Going outside to enjoy the spring weather might feel good after a long winter, but it also might help fight climate change and make you behave more sustainably.
Colin Capaldi, a first-year PhD student in psychology, recently co-wrote a study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology with John Zelenski, an associate professor at Carleton, and Raelyne Dopko, a graduate student, on the effect nature has on people’s behaviour.
The Charlatan’s Drew May spoke to Capaldi about the study and its findings.
Q: Can you tell me about your experiment and what the results were?
A: We had half of the participants come into the lab and watch a 20-minute clip of the BBC documentary Planet Earth that showed them natural environments. The other half of the participants watched a 20-minute video focusing on architecture. After they viewed the videos, we had them participate in a fishing game where they had to cooperate with three other computer-controlled fishers to decide how many fish to catch each round. If they were too selfish and behaved unsustainably, there would be no fish left. We used that as a measure of cooperation and sustainable behaviour. We also had people indicate their willingness to engage in pro social behaviours such as signing a petition, driving less, and using less water. We found people were more cooperative and environmentally sustainable after viewing the nature video.
Q: Were you surprised by the result of the experiments?
A: Our hypotheses were that nature would lead to more cooperation and sustainability but it’s surprising due to the short amount of time people watched the nature videos. It was surprising but nice to see it backed up what we predicted.
Q: What made you want to study people’s reaction to nature?
A: There has been a lot of research on the individual benefits of nature but it’s only more recently that researchers have started to look at how it can affect interpersonal functioning. I’ve always been interested in this and John Zelenski was my honours seminar professor. When I looked into his research it really interested me.
Q: Does the experiment have any implications for the fight against climate change?
A: We’ve seen the issue framed around the economic cost of climate change, but these results seem to suggest that priming people with the idea of nature may be the way to make people behave more sustainably.
Q: Are there plans to continue this kind of experiment in the future?
A: John and I are working on a study right now to find out what might explain the beneficial effect nature has and why people are more social when exposed to it. When people feel mentally fatigued or feel depleted they are less likely to help others, research suggests.
Q:What have peoples’ reactions been to your study?
A: Pretty positive so far. We’ve gotten a lot of great feedback on social media with the Canadian Psychology Association tweeting about it and Chris Mooney from the Washington Post wrote a blog about it, so it’s been pretty exciting. This stemmed from my master’s work so I’ve been talking about it a lot and writing about it a lot. It’s nice to see other people interested in it.
