F Femke Beute

Salutogenic Effects of the Environment: Review of Health Protective Effects of Nature and Daylight

Both nature and daylight have been found to positively influence health. These findings were, however, found in two separate research domains. This paper presents an overview of effects found for daylight and nature on health and the health-related concepts stress, mood, and executive functioning and self-regulation. Because of the overlap in effects found and the co-occurrence of both phenomena, the paper points to the need to consider daylight factors when investigating effects of nature and vice versa. Furthermore, the existence of possibly shared underlying mechanisms is discussed and the need to unify the research paradigms and dependent variables used between the two research fields. Last, in view of the beneficial effects of both phenomena on health, our objective is to raise awareness amongst the general public, designers, and health practitioners to use these naturally available phenomena to their full potential.

Can ambient persuasive technology persuade unconsciously?: using subliminal feedback to influence energy consumption ratings of household appliances

In this paper we explore a fundamental characteristic of Ambient Persuasive Technology: Can it persuade the user without receiving the users conscious attention? In a task consisting of 90 trials, participants had to indicate which of three household appliances uses the lowest average amount of energy. After each choice, participants in the supraliminal feedback condition received feedback about the correctness of their choice through presentation of a smiling or a sad face for 150 ms. Participants in the subliminal feedback condition received identical feedback, but the faces were presented only for 25 ms, which prohibited conscious perception of these stimuli. The final third of the participants received no feedback. In the next task, participants rated the energy consumption of all presented appliances. Results indicated that supraliminal feedback and subliminal feedback both led to more correct energy consumption ratings as compared to receiving no feedback. Implications are discussed.

Personal informatics, self-insight and behavior change: a critical review of current literature

Personal informatics (PI) systems allow users to collect and review personally relevant information. The purpose commonly envisioned for these systems is that they provide users with actionable, data-driven self-insight to help them change their behavioral patterns for the better. Here, we review relevant theory as well as empirical evidence for this self-improvement hypothesis. From a corpus of 6,568, only 24 studies met the selection criteria of being a peer-reviewed empirical study reporting on actionable, data-driven insights from PI data, using a “clean” PI system with no other intervention techniques (e.g., additional coaching) on a nonclinical population. First results are promising—many of the selected articles report users gaining actionable insights—but we do note a number of methodological issues that make these results difficult to interpret. We conclude that more work is needed to investigate the self-improvement hypothesis and provide a set of recommendations for future work.

Restoration in Its Natural Context: How Ecological Momentary Assessment Can Advance Restoration Research.

More and more people use self-tracking technologies to track their psychological states, physiology, and behaviors to gain a better understanding of themselves or to achieve a certain goal. Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) also offers an excellent opportunity for restorative environments research, which examines how our physical environment (especially nature) can positively influence health and wellbeing. It enables investigating restorative health effects in everyday life, providing not only high ecological validity but also opportunities to study in more detail the dynamic processes playing out over time on recovery, thereby bridging the gap between laboratory (i.e., short-term effects) and epidemiological (long-term effects) research. We have identified four main areas in which self-tracking could help advance restoration research: (1) capturing a rich set of environment types and restorative characteristics; (2) distinguishing intra-individual from inter-individual effects; (3) bridging the gap between laboratory and epidemiological research; and (4) advancing theoretical insights by measuring a more broad range of effects in everyday life. This paper briefly introduces restorative environments research, then reviews the state of the art of self-tracking technologies and methodologies, discusses how these can be implemented to advance restoration research, and presents some examples of pioneering work in this area.

In Sync: The Effect of Physiology Feedback on the Match between Heart Rate and Self-Reported Stress.

Over the past years self-tracking of physiological parameters has become increasingly common: more and more people are keeping track of aspects of their physiological state (e.g., heart rate, blood sugar, and blood pressure). To shed light on the possible effects of self-tracking of physiology, a study was conducted to test whether physiology feedback has acute effects on self-reported stress and the extent to which self-reported stress corresponds to physiological stress. In this study, participants executed several short tasks, while they were either shown visual feedback about their heart rate or not. Results show that self-reported stress is more in sync with heart rate for participants who received physiology feedback. Interactions between two personality factors (neuroticism and anxiety sensitivity) and feedback on the level of self-reported stress were found, indicating that while physiology feedback may be beneficial for individuals high in neuroticism, it may be detrimental for those high in anxiety sensitivity. Additional work is needed to establish how the results of this study may extend beyond immediate effects in a controlled lab setting, but our results do provide a first indication of how self-tracking of physiology may lead to better body awareness and how personality characteristics can help us predict which individuals are most likely to benefit from self-tracking of physiology.

The natural context of wellbeing: Ecological momentary assessment of the influence of nature and daylight on affect and stress for individuals with depression levels varying from none to clinical

&NA; This paper explores how everyday encounters with two natural phenomena ‐natural elements and daylight‐ influence affect and stress levels for people differing in mental health. Nature and daylight exposure both have well‐documented beneficial effects on mental health and affect but to what extent their exposure has beneficial effects in daily life is currently under investigated, as is the question whether lower mental health would make one more, or instead, less responsive. To this end, an ecological momentary assessment protocol was employed for a period of 6 days. Fifty‐nine participants varying in level of depressive symptoms from none to clinical completed momentary assessments of affect, stress, and their physical environment. Results indicate beneficial effects of nature and daylight on affect and some effects on stress and stress‐related outcomes. For nature exposure, but not for daylight exposure, effects were stronger for those in higher need of restoration, stressing the importance of our everyday environment for mental wellbeing. HighlightsDaily exposure to nature and daylight was related with better affective states.Effects of exposure to nature, but not to daylight, were more pronounced for those with affective problems.Only limited beneficial effects were found on stress and stress‐related outcomes.Results stress the importance of exposure to everyday environments on wellbeing.

Thinking of nature: associations with natural versus urban environments and their relation to preference

Abstract People generally prefer natural over urban environments, but little is known about what people think about when they see these environments. The aim of the present study was to investigate the associations with these scenes and their relation with preference. In a series of three studies 336 participants were asked to generate associations with photos. Study One manipulated naturalness of the environment as well as weather type. The data were analysed quantitatively by asking participants to rate the associations on valence, and qualitatively by a post hoc pile-sorting task on the associations. We found that associations with natural and sunny environments were more positive than those with urban and overcast environments. Natural scenes seem to elicit mainly positively valenced associations, whereas associations with urban environments were mixed. Content analyses confirmed these outcomes, indicating that how we experience an environment as well as its’ restorative potential are important for preference formation.

Stopping the Train of Thought: A Pilot Study Using an Ecological Momentary Intervention with Twice-Daily Exposure to Natural versus Urban Scenes to Lower Stress and Rumination

BACKGROUND Stress, and specifically perseverative cognition, is considered to have considerable detrimental effects on mental and physical health. Interventions that can offer temporary stress relief could, therefore, bring considerable health benefits. Previous research has pointed to stress-reducing effects of exposure to nature after acute stressors, but has not yet investigated effects in the realm of everyday life. The present pilot study explores whether an ecological momentary intervention using exposure to natural images could be effective in lowering stress and improve mood. METHODS Fifteen participants (12 females) scoring above threshold on stress, depression, or anxiety completed two study periods of 6 days. They watched an urban (control) or natural slideshow twice daily. Using Ecological Momentary Assessment, effects on mood, and stress-related complaints were measured in everyday life. RESULTS Compliance to the study protocol was high, especially in the first week, with slightly more videos watched in the morning than in the evening. We found indications of improvements in mood, self-reported worrying (but not stress levels), and heart rate. CONCLUSIONS The results suggest that twice-daily exposure to restorative visual content could be a viable Ecological Momentary Intervention, with the potential to reduce self-reported worry, lower autonomic activity, and increase positive affect.

Bots Mind the Social-technical Gap

Mobile workers experience the social-technical gap when moral dilemmas occur on communication platforms, and technology cannot adapt to social contexts on ethical matters. On messaging applications, bots are non-human team members and/or assistants that can aid mobile workers manage ethical challenges. We present excerpts from qualitative interviews with mobile workers that illuminate examples of moral challenges across communication channels. We then discuss how bots may be helpful intermediaries on these channels. Bots bridge the gap between mobile workers’ need for moral support and the communication medium’s incapability of having an intentionally moral stance.