I was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, but moved out to rural NJ in my thirties. I bought a house on a lake with no motorboats, plenty of black bears and raccoons and lots of trees. I now live in the rice fields of East Java, Indonesia, so I guess you can say I love the outdoors.
I do question the science or numbers in the study as much as I believe the basic premise to be true, however, correlation does not automatically imply cause. People suffering more after trees are removed can also mean that urbanization or development brought factories, or unhealthier air, rodents or any number of other negative factors with it.
I do intuitively relax more, and take great solace in my surroundings, and I do believe it is better for people. I would like to see more research on this; there have been a lot of debacles in the past two years in the social sciences and psychology with statistics and peer review. Some of the studies were taken for granted and are now under the microscope for being inconclusive or just wrong.
Yea for trees! And plants, animals and all that entails!
Agree, wildlife & wilderness is great, but my guess is that there's a confounding factor such as wealth, population density, etc. that has more of an impact on health than trees.
I opted for a lower quality apartment this year because all it's windows face vast green fields or trees. The effects are undeniable - some of my favourite times this year have been spent just sitting on my balcony admiring the greenery.
Went on my first cruise this year. I'm so glad we got a balcony -- I think I spent most of the trip just sitting on the balcony enjoying the sound of the ocean, or watching people at port. The balcony was my favorite part of the whole vacation...
I agree, I also just moved to a more tree ridden area a while ago and the backyard is much larger. IT's always so peaceful just like you said. Fall is just breathtaking as well.
Having trees in the city is nice, and Berlin has an ok level (at least where I live). But I recently started to do long weekend day hikes in the area around the city, and the effect is even better. The constant change of natural forms while moving really frees up my mind and floods it with new impressions that I don't have on my work days. I used to have a meditative effect from running, but it has become a bit too much routine in that regard.
There must be something about "natural forms" (as in varying, not changing, non-rectangular) that creates that feeling.
I fully agree. Trees (and plants in general, and rocks) are more fractal, and contain interesting detail on many levels... There's something pacifying about being around them vs flat, rectangular urban surfaces.
In terms of major cities, Berlin is wonderfully green almost all over. Trees line most streets, in a much more natural-feeling way than you'd find in places like Manhattan.
"Are trees alive?" is the question to ask yourself. They can seem very un-alive to us humans. But when the wind blows and their leaves move you can see it. They are literally WAVING at you. Think back to when you were 8 on the playground and a friendly kid waved at you. Trees just wanna play. But wait you say, that's just the wind. The tree isn't deciding to move like the 8 year old kid decided to wave his/her arms. OR DID the tree purposely make its leaves in a shape to catch the wind and that movement is 100% intentional. When you see it that way you can stare at trees for hours. Also, every single one of those trees is naked. When you are bored/depressed/lonely just stare at trees and giggle.
From what I've seen living in Toronto, NYC and Montreal, streets with nicer houses/apartments tend to have more trees. Those neighborhoods also tend to be quieter.
Take the example of NYC. The Upper East Side and Clinton Hill are two neighborhoods with a relatively large number of trees. Both of those neighborhoods are two of the most expensive and quiet neighborhoods in Manhattan/Brooklyn.
So it could just be that quiet streets and nice houses calm us down. But then again, maybe having more trees is what causes neighborhoods to be nice and quiet. As far as I can tell, it could go either way.
One hypothesis is that we've also evolved to associate greenery with healthy land and lifestyle. I can see why these signals from millions of years can have the 1% quoted effect.
I think its obvious, we like rivers, mountains, flowers, greenery as they all represent fertillity of the land! (Mountains mean that there will be water even in draughts)
We are mostly not human. Our bodies contain a vast assortment of usually symbiotic species so it is appropriate to think ecologically, more co-evolution.
It seems reasonable that flora and fauna responses to environmental factors that in of themselves may not be directly relevant to a human, but that we benefit from the interaction as a side effect e.g. useful compounds being produced naturally, partially synthesized from plant life even though the direct plant product may show no sign of helping us because we cannot yet process it artificially. Hope that makes sense.
Having said that, the Japanese researcher I mentioned above does say some kinds of hinoki oil produce comparable effects to traveling in forests.
Now seems like a good time to plug my favorite anime on tiny invisible life forms:
All of those saying correlation is not causation did not read the article. The study detected an immediate and neasurable effect from just walking among trees.
I was the parent of the thread that brought up 'correlation is not causation' point [0]. I did read the entire article, as well as other papers on the effects of environment on well being.
My main point however, is a call for some prudence especially with the relatively recent focus on bad statistics in psychology and the neurosciences. A caution against accepting a paper's conclusions because of the correlation of a few variables, and the omission of some obvious other ones. Here's just one link from 2013 [1]. fMRIs are a tool, and like any other, can be used incorrectly, which is also part of the problem. I am not negating Marc Berman's paper or this article based on it; I am just a bit wary of papers or articles with big claims (remember the article cites a 1% improvement after all of the buoying of the affects).
A variable not mentioned is that if you are walking outside, or facing a bunch of trees in a yard from your hospital room, you are getting daylight. Window panes block UVb, but not UVa (some are treated to block UVa too). Sunlight/daylight help you to produce vitamin D, which is linked to depression and the immunity system. This could be the cause of the 1% improvement the article states, and possibly not the trees.
Treatment for clinical depression figures are 60-80% successful depending on the study. An order of magnitude greater than 1% [2].
Aside from the few people who have replied to this thread about allergies and other maladies, how many people do you think are going to associate pain, depression or other negatives with an image of trees in their head when responding to a survey?
All that being said. My neighborhood was poor, and crime-ridden, yet my tree-lined block provided me with many peaceful moments of just staring at the trees, or simply listening to the wind in the leaves. I do believe they are beneficial, at least to me (except during a hurricane in NJ, where I thought the 60 foot tall, old oak tree just by my house was going to fall on my roof!).
Now I think this probably is causation, but pointing out that the correlation is really strong is not an argument against "correlation is not causation".
This study was limited to "employees from two large commercial offices", and probably suffers deeply from a Hawthorne Effect[0]. As usual, the rigor is doubtful.
Interesting finding, but the article at least leaves one with more questions than answers (I haven't looked up the original research).
My own personal experience tends to confirm the main point put forth. Indeed, when we moved to the US Southwest several years ago, I thought I would miss oceans the most (having always lived on a coast). But no, I really miss seeing green -- my first time back east after moving here, the impact of seeing all those trees was really tremendous (& positive).
Having said that, the effect mentioned in the study can also be due to the amount of attention that a city street demands, and a lot of other factors. (Walking down Broadway in NYC in the middle of day just isn't the same as strolling through West Village on a Sunday morning!) Not to mention what other commenters have pointed out, e.g., correlation != causality. Quite likely the researchers have thought about this; I would be interested in what they found.
I remember an explanation for the calming effect of nature by David Allen of Getting Things Done fame. He claims that the environment is too complex so your mind "lets go" he repeats some of that here https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20121027044918-402563-david-a... I'm not sure what the basis of that analysis is, but he could be right. I contrast that with the jail from THX 1138 which doesn't seem like it would be relaxing http://nightflight.com/wp-content/uploads/THX-1138-6.jpg
Some of the walks took place in June, whereas others took place in January; most people didn’t particularly enjoy trudging through the harsh Michigan winter, but their scores jumped just as much as in the summer trials.
I found this the most interesting point in the article. I would have assumed that any psychological effect of viewing trees would be largely due to their greenness, since that is their dominant visual aspect. But, assuming a largely deciduous environment, naked trees in winter would seem to have the same effect. So the effect must be stimulated by something deeper than just raw color.
"Berman and his colleagues have zeroed in on the “low-level” visual characteristics that distinguish natural from built environments. To do this, they broke down images into their visual components: the proportion of straight to curved edges, the hue and saturation of the colors, the entropy (a statistical measure of randomness in pixel intensity), and so on."
I wonder whether these principles could be incorporated into architecture and interior design, so we feel like we're in a natural setting even when indoors.
(Even better with trees visible through the windows, of course.)
Plant fruit and nut trees. This is vastly more useful than trees for the sake of calm.
See permaculture, food security, urban farming, distributed production, decentralization.
Trees for some zen or aesthetic cause is an elitist and ignorant perspective. Land use in suburban environments is extremely poor. Food sustainability is very poor.
Trees are a good starting point to start researching. But there are much more serious reasons than a warm fuzzy feeling.
Interesting. I love walking among the southern live oaks around where I live. They're just amazing trees. There was one that got hit by lightening a couple weeks back and split down the middle. I actually felt empathy for it. These trees are usually hundreds of years old.
[+] [-] eggy|9 years ago|reply
I do question the science or numbers in the study as much as I believe the basic premise to be true, however, correlation does not automatically imply cause. People suffering more after trees are removed can also mean that urbanization or development brought factories, or unhealthier air, rodents or any number of other negative factors with it.
I do intuitively relax more, and take great solace in my surroundings, and I do believe it is better for people. I would like to see more research on this; there have been a lot of debacles in the past two years in the social sciences and psychology with statistics and peer review. Some of the studies were taken for granted and are now under the microscope for being inconclusive or just wrong.
Yea for trees! And plants, animals and all that entails!
[+] [-] internaut|9 years ago|reply
Japanese researcher describes (with control group) the interesting affects of walking in a forest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jPNll1Ccn0
Indian researcher describes side affects of indoor plants on health esp. air quality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmn7tjSNyAA
I'm incorporating some of these concepts into my tiny house design e.g. a terrarium and an hinoki ofuro, together with natural daylighting.
[+] [-] greggman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nxzero|9 years ago|reply
Personally, tree are exciting to me, not calming.
[+] [-] junipergreen|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fratlas|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legohead|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xufi|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elcapitan|9 years ago|reply
There must be something about "natural forms" (as in varying, not changing, non-rectangular) that creates that feeling.
[+] [-] purplerabbit|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TillE|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmarbach|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewfromx|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exodust|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkolodny|9 years ago|reply
Take the example of NYC. The Upper East Side and Clinton Hill are two neighborhoods with a relatively large number of trees. Both of those neighborhoods are two of the most expensive and quiet neighborhoods in Manhattan/Brooklyn.
So it could just be that quiet streets and nice houses calm us down. But then again, maybe having more trees is what causes neighborhoods to be nice and quiet. As far as I can tell, it could go either way.
[+] [-] bagacrap|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cylinder|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anilgulecha|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ObeyTheGuts|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] internaut|9 years ago|reply
We are mostly not human. Our bodies contain a vast assortment of usually symbiotic species so it is appropriate to think ecologically, more co-evolution.
It seems reasonable that flora and fauna responses to environmental factors that in of themselves may not be directly relevant to a human, but that we benefit from the interaction as a side effect e.g. useful compounds being produced naturally, partially synthesized from plant life even though the direct plant product may show no sign of helping us because we cannot yet process it artificially. Hope that makes sense.
Having said that, the Japanese researcher I mentioned above does say some kinds of hinoki oil produce comparable effects to traveling in forests.
Now seems like a good time to plug my favorite anime on tiny invisible life forms:
Mushishi http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0807832/
[+] [-] choxi|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cantcopy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eggy|9 years ago|reply
My main point however, is a call for some prudence especially with the relatively recent focus on bad statistics in psychology and the neurosciences. A caution against accepting a paper's conclusions because of the correlation of a few variables, and the omission of some obvious other ones. Here's just one link from 2013 [1]. fMRIs are a tool, and like any other, can be used incorrectly, which is also part of the problem. I am not negating Marc Berman's paper or this article based on it; I am just a bit wary of papers or articles with big claims (remember the article cites a 1% improvement after all of the buoying of the affects).
A variable not mentioned is that if you are walking outside, or facing a bunch of trees in a yard from your hospital room, you are getting daylight. Window panes block UVb, but not UVa (some are treated to block UVa too). Sunlight/daylight help you to produce vitamin D, which is linked to depression and the immunity system. This could be the cause of the 1% improvement the article states, and possibly not the trees. Treatment for clinical depression figures are 60-80% successful depending on the study. An order of magnitude greater than 1% [2].
Aside from the few people who have replied to this thread about allergies and other maladies, how many people do you think are going to associate pain, depression or other negatives with an image of trees in their head when responding to a survey?
All that being said. My neighborhood was poor, and crime-ridden, yet my tree-lined block provided me with many peaceful moments of just staring at the trees, or simply listening to the wind in the leaves. I do believe they are beneficial, at least to me (except during a hurricane in NJ, where I thought the 60 foot tall, old oak tree just by my house was going to fall on my roof!).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...
[1] http://www.wired.com/2013/04/brain-stats/
[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2908269/
[+] [-] aninhumer|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaron695|9 years ago|reply
https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2014/09/leafy-green-bette...
[+] [-] stephengillie|9 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
[+] [-] kkylin|9 years ago|reply
My own personal experience tends to confirm the main point put forth. Indeed, when we moved to the US Southwest several years ago, I thought I would miss oceans the most (having always lived on a coast). But no, I really miss seeing green -- my first time back east after moving here, the impact of seeing all those trees was really tremendous (& positive).
Having said that, the effect mentioned in the study can also be due to the amount of attention that a city street demands, and a lot of other factors. (Walking down Broadway in NYC in the middle of day just isn't the same as strolling through West Village on a Sunday morning!) Not to mention what other commenters have pointed out, e.g., correlation != causality. Quite likely the researchers have thought about this; I would be interested in what they found.
[+] [-] jrcii|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] et-al|9 years ago|reply
"This Is Your Brain on Nature"
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/call-to-wild-text
[+] [-] kevindeasis|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrickk|9 years ago|reply
Perhaps inspired by a similar line of thinking.
[+] [-] keithpeter|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skipton_Castle
[+] [-] jcl|9 years ago|reply
I found this the most interesting point in the article. I would have assumed that any psychological effect of viewing trees would be largely due to their greenness, since that is their dominant visual aspect. But, assuming a largely deciduous environment, naked trees in winter would seem to have the same effect. So the effect must be stimulated by something deeper than just raw color.
[+] [-] DennisP|9 years ago|reply
I wonder whether these principles could be incorporated into architecture and interior design, so we feel like we're in a natural setting even when indoors.
(Even better with trees visible through the windows, of course.)
[+] [-] ilaksh|9 years ago|reply
See permaculture, food security, urban farming, distributed production, decentralization.
Trees for some zen or aesthetic cause is an elitist and ignorant perspective. Land use in suburban environments is extremely poor. Food sustainability is very poor.
Trees are a good starting point to start researching. But there are much more serious reasons than a warm fuzzy feeling.
[+] [-] nichochar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sitkack|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianai|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|9 years ago|reply