Avaxhome,Astalavista,ESnips & All..

Astop to smell the roses can have social as well as personal benefits, says Richard Ryan, co-author and professor of psychology, psychiatry and education at the University of Rochester. A Ryan and his team at the University of Rochester put together a paper after conducting four different experiments in which 370 participants were exposed to either natural or man-made settings.
In three of the studies, participants were shown a selection of four images for two minutes each. Half of the subject viewed buildings and other cityscapes; the other half observed landscapes, lakes etc. In a fourth study, participants were simply assigned at random to work in a lab with or without plants.
Participants then answered a questionnaire assessing the importance of four life aspirations: wealth and fame, community and being connected. Across all four studies, people exposed to natural elements rated close relationships and community higher than they had previously. The study also found that the more deeply engaged subjects were with natural settings, the more they valued community and closeness. By contrast, the more intensely participants focused on artificial elements, the higher they rated wealth and fame.

Tags: Nature, University of Rochester