Nature Images and Fractal Scale-Invariance upon Prosociality
Links between nature experience and positive affect, cognition (with focus upon attention and consciousness), and social well-being are outlined alongside known mechanisms for these effects. Extant empirical work in neuropsychology is reviewed to support that attention is not merely restored by natural environments (e.g., attention restoration theory) but rather is functionally benefited. Globality (i.e., whole-parts, superordinate processing of environmental scenes) prompted by scale invariance (i.e., the extent to which stimuli repeat their own lower-level structure) has been previously demonstrated to relate to perception of natural beauty, which mediates certain effects of nature experience. Scale invariance is posited as a distinct phenomenon in the visual perception of natural stimuli that may lead to salutatory, hedonic, and eudaimonic outcomes. It is hypothesized that engagement with natural beauty indirectly mediates the effects of the natural versus non-natural image condition upon both hypo-egoism (awareness placed not upon the self but to concrete aspects of immediate experience) and prosocial orientation (a reported willingness to assist others). The latter has been found in prior work. In Study 1, an Implicit Association Test was designed, configured, piloted, cleaned, analyzed, and interpreted. In Study 2, viewing natural versus non-natural images had a significant effect on prosociality measured via self-reported altruism and engagement with natural beauty. Engagement with natural beauty mediated the relationship between nature image exposure and prosocial intentions. In Study 2, there was not a significant effect for fractal iteration. In Study 3, scale invariance was isolated and manipulated, with the scale- invariant versus non-scale-invariant condition significantly impacting prosociality and meaning. Meaning fully mediated the effect of scale invariance on prosocial behavior. Future research should address the impact of natural images and scale-invariant stimuli on other variables such as descriptive meaning (i.e., coherence, or the cognitive component of meaning as information). The processes, mechanisms, results, limitations, and future directions of viewing natural and scale-invariant stimuli upon engagement with natural beauty, meaning, hypo-egoism, and prosociality are discussed.
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