| Popis: |
Natural environments are often promoted as sanctuaries, offering rejuvenation from the stresses of modern urban life. Compared with urban environments, nature has a favourable influence on affective states, cognitive performance and physiological levels of stress. Natural environments have also attracted research for their potential to increase altruistic tendencies in people. Altruism often manifests itself as an overriding concern for the welfare of others. In recent years psychologists have sought to examine psychological states in which self-absorption is minimised and their influence on wellbeing and adaptive functioning. Juxtaposing the experience of natural environments with the practice of mindfulness, the salient common trait from these seemingly disparate experiences is that they promote hypo-egoic states of being. Participants demonstrated an overwhelming tendency to behave altruistically across both virtual conditions, as 100 per cent of participants in the virtual nature condition were altruistic in the trust game and 83 per cent of participants in the virtual city condition were altruistic. |
