Pay Attention to Biophilia It's in the Flow

Ashley King

Date of Award

2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Callahan, Charlene

Keywords

Biophilia, Flow, Csikszentmihalyi

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

This study sought to explore the possible relationship between two theories addressing psychological health: Wilson�s Biophilia Hypothesis and Csikszentmihalyi�s Flow. Undergraduate college students played Tetris before viewing either a nature video or a built environment video. After the video, participants completed another game of Tetris and a shortened version of the Flow State Scale. It was hypothesized that contact with nature would restore attention capacity and facilitate the flow experience, leading to a higher level of improvement from pre-test to post-test and also higher scores on the FSS in the nature condition than in the built environment condition. As expected, the nature group improved more from Tetris pre-test to post-test than did the built environment group, t(30) = -1.697, p = .05. Scores on the FSS, however, did not differ significantly with condition, t(30) = .858, p = .199. These results indicate that there may be a relationship between contact with nature and the experience of flow, but more research is needed to explore this relationship.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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