By Maria Johansson, Terry Hartig, Jens Frank, and Anders Flykt.

Read the full paper here.

Spending time in natural settings is important for many people’s quality of life, well-being and health. We find that wildlife may both undermine and strengthen the perceived opportunities for psychological restoration. The extent of mental restoration will depend on how a person thinks about the animal they encounter in natural settings and what expectations they have about encountering that animal. We also find that these thoughts about animal encounters follow a four-step process involving several considerations that could both increase the restorative quality of time in nature or decrease it. These aspects are summarised by the figure below. This study show that natural settings may not always be perceived as restorative and people’s thoughts of encountering different animals will impact the extent of psychological restoration.