What Counts as Nature? It All Depends

Written by

Kim Eckart · UW News · November 15, 2017

Featuring Peter Kahn, Nature and Health researcher and Steering Committee member

a waterfall surrounded by mossy rocks
The environment we grow up with informs how we define “nature,” UW psychology professor Peter Kahn says. Encounters with truly wild places inspire people to preserve them. Credit: University of Washington

Think, for a moment, about the last time you were out in nature. Were you in a city park? At a campground? On the beach? In the mountains?

Now consider: What was this place like in your parents’ time? Your grandparents’? In many cases, the parks, beaches and campgrounds of today are surrounded by more development, or are themselves more developed, than they were decades ago.

But to you, they still feel like nature.

That’s what University of Washington psychology professor Peter Kahn calls “environmental generational amnesia” — the idea that each generation perceives the environment into which it’s born, no matter how developed, urbanized or polluted, as the norm.

Technology Is Changing Our Relationship With Nature as We Know It

Written by

Adrienne Matei · Quartz · August 8, 2017

Interview with Peter Kahn, Nature and Health researcher and Steering Committee member

University of Washington psychology professor Peter Kahn has spent much of his career analyzing the relationship humans have with nature—and he thinks that relationship is more fragile than many of us realize.

Kahn works to understand the intersection of two modern phenomena: the destruction of nature, and the growth of technology. As UW’s director of the Human Interaction with Nature and Technological Systems Lab (HINTS), Khan researches humans in relation to both real nature and “technological nature”: digital representations of the wild, such as nature-focused documentaries, video games, and VR simulations.

Technological nature has its benefits; engaging with it makes us feel good by triggering our innate “biophilia,” a term for humanity’s inborn, primordial affiliation with the environment. For example, researchers have found that nature videos played in prisons drastically reduce violence amongst inmates, suggesting nature’s relaxing influence translates through screens. Studies have also found that watching Planet Earth brings viewers joy and markedly lowers anxiety, and that workers in offices with plasma-screen “windows” that play livestreams of the outdoors are happier and more productive than their counterparts working in rooms without any windows at all.

Peter Kahn on Nature Interaction, Wildness in Cities

Written by

Michelle Ma · UW News · June 3, 2016

Featuring Peter Kahn, Nature and Health researcher and Steering Committee member

University of Washington professor Peter Kahn recently co-authored an opinion piece in the journal Science about the importance of interacting with nature in urban areas. UW Today asked Kahn a few more questions about the broader implications of his work.

Q: Why is it so important for people in cities to connect more deeply with nature?

PK: As a species we came of age with nature, and still today need that connection to do well, physically and psychologically. Just look around — and we see a lot of dis-ease. For example, about a third of people in the U.S. are obese. About 10 percent of people take antidepressants. The research literature supports what I think we all know intuitively: we’re our more vibrant, healthy selves when we live in relation with the natural world.

Finding Connections to Nature in Cities Is Key to Healthy Urban Living

Written by

Michelle Ma · UW News · June 3, 2016

Featuring Peter Kahn, Nature and Health researcher and Steering Committee member

The modern city is a place where a vibrant array of ideas, sights, sounds and smells intermingle to spawn creativity, expression and innovation. We are drawn to the noise, the constant connectivity and the delicious food.

Simply put, society is tuned to the pulse of the city — but at what cost?

That’s the question explored in a recent Science perspective piece co-authored by University of Washington researcher Peter Kahn. Its authors discuss the growing tension between an arguably necessary role urban areas play in society and the numbing, even debilitating, aspects of cities that disconnect humans from the natural world.

Why We Need More Time in the Natural World

Written by

Newsweek · Feb 11, 2009

Featuring Peter Kahn, Nature and Health researcher and Steering Committee member

Peter Kahn is one of a handful of environmental psychologists who have begun systematically exploring these questions. He and his colleagues at the University of Washington ran a series of experiments to see what benefit—if any—people get from high-quality technological versions of nature. In one experiment, for example, they installed plasma TV “windows” in workers’ otherwise windowless offices for a period of 16 weeks, and then took various measures of psychological function. They found that those with the “views” of parkland and mountain ranges had a greater sense of well-being, clearer thinking, and a greater sense of connection to the natural world.

All that means, of course, is that HDTV is better than a blank wall. To see if the televised version stacks up against the real thing, Kahn ran another experiment in which some office workers had an actual view of a natural setting through a window—the old-fashioned glass kind—while others got the plasma version and still others the blank wall. They exposed all the workers to low levels of stress, but enough to make their heart rate go up; then waited to see how long it took them to calm down.