The Current - How noticing nature can improve your mood

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

When was the last time you stopped to notice the animal tracks in the snow, or listened for the chirp of a bird in the stillness of winter? Edmonton researcher Holli-Anne Passmore wants people to stop and notice nature, saying that the emotions evoked can improve our sense of well-being.

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Holly Ann Passmore is an associate professor of psychology at Concordia University of Edmonton and on a recent evening on her way home from work, she took a moment to notice what she saw. The nature that I'm noticing is there are a gazillion rabbit prints embedded in the snow around campus and it's absolutely amazing. Some of us might retreat from the outdoors on these cold wintery days or maybe just rush past those rabbit tracks without thinking about them but not Hollyann. Every time she looks outside she notices something new. Well I'm just down in my neighborhood now, and I'm looking around actually at all of the evergreen trees

and also all the trees just with the bare branches. And it actually gives me a, it makes me feel strong. It gives me a sense of hope and strength that all these trees are here year after year and they're surviving. Paying attention to all of this isn't just a personal interest for Holly Ann Passmore. She also does research on how noticing nature

and the world around us can improve our sense of wellbeing. And this winter, she's testing out whether that idea holds true. Even on the coldest winter days, Holly Ann Passmore, good morning. Good morning. I love hearing you talk about noticing those rabbit tracks because there's a sense of delight and wonder in your voice.

You seem lifted by what you saw. You said that it gives you a sense of hope and some degree of optimism. When you see those prints in the snow, how does that affect you? It just makes me feel happy, I suppose, global sense of happiness, but also this real sense of wonder and playfulness that these little creatures are around, even though we might not necessarily notice them

or see them. What is your own relationship like with nature and what do you connect with in the city that you live in? You're in Edmonton. Yeah, correct, I'm in Edmonton. I have a very close relationship with nature. I think I always have as a child, and certainly that's what led me to start researching

in this area. And so I'm very lucky because I get my commute to campus every day is through the river valley. And, but even when I'm not in the river valley, I just tend to notice that the nature around me, notice how it makes me feel. I notice the berries on the trees. I notice birds, bird sounds.

And I'm extremely lucky because we, because I live down in Riverdale, there's coyotes out, that's pretty common actually, just walk down the front street. So that's not particularly common for other places, but it is here, which is pretty exciting. So I was out yesterday for a run in the city that I'm in, in the centre of the city and on this major street,

out of nowhere, swoops this red-tailed hawk, very low, like right above me. And I stopped and kind of was like, this kind of intake of breath. And I stopped and kind of was like, this kind of intake of breath. And I would do that because I like birds and I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to that kind of stuff. But what do we know broadly about what's going on there? What is the link between noticing nature and our sense of wellbeing? Great question. And I'm glad you noticed that bird. There are a number of links between noticing nature, notice how it makes you feel, and our well-being.

This is quite a solid area of science. I think sometimes people seem to think it's more of a kind of left-wing tree-hugger kind of thing, but there is a great deal of science behind it. We know that when people notice nature, and not necessarily even just spend extra time, but just noticing it, we know it enhances our positive emotions, our sense of what I call transcendent connectedness. So that is feeling just connected to everything and everybody, and that's an important aspect

of meaning in life. And we know that noticing nature around us also tends to elevate, enhance our sense of elevation and that's a composite emotion. And that includes a sense of wonder, a sense of awe, deep appreciation, gratitude, spiritually uplifted, and of course, feeling elevated. Is that different in an urban setting? I mean, in the wild, we were speaking yesterday

in the program about being out in the mountains, for example, and you are there, you are immersed in nature, but if you were in a built environment, is that a different component to what you're talking about? It's exactly the same. I shouldn't say it's exactly the same. There are a few things that being out in the wild, I think people, you have a bigger sense of freedom

in the wild, but all of my research for a number of years and a few different countries, Canada, the States and China as well, it's all about urban nature. It's about everyday nature, the kind of nature, the tree at the bus stop, right? The bird that you see outside your window. And that we have again and again and again, the exact same kinds of boost to wellbeing and boost to all these different kinds of aspects or facets of wellbeing.

So now you're trying to measure this. Tell me about the research that you're doing this winter. What are you asking people to do? So I've done this, what I call the noticing nature intervention several times before, but it's always been in during the spring or summer or fall. So I wanted to test, is this going to work in the winter? And it's the, Nate, the intervention itself is really simple

and just simply asking people, don't change your routine. Don't add time to your day or anything. just notice the nature around you and notice how it makes you feel. And then every day for two weeks, people get an email and they go to the website and they log what they saw, what nature they noticed that day, whether it was outside, looking out from outside, inside, whatever, and how it made them feel. Because this is research, there's a control group as well, right, whatever, and how it made them feel. And because this is research, there's a control group as well, right? Yes, very much so.

So in previous studies, I've had different kinds of active control groups. And particularly in one study, I had an active control group of the most common positive psychology intervention, which is writing down three good things that happen every day. And it ended up being that nature,

they were both good for boosting positive emotions, but nature actually boosted that composite emotion of elevation and transcendent connectedness, whereas just noticing three good things every day did not. This time, I'm not having a control condition because I've had these control conditions so many times and there's never any difference if I have them do something just bland. So we're just having just a basically a do nothing condition. The fact that you're doing this in the depths of winter

is interesting. I mean there are a lot of people, I love winter, but there are a lot of people who strongly dislike winter and feel this is the worst time of the year. The days are shorter, it's darker, it can be gloomy, you may not feel like going outside. What are you doing or what are you hoping to do in terms of rolling this out in the deepest, darkest parts of winter?

Right, so what I'm doing currently is we're studying this at Concordia University of Edmonton with the students. However, I have done a small sample a couple years ago in the winter with community people. And I think one of the things that happens in the winter is we get into this mindset, we go into it thinking this is going to be terrible. And we need to change our mindset about winter. There's actually a fantastic book that's out recently called How to Winter by Kerry Leibovitz. And so really this is about that. And one of the important things is that in none of my studies have people actually spent more time in nature. So I'm not necessarily asking people to go outside in nature or spend more time, although that's

great if you do. It's just notice the nature around you. Notice it from inside your house. When you look outside, notice it as you're going to the bus stop. How are you measuring this? Because you can imagine me seeing the hawk made me delighted, but does that mean anything beyond me having a smile on my face for the rest of my cold run? How are you measuring the difference between what you're talking about, what you hope to measure and people just feeling good because they're outside? Right, great, great question.

And actually, you feeling and noticing that, huh, it probably made you nicer to other people for the rest of the day. Not saying that you're not nice in the first place, but there's science behind that. And so what we're doing is we have pre-measures and post-measures. And both pre and post, we measure, there's validated measures of positive emotions, of transcendent connectedness, and levels of hope, elevation. So we have people do this questionnaire ahead of time, and then for two weeks they do the intervention, and then we

have them repeat the measures. And then we look statistically to see is there a significant difference between the group that did the intervention on all of these validated measures and the group that did not. And certainly in the past, the effect size, so simply how much it boosted it, have been quite large. So I am expecting that again. What did you say? You said elevation, what is that? Elevation, this is one of my favorite emotions because it's a composite emotion

and it's this mixture of, of course it's a mixture of feeling elevated, but it's also, we also measure this by items regarding a sense of awe, a sense of wonder, a sense of really deep appreciation, feeling spiritually uplifted, morally elevated. In other studies, not with nature, but in other studies when we induce that composite emotion of elevation, for people who are considering suicide, it's actually caused them to reach out in house

for help more often. So at some point I'd like to measure, does this also work when we induce elevation by nature? What will you do with the results? I mean, and how could they be used in a practical way, do you think? Great, well, certainly I'll be publishing it in academic journals, but I think one of the things

that's always been my goal since I started this is to reach this out to the clinical community. So the community of clinical and counseling psychologists, this is an incredibly effective and a very easy way for people to just get a little boost of wellbeing. Of course it's not a panacea, nothing is. You need to work on wellbeing in many ways. But this is a reliable activity that people can do that clinicians then, and just everyday

people as well, can really help to boost our wellbeing. Just finally, what advice would you give, life is busy, people are bustling around doing a million things all at the same time. What advice would you give to somebody so that they get the benefit that you got from seeing those rabbit tracks? Just notice it. It's, I wish I had a more sexy, exciting piece of

advice, but really? It's pretty straightforward. Just notice it. It really is. Notice it, notice how it makes you feel. You will be surprised at the difference it makes. We get that comment all the time in our research. Holly-Ann, thank you very much for this.

This was lovely, thanks so much, Ben. Holly-Ann Passmore is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at Concordia University of Edmonton, also the director of the Nature Meaning in Life Research Lab.