The Radical Psychological Implications Of Spending Time Outside - Study On Commons Dilemma
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The research design was a series of experiments with college undergraduates, who, in the first of three studies, were asked to watch a 12 minute video. In some cases, it was a nature video — BBC’s “Planet Earth,” no less. In others, it was a documentary about New York City’s impressive — but also quintessentially urban — architecture. Then the subjects played a game that the researchers called a “fish-themed commons dilemma.” In the game, a group of people decide how many fish to catch over the course of a number of “seasons.” Players receive 10 cents per fish caught (but it costs 5 cents to travel out to sea to catch them); the ocean initially contains 50 fish; and over seasons, fish regenerate at a fixed rate.
The participants were playing against other simulated fishermen who had been programmed to “behave relatively cooperatively,” rather than greedily (i.e., catching too many fish to maximize their profits, but ultimately crashing the fishery).
The results showed, sure enough, that those who had watched the nature video “harvested significantly fewer fish per season.” And moreover, the virtual oceans in which they fished supported sustainable fishing for longer. In contrast, those who watched the architecture video harvested more fish early on, going for the money. “By season 15, 49.09% of the architecture condition’s oceans went extinct, compared to 28.57% in the Planet Earth condition,” wrote the authors.
In several subsequent studies, meanwhile, the researchers modified the experimental conditions in order to test the strength of the results, a common practice in psychology studies. Thus, in another study, three different nature videos now showed a forest, a pack of wolves hunting, and a destructive flood. The architecture videos, meanwhile, showed an exciting Las Vegas scene and an old rundown house. Thus, people saw both pleasant and unpleasant images of nature and a built environment.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/03/06/the-radical-political-implications-of-spending-time-outdoors/