REVIEW article

Biophilia as evolutionary adaptation: an onto- and phylogenetic framework for biophilic design.

Giuseppe Barbiero

  • GREEN LEAF - Groupe de Recherche en Education à l’Environnement et à la Nature, Laboratorio di Ecologia Affettiva, Università della Valle d’Aosta - Université de la Vallée d’Aoste, Aosta, Italy

Biophilia is a human personality trait described initially by Erich Fromm and later by E.O. Wilson, both of whom agree that biophilia has a biological basis and that it is fundamental to develop harmonious relationships between humans and the biosphere. This review aims at establishing a definition of biophilia as an evolutionary process. To this end, the most significant studies of evolutionary psychology were considered, to outline the fundamental characteristics of a hypothetical biophilic temperament/personality and to reconstruct a plausible history of biophilia as an evolutionary process. This process considers different typologies of Nature (wilderness, rural, and urban) and human cultures (Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Burg) and leads us to consider environmental preference and psycho-physiological recovery in relation to the threshold of time spent in contact with Nature. Unfortunately, modern people, especially children, lack direct and frequent contact with Nature and this can have negative consequences on their physical and mental health. Biophilic design, considering the evolutionary roots of this architectural approach, is an effective way of planning/designing interior and urban environments to stimulate the innate biophilia of the individual.

Introduction

Biophilia is a combination of two words that descend from ancient Greek: “life” (bio) and “love” (philia); it literally means love of life. When we talk about “love of life,” it is appropriate first of all to specify what we mean by “life.” In a recent article, Lenton et al. (2020) proposed to indicate with the word life (spelled out all in the lower case) the class of properties that are common to all living beings, and with the word Life (capitalized) the phenomena that emerge from the coupling of the metabolism of living organisms with the external environment. In this sense, Life appears as a dynamic process in which organic and inorganic forces concur in continuously remodeling Gaia’s habitable conditions ( Volk, 1998 ; Lenton and Watson, 2011 ); according to Gaia hypothesis, Earth is a self-regulating system in which the biota play an integral role ( Kump et al., 2010 ). Human beings are capable of recognizing living organisms ( life ) in the non-living world as well as Nature ( Life ) as a process in its entirety ( Barbiero, 2014 ). Therefore, biophilia can mean both love for living creatures ( life ) and love for Nature ( Life ), understood as the set of living creatures plus the abiotic environment in which they thrive. In this paper, “Nature” is written with the capital “N” to indicate the biosphere and the abiotic matrices (soil, air, and water) where it flourishes, and to avoid confusion with “nature” as the intrinsic quality of a certain creature and/or phenomenon.

The word “biophilia” was coined twice independently by German psychologist Erich Fromm and American biologist E.O. Wilson. Fromm used the term biophilia to describe the psychological orientation of being attracted to all that is alive and vital ( Fromm, 1964 ), thus assuming a predominantly ontogenetic perspective, aimed at understanding the conditions for developing a biophilic personality. Wilson used the term biophilia to describe the traits of evolutionary adaptation that allow us to develop a mental link with the living world and Nature ( Wilson, 1984 ), thus assuming a predominantly phylogenetic perspective. Later on, Wilson, together with Stephen R. Kellert, published the collection of essays The Biophilia Hypothesis ( Kellert and Wilson, 1993 ); this hypothesis asserts the human dependence on Nature “that extends far beyond the simple issues of material and physical sustenance to encompass as well the human craving for aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive, and even spiritual meaning and satisfaction” ( Kellert, 1993 , p. 21). The biophilia hypothesis must be compatible with our knowledge of evolutionary biology and psychology to make it possible to reconstruct a plausible and coherent history of biophilia with what we know of Nature in the Pleistocene and Holocene eras, and of our cultural evolution in the Paleolithic ( Tattersal, 2008 ) and most importantly in the Neolithic era ( Diamond and Bellwood, 2003 ), when our relationship with Nature changed radically.

In this review, we aim to establish a definition of biophilia as an evolutionary phenomenon, while highlighting three areas that need further research: the typology of the natural environment, the typology of human experience, and the exposure threshold (1) The typology of the natural environment. Nature is not the same everywhere; classification criteria of the different natural environments are necessary for them to be related to environmental preference and any psycho-physiological effects (2) The typology of human experience with the natural environment . Our species has developed a series of adaptations to the quality and quantity of Nature which are part of our evolutionary history. Our ancestors survived in the Pleistocene wilderness, they learnt to domesticate animals and plants in the Neolithic, and today, they live in urban environments where Nature is almost disappeared. Recognizing these adaptations throughout our evolutionary history as a species could help us understand the development of the broad spectrum of psycho-physiological reactions that Nature elicits in us ( Wilson, 1993 ) (3) The threshold of exposure to the natural environment . How much Nature is needed and for how long to obtain subjective and/or objective benefits? This question takes on dramatic importance in an era where urbanization has deprived entire generations of direct contact with Nature, leading to problematic phenomena of disconnection from Nature ( Chawla, 2016 ). Besides the various suggestions on how to alleviate or reverse this trend, it is also essential to learn how to design urban spaces where contact with Nature is continuous and sustained. As we will see in Section “Biophilic Design For a Biophilic Environment,” the goal of biophilic design is to give back to human beings living in urban environments the possibility of maintaining contact with Nature ( Kellert, 2008 ).

The Interpretations of Biophilia

Erich fromm’s ontogenetic perspective.

Erich Fromm was the first to introduce the term biophilia , defined as “the passionate love of life and of all that is alive” ( Fromm, 1973 , p. 406). According to Fromm, biophilia manifests as the “wish to further growth, whether in a person, a plant, an idea, or a social group” ( Fromm, 1973 , p. 406) and includes “love for humanity and nature” ( Fromm, 1994 , p. 101). The concept of biophilia was developed at various times by Fromm (1964 , 1973 ), to describe the mental tendency to preserve life and fight death ( Fromm, 1964 ). The fundamental trait of biophilia is “the experience of union with another person, with all men, and with nature, under the condition of retaining one’s sense of integrity and independence” ( Fromm, 1955 , p. 37). Biophilia restores “an active power in man” which “makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness” ( Fromm, 1956 , p. 17).

Fromm recognizes the innate and ontogenetic character of biophilia, as a “primary potentiality” ( Fromm, 1964 , p. 51) “intrinsic to human biology” ( Fromm, 1973 , p. 407). However, Fromm warns that biophilia is realized only if the environmental conditions – natural and social – are present that foster its growth and development in a natural and spontaneous way. If the environmental conditions are in contrast with existential needs, then an opposite secondary potentiality may develop, necrophilia, that is, “the passion to destroy life and the attraction for all that is dead, in decay and purely mechanical” ( Fromm, 1973 , p. 25). According to Fromm, “there are three environmental conditions that must precede the development of biophilia: security, justice and freedom” ( Fromm, 1964 , p. 52). To develop a biophilic orientation, the first environmental condition is physical and mental security . These require that there be shelter as well as access to economic resources. Conversely, insecurity and economic scarcity encourage necrophilia. An individual or group forced to “ward off starvation” will not develop a biophilic orientation ( Gunderson, 2014 ). The second environmental condition is justice . Living in a context in which behavioral rules are observed, including duties and expectations for oneself and others, fosters a biophilic attitude. Biophilia flourishes in a context where an individual can decide to think, express him of herself, and act without constraints, being able to devise and implement actions with free choice of ends and tools that he or she deems useful to achieve his or her goals. If the preconditions for biophilia are met, then it is possible to cultivate four active elements for biophilia: care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge ( Fromm, 1956 ). Unfortunately, Fromm developed the description of the active elements for biophilia only as far as the relationships between human beings, with the only exception of the care element, which Fromm extended also to Nature. Ryan Gunderson (2014) has proposed a plausible extension of Fromm’s concept of biophilia in relation to Nature. According to Gunderson, Fromm’s love of Nature means (1) an active concern for the growth and prosperity of Nature, (2) the ability to respond to and satisfy the needs of Nature, (3) respect for the autonomy and independence of Nature and its defense from human interests, and (4) having knowledge of Nature without dominating it.

E.O. Wilson’s Phylogenetic Perspective

E.O. Wilson’s (1984) biophilia hypothesis adopts an evolutionary interpretation and offers a phylogenetic perspective to our love for life. Wilson defines biophilia as “our innate tendency to focus upon life and life-like forms and, in some instances, to affiliate with them emotionally” ( Wilson, 2002 , p. 134). In this form, it is already an operational definition, because it identifies two fundamental constructs of biophilia: fascination ( focus upon ) and affiliation.

Nature exerts a fascination on human beings, that is, an attraction capable of activating the involuntary/effortless modality of attention. Fascination is the key concept of the Attention Restoration Theory (ART; for more details see Kaplan, 1995 ). People respond with involuntary attention to natural settings, and this guarantees that directed attention can rest and be restored from mental fatigue in adults ( Berto, 2005 ) and in children ( Barbiero et al., 2014 ). Nature represents a fascinating stimulus of choice ( Kaplan, 1995 , 2001 ).

Affiliation for Nature is an emotional bond with specific forms of life that takes place in certain circumstances ( Wilson, 2002 , p. 134). From an evolutionary point of view, the feeling of affiliation seems to reside in “our capacity to experience empathy with other creatures and respond to their concerns as our own” ( Goodenough, 1998 , p. 127). Empathy, which can be a mediator of affiliation with Nature ( Di Fabio and Kenny, 2018 ), is “an emotional state triggered by another’s emotional state or situation, in which one feels what the other feels or would normally be expected to feel in his situation” ( Hoffman, 2008 ). Normally, a feeling of empathy develops between two human beings; however, the ability to experience empathy is not limited to humans ( Angantyr et al., 2011 ). Forms of differentiated emotional participation and affective empathy are widespread in mammals ( Preston and de Waal, 2002 ). Domestic Nature offers ample possibilities for empathic contact ( Hand et al., 2017a ) and can help reduce the stress response, as suggested by the Stress Recovery Theory (SRT; for more details see Ulrich et al., 1991 ). It is therefore reasonable to assume that more frequent contact with domestic Nature tends to aid a faster recovery from stress ( Ulrich, 1984 ). The main empirical evidence of the relationship between the feeling of affiliation and recovery from stress comes from studies on relationships with pets ( Coakley and Mahoney, 2009 ). Humans like to establish emotional relationships with their pets, because this type of affiliation reduces the stress response ( Sapolsky, 2004 , pp. 234–248; Kertes et al., 2017 ).

According to Wilson, “biophilia is not a single instinct but a complex of learning rules that can be teased apart and analyzed individually. The feelings molded by the learning rules fall along several emotional spectra: from attraction to aversion, from awe to indifference, from peacefulness to fear-driven anxiety” ( Wilson, 1993 , p. 31). Two considerations follow from this: (1) biophobia – meaning “fear of or strong negative/avoidance responses to certain natural stimuli that presumably have constituted risks during evolution” ( Ulrich, 1993 , p. 76) – is an intrinsic and complementary part of biophilia and (2) biophilia is innate but not instinctive ( Lee, 2012 ). It is innate insofar as it is a manifestation of a phenotype that has passed the scrutiny of natural selection and can be studied from a phylogenetic perspective. It is not instinctive because it does not give rise to rigid and deterministically fixed behavior ( Wilson, 1993 ). Over the course of evolution, biophilia has become part of the human genotype ( Kellert, 2009 ), through a process of co-evolution of culture and genes ( Wilson, 1993 ) which has bestowed an advantage in terms of real fitness to individuals capable of becoming emotionally affiliated with the environment ( Kellert, 1997 ).

Biophilia: State or Trait?

Fromm and Wilson offer two complementary perspectives of biophilia, which together define a theoretical horizon for the experimental verification of the biophilic hypothesis. In many cases, the two perspectives mirror each other. For example, a biophilic personality has many good reasons to appreciate Nature. At any rate, Nature is more likely to fascinate a biophilic personality rather than a necrophilic/biophobic one. Fromm and Wilson agree that biophilia has a biological basis ( Fromm, 1973 ; Wilson, 1993 ) and that it is a fundamental human force for developing harmonious relationships between humanity and the biosphere ( Fromm, 1963 , 1966 ; Wilson, 1984 , 1993 ). However, there are substantial differences. Where Wilson defines biophilia in its biological terms which relate to humanity as a species, Fromm is more attentive to the environmental and social conditions that affect the individual developing biophilia. Wilson’s definition has the advantage of being more operational because it has identified the constructs of fascination and affiliation which have allowed the operationalization of biophilia on an evolutionary basis.

The phylogenetic interpretation allows us to understand how biophilia can become a “total orientation, an entire way of being” ( Fromm, 1964 , p. 45) which permeates the entire personality. Personality is defined as the set of inherited and acquired mental qualities that define an individual’s temperament and character through a process of adaptation as a compromise between internal needs and external demands ( Cloninger et al., 1993 ). Many clues suggest that biophilia is a hereditary trait. Firstly, biophilia is considered intrinsic to human nature ( Fromm, 1973 ; Wilson, 1984 ; Kellert, 1993 ; Gardner, 1999 ); accordingly, it can assume that biophilia is ubiquitous in human cultures and probably an “absolute universal,” a psychobiological trait that has been forged by evolution ( Brown, 2004 ). Secondly, biophilia possesses the four characteristics considered typical of a temperament trait: It (1) is present since early childhood, (2) has its counterpart in animals, especially as a guide in finding shelters and resources, (3) is determined by innate biological mechanisms, and (4) is subject to changes caused by maturation and individual-specific genotype-environment interaction ( Strelau, 1998 ). Therefore, biophilia could be a basic, relatively stable personality trait which expresses itself in one’s reactions and behavior when in contact with Nature.

Biophilia, however, consists of “weak learning rules” ( Wilson, 1993 , p. 32), which leave ample freedom to the individual. Every individual conduct has elements attributable to an innate heritage and a learned heritage and what is phylogenetically selected is a greater receptivity toward certain ontogenetic contingencies ( Caprara and Gennaro, 1994 ). Plausibly, sequences of responses or behaviors are not what is inherited but rather a greater susceptibility to certain environmental stresses and to the possibility of establishing certain links between individual reactions and situational contingencies. Human behavior is not affected by instinct like that of animals. And here is where character comes into play, and all the environmental conditions influence it, mainly education. Fromm was clear on the function of character to “substitute for” the instinctive equipment that human beings lack ( Fromm, 1973 , p. 255). The innate component of biophilic behavior is resolved in the environment with which the genetic heritage interacts and from which it takes the forms to be translated into behaviors, dispositions, and personalities. Education is fundamental in the formation of character ( Williams, 2000 ), and it may or may not help in the formation of a biophilic personality. It is clear, however, that education cannot go along without contact with Nature ( Kahn, 2002 ), because biophilia is innate: “when human beings remove themselves from the natural environment, the biophilic learning rules are not replaced with versions equally well adapted to artifacts” ( Wilson, 1993 , pp. 31–32). Education could enhance the evolutionary core of biophilia, which consists of a set of learning rules which facilitate a faster and more effective ability to interact with the environment. Biophilia could be defined as an innate predisposition to learn from and interact with Nature. Learning predispositions are of great importance for the Homo sapiens species. Children are extraordinarily inept at birth and go through a very long phase of learning and inculturation, during which they learn the correct behaviors ( Tizard and Hughes, 2008 ), including those relating to Nature ( Klaar and Öhman, 2014 ). A fast and effective learner has an evolutionary advantage, which continues to be appreciated in all school systems ( OECD, 2015 ). Therefore, evolution may have fostered not only innate biological mechanisms to be able to relate to Nature, but also the quick learning of its “laws” ( Meyer, 1997 ; White and Stoecklin, 1998 ).

Biophilia as an Evolutionary Adaptation

Over the course of evolution, humanity has had to face many hostile forces of Nature and it is reasonable to think that the “natural selection should have favored individuals who were motivated to explore and settle in environments likely to afford the necessities of life but to avoid environments with poorer resources or posing higher risks” ( Orians and Heerwagen, 1992 , p. 557). The phylogenetic approach suggests that the learning rules of biophilia may have become rooted in the gene pool of our species in relation to the contribution which they have given and can still give to improving human adaptation to the environment.

Phylogeny of Biophilia

The biological evolution of our species took place in the wilderness, the Nature of the Late Pleistocene. For about 95% of our evolutionary history, corresponding to the Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic Eras, humans have survived as hunters-gatherers. Humans have thus perfected a set of adaptive responses to different wild environments – mainly the savannah ( Orians and Heerwagen, 1992 ) – aimed at recognizing the quality of an environment in terms of shelters and resources ( Buss, 2016 ). Safe and resource-rich environments are a precondition for biophilia ( Fromm, 1964 ); they reduce the stress response and promote the restoration of cognitive processes (for a review, see Berto, 2014 ). Some environmental preferences ( Balling and Falk, 1982 ; Robinson and Breed, 2020 ) could therefore be the result of adaptations that proved effective in our ancestors’ struggle for survival ( Falk and Balling, 2010 ). Furthermore, recovering from mental fatigue in a shorter time may have provided an additional evolutionary advantage ( Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989 ).

The relationship with Nature changed in the Neolithic, which covers approximately 5% of humanity’s evolutionary history ( Larson et al., 2014 ; Stephens et al., 2019 ). After the invention of agriculture ( Purugganan and Fuller, 2009 ) and animal breeding ( Larson and Fuller, 2014 ), about 14,000 years ago ( Arranz-Otaegui et al., 2018 ), humans began to distinguish domestic Nature (good) from wild Nature (bad). The biophilic trait may have entered an adaptation and exaptation cycle ( Gould and Vrba, 1982 ) to develop new forms of adaptation and promote its better use based on the demands of the new Neolithic lifestyle.

With the Industrial Revolution, starting from the second half of the eighteenth century – an irrelevant period from the point of view of evolutionism, corresponding to less than 0.1% of the history of humanity – humans began to create urban environments, characterized by an increase in population density and a decrease in green spaces ( Szreter and Mooney, 1998 ). During this period, the size of urban agglomerations grew, and now, they are inhabited by more than half of the world’s population ( Worldbank, 2019 ). In urban environments, visible Nature has almost disappeared, even if not completely ( Beatley, 2011 ) and consequently, the natural stimuli useful for developing biophilia have been reduced ( Berto and Barbiero, 2017a ).

The Neolithic age and especially the Industrial Revolution, which fueled the urbanization process, led to two moments of rupture with Nature: first with wilderness and then again with domesticated Nature. Although these two moments of rupture have strongly influenced the processes of inculturation, the predisposition to learn from Nature has probably remained the same ( Wilson, 1993 ). What has changed is the nature of the Nature to learn from; however, many evidences indicate that the imprint of wilderness has remained deep within the human psyche ( Estés, 1992 ).

The Typology of the Natural Environment

Nature is not the same everywhere. Some types of Nature seem to stimulate biophilia and are preferred, while other types of Nature seem to stimulate biophobia and are avoided (for more details, see Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989 ). In general, people seem to become more fascinated by the kind of Nature that matches their feeling of affiliation ( Fredman and Emmelin, 2001 ; Van den Berg and Koole, 2006 ; Nisbet and Zelenski, 2011 ); thus, people who have a high affiliation with Nature prefer wilder natural environments ( Berto et al., 2018 ; Løvoll et al., 2020 ), while people with a lower affiliation tend to prefer more domestic natural environments ( Bixler and Floyd, 1997 ; Davis and Gatersleben, 2013 ).

Since biophilia appears primarily as a functional evolutionary adaptation to an environment characterized by wild Nature, any criteria for classifying natural environments must start from a precise definition of wild environment, that is, “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain” ( Wilderness Act, 1964 ). Berto et al. (2018) is one of the few studies which used a criterion for evaluating the wildness level of a natural environment, specifically, the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum (ROS, Clark and Stankey, 1979 ) adapted to the European Union context ( Paracchini et al., 2014 ). ROS is a management tool which classifies natural areas according to their recreational opportunities. To evaluate wilderness levels, ROS uses two general criteria: the accessibility and social experience , which can be had in an environment. Accessibility depends on the extent of the area considered, the type of access , naturalness , based on preservation criteria that evaluate how much the environment has been modified by human hands, and remoteness , that is, the distance from access routes. The social experience depends on the number of social encounters , available facilities , visitor impacts , and the visitors themselves . Based on these parameters, ROS identifies seven environments in service use: urban (U), rural (R), roaded modified (RM) in some areas, roaded natural (RN), semi-primitive motorized (SPM), semi-primitive non-motorized (SPNM), and primitive (P). A natural environment is defined as “wilderness” when it extends over more than 20 km 2 , the nearest road is at least 5 km away, and one can meet less than six people per day or less than three visitors at a campsite. Using ROS to distinguish the degree of naturalness of four parks, Berto et al. (2018) found that park visitors with a higher affiliation with Nature (measured by the Connectedness to Nature Scale; Mayer and Mc Pherson Frantz, 2004 ) had a perception of greater restorative benefits (measured by the Perceived Restorativeness Scale; Hartig et al., 1997 ) in parks with a higher degree of naturalness. ROS is built on an empirical basis; however, in defining a gradient of naturalness, it follows in detail the model “Paleolithic (Wild Nature: P, SPNM) – Neolithic (Domestic Nature: SPM, RN, RM, and R) – Urban (Nature absent in the Burg: U),” which is useful in offering a classification of the environments, having allowed us to predict the effects of the environment type based on the individual link with Nature ( Table 1 ).

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Table 1 . Individual’s preference for Nature typologies (the first two columns from the left) affects the individual’s perception of the benefits to obtain in terms of subjective wellbeing (the last column on the right), and this perception is mediated by the individual’s connection to Nature (the third column from the left).

Although the existing literature invites us not to underestimate the importance and value of domestic Nature, it is evident that the landscapes and green spaces with low population density and greater naturalness have a high restorative power which is immediately perceived ( Kuo, 2015 ), and thus gain one more reason to be preserved in their naturalness.

The Typology of Human Experience With the Natural Environment

Why does a desire for wild Nature correspond to a higher affiliation with Nature (see Table 1 )? The answer may once again be evolution. Biophilia presumably evolved and was successful in the Pleistocene, when only wild Nature existed. However, the human evolutionary experience with Nature had at least two important moments of rupture: the Paleolithic-Neolithic transition ( Ellis et al., 2016 ) and the Neolithic-Urban transition ( Schultz, 2002 ). A successful adaptation as far as the relationship with Nature in the Paleolithic may no longer be as effective in the Neolithic, when domestic Nature is the prevailing environment with which humans interact. Some manifestations of biophilia likely continued to be suitable both for Paleolithic hunters and Neolithic breeders, while other manifestations of biophilia may have been suitable for both Paleolithic gatherers and Neolithic farmers. However, when humans learned to cultivate plants and breed animals, that is, to transform a part of wild Nature into domestic Nature, it is likely that Wild Nature was perceived as an “enemy,” to be pushed away and rejected, and feelings of affiliation would then be reserved only for domesticated plants and animals ( Cronon, 1996 ). One example is our relationship with the Canis lupus species. The wolf is the wild version of C. lupus , and it was the only form known to Paleolithic humans, who feared and admired the wolf, so much so that they made it into an archetype ( Jürgens and Hackett, 2017 ). Neolithic humans continued to fear and admire the wolf, but they rejected it, while protecting the dog, the domestic variant of C. lupus , because it was useful to the new lifestyle.

Biophilic traits could have pleiotropic characteristics; in practice, the same adaptation could prove useful in a different context thanks to an exaptation cycle ( Gould and Vrba, 1982 ). Affiliation with wild Nature could be a “personality trait” with a pleiotropic effect on the perception of a restorative environment and the population density of a certain area. For a Paleolithic human, the usual landscape was devoid of visible places of human aggregation. It is therefore presumable that the restorative environment was perceived without such places. Opposite to that, the landscape of a Neolithic human was characterized by visible places of human aggregation, which were landmarks for orientation and often were the final goal of a transfer. It is therefore presumable that the restorative environment was perceived with such places.

However, an exaptation cycle does not always lead to an optimal result. Paleolithic humans lived in small nomadic communities roaming over large areas; population density was low and encounters outside one’s own clan were rare. On the other hand, Neolithic humans lived in stable villages and smaller areas, where population density was higher and encounters more frequent ( Stiner, 2001 ). Village life requires a higher level of socialization and hitherto unknown physical proximity that turns out to be stressful ( Larsen et al., 2019 ) and to which we still do not seem fully adapted. This could explain, for example, the stress response to crowding and why many people seek outdoor spaces in Nature where human presence is rare.

The pleiotropic effect appears more evident in the transition from the Neolithic to the Urban, that is, in the passage from the rural to the burg environment. In an Urban environment, the usual landscape is apparently devoid of Nature. Nature is almost invisible and cannot support restoration needs which are replaced by artificial surrogates ( Galtung, 1984 ). The lifestyle changes and biophilia atrophies, but is never completely extinguished ( Wilson, 1993 ). If this hypothesis is correct, then in each human being three fundamental experiences (and cultures) are probably present and settled: the wild Nature of the Paleolithic, the domestic Nature of the Neolithic, and the absent Nature of the Urban environment. Together, all three phylogenetic experiences of affiliation, with different intensities varying from individual to individual, give rise to a specific relationship with Nature ( Barbiero, 2021 ).

The Threshold of Exposure to the Natural Environment

The desire to establish and maintain contact with Nature probably depends on experiences of stress recovery ( Ulrich et al., 1991 ; Berto, 2014 ; Lee et al., 2015 ; Martyn and Brymer, 2016 ) or attention restoration ( Kaplan, 1995 ), or both ( Cimprich and Ronis, 2003 ). This could explain why, in social relational contexts, environments in which Nature is present are preferred to environments in which it is absent ( Lindemann-Matthies et al., 2010 ; Lin et al., 2014 ), especially when people engage in fun activities ( Cleary et al., 2017 ). Natural environments are preferred for activities that aim to provide relaxation from daily routines, such as vacations and receptions, and often serve as the backdrop for social media sharing ( Chang et al., 2020 ). It does not come as a surprise that humans tend to associate Nature with emotional happiness ( White et al., 2013 ; Capaldi et al., 2014 ; Zelenski and Nisbet, 2014 ; Kuo, 2015 ; Biedenweg et al., 2017 ). Nature offers places where people can feel relaxed, forget their worries, and reflect on personal matters ( Ouellette et al., 2005 ; Moreton et al., 2019a ; Graves et al., 2020 ). Nature seems to satisfy the psychological need for belonging and relating ( Moreton et al., 2019b ); actually, activities that involved contact, emotional attachment, meaning, beauty, and a compassionate relationship with Nature are pathways for improving Nature connectedness, pro-environmental behavior, and wellbeing ( Lumber et al., 2017 ). Studies show that in natural environments people tend to behave more altruistically ( Weinstein et al., 2009 ; Zelenski et al., 2015 ; Guéguen and Stefan, 2016 ) and there is an increased sense of satisfaction with life ( Biedenweg et al., 2017 ).

The beneficial effects of being in contact with Nature also depend on the time of exposure and the frequency of such contact. Several empirical observations show that the variables “time spent” and “frequency of contacts” affect the feeling of affiliation with Nature ( Nisbet et al., 2009 ; Prévot et al., 2018 ; Bonnell et al., 2019 ). Experimental designs to verify the effect of “time” in Nature might be difficult to conceptualize and compare; they differ on the type of Nature contact (slide, video, walk, exercises, wilderness program, etc.) and on the psychological outcomes (questionnaire, self-rating scales, objective test, etc.); however, they suggest that individual’s response to Nature seems to be dose-dependent (for more details, see Kaplan and Berman, 2010 ). In fact, “negative” studies on the effects of Nature – that is, observing what happens when there is not direct and frequent contact with Nature ( Schultz, 2002 ; Kesebir and Kesebir, 2017 ) – show that disconnecting from Nature has detrimental effects on both mental and physical health ( Ulrich, 1993 ; Frumkin, 2001 ; Schultz et al., 2004 ). Many studies observe that direct exposure to Nature, even when brief (15 min), can offer visible psychophysiological benefits ( Mayer et al., 2009 ; Mackay and Neill, 2010 ; Ryan et al., 2010 ; Nisbet and Zelenski, 2011 ).

A large quantitative dose-response study was recently carried out where the self-reported minutes spent in natural environments for recreation in the last 7 days were compared in relation to self-reported health and subjective wellbeing ( White et al., 2019 ). This research revealed that there is a minimum “threshold” of exposure to Nature which can be quantified as 2 h per week. People who reported spending at least 2 h in Nature per week exhibited consistently higher levels of health and wellbeing than those who reported no exposure. It does not matter in which way the 2-h threshold was reached, whether by long weekend walks in places far from home or short and regular walks in urban parks, nor which activity took place in these 2 h immersed in Nature. Despite the numerous limitations recognized by the authors themselves, this research establishes a clear reference point for subsequent research, in relation to the dose of Nature as a function of people’s responses insofar as their perceived wellbeing.

Building Environments That Stimulate Biophilia

Nurturing children’s affiliation with nature.

The feeling of affiliation with Nature depends on how one sees, treats, and cares for Nature, animals, plants, and natural resources. It also depends on how familiar one is with natural environments, and the degree of comfort and wellbeing that one experiences in such environments ( Capaldi et al., 2015 ; Korpela et al., 2018 ; Bratman et al., 2019 ). Although it is a rather complex biophilic construct, affiliation with Nature can be represented in operational terms and as such it can be measured by means of different approaches. At least 10 approaches have been suggested to describe and measure affiliation with Nature: Emotional Affinity Toward Nature ( Kals et al., 1999 ); Inclusion of Nature in Self ( Schultz, 2001 ; Martin and Czellar, 2016 ); Environment Identity ( Stets and Biga, 2003 ); Environmental Identity ( Clayton, 2003 ); Connectedness to Nature ( Mayer and Mc Pherson Frantz, 2004 ); Self-Nature IAT ( Schultz et al., 2004 ); Connectivity with Nature ( Dutcher et al., 2007 ); Commitment to Nature ( Davis et al., 2009 ); Nature Relatedness ( Nisbet et al., 2009 ); and Love and Care for Nature ( Perkins, 2010 ). Each of these approaches captures slightly different aspects of affiliation with Nature. At any rate, for all practical purposes, at least seven of these 10 modalities are quite equivalent (for more details see Tam, 2013 ).

The sense of affiliation with Nature matures quite early in childhood, following a rather precise value pattern ( Kahn and Kellert, 2002 ) and development of the environmental cognition ( Barbiero and Berto, 2016 ). The relationship between children and Nature has been extensively studied ( Kahn, 1997 ; Kahn and Kellert, 2002 ; Gill, 2014 ; Adams and Savahl, 2017 ; Tillmann et al., 2018 ), and the consensus is almost unanimous that children’s first experiences with Nature are fundamental ( Wells and Lekies, 2006 ; Dadvand et al., 2015 ), lacking which incompetence prevails ( Balmford et al., 2002 ) together with a feeling of fear for Nature ( Bixler and Floyd, 1997 ). Children generally appreciate natural environments ( Chawla, 2007 ; Kalvaitis and Monhardt, 2015 ), preferring them to artificial environments ( Simmons, 1994 ; Mahidin and Maulan, 2012 ; Berto et al., 2015 ). In spite of that, more than half of the world’s children have little chance of being outdoors and in contact with Nature ( Clements, 2004 ), and most importantly, they can no longer play in Nature ( Chawla, 2016 ). Children live in highly modified environments associated with low biodiversity ( Turner et al., 2004 ); they have little independence and are not free to roam and explore ( O’Brien et al., 2000 ). In urban environments, road traffic reduces children’s autonomy ( Carver et al., 2008 ); coupled with parental concerns about neighborhood safety, these conditions further reduce the children’s desire and ability to play outdoors ( Timperio et al., 2004 ). This being the case, children increasingly occupy their time with technological devices which tend to replace Nature as a playing and learning space ( Pergams and Zaradic, 2006 ; Ballouard et al., 2011 ; Soga and Gaston, 2016 ).

Children losing their connection with Nature are not without consequences. It has a negative impact on their health and wellbeing ( Samborski, 2010 ), leading to a higher risk of obesity ( Wolch et al., 2011 ; Halonen et al., 2014 ), decreased ability for problem solving and risk assessment ( Kuo and Taylor, 2004 ), and loss of motivation to protect Nature ( Miller, 2005 ; Wells and Lekies, 2006 ). For their biophilia to be stimulated, children need frequent contact with Nature, initially with domestic Nature, and then extending the exploration to wild Nature ( Hordyk et al., 2015 ). Children’s innate inclination to appreciate many forms of wild Nature can flourish only if it is adequately stimulated ( Fattorini et al., 2017 ; Venturella and Barbiero, 2021 ). If biophilia is not stimulated in children, they tend to prefer domestic Nature (private gardens and courtyards), even when they have the freedom to access areas with high biodiversity ( Hand et al., 2017a ). This does not mean that today’s children are less biophilic, “but rather that their ability to act in this way has been curtailed” ( Hand et al., 2017b ). This appeared as evident in the experimental observations which led to the definition of the Standard of Étroubles (for more details, see Berto et al., 2015 ), where it emerged that, in a group of primary school children during a day spent in a wooded environment, the perception of restorativeness (presumably mediated by the fascination exerted by Nature) was increased, while the feeling of affiliation remained unchanged. A biophilic personality develops over time, and for the feeling of affiliation to grow, direct and frequent exposure to Nature is required ( Venturella and Barbiero, 2021 ).

Biophilic Design for a Biophilic Environment

Due to the Urban lifestyle, our contact with Nature has become less frequent ( Turner et al., 2004 ). Nature continues to fascinate us, but our sense of affiliation with wild Nature has slackened ( Miller, 2005 ). Our sporadic encounters with Nature are no longer enough to stimulate our biophilia, which tends to atrophy ( Wilson, 1993 ; Barbiero, 2011 ). In the near foreseeable future, the phenomenon of disconnection from Nature will tend to accentuate. In 2007, urban population surpassed rural population for the first time in human history. Forecasts for 2050 are that 75% of the population will live in cities by then ( Worldbank, 2019 ). From a certain point of view, this is good news. If human presence in rural environments decreases, it is foreseeable that wild Nature will tend to take over the spaces left behind. Larger habitats will increase the chances of survival of currently endangered wildlife species ( Fahrig and Merriam, 1994 ; Fischer and Lindenmayer, 2007 ). However, Urban environments dwellers will have increasingly fewer opportunities to get in touch with Nature. Therefore, it becomes important to create Urban environments that will stimulate our biophilia as much as possible ( Beatley, 2011 ; Hartig and Kahn, 2016 ; Söderlund, 2019 ). Biophilic design has been suggested as a way to meet this need ( Kellert et al., 2008 ). The goal of biophilic design is to create artificial environments as similar as possible to natural ones, to ensure the positive effect that Nature has on people’s health and wellbeing ( Söderlund, 2019 ; Browning and Ryan, 2020 ). Over the past 15 years, several biophilic design models have been suggested (see Table 2 ), which have often been implemented in advanced building certification systems ( WELL, 2016a , b ; LBC, 2017 ; LEED, 2018 ). Despite their specific differences, the criteria adopted by the various biophilic design models seem to respond to psychological needs matured over the course of evolution (for more details, see Bolten and Barbiero, 2020 ). In point of fact, the elements of biophilic design can be broken down into two fundamental groups following evolutionary adaptation principles developed by our species in the search for safe and resource-rich habitats ( Orians, 1980 , 1986 ). The first such group (light, protection and control, air, and views) seems to satisfy the theme of “searching for a safe place to live” ( Buss, 2016 ); the element of this group is the basis of the savannah hypothesis ( Orians, 1980 , 1986 ). The second group of elements (greenery; curiosity; materials and finishing and colors) seems more linked to the theme “searching for resources and acquiring food” ( Buss, 2016 ).

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Table 2 . Comparison of the most important features of biophilic design according to the most relevant studies.

Although biophilic design research can rely on a robust evolutionary theoretical framework, it remains largely empirical ( Kellert, 2018 ). There have been very few projects subjected to an experimental verification plan. Among them is the Biosphera Project of the Italian-Swiss company AktivHaus belonging to the Nexlogic Group. Biosphera Project is a research program unique for its kind because it is based on the creation of prototypes of transportable housing units. Being relatively mobile, the housing prototypes built so far – Biosphera 2.0 and Biosphera Equilibrium – have the advantage of being suitable for different environments: wilderness, rural, and burg. Starting in 2016, the Biosphera Project researchers have been collecting numerous experimental indications revealing the importance of biophilic design in promoting psychophysical wellbeing ( Berto et al., 2020 ). These experimental results contributed to the creation of the Biophilic Quality Index (BQI; Berto and Barbiero, 2017b ). The application of the BQI in a biophilic designed redevelopment project of the primary school in Gressoney-La-Trinité, Aosta Valley (Italy), introduced an experimental approach to biophilic design ( Barbiero et al., 2017 ). That of Gressoney-La-Trinité is the first biophilic school where a three-year longitudinal study was conducted which highlighted the importance of restorative biophilic designed learning environments, that is, capable of supporting learning processes and reinforcing the bond of affiliation with Nature ( Venturella and Barbiero, 2021 ). Continuous and long-lasting contact with Nature allows children to establish a deeper affiliation with Nature and lays the foundations for pro-environmental behavior in adults ( Berto and Barbiero, 2017a ).

The aim of this review was to explain our response to Nature against the background of our evolutionary past. Natural selection favors traits which bring advantages in struggle for survival. Biophilia consists of learning rules that facilitate effective contact with Nature; this is its main evolutionary advantage. The fascination exerted by Nature and affiliation with Nature are the biophilic constructs identified by Wilson (2002) , which, being able to be operationalized ( Barbiero and Berto, 2018 ), allow us to relate their evolutionary roots with the positive effects that Nature exerts both on a physiological and cognitive level. The evolutionary explanation can also account for the different experiences of Nature depending on environmental typology (wilderness, rural, and burg), which in turn reflects the phylogenetic typology of human experience with Nature (Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Urban).

Although there is little doubt that biophilia has an evolutionary origin, some researchers disagree that the attraction that humans feel for Nature has become fixed over the course of its evolution and criticize the evolutionary interpretation of biophilia ( Joye and De Block, 2011 ; Joye and Van den Berg, 2011 ; Haga et al., 2016 ). To this approach, individual’s response to natural stimuli does not depend on the stimulus characteristics, whereas on the meaning that individuals assign to it, accordingly, individual’s positive response to Nature (including preference and perceived restoration) has been learned and depends on positive emotional associations. These observations are not in contrast with the biophilic hypothesis proposed here. The hypothesis that behavior depends on both biological/hereditary and environmental/cultural factors and that these are not additive but interactive is not new; what is new is the role recognized to cognitive and affective processes as interacting variables capable of significantly acting on biological and environmental factors ( Caprara and Gennaro, 1994 ). Biophilia consists of weak learning rules, which require contact and experience before affiliation with Nature is consolidated. It is therefore foreseeable that, as one learns from experiencing Nature, the feeling of affiliation with Nature will deepen, triggering a virtuous process involving concern for the environment and pro-environmental behavior ( Barbiero and Berto, 2018 ). For this reason, it can be assumed that biophilic design can generate those positive emotions associated with Nature, reproducing and incorporating in the design of the built environment the direct and indirect experiences of Nature ( Kellert, 2018 ), which derive from evolutionary stratification of biophilic experiences.

Biophilia is not a cultural by-product but a “useful trait,” that is, a characteristic that directly contributed to self-preservation and reproduction, which provided us useful information about the natural environment, seeking out and exploring the novel and extraordinary environment we had to face. Biophilia steers our relationship with Nature, including preference for natural environments that can aid recovery from attentional fatigue and psycho-physiological stress ( Berto, 2014 ; Berto et al., 2018 ). In brief, from the evolutionary point of view, biophilia is a shared predisposition to recognize that a certain habitat reflects the adaptations designed by natural selection aimed to help us to choose the place where to live.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

This paper is part of the activities of the project “Green space for active living: older adults’ perspectives,” funded by the Cariplo Foundation in response to the Call “Social research on aging 2018: people, places and relationships 2018” – CUP G44I18000180005 – Ref. Practice 2018-0841.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the colleagues Elsa Bianco (Jungian psychoanalyst), Bettina Bolten (biophilic design consultant), Elena Camino (epistemologist), Marcella Danon (ecopsychologist), and Pierangela Fiammetta Piras (MD, expert in forest therapy) for the countless reflections and shared ideas. Thanks also to the reviewers for their useful comments.

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Keywords: biophilia hypothesis, biophilia ontogenesis, biophilia phylogenesis, biophilic design, biophilic temperament

Citation: Barbiero G and Berto R (2021) Biophilia as Evolutionary Adaptation: An Onto- and Phylogenetic Framework for Biophilic Design. Front. Psychol . 12:700709. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.700709

Received: 26 April 2021; Accepted: 18 June 2021; Published: 21 July 2021.

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Copyright © 2021 Barbiero and Berto. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Giuseppe Barbiero, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Humans have always been drawn to, dependent on, and fascinated by the natural world. Biophilia, which literally translates to “love of life,” is the idea that this fascination and communion with nature stem from an innate, biologically-driven need to interact with other forms of life such as animals and plants.

  • What Is Biophilia?
  • How Nature Improves Well-Being

biophilia hypothesis psychology definition

Biophilia describes the human drive to connect with nature and other living things. Nature’s power for humanity can influence our mental health, our hobbies, our travels, and our homes and workplaces.

If biophilia delivers benefits to humans, then our increased distance and detachment from the natural world, due to urbanization, technological advances, and other factors, could have negative effects on our well-being—not to mention on nature itself.

The term is thought to have been coined by the renowned psychologist Erich Fromm, but it was popularized by Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson through his 1984 book Biophilia. In it, Wilson proposed that humans’ attraction to nature is genetically predetermined and the result of evolution.

The human appreciation for flowers, he theorized, was due to the fact that for many plant species, flowers signal that fruit (a rich source of nutrients for early humans) would be arriving soon. And human fondness for baby animals suggests that affiliating with animals, and protecting the most vulnerable among them, provided early people with an evolutionary advantage.

Nature has the capacity to generate wonder and awe. The beauty and expansiveness of nature can lead people to appreciate the grandeur of the universe, put their personal worries into perspective, and be more attentive to their world and their relationships.

Research suggests that the cognitive benefits of being in nature are due to “restorative environments,” which provide the experience of escape from daily demands, and a perception of vastness. Greater attention spans and less mental fatigue are found after people even just watch films or view photographs of natural scenes.

From the lens of evolutionary psychology , people who were well-connected to landscapes, animals, and water sources were more likely to survive. Survival and, later, achievement have rested on creating cohesive non-kinship-based groups. A shared belief in something bigger than the individual can be an effective mechanism for coordination; nature and awe have since united people in creating universities, symphonies, and voyages to the moon.

Freud believed that human existence represented a constant struggle between Thanatos, the death instinct, and Eros, the life instinct. In a healthy human being, Eros retains the advantage in this game of forces.

In a similar way, Erich Fromm analyzed the hidden processes in the human psyche. In the case of Fromm, it is not Thanatos and Eros that confront each other, but rather necrophilia and biophilia. Derived from ancient Greek, “necrophilia” means “love of the dead,” and “biophilia” means “love of life.” Fromm said of human biophilia, “The person who fully loves life is attracted by the process of life and growth in all spheres.”

Research from environmental psychology —the wing of behavioral science studying how natural and man-made spaces affect our health, mental processes, and social interactions—consistently suggests that buildings support us best when they echo the scale and tone of the natural world, through pattern, dimension, light, layout, and sound. An understanding of biophilia can inform design choices that curb stress and boost well-beins. These include wood floors, high ceilings, and plenty of windows.

Biophobia is a fear of nature, or certain elements of nature such as snakes, spiders, or bears. Like biophilia, biophobia has evolutionary roots: Learning which animals and plants were harmful or poisonous protected our ancestors and conferred a higher likelihood of survival. As a species, we continue to fear certain animals or plants, even if it's unlikely that we’ll encounter them in the urban world.

biophilia hypothesis psychology definition

Spending time in nature and interacting with animals can have beneficial effects on both physical and mental health.

Time spent in green spaces, for instance, is associated with lower levels of stress, improved memory , and heightened creativity . Symptoms of ADHD and depression can decrease for children and adults as outdoor time increases. The benefits of green time may be physical, as well: One study concluded that a microbe found in soil may improve the body’s immune response.

Animals are regularly used in therapeutic settings, such as in equine-assisted therapy , and owning a pet has long been associated with positive mental health outcomes. Pets also often encourage physical activity, which triggers its own cascade of physical and emotional benefits.

In addition to inspiring wonder and joy, there is now evidence that time in nature can strengthen mental health.  Those who walked in a scenic area experienced less anxiety and rumination than those who walked in a busy urban area, one study found. Longer term research also finds that living in places with more exposure to green space is correlated with lower stress and greater well-being.

Just as there are recommendations for the amount of exercise to get and vegetables to eat, there’s a benchmark for the amount of time in nature needed to boost well-being . Research suggests that that point is two hours per week. That was the time at which nature was associated with better self-reported health and well-being in a large study. That benchmark seemed to hold no matter how the time was spent, whether through one long hike or several short walks in the park.

People who surround themselves with plant life, indoors or out, can experience mental health benefits in many spheres of life, research suggests. These benefits include stress reduction, reduced symptoms of depression, PTSD , and ADHD, stronger memory retention, improved productivity and concentration , greater creativity, and enhanced self-esteem .

Gardening can be a powerful activity. It teaches valuable skills such as accepting uncertainty, confronting perfectionism , being present, connecting to the earth, connecting with other people, and adopting healthy eating and exercise habits. Gardening can also curb stress as well as reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression.

The relationship people form with their pets can bring joy in times of happiness and comfort in times of distress. Pets also facilitate community by leading people to connect with neighbors in the park or strangers on the street. Pets may also provide a buffer against stress and depression: Those with severe depression who adopt a pet fare better than those who are depressed but do not, research suggests. People with dogs also tend to get more physical activity than non-dog owners, which may explain the connection between pet ownership and both stress reduction and heart health.

biophilia hypothesis psychology definition

Many of the risky behaviors of both men and small animals can be attributed to human inventions—such as roads separating living things from the things they need to survive.

biophilia hypothesis psychology definition

How can architects take psychology and neuroscience seriously? Responses to coherence, fascination, and homeyness offer a cheat code to assist design choices.

biophilia hypothesis psychology definition

Explore how this unique therapeutic practice can bring peace and happiness to your life.

biophilia hypothesis psychology definition

Biophilic design has financial value and can enhance mental and physical health.

biophilia hypothesis psychology definition

An examination of the evolution of ideals through the lenses of other species and the importance of making appropriate tender contact and expressing unconditional love.

biophilia hypothesis psychology definition

Amid immense amounts of human-generated waste, recycling appears to offer redemption. But by aiming to be diligent recyclers, we may be causing greater harm to the planet.

biophilia hypothesis psychology definition

The modern biophilic movement and its focus on the role of nature in our lives is rooted in Romantic ideas and Alexander von Humboldt’s remarkable global influence.

Therapy Dog Shelby, handled by Debbie Smith

Learn the differences and how to know which dogs you should and should not approach.

biophilia hypothesis psychology definition

Experts in architecture are more sensitive to the coherence of spaces than non-experts; whereas, lay people are more affected by hominess.

biophilia hypothesis psychology definition

We're self-obsessed but rarely wonder about what a self is. Wordle's non-answers provide a clue.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Biophilia

Introduction, a definition of life.

  • Fromm’s Ontogenetic Perspective
  • Fascination for Life
  • Affiliation with Life
  • Environmental Preference from the Evolutionary Perspective
  • Humans’ Preference for Natural Environments
  • Hard Fascination
  • Soft Fascination
  • Perceived Restorativeness
  • Exposure to Nature and Its Effects on Attention
  • Exposure to Nature and Activity of the Autonomic Nervous System
  • Exposure to Nature, the Perception of Pain, and Brain Activity
  • Restorative Environments
  • Biophilic Design for Children

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Biophilia by Rita Berto , Giuseppe Barbiero LAST MODIFIED: 26 September 2022 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199830060-0239

Humans are inherently attracted to all that is alive; this attraction is called biophilia . Biophilia is an evolutionary trait which contributes to self-preservation and reproduction, and it does so by providing us with useful information about the natural environment. Biophilia was initially used by Erich Fromm to describe the psychological orientation to preserve life, and subsequently by Edward O. Wilson to describe the evolutionary adaptation that allows us to develop an affective bond with the living world (the Biophilia Hypothesis). Wilson identified two principal constructs of biophilia: fascination for and affiliation with life. Biophilia depends on the ability to focus attention on natural stimuli effortlessly, to be fascinated by Nature, and the ability to connect emotionally to the various life forms, namely to affiliate with them. In this article, the noun “Nature” written with a capital first letter indicates the biosphere and all the abiotic matrices (soil, air, and water) in which it flourishes, thus avoiding confusion with “nature,” that is, the intrinsic quality of a certain creature and/or phenomenon. Biophilia steers our preference for natural environments. Humans have an unlearned predisposition to pay attention to and respond positively to content, characteristics, and patterns of stimulation that were favorable for survival; this predisposition was instilled over thousands of years of evolution in the African savanna (the Savanna Hypothesis). Hence, a preferred setting maximizes security and seclusion (Prospect-Refuge Theory), offers information that enables us to comprehend and predict (Preference Matrix), and allows restoration from the elements of the environment that threaten well-being (the “relax and renew” response). Natural environments are consistently preferred and are more restorative than urban environments. The importance of contact with Nature extends beyond aesthetics to include a range of benefits in terms of enhancement of physiological well-being ( Stress Recovery Theory ) and recovery from mental fatigue ( Attention Restoration Theory ). Biophilia as a phylogenetic process takes account of the different types of Nature (wild, rural, urban) and different human cultures (Paleolithic, Neolithic, bourgeois), whereas as an ontogenetic process it depends directly on exposure frequency and time spent in contact with Nature. This brings to a modern-day phenomenon, namely the fact that many children are deprived of Nature. Indeed, experiences of Nature are said to be becoming extinct, and a consequence of this is the atrophy of biophilia. To sustain Nature experiences in urban and indoor settings, biophilic design was proposed. Biophilic design is an application of the Biophilia Hypothesisin architectural design and urban planning to sustain affiliation with Nature, which can lead to the formation of positive attitudes and behaviors toward natural environments.

The term “biophilia” arises from the combination of two words, both descending from ancient Greek: “bio” (life) and “philia” (love); thus, the literal meaning of biophilia is “love for life.” However, to speak of “love for life,” we must first specify exactly what we mean by “life.” Lenton, et al. 2020 proposes using the word life (written in lowercase) to indicate the set of properties that are common to all living things, and the word Life (with a capitalized first letter) to indicate the phenomena that emerge from the coupling of the metabolism of living organisms with the external environment. In this sense, Life emerges as a dynamic process in which both organic and inorganic forces concur to continuously remodel what Volk 1998 calls Gaia’s habitable conditions. Human beings are capable of recognizing living organisms ( life ) in the non-living world as being distinct from the process that is Nature ( Life ) in its entirety. Therefore, biophilia can mean both “love for living creatures” ( life ) as well as “love for Nature” ( Life ), intended as all living creatures plus the abiotic environment in which they live and prosper.

Lenton, T. M., S. Dutreuil, and B. Latour. 2020. Life on Earth is hard to spot. The Anthropocene Review 7:248–272.

DOI: 10.1177/2053019620918939

This paper reflects on some approaches that identify Life as a biological and geological phenomenon. The authors stress the importance of recognizing the geological impact of Life on Earth and suggest that efforts be made to identify the laws that would permit humans to navigate the Anthropocene Epoch successfully.

Volk, T. 1998. Gaia’s body: Towards a physiology of Earth . New York: Copernicus.

Volk revisits Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis. It blends high-quality science with particularly evocative images chosen to describe Life on planet Earth as a physiological system.

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The Biophilia Reactivity Hypothesis: biophilia as a temperament trait, or more precisely, a domain specific attraction to biodiversity

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  • Published: 20 November 2023
  • Volume 25 , pages 271–293, ( 2023 )

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E.O. Wilson proposed the concept of biophilia as “the innately emotional affiliation of human beings with other living organisms.” While the idea has gained traction in diverse fields, including architecture and horticulture, the few empirical tests of the biophilia hypothesis are either inconclusive or fail to provide support. This paper reviews fundamental flaws in Wilson's biophilia hypothesis and proposes “the Biophilia Reactivity Hypothesis”: biophilia as a temperament trait, a theory that offers a falsifiable version of Wilson’s original concept.

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1 Introduction

E.O. Wilson defined biophilia as “the innate tendency to focus on life and life-like processes” (Wilson, 1984 ), or more specifically related to humans, “the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms” (Wilson, 2007 ). Wilson defined biophilia in 1984 in the book Biophilia: The Human Bond with Other Species (Wilson, 1984 ). Biophilia is beautifully written: part memoir, part musing, and part theory, without a single in-text citation.

In the 40 years since its publication, biophilia has become a popular concept in fields as diverse as public health, environmental ethics, and political science—it is particularly influential in architecture, urban planning, and interior design (Yeom et al., 2022 ). Biophilia has been the subject of musical compositions (Björk, 2011 ), art exhibits (Marley, 2018 ), and popular books (Louv, 2008 ; Williams, 2017 ). Thousands of publications, both popular and scientific, refer to biophilia as though it is a hypothesis that has been rigorously tested, which to date, it has not.

This paper seeks to strengthen the original biophilia hypothesis by proposing the Biophilia Reactivity Hypothesis (BRH), where biophilia is a temperament trait, specifically, a domain-specific attraction to biodiversity.

We divide our discussion into two parts. The first part reviews the paradox that the biophilia hypothesis attempts to explain; puts biophilia in the broader context of sociobiology; highlights the errors in the original hypothesis that led to its rejection in evolutionary biology and biology; reviews the current status of the predictions of the original hypothesis, which are either unsupported, thinly supported, or difficult to falsify; and justifies the effort to strengthen the original hypothesis rather than abandoning it altogether. The second part proposes the BRH and argues that proposing biophilia as a temperament trait more accurately describes what the original hypothesis was trying to capture. It refines the definition of biophilia to refer to humans’ attraction to biodiversity, instead of their attraction to “nature,” a category that frequently used by researchers but one that is ambiguous and difficult to test. This paper provides a roadmap to test the hypothesis against alternative hypotheses and finally predicts the impact of the BRH on human flourishing.

We conclude that a revised hypothesis exploring biophilia is necessary, given the rise in the popularity of biophilia, which has consequences in several key areas. For example, conservation education assumes people are intrinsically motivated to maintain or increase biodiversity, when recent work has found that this Is not the case (Bowie et al., 2021 ). Urban planning is increasingly treating access to biophilic areas as a social justice issue, even though these areas might be harmful when treated with herbicides and pesticides (Chawla, 2015 ). Finally, the benefits of biophilia have mostly been explored in temperate countries in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) populations, and extrapolating these studies’ results to tropical developing countries might lead to a sense that these inhabitants are compensated for their economic disadvantages because of their proximity to a biophilic environment, even though their risk of parasitic and zoonotic diseases is higher due to this proximity. Testing the predictions of the BRH has implications for how we understand the impact of the natural world we have lost, how we conserve what is left, and how we can create a future in which all can flourish.

1.1 The nature paradox

For the last 50,000 years, human efforts have been focused on changing the landscape and expanding the built environment. Although modern humans, Homo sapiens, are estimated to have evolved 200,000 to 300,000 years ago (Hublin et al., 2017 ; McDougall et al., 2005 ), the cultural and technological evidence for our unique forms of cognition does not appear until 50,000 to 80,000 years ago (Hare & Woods, 2021 ). Shortly after this cognitive revolution, evidence emerges in the fossil record of widespread landscape alterations by humans.

These changes to the landscape likely began with fire (Wrangham, 2009 ). Firestick farming, the practice of deliberately burning the landscape to enhance the predictability and yield of prey animals and edible plants, is thought to be the starting point for human landscape alteration. The oldest evidence of fire stick farming dates back 45,000 years and is attributed to the Australian Aboriginals (Turney et al., 2001 ). Firestick farming can enhance biodiversity by promoting certain species while suppressing others; this goal is achieved through careful management of patchwork areas, also referred to as mosaics, that create a diverse landscape (Bliege Bird et al., 2008 ). Once humans could predictably and sustainably manage fire, they could improve habitation, control insects and vermin, and create open landscapes for hunting and travel (Pausas & Keeley, 2009 ).

Until the transition to agriculture around 10,000 years ago in the Levant, or eastern Mediterranean (Kuijt, 2008 ), all humans lived as hunter-gatherers. Dwellings were mostly impermanent, organic structures that were abandoned as the group moved. The shift to agriculture marked the rise of sedentary societies. Throughout the Bronze Age, these sedentary societies continued to clear and burn the landscape, constructing permanent structures to such an extent that by 3,000 years ago, perhaps no terrestrial area on Earth remained unaltered by humans (Stephens et al., 2019 ). In 2008, the global human population turned a corner, as for the first time, more people lived in urban areas than in rural areas. By 2018, 55% of people lived in cities, and estimates project this to reach 68% by 2050 (DESA, 2018 ).

Not only are we an urban species, we have also become an indoor species. On average, Americans spend 87% of their time indoors and an additional 6% of their time inside cars, totaling 93% of time within the built environment (Klepeis et al., 2001 ). The trajectory of landscape modification that began at the dawn of our species’ evolution has reached escape velocity. We now spend a fraction of our lives outdoors, and this “outdoors” is entirely designed for and constructed by humans.

Now that this transformation has been achieved, a shift has occurred. People are dedicating increasing amounts of time and resources to reconnect with the nature they once sought to suppress. For example, global ecotourism, generally defined as traveling to natural areas (Fennell, 2014 ), was valued at US$181 billion in 2019, with projected growth to reach US$334 billion in 2027 (Statista, 2021 ). In addition, people are willing to pay more to live near nature. In urban areas in the U.S., individuals pay 10–30% more for a house with a view of a river or canal (Nicholls & Crompton, 2017 ). A study of houses in Portland revealed that people are willing to pay nearly $9000 more for a house on a tree-lined street compared to a similar house on a street without trees (Donovan & Butry, 2010 ). Individuals are also increasingly attempting to incorporate nature into or around their homes. The U.S. horticultural industry, encompassing nurseries, greenhouses, turfgrass producers, landscape designers, and garden centers, experienced growth from $148 billion in 2002 to $196 billion in 2013, with steady growth from 2011 to 2023 (Yue & Knuth, 2022 ). The total value-added contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was $191 billion (Hall et al., 2020 ).

Not only do people seem to be drawn back to the natural world, there is also evidence that we are suffering without it. “Mismatch” is an evolutionary biology term used to describe a situation in which an evolved trait that was once advantageous becomes maladaptive due to changes in the environment (Li et al., 2018 ). For instance, our craving for sweetness was advantageous to our health while honey was the only sweetener, but the sudden access to processed sugar has been a major contributor to the obesity epidemic. Evidence for mismatch in human populations includes the rise of diseases corresponding to increasing urbanization. Cardiovascular disease is the leading global cause of mortality. Although it has multiple causal factors, including genetics, it is also linked to sedentary lifestyles and poor diet and nutrition resulting from urban living (Thelin et al., 2009 ; Vorster, 2002 ). The second leading cause of global mortality is cancer, and while like cardiovascular disease, it has many causal factors, rapid environmental changes have led to increased exposure to environmental carcinogens, such as pollution, pesticides, and heavy metals (Belpomme et al., 2007 ). Respiratory disease, the third leading global cause of mortality, is often connected to pollutants and poor air quality in urban environments (Gouveia et al., 2018 ; Mokoena et al., 2019 ).

What is the source of this paradox: that we have conquered nature only to yearn for its return? Or more specifically, why is it that after spending most of our evolutionary history expanding urbanization, we now find our lives cut short because of it?

1.2 The Biophilia Hypothesis and its limitations

Although Wilson published Biophilia in 1984, it was not until 1992 that a symposium was convened to refine and test aspects of the biophilia hypothesis. Philosophers, biologists, psychologists, theologians, and evolutionary anthropologists presented their contributions, and the result was The Biophilia Hypothesis an edited volume published in 1993 (Kellert, 1995 ). The “biophilia hypothesis” was proposed as the answer to the urbanization paradox and laid out the argument for evolutionary mismatch.

When humans remove themselves from the natural environment, the biophilic learning rules are not replaced by modern versions equally well adapted to artifacts. Instead, they persist from generation to generation, atrophied and fitfully manifested in the artificial new environments into which technology has catapulted humanity (Wilson, 2007 , p. 32).

However, after the 1992 symposium and the subsequent publication of The Biophilia Hypothesis , biophilia as a concept faded from biology and evolutionary anthropology.

Due to the nature of its predictions, these disciplines should have been the theory’s natural home. Instead, publications on biophilia in these disciplines flatlined, and have rarely appeared, even to the present day.

Then, around 2008, a surge of publications mentioning biophilia began appearing in satellite fields, notably in architecture and urban planning (Fig.  1 ). The incorporation of biophilia into these areas is likely due to the late forestry scholar Stephen Kellert, the co-editor of The Biophilia Hypothesis , who promoted the notion of biophilic design in several books and who became a recognized authority figure in this area (Kellert, 2012 , 2018 ). More mysterious is the appearance of thousands of publications in the last decade mentioning biophilia in fields such as social studies, public health, philosophy, theology, tourism, and horticulture.

figure 1

Number of citations of biophilia in the academic literature 1984–2022. Citations in satellite fields and total citations have increased, but citations in the biological sciences remain few. Sourced from the research database app.dimensions.ai from 11 fields with the most peer reviewed publications and book chapters which mention biophilia

The evolutionary theory behind the biophilia hypothesis was neither critiqued nor tested at the time of publication, nor in the decades that followed. There are several possible reasons for this lack of scientific inquiry. First, biophilia may have been lost in the larger and louder controversy over Wilson’s theory of sociobiology. Second, there were flaws in Wilson’s evidence for biophilia.

1.2.1 Sociobiology

Biophilia was an extension of Wilson’s theory of sociobiology that he described as the “systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior” (Wilson, 2000 ). In 1975, Wilson published Sociobiology; The new synthesis (Wilson, 2000 ), and while most of the text was about animal behavior, the first and last chapter addressed human behavior. It is difficult to overstate the impact Sociobiology had in public and academic spheres. It was more than an extension of the centuries old “nurture vs nature” debate. Sociobiology launched an entire field of study, now called evolutionary psychology and had wide ranging impacts through fields of political science, economics, and social science.

One of the most vocal critics of sociobiology was evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould. Gould critiqued sociobiology within a wider framework of adaptationism, where, for a trait (behavioral or physical) to evolve, natural selection must necessarily have acted on this trait because it conferred an evolutionary advantage (Gould & Lewontin, 1979 ). Biophilia was likely seen as another adaptationist invention. As for supporters of sociobiology, it is unclear why they did not extend the same support to biophilia. One possibility is that even the most fervent of Wilson’s supporters in his field could not overlook several flaws within the original hypothesis and thought it best to ignore biophilia and support other aspects of sociobiology with more solid empirical footing. The two main flaws in Wilson’s argument for biophilia also happen to be his main two pieces of evidence: the savannah gestalt and the serpent myth.

1.2.2 The savanna gestalt

The savannah hypothesis roughly states that “we retain genetically based preferences for features of high-quality African savannas where our ancestors lived when their brains and bodies evolved into their modern forms” (Orians, 2016 ). The hypothesis is based on the 1925 discovery of Australopithecus africanus, a bipedal hominin who appeared to have lived in the savannas of South Africa several million years ago (Bender et al., 2012 ). As evidence for the savannah hypothesis, Wilson emphasized historic landscape design; “artfully spaced trees and shrubs”, and the universal modern attraction to “open tree-studded land on prominences overlooking water” (Wilson, 1984 , p. 110).

The savanna hypothesis is problematic for several reasons. The first is that humans did not evolve on the savanna. Subsequent to 1925, discoveries of human fossils revealed that hominids evolved in a variety of habitats. Specifically, in 1994, Ardepithecus ramidus was discovered, a bipedal 4.4 million year old progenitor of Homo that lived in a densely forested environment of what is now Ethiopia. Our species, Homo sapiens, evolved 200,000–300,000 years ago (Hare, 2017 ). Evidence for the cultural and technological revolution around 50,000–80,000 years ago allowed Homo sapiens to colonize almost every ecological niche including glacial tundra, temperate rainforest, coastal scrub, and everything in between (Gibbons, 2020 ).

Another reason the savanna hypothesis is problematic is that the evidence for contemporary human preference for savanna habitats is minimal. The most cited study for this preference is Balling and Falk ( 1982 ), who found that children prefer savanna habitats. However, within this study, the preference did not hold for older children, and the results were otherwise inconclusive. Subsequent empirical studies were unable to replicate savanna preference (Han, 2007 ; Hartmann & Apaolaza-Ibáñez, 2010 ; Kiley et al., 2017 ).

1.2.3 The serpent myth

The Greek word “ϕιλία” (philía) means affectionate friendship, and in The Biophilia Hypothesis, Wilson defined biophilia as “the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms” (Wilson, 2007 , p. 32).

The problem with this definition is that there are many aspects of the natural world that arouse a range of negative emotions. Even Wilson admits; “[t]he living sea is full of miniature horrors designed to reduce the visiting biologist to his constituent amino acids in quick time” (Wilson, 2007 , p. 12).

To address this apparent contradiction, Wilson argues that biophobia is an extension of biophilia and uses what he describes as the universal fear and reverence of snakes as an example: “The mind is primed to react emotionally to the sight of snakes, not just to fear them but to be aroused and absorbed in their details, to weave stories about them” (Wilson, 2007 , p. 86). Wilson proposes that since biophobia had already been established as phylogenetically inherited, ontogenic, and universal, the same might be said for biophilia. However, even at the time of publication of Biophilia , biophobia was already a complicated phenomenon. The debate over whether the fear of snakes is a human universal has a long, complicated history, and even now, has not been resolved (Blanchette, 2006 ; Tipples et al., 2002 ).

In support of biophobia, researchers have proposed a model in which humans and primates are “prepared to learn to fear” certain stimuli. Laboratory monkeys do not innately show fear of snakes, but they quickly display fear behavior after observing wild monkeys exhibiting fear behavior towards snakes (Öhman & Mineka, 2001 ). However, studies of children are less clear. Children may pay attention to serpentine shapes and movement, or they may just be focusing on triangular shapes that could signal danger, such as the triangular head of a pit viper (Souchet & Aubret, 2016 , although see Prokop et al., 2018 ). Recent studies challenge the “prepared to learn to fear” model of snakes in children (LoBue & Adolph, 2019 ). Cross-cultural researchers also report mixed results, with some studies finding that children who grow up around venomous snakes are more afraid of them (Ballouard et al., 2013 ), while others show that a lack of contact and knowledge of snakes leads to fear behavior (Makashvili et al., 2014 ; Özel et al., 2009 ). Despite decades of research and numerous publications on phobias in general, there is still no consensus on whether human fear of snakes is innate, universal, and inherited.

Concerning other specific phobias, the paradoxical nature of human-animal relationships has been well-documented (Knight & Herzog, 2009 ). Following snakes, the next most common fear group comprises invertebrates, which constitute almost 80% of biodiversity and are primarily associated with aversion, disgust, dislike, and fear (Herzog & Foster, 2010 ), even in children (Schlegel et al., 2015 ). The description of humans as invertebrates (such as cockroaches or parasites) is a strategy used to dehumanize out-groups and incite violence against them (Hare & Woods, 2021 ). Few, if any, cultures exhibit a blend of both revulsion and awe towards slugs and cockroaches.

In summary, the two main pieces of evidence that Wilson used to support the biophilia hypothesis—the savannah gestalt and the serpent myth—have not stood the test of time. The lack of evidence for biophilia would be less significant if the predictions of the hypothesis had found support. However, to date, support has been scant and at times, contradictory.

1.3 Status of the predictions of the biophilia hypothesis

The current state of the original predictions of the biophilia hypothesis are outlined below.

1.3.1 Biophilia is inherent (that is biologically based)

Wilson’s idea that biophilia has a biological basis is the prediction upon which his hypothesis hinges. It is also the prediction with the least amount of evidence. There is one study that directly investigates the heritability of biophilia (Chang et al., 2022 ). This study examined the responses of 2306 twins an adult twin registry in the UK and identified nature orientation as being 46% heritable. However, a question arises concerning what precisely the term “nature orientation” encompasses. This issue will be explored in greater depth in Sect. 1.4.2 .

1.3.2 Biophilia is part of our species evolutionary heritage

The prediction that biophilia is part of our species’ evolutionary heritage is difficult to test. Evolutionary heritage addresses phylogeny, or the history of a behavior in related species. There is evidence that our closest genetic relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, might exhibit abnormal behaviors such as coprophagy, fecal smearing, and repetitive rocking in non-biophilic environments, particularly in laboratory settings. In Wobber and Hare ( 2011 ), chimpanzee orphans who lived in large, forested sanctuaries displayed less aberrant behavior than chimpanzees in zoos, even though the orphans experienced the early traumatic events of being taken from their mothers at a young age and sold on the bushmeat market. The authors concluded that the rich physical and social environment of the orphan chimpanzees facilitated a return to species specific behavior.

Many animals display aberrant behavior in captive settings, particularly laboratory settings; however, whether this is because of non-biophilic, artificial stressors such as lighting, noise, and restricted movement as opposed to social stressors such as solitary confinement, abnormal social groups, or forced proximity to humans, is difficult to ascertain.

1.3.3 Biophilia is associated with human competitive advantage and genetic fitness

It is also difficult to test whether biophilia is associated with competitive advantage or genetic fitness. To test this prediction, evidence of variability in biophilia among humans would first need to be established. Next, a selective sweep analysis could be conducted to identify genes linked to individuals with biophilic tendencies. While Chang et al.'s work in 2002 offers a promising step in this direction, further investigation is needed to precisely define the relationship between nature orientation and biophilia.

In this context, refining the definition of how nature orientation aligns with the concept of biophilia becomes crucial. A more comprehensive exploration of this relationship is required for a more accurate understanding of the genetic underpinnings of biophilia.

1.3.4 Biophilia is likely to increase the possibility for achieving individual meaning and personal fulfillment

In the vast, subsequent literature on biophilia, the main prediction that is tested is the idea that biophilia can increase individual meaning and personal fulfillment (see Bratman et al., 2012 ; Wells & Rollings, 2012 ; Hartig et al., 2014 ; Capaldi et al., 2015 ; Chawla, 2015 ; Hall & Knuth, 2019a , 2019b , 2019c , 2020 ). However, for this prediction, and in some cases, for all five predictions, biophilia is defined (either directly or indirectly) as an attraction to nature. The term “nature” is often used ambiguously, encompassing a wide range of meanings, from pristine wilderness to the broader outdoors. This general affinity for nature presents challenges for falsifiability, particularly if it also includes any potential aversions to certain aspects of nature. A more specific definition of biophilia is required and discussed in Sect. 1.4.2 .

1.3.5 Biophilia is the self-interested basis for a human ethic of care and conservation of nature, most especially the diversity of life

The fifth and final, largely ignored, prediction—that biophilia could form the basis for a human ethic of care and conservation of nature—is the heart of Wilson’s hypothesis. Wilson, a passionate conservationist, was searching for a conservation ethic, one that was irrefutable because it was universal. The economic, social, utilitarian benefits of conserving this natural world and its resources could be debated, but an innate need to affiliate with this natural world could not. Several researchers have engaged with the concept of biophilia as a universal conservation ethic, but most have found it either unlikely or not useful (Simaika & Samways, 2010 : but see Clowney, 2013 ; Joye & De Block, 2011 ). A more extensive discussion of how and why the “diversity of life” should be factored into any test of the biophilia hypothesis will follow in Sect. 1.4.2 .

1.3.5.1 Critiques of the biophilia hypothesis

Critical analysis of the biophilia hypothesis is limited, compared to its overwhelming acceptance. The first critique was Diamond’s chapter in The Biophilia Hypothesis (Diamond, 1993 ), in which he outlined New Guineans’ cruelty to animals, their lack of fear around snakes, and evidence contrary to the savannah hypothesis. Diamond’s critique was largely ignored by the other authors, and he did not comment on biophilia again. Joye and van den Berg ( 2011 ) has criticized the lack of empirical evidence and a conceptual framework, a critique that encompasses issues like the serpent myth and the savannah hypothesis. Other researchers have also raised concerns about the absence of alternative hypotheses and the overall testability of the biophilia hypothesis (Clowney, 2013 ; Simaika & Samways, 2010 ). In reviews of biophilia studies, it has been observed that the majority of research is concentrated in high latitudes, neglecting the tropics where the highest biodiversity resides and where the potential negative consequences of human interacting with nature, such as zoonotic diseases, are significant (Keniger et al., 2013 ).

Some researchers have introduced the “topophilia hypothesis” as an extension of the biophilia hypothesis, encompassing the human connection with the non-human world (Beery & Jönsson, 2015 ). However, this formulation, much like the biophilia hypothesis itself, poses challenges in terms of falsifiability. Others have proposed expanding biophilia to include all sentient affiliative relationships (Clowney, 2013 ). Such cooperation, while related, arguably delves into a different realm of biology.

There are suggestions from various researchers to either abandon the concept of biophilia altogether, revert to Eric Fromm's ( 1973 ) original definition of biophilia “the passionate love of life and all that is alive” (which omits the genetic aspect), or introduce an entirely new term (Clowney, 2013 ; Simaika & Samways, 2010 ). Joye and van den Berg ( 2011 ) has put forth the term “Phytophilic Response Module (PRM)” as a potential alternative, as it more accurately represents the restorative value of plants without necessitating the encapsulation of biophobia.

However, there are reasons to invest in further exploration of the biophilia hypothesis. Firstly, in the literal sense, the hypothesis makes sense. Anyone would prefer a space that includes life, even one as unattractive as a weed covered side of the highway, rather than a space that cannot, such as a river choked with plastic trash. Moving away from this extreme definition is likely to produce variation within individuals. For instance, certain people would not prefer the weed covered side of a highway to a pleasant indoor space. But at a fundamental level, there probably is a human universal preference for a space that supports life, even if that space is only designed to support one kind of life—humans. A series of simple preference tests would likely confirm this.

Secondly, when Peter Singer extended sociobiology into the field of ethics in 1981, he noted that Wilson had made several errors in regard to philosophical reasoning causing philosophers to largely reject and ignore Wilson’s proposal for a biological basis for morality. Instead of following his peers’ rejection, Singer engaged with sociobiology in a way that moved the field of ethics forward (Singer, 1984 ).

Biophilia resonates across disciplines and interests, which is rare for an evolutionary concept. Other evolutionary concepts that gain traction, such as “survival of the fittest”, tend to be completely the opposite of their actual meaning and relevance, and have managed to do enormous damage, occasionally culminating in consequences as extreme as genocide (Hare & Woods, 2021 ). Biophilia, in contrast, is a lovely idea, a hopeful concept that could inspire a new relationship with the natural world, and an appreciation of its importance for human flourishing. However, to be truly powerful, it must have a more solid theoretical and empirical footing, which is what this paper seeks to address. The initial step toward achieving this goal involves establishing a precise definition of biophilia that can generate the testable predictions required by any hypothesis.

1.4 The Biophilia Reactivity Hypothesis (BRH)

1.4.1 biophilia as a temperament trait.

Biophilia, when broken into its parts is the innate focus on life or lifelike processes (Wilson, 1984 ). The innate piece of the definition is Wilson’s main contribution. It is also the piece for which there is the least evidence. There have been substantial advances in the field of behavioral genetics and one finding that has repeated been replicated is that psychological traits show significant and substantial genetic influence (Plomin et al., 2016 ). However, heritability is caused by many different genes that each may have a small effect and figuring out which genes are responsible for which behavioral trait is difficult (Dietz et al., 2005 ). Still, in Chang et al. ( 2022 ), when examining the heritability of nature orientation of twins, found that shared environment had little influence compared to genetic influence. But as the first study in this area, it will take time for these results to be replicated.

Cognitive psychology had been slowly developing as a field in the decade before Wilson proposed biophilia, and he complained that “cognitive psychologists have been strangely slow to address its mental consequences” (Wilson, 2007 , p. 34). Wilson proposed biophilia as “complex set of learning rules that can be teased apart and analyzed individually”, which mapped onto theories of cognitive psychology at the time, particularly language development. However, it was temperament psychologists whose framework better fit the biophilia hypothesis. When Wilson proposed the biophilia hypothesis, the study of temperament was a nascent field. No standardized measurements or tools existed, and it wasn’t until a seminal paper in 1987, that temperament was defined by Goldsmith et al. ( 1987 ):

Temperament consists of relatively consistent, basic dispositions inherent in the person that underlie and modulate the expression of activity, reactivity, emotionality, and sociability. Major elements of temperament are present early in life, and those elements are likely to be strongly influenced by biological factors. As development proceeds, the expression of temperament increasingly becomes more influenced by experience and context. (p. 524)

The definition of temperament has been through many iterations (Shiner et al., 2012 ), but at the most basic level, a temperament trait must meet at least these three criteria (Goldsmith et al., 1987 ). It must:

Have individual variability

Be present early in development

Be relatively consistent over time and in different situations

Preferably, it should also meet a fourth criteria;

Have physiological and neurological markers (Shiner et al., 2012 )

Temperament is different from personality in that personality can change and grow but temperament is present, or begins to appear at a young age, even infancy. Temperament has a genetic component, meaning that genes influence temperament, but do not control it. Also, temperament is usually relatively consistent throughout time. As one researcher described it, personality is a symphony, and temperament is the key in which the symphony is played (Rettew, 2013 ).

Temperament and cognition are commonly treated as distinct processes. Temperament refers to the inherent likelihood of an individual to respond in a specific manner to particular situations. On the other hand, cognition pertains to the brain's capacity to receive, process, and apply information in problem-solving. Temperament characterizes how individuals behave when faced with emotionally charged or unfamiliar situations, such as encountering novel or unusual circumstances. Cognition, on the other hand, governs their capacity to innovate, gain insights, make decisions, and respond adaptively to resolve challenges. Nevertheless, temperament and cognition are not entirely isolated processes within the brain. Instead, they interact in intricate ways. Some traits, such as self-control, bridge the realms of temperament and cognition. Personality emerges from the interplay between temperament and cognition, shaped by how these aspects engage with the environment during an individual's development.

Wilson proposed biophilia as a cognitive trait, but his description of biophilia was more aligned with a temperament trait, with the exception of individual variability:

[Biophilia] unfolds in the predictable fantasies and responses of individuals from early childhood onward. It cascades into repetitive patterns of culture across most or all societies, a consistency often noted in the literature of anthropology. These processes appear to be part of the programs of the brain. (Wilson, 1984 , p. 85)

Wilson defined biophilia as a human universal, as part of “ultimate human nature” (Wilson, 1984 , p. 32). Ironically, if Wilson had acknowledged individual variability of biophilia, it would have solved a weakness in his hypothesis. Instead of performing theoretical somersaults to wrap biophobia into biophilia, as a temperament trait, biophobia and biophilia would be on opposite ends of the spectrum (Fig.  2 ).

figure 2

Biophilia as a temperament trait

The other advantage of biophilia as a temperament trait is that, with a little more clarification, it becomes testable. Firstly, biophilia must meet the criteria of a temperament trait. Secondly, it must be domain specific, or not completely overlapping with a domain general temperament trait. For example, high biophilia should not just be an extension of the temperament trait of sociability (the tendency to prefer the presence of others), and low biophilia, or biophobia, should not just be an extension of emotionality (the tendency to get easily distressed or upset) (Zentner & Bates, 2008 ). Biophilia may overlap with these temperament traits, but should be distinct, or domain specific, so that someone high in biophilia can also be low in sociability and vice versa.

Biophilia, as a temperament trait, is an innate attraction to “life or life-like processes.” It is this last phrase, “life of life-like processes”, which is the real challenge of the definition.

1.4.2 An ambiguous nature

In the majority of the literature mentioning biophilia, including most contributing authors to The Biophilia Hypothesis “life or lifelike processes” is used interchangeably with nature. Nature can be as broadly defined as “areas containing elements of living systems that include plants and nonhuman animals across a range of scales and degrees of human management, from a small urban park through to “pristine wilderness” (Bratman et al., 2012 ).

There are several challenges with a definition of nature that spans everything from pristine wilderness to the general outdoors. The first is that the hypothesis becomes difficult to test, especially when it comes to the “innate” part of the definition, upon which the entire hypothesis hinges.

For instance, in Chang et al. ( 2022 ), an analysis of longitudinal surveys from an adult twin registry revealed that nature orientation demonstrated a heritability of 46%. Additionally, the survey encompassed measurements of nature experience. The findings indicated a heritability of 48% for the frequency of public nature space visits, 34% for the frequency of garden visits, and 38% for the duration of garden visits. However, beyond the moderately significant results that suggest environmental influences play a substantial role in the variability of these traits, the study prompts the question of whether these measurements accurately capture biophilia. What kind of “nature” people are drawn to and how is this attraction manifested through the frequency and duration of garden visits?

Genetic evidence for a trait requires that the trait can be measured. Even human height, which is easy to measure, is a polygenic trait that involves over 400 gene regions (Wood et al., 2014 ). The attraction to anything from green spaces to remote wilderness outposts is difficult to measure and therefore difficult to connect with any genetic component.

The second problem with an ambiguous definition of nature is that biophilia is found in nature but not all nature is biophilic. To encourage people to spend time outside in nature, many areas are treated with herbicides and pesticides. In the U.S., of the 40 most common household pesticides, 39 are toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms vital to the ecosystem, 33 are toxic to bees, 18 are toxic to mammals, and 28 are toxic to birds (Beyond Pesticides, 2021 ). Many of these pesticides negatively affect human health and wellbeing. Of these same 40 pesticides, 26 are linked to cancer or carcinogenicity, 12 are linked to birth defects, 21 to reproductive effects, 32 to liver or kidney damage, 24 to neurotoxicity, and 24 to disruption of the endocrine (hormonal) system (Beyond Pesticides, 2021 ).

Studies that explore the benefits of connecting with nature and scales that measure people’s connectedness to nature (e.g. Richardson et al., 2019 ) often neglect to address these concerns, even though various health agencies have issued warnings regarding the potential adverse health effects of exposure to these agents, particularly among children (Chawla, 2015 ).

1.4.3 An argument for biodiversity

Placing the original definition in the context of Wilson’s writings and works, it is clear that the closest interchangeable term with “life” is not “nature” but biodiversity.

The subtitle of Wilson’s original Biophilia is “the human bond with other species.” Almost every text Wilson wrote after Biophilia addresses the importance of biodiversity, and the imminent threat of its loss.

Therefore, this paper proposes the Biophilia Reactivity Hypothesis (BRH), where biophilia is defined as a temperament trait, specifically a domain-specific attraction to biodiversity.

Studies of biophilia rarely focus on biodiversity (Keniger et al., 2013 ). The reason for this is partly a definition debate. The word “biodiversity” was shortened from “biological diversity” by biologists in the 1980s (Novacek, 2008 ; Sarkar, 2021 ), and there are variations in how different researchers and fields define biodiversity (Swingland, 2001 ). In its simplest form, biodiversity is the variety of life (DeLong Jr, 1996 ). For ease of measurement, most studies focus on species number and richness.

One question for the measurement of human attraction to biodiversity is is whether non-biologists can distinguish between high and low biodiverse environments. In one study, people correctly identified grasslands as environment with high species richness, and they preferred these environments (Lindemann-Matthies et al., 2010 ). A Finnish study found that national parks with higher rates of biodiversity attracted more visitors (Siikamäki et al., 2015 ). In an Australian study, researchers found mixed preference for high and low biodiverse home gardens, although preference was significantly higher for gardeners who belonged to native plant societies (Kurz & Baudains, 2012 ).

Other studies have found that people’s ability to assess biodiversity is inconsistent (Clergeau et al., 2001 ; van Riper et al., 2017 ). For example, people noticed an increase of plant diversity in a public park but underestimated bird and insect diversity (Shwartz et al., 2014 ). Another study found that children do not prefer biodiverse spaces, but instead prefer yards and gardens (Hand et al., 2017 ). A study in Spain found that people only value some elements of biodiversity (charismatic megafauna and trees) and have a negative or neutral association with other elements (invertebrates, microorganisms); they are rarely willing to pay to preserve any elements of biodiversity (although willingness to pay increases slightly with positive affect) (Martín-López et al., 2007 ). Various studies have found no preference, or minimal preferences for landscapes of different levels of biodiversity (Qiu et al., 2013 ; Williams & Cary, 2002 ).

An essential part of testing the biophilia hypothesis will be building on previous research to see if people can distinguish between high and low biodiversity and whether attraction or aversion towards biodiversity is implicit or explicit.

1.5 BRH: a roadmap

The BRH predicts that biophilia will meet three requirements outlined by Goldsmith et al ( 1987 ), and should preferably meet the fourth requirement. To test this prediction, this paper proposes the development of a Biophilic Quotient (BQ).

1.5.1 Individual variability

The initial prediction posits that BQ will exhibit variability across individuals in a distribution resembling a normal curve. This suggests that BQ will not display an upper or lower limit effect, nor will it manifest a bias towards positive or negative values. Additionally, a negative correlation is anticipated between biophilia and biophobia within each individual.

The BQ will measure attraction to biodiversity in two ways. The first is through self-reported survey data. Survey questionnaires remain one of the main measurements of temperament, and with careful study design and analysis, have found to be reliable assessments of temperament traits (Rettew, 2013 , p. 33). The second is behavioral observation pioneered by Kagan et al. ( 2007 ) who followed infants longitudinally into adulthood. Coded behaviors included approach and avoidance, distress signals, and engagement towards novel objects. These variables were correlated with outcomes later on in life. Similar behavior could be coded in the context of attraction towards biodiverse versus non biodiverse environments.

Concurrently, the ability to distinguish high and low biodiversity should be assessed in participants. The BRH predicts that people who can identify environments with high biodiversity may be more attracted towards biodiversity. An alternative hypothesis is that the ability to distinguish biodiversity is independent of the attraction towards biodiversity.

1.5.2 Early emerging

Once the BQ has been developed and validated for adults, the next step will test whether the same individual variability present in adults is also present in children.

Although some temperament traits appear later on in life, facilitated by events such as puberty or menopause, biophilia is expected to appear early in childhood, perhaps even infancy. As a domain specific temperament trait, biophilia may overlap with (but not map onto) traits such as extraversion, novelty seeking, and surgency, all of which appear early in life.

Similar to the work of Rothbart and colleagues (Capaldi & Rothbart, 1992 ; Derryberry & Rothbart, 1988 ; Rothbart et al., 2001 ), once a reliable survey instrument is designed to assess BQ in adults, the same survey should be adapted to apply to infants and children so that it can be filled out by their caregivers. This new instrument will have to be validated, and also show a normal distribution among individuals. Once coded behaviors that express attraction to biodiversity have been identified in adults, these should be used with children, and adapted where necessary.

1.5.3 Remain relatively consistent over time

Although environmental factors, such as exposure and experience, almost certainly influence BQ, as a trait, BQ should remain relatively consistent over time (Goldsmith et al., 1987 ). A child who is attracted to the outdoors, animals, and insects will be expected to retain this attraction into adulthood, even in the face of negative experiences (being stung or bitten). A child who is averse or frightened of biodiversity might be expected to gravitate towards more lifeless or less biodiverse environments, such as cities or indoor activities. Support for this prediction will require longitudinal data. The BQ developed for different age groups will be applied within individuals, from infancy to adulthood.

1.5.4 Physiological and neurological markers

The fourth prediction, which will provide further evidence for biophilia as a temperament trait is that there will be physiological and neurological markers. Not all temperament traits have physiological markers that can be reliably measured. However, these physiological markers, along with survey instruments and coding of behavior, can strengthen the argument for biophilia as a temperament trait. For example, someone with high BQ might respond with lowered cortisol in a biodiverse environment. Heart rate variability could also be measured, both in laboratory settings and the field. In laboratory settings, facial recognition software and eye tracking could measure pupil dilation and facial expressions in response to different images. Once physiological markers are established in adults, subsequent efforts should focus on different age groups, both between and within individuals.

1.5.4.1 Alternative hypotheses

If there is sufficient evidence for BRH, it is possible to propose alternative hypotheses. that explain human attraction to biodiverse environments. The null is the Anthrophilia Hypothesis (AH), which proposes that humans evolved innate prosocial behavior towards other humans, primarily kin, ingroup members, and strangers, but not towards abstract categories like future generations or forests. In the AH, attraction or willing to act positively towards biodiverse environments is an accidental byproduct of our prosocial behavior towards humans that has been flexibly co-opted to apply to other non-human categories.

An attraction towards other humans is well established in the literature as a temperament trait, also known as sociability (Rettew, 2013 ). Bowie et al ( 2021 ) directly tested the AH against Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis. In a cross-cultural study of 1088 children in Congo, China and the US, researchers found no evidence for an intrinsic motivation in children to save forests. Even children in a conservation summer camp in the US would not donate tokens to save a forest unless they were extrinsically rewarded (in candy) for doing so or punished (with a time delay) for not doing so.

The second alternative hypothesis is the Diversity Hypothesis (DH), a domain general trait where humans are attracted to all kinds of diversity (defined as novelty and variability) rather than biodiversity. Reactivity towards novelty has been well established as a temperament trait (Kagan et al., 2007 ), and has been linked with the personality trait of extraversion, where extraversion is the “tendency to engage the world and other people” (Rettew, 2013 , p. 25). Rothbart listed High Intensity Pleasure as a sub factor of Extraversion: “Pleasure related to situations involving high stimulus intensity, rate, complexity, novelty, and incongruity” (Derryberry & Rothbart, 1988 ).

The DH predicts that BQ would simply map onto high intensity pleasure or novelty seeking, rather than emerge as a domain specific trait.

If the two alternative hypotheses have been ruled out, then support becomes stronger for the BRH.

1.6 The intersection of biophilia and human flourishing

The BRH predicts that individuals with a high BQ should respond positively to biodiverse environments. The field of positive psychology did not exist until Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi ( 2000 ) called for a new era of study of the “positive features that make life worth living”.

Flourishing is “a construct that encompasses the increase of positive emotion, engagement, meaning, positive relationships and accomplishment, involving an existence provided of a greater meaning” (Scorsolini-Comin et al., 2013 ). Without any conceptual framework of positive psychology, Wilson perfectly captured the concept of flourishing decades before the field had been proposed.

In a twist my mind came free and I was aware of the hard workings of the natural world beyond the periphery of ordinary attention, where passions lose their meaning and history is in another digestion, without people, and great events pass without record or judgment. I was a transient of no consequence in this familiar yet deeply alien world that I had come to love (Wilson, 1984 , p. 10).

There are thousands of studies that explore the link between nature and flourishing, including those that mention biophilia. Instead of flourishing, these studies might use terms such as well-being, happiness, or positive affect, and there are several survey instruments that measure an affinity towards nature, although most of these scales measure a single underlying factor (Tam, 2013 ), with the exception of Nisbet et al. ( 2009 ).

There are few studies which examine the effect of biodiversity on flourishing. In the literature that exists, one study found that people visiting natural areas with a high level of biodiversity had higher well-being, particularly in urban versus semi-urban settings (Carrus et al., 2015 ). Another study found that although people could not correctly assess biodiversity, their sense of well-being improved once biodiversity was increased (Shwartz et al., 2014 ). In contrast, Dallimer et al. ( 2012 ) found no evidence for a link between species richness and well-being; however, if people perceived the biodiversity to be higher, there was a slight positive effect.

The BRH predicts that people with a high BQ are more likely to flourish in biodiverse environments. It is essential to validate these results in non-WERID populations in biodiversity hotspots, such as tropical latitudes where risk of zoonotic disease transfer is higher. Keniger et al ( 2013 ) noted that most research examining the intersection between natural spaces and flourishing occur in Western, temperate climates. For example, one preliminary study found that Meru rural pastoralists in Kenya have a more negative perception of nature than their more urban counterparts (Marczak & Sorokowski, 2018 ). More studies of this kind are critical since extrapolating benefits of biophilia to non-WEIRD societies could have unintended consequences. For example, living in or near biophilic environments, such as the developing world in tropical regions, could be seen as providing benefits to wellness, health and longevity, where in fact, none exist.

2 Conclusion

It is not surprising that the biophilia hypothesis has struck a chord with researchers in a broad range of disciplines. Mounting evidence of catastrophic climate change, deforestation, and species extinction has us confronting the costs of continuing to expand the urban environment and retreat indoors. The biophilia hypothesis an articulation of anxiety and loss. Many of us intuit, as did Wilson, that the natural world is fundamentally important. However, intuition is not enough. A true hypothesis is falsifiable. Currently, the biophilia hypothesis is not.

This lack of scientific precision would not be a matter of urgency, or even importance, except that thousands of publications are basing policy decisions, urban planning, and building theory on the biophilia hypothesis as though it has been tested. Access to biophilic environments has been argued to be a social justice issue, conferring an unfair advantage to children of higher socioeconomic status, even though “access to nature” is poorly defined, and when treated with carcinogenic chemicals, creates potential harm. Conservationists might be putting misguided faith in biophilia as a human universal, when perhaps, only some people flourish in the natural world, and some prefer a beautiful lifeless indoor space. Perhaps these preferences shift when nature becomes uncomfortable and exposes people to zoonotic and parasitic diseases.

The Biophilia Reactivity Hypothesis proposes biophilia as a temperament trait, specifically, a domain specific attraction to biodiversity. This definition generates testable predictions which allows the hypothesis to be falsified. Whether or not the predictions of the hypothesis will be supported, or whether biophilia is a more domain general trait, has important implications for conservation, how we build our new environments, and how we can best flourish.

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We would like to thank Grainne Fitzsimmons, Anne Spafford, Susan Thananopavarn, and Brian Hare who gave comments on the paper, as well as the helpful comments of the two anonymous reviewers. We declare no competing interests.

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Woods, V., Knuth, M. The Biophilia Reactivity Hypothesis: biophilia as a temperament trait, or more precisely, a domain specific attraction to biodiversity. J Bioecon 25 , 271–293 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10818-023-09342-w

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Biophilia: Does Visual Contact with Nature Impact on Health and Well-Being?

Bjørn grinde.

1 Norwegian Institute of Public Health, PO Box 4404 Nydalen, 0403 Oslo, Norway

Grete Grindal Patil

2 Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Box 5003, N-1432 Ås, Norway; E-Mail: [email protected]

It is concluded that an environment devoid of Nature may act as a “discord”, i.e., have a negative effect. While the term mismatch is used for any difference between present living conditions and the environment of evolutionary adaptation, discords are mismatches with a potentially undesirable impact on health or quality of life. The problem is partly due to the visual absence of plants, and may be ameliorated by adding elements of Nature, e.g., by creating parks, by offering a view through windows, and by potted plants. The conclusion is based on an evaluation of some fifty relevant empirical studies.

1. Introduction

The hypothesis that humans have an inherent inclination to affiliate with Nature has been referred to as biophilia [ 1 , 2 ]. Biophilia implies affection for plants and other living things. Cities and indoor environments are dominated by manmade objects; the question is whether the concomitant depletion of natural elements has a negative impact on the human mind.

In most cultures, both present and past, one can observe behavior reflecting a fondness for Nature. For example, tomb paintings from ancient Egypt, as well as remains found in the ruins of Pompeii, substantiate that people brought plants into their houses and gardens more than 2,000 years ago [ 3 ]. Moreover, in most cities, trees are planted and parks established in order to improve the environment. A tendency to add elements of Nature seems to be a universal human feature; evident wherever manmade surroundings tend to remove humans from a natural setting, and where the people are sufficiently affluent to afford doing something about it. The behavior is, presumably, a response to the biophilic quality of the human mind [ 4 ].

The first hospitals in Europe were infirmaries in monastic communities where a garden was considered an essential part of the environment in that it supported the healing process [ 5 ]. Since then the connection between greenery and either therapeutic or preventive medicine has gradually been outmoded, partly due to the advance of medical science and the concomitant technical approaches to healing. Over the last decades, however, considerable research has been carried out looking at the effects of being in Nature, and of adding plants to otherwise sterile environments. To the extent that the results are positive, the idea that access to nature can aid healing, or help prevent ailments, may eventually be incorporated into evidence based medicine.

Adding elements of Nature to living spaces can presumably induce positively valued changes in cognition and emotion, which again may impact on stress level, health and well-being. In order to allocate resources for the purpose of creating more natural environments, it is important to assess what sort of return can be expected. Here we review a range of current data, focusing primarily on recent work published in established scientific journals. Some fifty empirical studies were examined with the following aims: One, to verify whether the biophilia hypothesis has merit; two, to suggest what sort of influence the presence of plants may have on the human mind; and three, to evaluate to what extent adding elements of nature can compensate for visits to the outdoors and thereby be used as a preventive measure to improve health and well-being. Although plants may enhance the environment in several ways, including improved air quality and the addition of fragrance, we here focus on the visual impact.

2. Theoretical Perspectives

Humans, like any other species, have been shaped by the forces of evolution. The term Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation , or EEA, is used to denote the qualities of the environment humans are adapted to live in [ 6 , 7 ]. Obviously this environment comprised a closer presence of Nature compared to what most people experience today. Plants were of crucial importance for survival during most of our evolutionary history; as a food resource, for shelter, and as an indicator of water. On a purely theoretical ground, one would expect the presence of plants, as an integral part of the human EEA, to have had an impact on the evolution of the brain. We are presumably adapted to live in a green environment.

Deviations from the way of life for which we are genetically designed have been referred to as mismatches [ 8 ]. Some mismatches are beneficial, such as sleeping on a mattress instead of on the ground, while others may contribute to disease or reduce life quality. The word discord is used for mismatches that have a negative impact; i.e., they cause some form of “stress”, at least in susceptible individuals [ 9 ].

Zoological gardens illustrate the role of discords. Zoo keepers need expertise as to what sort of conditions one ought to provide the various species of animals. As a rule of thumb the ideal is to approach as close as possible the EEA of the species in question; i.e., to offer the type of conditions that the species have in the wild. Refraining from this rule easily leads to animals that show inappropriate behavior such as hurting themselves and refusing to mate or eat. Obviously it is impossible to offer the exact EEA within the confinement of a zoo, thus the focus is on avoiding the more troublesome discords.

Modern societies can be construed as “zoological gardens” in that the environment necessarily is different from the EEA. A relevant step towards improving the situation is to avoid discords by creating an environment that approaches as much as possible the EEA. A constructive strategy is to suggest candidate discords by comparing present living with assumptions about the environment humans are adapted to live in, and subsequently assess these putative discords by empirical research. The implications, as to the presence of plants, is that although the absence of natural elements is an obvious mismatch, research is required to decide to what extent it is also a discord.

Although any organ or bodily function can suffer from discords, the human brain appears to be particularly vulnerable—due to its complexity, the fact that it requires substantial maturation after birth, and that the maturation takes place in response to environmental stimuli. This vulnerability presumably helps explain why mental disorders are one of the main health problems of Western societies [ 10 ]. Thus, to the extent that a lack of natural elements is a discord, one would expect that a closer association with nature should improve psychological health. Most of the research related to biophilia has focused on positive effects of associating with plants rather than negative, i.e., discord, effects of removing greenery. According to the concept of discords, a positive effect suggests that those who presently obtain a suboptimal dose of exposure to plants have a concomitant reduced life quality. Current statistics of mental health does not contradict this model.

Most studies dealing with psychological benefits of Nature are within the field of environmental psychology, and are typically based on theories of restorative effects. Restoration, in this context, implies the process of regaining psychological, social and physical capacity [ 11 ]. One theory suggests that the visual environment is important for stress recovery and that stress reduction is faster in Nature compared to urban environments [ 12 , 13 ]. It is argued that stress activation has evolved through evolution as a strategy to deal with situations that threatens well-being. Too much stress may lead to various ailments, including anxiety related disorders [ 14 ]. A visual presence of plants may be one such stress-reducing factor as affective responses to visual stimuli deemed aesthetic may release tension. Beauty has been defined as visual input that gives pleasure to the mind, thus aesthetics offer per definition a positive experience. A theoretical examination of aesthetic values points towards the importance of elements reflecting Nature; such as complexity, choice of colors, perspective and balance [ 15 ]. In other words, Nature itself may offer potent aesthetic stimuli.

The Attention Restoration Theory offers an alternative way of explaining psychological benefits of Nature [ 16 ]. Directing attention to demanding tasks and dealing with disturbing environmental factors may lead to mental fatigue. On the other hand, environments that provide a possibility for more effortless attention offer an opportunity to restore mental capacity. Surroundings dominated by elements of Nature are thought to be restorative.

Although it would be useful to understand how the visual presence of plants can have a positive effect on well-being and health, one should be open for the possibility that the natural environment influences subconscious parts of the brain in ways that cannot easily be described. Objects within the field of vision may in fact exert an influence even if the conscious brain does not recognize their existence. The classical example is the response evoked by a twig on the ground if it remotely resembles a snake: The fear is initiated prior to any visual inspection of the twig. Similarly, plants may impact on brain processes through unconscious mechanisms even when they are not the object of focus. The absence of plants may suggest an “unnatural”, and thus potentially unsafe, environment.

Non-visual aspects of adding plants to the environment may also play a role, for example fragrance [ 17 ], or improving acoustics [ 18 ]. Moreover, effects on health can be conveyed by the way plants influence the microclimate, i.e., by improving humidity and purifying the air [ 19 , 20 ]. The present review will focus on visual aspects. Although empirical data offer clues as to possible advantages of associating with Nature, it should be noted that in most cases there is limited information as to how the effects are elicited.

3. Empirical Studies on Outdoor Environment

Over the past decades, an increasing number of studies have documented that experiences in, or of, Nature can be beneficial for human health and well-being. The issue has been reviewed in a report for the Health Council of the Netherlands [ 21 ], which concludes that there is a positive link between health indicators and living close to Nature.

More specifically, contact with Nature has been reported to have psychological benefits by reducing stress [ 12 , 22 ], improving attention [ 16 ], by having a positive effect on mental restoration [ 23 – 25 ], and by coping with attention deficits [ 26 , 27 ]. In addition to mental advantages, there appear to be direct physical health benefits [ 28 ], such as increased longevity [ 29 ], and self-reported health [ 30 , 31 ]. As might be expected, the availability of Nature correlates positively with health [ 32 ]. Benefits have been associated with various types of Nature experiences, including true wilderness [ 33 , 34 ], neighbourhood parks [ 35 , 36 ], gardens [ 37 – 39 ], and natural features around residences [ 40 , 41 ].

The stress reducing effect may be a key element as to the health benefits of Nature. Stress plays a role in the etiology and course of several common health problems, including cardiovascular diseases, anxiety disorders and depression. It is noteworthy that beneficial effects of Nature can occur even upon relatively brief exposure.

A main concern with most of the studies mentioned above is to decipher what is actually causing the benefits. Ulrich [ 13 ] points to four possible advantages: One, being in Nature tends to correlate with physical activity, which obviously promotes health. Two, Nature activities often implies socializing, e.g., in the form of walking together or sitting in a park with friends. Building social networks has a well documented potential for improving health. Three, Nature offers temporary escape from everyday routines and demands. The fourth option is the question of to what extent the interaction with Nature itself has an appreciable impact on the mind; in other words, is there an extra benefit of performing these tasks in a natural environment, or can the physical and social advantages alone explain the observed benefits?

The idea that being in Nature may improve health has led to organized activities referred to as therapeutic horticultural (for a review, see [ 42 ]). The term typically implies that a group of people comes together to do gardening or in other ways interact with or care for plants. Therapeutic horticultural activities have apparently had some success, primarily for people with mental health problems or learning difficulties, although empirical data is limited [ 43 ].

If Nature itself is responsible for some of the advantages, the next question is how to explain this effect? Again there are at least three options: One, the air may be more healthy in that it contains less air pollutants and more humidity; two, the plants may emit fragrances that humans find pleasant or react to in various ways [ 17 , 44 ]; or three, which is the main subject for the present review, the visual experience of plants makes a difference. As will be discussed below, some reports contain data relevant for singling out the potential of the latter option.

One approach relevant to the task of distinguishing between visual and non-visual effects is to consider the outcome of simply viewing Nature through a window or seeing pictures of Nature. To the extent that looking at Nature makes a difference, the other possible explanations can normally be ruled out. It has been reported that viewing natural landscapes provides psychological and health benefits, including a reduction in stress [ 12 , 13 , 45 ]. Having a hospital window with a view has been shown to improve healing, reflected in both the level of pain medication and the speed of recovery after surgery [ 48 , 49 ]. In reviewing this issue, Velarde et al. [ 50 ] found that natural landscapes have a consistent positive health effect, while urban landscapes can have a negative effect

To conclude this section, nature appears to have qualities useful for stress relief, mental restoration, and improved mood simply by being consciously or unconsciously “pleasing to the eye”. Although there are several other ways in which the availability of plants can contribute to health, the visual aspect is presumably sufficient to offer some advantage.

4. Empirical Studies on Indoor Environment

The next question is whether adding elements of Nature, in the form of plants or other items resembling Nature, to indoor environments offers some of the advantages of outdoor nature. This is a relevant question as we spend a major part of our time indoors [ 51 ].

It has been shown that office employees seem to compensate for lack of window view by introducing indoor plants or pictures of Nature [ 52 ]. An ensuing question is whether the plants or pictures improve performance, health, or well-being for the employees. In the same study population it was found that having a view to plants from the work station decreased the amount of self-reported sick leave [ 53 ].

Experimental studies on psychological benefits of indoor plants have recently been reviewed in a report including more than twenty studies [ 54 ]. Most of these studies concern people in settings reflecting everyday life, such as the workplace, students at school, or patients in hospitals. Some studies were more experimental in Nature, typically recruiting college students as subjects for testing the effect of plants in the laboratory. Almost all of the studies had a no-plant control condition, but otherwise they showed considerable variation in experimental manipulations, both quantitatively (e.g., number of plants) and qualitatively (e.g., a distinction between flowering and non-flowering foliage, size, shape and plant species). The duration of exposure to plants also varied, from minutes in laboratory studies up to a year in workplace settings. The measured outcomes reflected practical concerns of the research, and included task performance, affect, physiological arousal, pain perception, health and discomfort symptoms, social behavior, and room evaluations. Some studies found beneficial effect(s), while others did not, or only found them for some groups. None of the studies reported any significant negative outcome associated with the presence of plants.

Several studies indicated that indoor plants improve the attractiveness of a room [ 55 – 58 ]. Dijkstra et al. [ 58 ], for example, found that by showing photos of hospital rooms with or without plants, those with plants reduced self-reported stress. Other studies also indicate lower stress level when adding plants to a windowless work environment [ 22 , 59 ].

The biophilia hypothesis might suggest an impact of plants on emotional states; however, several studies have failed to find any consistent impact [ 56 , 60 – 62 ]. Some studies, using mood scales including several items, found significant differences, but only on particular items [ 57 , 59 , 63 ]. Adachi et al. [ 57 ] even reported possible negative effects of plants on annoyance and temper. A couple of reports suggested gender differences in that women, particularly those with a relatively high level of preinduced stress, had the most benefit [ 17 , 44 ].

The idea of a stress-reducing effect also inspired experiments concerned with pain and recovery from disease [ 63 – 66 ]. One starting point for these studies was the idea that the pleasant and attention holding (i.e., positively distracting) properties of plants might keep a person from focusing on pain. All the studies concluded that the subjects had better tolerance for pain with than without plants present. One report [ 64 ] suggested that flowering plants have more positive effects on pain tolerance and distress than non-flowering plants. Lohr and Pearson-Mims [ 63 ] observed an effect on pain tolerance, apparently due to more than just a distracting quality of plants.

Other experiments have looked at the effect of plants on task performance or self-reported alertness [ 56 , 59 , 60 , 62 ]. The idea is that the presence of indoor plants may help restore attention by relaxing the subjects and help them recover from mental fatigue. Positive effects of plants were reported, although the results are somewhat ambiguous. One report found that performance on a letter identification task decreased with the presence of a larger number of plants, which was taken to suggest that fascination with plants may interfere with the focus on the task at hand [ 56 ].

A decrease in health complaints, such as tiredness and coughing, has been reported in office and hospital workers when plants were added to the work environment [ 67 , 68 ]. Similar findings on conceived health and level of discomfort were observed in school children [ 68 ]. The authors ascribe the positive outcome in these experiments to either an improvement in air quality, or that a more pleasant visual environment affected the amount of health complaints.

It is worth mentioning that plants may be viewed as one among many types of aesthetic features added to enhance indoor environments. A study by Lohr and Pearson-Mims [ 63 ], however, suggests that plants may have advantages. They found that plants had greater attention holding power and gave greater relief from pain compared to other aesthetic objects such as a designer lamp or an abstract picture. The room with plants was also perceived as more cheerful, pleasant, and inviting.

As in the case of the outdoor studies, it is not obvious that the indoor results reflect solely the visual presence of plants. It is difficult to exclude an effect of fragrance or of air quality. However, it seems fair to assume that visual impact is an important factor.

5. Discussion

Taking all the reviewed evidence into account, the idea that interacting with Nature can offer positive effects on health and well-being seems to be reasonably well substantiated. Thus, the biophilia hypothesis has merit. The evidence includes studies on outdoor activities, therapeutic use of Nature, having a view of Nature (either actual Nature or in pictures), and adding plants to indoor environments. Moreover, the notion that part of the effect is mediated through visual contact with plants also appears to be substantiated. The above statement is based on empirical data, but supported by theoretical expectations, which suggest that the absence of Nature is a potential discord. The latter point has been raised recently by Richard Louv [ 69 ], who use the term nature-deficit , and suggests that the increase in prevalences of conditions such as obesity, attention disorders, and depression is partly due to a decrease in the degree children are exposed to Nature.

Biophilia may be described as a vague preference for having a natural environment as a consequence of our evolutionary history. As such, one would expect that plants are agreeable, and that the absence of greenery is sensed, possibly unconsciously, as a stress factor. In other words, the presence of plants can impact on the human mind. Biophilia, however, is probably not an attribute with a strong penetrance. Thus the relationship between humans and plants is likely to be shaped to a large extent by cultural factors and individual peculiarities [ 47 ].

On a theoretical basis, it should be expected that if plants in a natural setting have an impact, so would indoor greenery. However, one might also expect that disconnected, potted plants are less potent than outdoor Nature. The overall trend in the literature appears to support this contention. In their review, Bringslimark et al. [ 54 ] focused on the benefits of indoor plants. They concluded that although some findings recurred, such as enhanced pain management with plants present, the mixed results from the studies suggest that more research is needed in order to define possible effects. None of the studies reported obvious negative effects. It might be argued that if there was no effect, an equal number of studies would be expected to find negative as positive correlates between health parameters and the presence of plants. On the other hand, publications are liable to the bias of preferential reporting of positive results. It is not possible to know how many trustworthy neutral or negative findings that are not published, but the fact that several articles reported absence of effect indicates that both types of results would be publishable.

One problem in detecting possible effects is that most studies, for practical reasons, span a short time-period. Some only look at brief exposure to plants, while others may follow subjects for a year or so. To the extent that the absence of plants is a discord, one might expect that the consequences are more likely to be apparent over a life time. Moreover, although the therapeutic or preventive potential of plants is likely to be limited, as the indoor environment is the daily setting for a majority of the present population, even minor effects of adding plants can add up to a substantial decrease in the health burden on a global scale.

The positive effect of having a view from the window may be related more to the perceived openness than to any particularities of the vista. Velarde et al. [ 50 ] addressed this issue and concluded that seeing open water is better than open city landscapes, but that green landscapes offered the best effect. In this context, it should, however, be mentioned that green spaces perceived to be unmanaged may have an adverse effect in the cities by causing an increased anxiety for crime [ 70 ].

Some studies reported differences in the response to plants depending on gender [ 17 , 44 , 61 , 62 ]. Although the results were somewhat mixed, there seemed to be a tendency for women to respond stronger to plants than men. On a theoretical ground one might expect that women take more interest in plants due to differences in activities during the formative period of human evolution; that is, women were supposedly more involved in gathering plants as food, while men were more tuned towards hunting. However, the difference may also be due to cultural bias; for example, in Western societies it has traditionally been the task of women to care for the home, which will typically include both garden and indoor plants.

There seems to be a current trend towards a love for TV and computer screens rather than for nature, in that people use the former more and the latter less [ 71 , 72 ]. Although indoor plants may ameliorate some of the negative effects of this trend, it can hardly be more than a substitute for experiencing real Nature outdoors.

The biophilia trait can be reinforced or subdued by individual learning. It seems likely, however, that even in individuals who do not express any appreciation for plants and nature, the lack of nature can have a negative effect. Moreover, although the demonstrated effects are not overwhelming, the cost of making nature available, if only as potted plants, is neither prohibiting. In other words, it seems worthwhile to encourage interaction with plants, both outdoor and indoor, as this is likely to be a useful environmental initiative with a sound cost-benefit profile.

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  1. The Biophilia Hypothesis

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COMMENTS

  1. Biophilia

    Biophilia, which literally translates to "love of life," is the idea that this fascination and communion with nature stem from an innate, biologically-driven need to interact with other forms ...

  2. Biophilia hypothesis

    psychology. biophilia hypothesis, idea that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature and other forms of life. The term biophilia was used by German-born American psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), which described biophilia as "the passionate love of life and of all that is alive.".

  3. Biophilia hypothesis

    The biophilia hypothesis (also called BET) suggests that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature and other forms of life. Edward O. Wilson introduced and popularized the hypothesis in his book, Biophilia (1984). [1] He defines biophilia as "the urge to affiliate with other forms of life". [2]

  4. A Meta-Analysis of Emotional Evidence for the Biophilia Hypothesis and

    Wilson used a more specific definition, the "innate tendency to focus on life and life-like processes" (Wilson, 1986, p. 1). This focus on life is proposed to be a psychological and emotional ... Developmental psychology and the biophilia hypothesis: children's affiliation with nature. Dev. Rev. 17, 1-61. 10.1006/drev.1996.0430 ...

  5. Biophilia as Evolutionary Adaptation: An Onto- and Phylogenetic

    Biophilia is a human personality trait described initially by Erich Fromm and later by E.O. Wilson, both of whom agree that biophilia has a biological basis and that it is fundamental to develop harmonious relationships between humans and the biosphere. This review aims at establishing a definition of biophilia as an evolutionary process.

  6. Frontiers

    The biophilia hypothesis must be compatible with our knowledge of evolutionary biology and psychology to make it possible to reconstruct a plausible and coherent history of biophilia with what we know of Nature in the Pleistocene and Holocene eras, and of our cultural evolution in the Paleolithic (Tattersal, 2008) and most importantly in the ...

  7. PDF Developmental Psychology and the Biophilia Hypothesis: Children's

    developmental psychology. In the first section, I sketch some of the promising research that supports the biophilia hypothesis. This task is important, for the idea of biophilia becomes compelling not by any single study, but by the confluence of re-search from diverse fields. This body of research also sets into motion the

  8. The Beckoning of Biophilia

    Biophilia is a word that could potentially beckon us all back home, if we were to embrace it, accept it and live by it. It is reminding us of our interconnectedness and the joys and meaning that ...

  9. A Critical Examination of the Biophilia Hypothesis

    do seem to corroborate a more well-defined version of the biophilia hypothesis can often be accounted for by alternative hypotheses. Third, the evolutionary reasoning behind the biophilia hypothesis tends to be unclear, and sometimes even inaccurate. KEYWORDS Biophilia, environmental aesthetics, environmental ethics, evolutionary psychology

  10. Biophilia

    Biophilia, which literally translates to "love of life," is the idea that this fascination and communion with nature stem from an innate, biologically-driven need to interact with other forms ...

  11. Beyond knowing nature: Contact, emotion, compassion, meaning, and

    The Biophilia Hypothesis is not without critique as the ambiguous nature of the theory makes the direct testing of the rubrics of biophilia difficult . Whether it is down to a lack of evidence or inability to test the hypothesis directly, research into biophilia has declined, however the hypothesis remains a useful catalyst for research into ...

  12. The Biophilia Hypothesis

    The biophilia hypothesis is the idea that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature and other forms of life. The term biophilia was used by German-born American psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), which described biophilia as "the passionate love of life and of all that is alive.".

  13. PDF Examination of The Biophilia Hypothesis and its implications for Mental

    Biophilia Hypothesis and its implications for Mental Health Douglas Radmore The Biophilia Hypothesis was originally referred to (Wilson, 1984) as an 'innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes', meaning that we gain the most satisfaction from processes that mimic the nature of life on many levels, be they cognitive or emotional.

  14. The Biophilia Hypothesis and Life in the 21st Century: Increasing

    Wilson's biophilia hypothesis includes the claim that, as a consequence of evolution, humans have an "innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes." A review of various literatures converges to support this central claim. One area of support for our innate affiliation with nature comes from research demonstrating increased psychological well-being upon exposure to natural ...

  15. Biophilia

    Biophilia is an evolutionary trait which contributes to self-preservation and reproduction, and it does so by providing us with useful information about the natural environment. Biophilia was initially used by Erich Fromm to describe the psychological orientation to preserve life, and subsequently by Edward O. Wilson to describe the ...

  16. Developmental psychology and the biophilia hypothesis: Children's

    A hypothesis has been put forth by E. O. Wilson (1984), S. R. Kellert (1996), and others and has been receiving increasing support. The hypothesis asserts the existence of biophilia, a fundamental, genetically based human need and propensity to affiliate with other living organisms. A review of the biophilia literature sets into motion 3 overarching concerns. One focuses on the genetic basis ...

  17. Developmental Psychology and the Biophilia Hypothesis: Children's

    Through this critical examination, biophilia emerges as a valuable interdisciplinary framework for investigating the human affiliation with nature, yet it is clearly a nascent framework, and some of its potential lies in charting a stronger ontogenetic course. A venturesome hypothesis has been put forth by Wilson (1984), Kellert (1996), and others and has been receiving increasing support. The ...

  18. The biophilia hypothesis

    The biophilia hypothesis, if substantiated, provides a powerful argument for the conservation of biological diversity and implies serious consequences for the authors' well-being as society becomes further estranged from the natural world. "Biophilia" is the term coined by Edward O. Wilson, author of The Diversity of Life and winner of two Pulitzer prizes, to describe what he believes is our ...

  19. Biophilia revisited: nature versus nurture

    The 'Biophilia' hypothesis highlighting humans' innate, positive response to nature is both increasingly accepted and questioned. Studies support an updated Biophilia. The interplay between inheritance and environment, including culture, governs an individual's response, from positive to negative. Variety in urban green spaces is needed ...

  20. Editorial: Biophilic design rationale: Theory, methods, and

    Starting from the biophilic theory, Pasini et al. created, in a shared design process with worker representatives, a new workplace. However, despite the opposite approach and proximity to restorative theories or biophilia hypothesis, all studies agree that human nature and human relationships with Nature should be central to design.

  21. The Biophilia Reactivity Hypothesis: biophilia as a ...

    E.O. Wilson proposed the concept of biophilia as "the innately emotional affiliation of human beings with other living organisms." While the idea has gained traction in diverse fields, including architecture and horticulture, the few empirical tests of the biophilia hypothesis are either inconclusive or fail to provide support. This paper reviews fundamental flaws in Wilson's biophilia ...

  22. Biophilia: Does Visual Contact with Nature Impact on Health and Well

    The problem is partly due to the visual absence of plants, and may be ameliorated by adding elements of Nature, e.g., by creating parks, by offering a view through windows, and by potted plants. The conclusion is based on an evaluation of some fifty relevant empirical studies. Keywords: biophilia, discord, quality of life, health, evolutionary ...

  23. Biophilia revisited: nature versus nurture

    The 'Biophilia' hypothesis highlighting humans' innate, positive response to nature is both increasingly accepted and questioned. Studies support an updated Biophilia. The interplay between inheritance and environment, including culture, governs an individual's response, from positive to negative. Variety in urban green spaces is needed to optimise benefits to all residents.