. In contrast, our results also indicate that single, smaller clouds (e.g., cumulus clouds) positively influenced preference scores.…”

Section: Plos Onesupporting

confidence: 91%

“…smaller cloud groups. Similarly, the study by Smalley and White [43] demonstrates that the appearance of the sky during sunrise or sunset increases perceived beauty of landscapes.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 85%

“…Thus, inclement weather conditions can moderate preferences for waterscapes [41] and associated benefits such as happiness [42]. In contrast, sunrise, rainbows, and sunset can significantly increase preferences compared to blue sky [43]. In arts and photography, which have been intensively concerned with the aesthetics and emotional effects of appearance of the sky, clouds are often used to convey certain moods and messages [44,45].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing landscape aesthetic values: Do clouds in photographs influence people’s preferences?

2023

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Photo-based surveys are widely applied to elicit landscape preferences and to assess cultural ecosystem services. Variations in weather and light conditions can potentially alter people’s preferences, as sunny landscapes are more positively perceived than those under inclement weather conditions. To assure comparability across pictures, studies usually include photographs taken at sunny days (i.e., blue sky). However, the influence of clouds in sunny landscapes on people’s preferences has been rarely considered, although color contrasts between clouds and the blue sky may attract people’s attention. This study therefore aimed to assess the effects of clouds in landscape photographs on people’s preferences by (1) examining differences in preference between pairs of landscape photographs (i.e., with clouds and without clouds), and (2) explaining variations through variables from eye-tracking simulation, photo content analysis, and Geographic Information System (GIS)-based analysis. Our results indicate no significant differences in preferences between pictures with and without clouds when the pictures with clouds contained a proportion of sky around 22% and a cloud cover of about 39%. However, a higher proportion of sky positively influenced landscape preferences, while a higher proportion of clouds, especially in combination with a lower proportion of sky, had negative effects. These findings suggest that landscape preference studies should pay attention not only to the appearance of the sky in terms of cloudiness, but they also should control the proportion of sky across different pictures to obtain comparable results. Future research should address limitations regarding the transferability of our findings to other types of landscapes and regarding potential differences in perceptions between respondents with different socio-cultural characteristics. Moreover, landscape preferences under changing weather conditions or different cloud types as well as diurnal and seasonal changes should be further explored.

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Section: Plos Onesupporting

confidence: 91%

“…smaller cloud groups. Similarly, the study by Smalley and White [43] demonstrates that the appearance of the sky during sunrise or sunset increases perceived beauty of landscapes.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing landscape aesthetic values: Do clouds in photographs influence people’s preferences?

2023

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“…Three different environments were presented in counterbalanced order, showing a natural, an urban, or an indoor setting (see Figure 1A). The natural and urban environments were closely matched regarding low-level (e.g., color and spatial properties) and high-level (e.g., scenic structure, complexity, openness) visual features (28). Specifically, the natural setting was created first and included a large central lake (with observable wind ripples), trees by the side of the lake (with rustling leaves), and an animation showing the shifting position of the sun and cloud movements.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…The urban condition was constructed by adding human-made elements to this basic scene, including buildings on the far side of the lake, a paved path, a short wall, and benches on the nearside of the lake. The resulting urban scene, containing many of the originally attractive natural elements, was still rated as relatively beautiful (28). Both scenes were accompanied by soundscapes created based on recommendations of previous works investigating acoustic experiences in different environments (38).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature exposure induces hypoalgesia by acting on nociception-related neural processing

Steininger,

White,

Lengersdorff

et al. 2024

Preprint

Self Cite

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Nature exposure has numerous psychological benefits, and previous findings suggest that exposure to nature reduces self-reported acute pain. Given the multi-faceted and subjective quality of pain and methodological limitations of prior research, it is unclear whether the evidence indicates genuine hypoalgesia or results from domain-general effects and subjective reporting biases. This preregistered functional neuroimaging study aimed to identify how nature exposure modulates nociception-related and domain-general brain responses to acute pain. We compared the self-reported and neural responses of healthy neurotypical participants (N = 49) receiving painful electrical shocks while exposed to virtual nature or to closely matched urban and indoor control settings. Replicating existing behavioral evidence, pain was reported to be lower during exposure to the natural compared to the urban or indoor control settings. Crucially, machine-learning-based multi-voxel signatures of pain demonstrated that this subjective hypoalgesia was associated with reductions in nociception-related rather than domain-general cognitive-emotional neural pain processing. Preregistered region-of-interest analyses corroborated these results, highlighting reduced activation of areas connected to lower-level somatosensory aspects of pain processing (such as the thalamus, secondary somatosensory cortex, and posterior insula). These findings demonstrate that nature exposure results in genuine hypoalgesia and that neural changes in lower-level nociceptive pain processing predominantly underpin this effect. This advances our understanding of how nature may be used as a non-pharmacological pain treatment. That this hypoalgesia was achieved with brief and easy-to-administer virtual nature exposure has important practical implications and opens novel avenues for research on the precise mechanisms by which nature impacts our mind and brain.

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Nature-based biopsychosocial resilience: An integrative theoretical framework for research on nature and health

White,

Hartig,

Martin

et al. 2023

Environment International

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Beyond blue-sky thinking: Diurnal patterns and ephemeral meteorological phenomena impact appraisals of beauty, awe, and value in urban and natural landscapes

Cited by 11 publications

References 97 publications

Assessing landscape aesthetic values: Do clouds in photographs influence people’s preferences?

Assessing landscape aesthetic values: Do clouds in photographs influence people’s preferences?

Nature exposure induces hypoalgesia by acting on nociception-related neural processing

Nature-based biopsychosocial resilience: An integrative theoretical framework for research on nature and health

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