The idea that humans today have a preference, and possibly evolutionary
predisposition, towards the natural world can be related to both living organisms and landscape typologies. While the idea that humans enjoy or prefer natural surrounds is not a recent one, the fact that it might be genetically linked to human biology is. Humans have spent much of their existence living closely with nature and it is hypothesised that this has resulted in an attraction towards nature. Of particular interest to this research is preference for specific landscapes such as wilderness, however a general attraction to a bio-diverse environment also offers insights.
The concept of ‘biophilia’, introduced by E.O. Wilson, is defined as “the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike tendencies” (1984, p. 1), and is manifest through an emotional or affectual response to other living organisms and complex natural worlds. The feelings or emotions invoked are viewed as the result of a set of
learned rules, with which humans are genetically stamped, and which have served us throughout our evolutionary history: “the feelings molded by the learning rules fall along several emotional spectra: from attraction to aversion, from awe to
indifference, from peacefulness to fear driven indifference” (Wilson, 1993, p. 31). The resultant feelings, then, can have an impact not only on our tendency to want to return to such contexts, but also on the quality of our lives and well-being. Among the possibilities that the biophilia hypotheses suggests is that the attraction towards life and lifelike tendencies is “likely to increase the possibility for achieving individual meaning and personal fulfilment” (Kellert, 1993, p. 21).
While not necessitating a genetic attraction to life, there is a more general idea that humans today may be predisposed, for a variety of reasons, to natural and, in particular, wilderness landscapes. Research has led several environmental psychologists to consider responses to wilderness as reflecting an individual’s preference for certain environmental qualities. For example, Kaplan and Talbot (1983), using data collected over a decade, reported that many subjects responded to the wilderness setting in a way that produced meaningful experiences.
Experiences of wilderness settings on a two week program, as reported by Kaplan and Talbot, included a sense of wonder, tranquillity, serenity, integration, wholeness and oneness: “the wilderness inspires feelings of awe and wonder, and one’s intimate contact with this environment leads to thoughts about spiritual meaning and eternal processes” (1983, p. 178). The experiences changed over time, and were viewed as a response to a new and potentially hostile environment which involved a getting-to- know the environment process. Experiences were often reported as significant or personally moving: “the experience with the environment changes us quickly and quietly. By and large it is not a process to which words are attached. Nor are people aware of how radically affected they are by the way they see the world” (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1995, p. 136).
Reporting that individuals experienced heightened and beneficial psychological states, Kaplan and Talbot (1983) isolated four factors relating to the wilderness landscape that they considered integral to such meaningful experiences:
• being away (distant from home);
• extent (sense of connection to something larger); • fascination (effortless attention); and
• compatibility (landscape compatible with desired actions) (summarised from Kaplan and Talbot, 1983).
Kaplan and Talbot posited that people have two basic needs in the environment, that of understanding and that of exploration (Stamps, 2004), and that the above factors predict a preference for certain environments. In particular, ‘fascination’ and ‘compatibility’ are tied to the satisfactions and benefits of being able to operate effectively in an environment, while ‘being away’ and ‘extent’ are tied to ideas of exploration and that the environment potentially holds still more to discover and experience.
The characteristic of being away is used in a conceptual context; that is, it requires a person to feel they are away from ‘everyday’ situations (Kaplan and Talbot 1983). For people living in today’s modern cities, the way in which natural settings achieve this is not necessarily reliant on the physical distance usually involved in reaching what we might understand as wilderness per se; rather, it can be achieved by a quiet moment in a local park removed from the usual human inventions and interruptions. It does, however, require that feeling of escape, or leaving something behind.
Extent implies the possibility of extensions to the currently viewed environment; that is, the possibility of worlds beyond the environment that is concretely available (Kaplan and Talbot 1983). Within wilderness contexts ‘extent’ can be made available in the form of disappearing ridgelines, a stream carrying on around a corner or thinly spaced trees disappearing into the distance. It also implies that the space currently experienced is part of something larger, or an extended world; it is about a sense of connectedness.
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Fascination is related to the way in which attention is attracted and held, without external motivation, in an effortless way. A person experiences a sense of renewal due to the fact that there is no need to use directed attention towards stimuli (Kaplan and Talbot 1983). The stimuli involved, then, are deemed to be fascinating in
themselves, and can be in the form of aesthetic sensory stimuli such as waterfalls or sunsets, or in the form of cognitive or physical stimuli involving an element of the
unknown or challenge (similar to the idea of flow discussed earlier) that can provoke a sense of internally motivated fascination with the task at hand.
There is also a requirement that the environment provides a sense of compatibility
with required action – that is, the environment offers the information that provides a person with the feeling that they are going to be able to achieve the tasks required; that there is the opportunity to achieve desired outcomes (Kaplan and Talbot 1983). At its basest level, the sense evoked is that the environment is compatible with survival. In the absence of such compatibility markers, the landscape may be perceived as dangerous.
By considering each of the characteristics described it is possible to see that they are clearly available, particularly over time, in a wilderness environment. It is the combined relationship of the elements within a wilderness landscape that brings together these characteristics which, given sufficient quality and time, are able to evoke meaningful experiences based on a preference for wild natural landscapes. The ‘wilderness laboratory’ was found to provide a surprising level of opportunity for meaningful or spiritual experiences in wilderness contexts (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1995). These meaningful experiences were considered to be a form of restoration or spiritual renewal and inspiration, indeed: “a surprising outcome of the research has been the remarkable depth of such spiritual impacts” (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1995, p. 147).
Kaplan and Talbot (1983) recognised that some of the restorative benefits coming from wilderness experiences may also come from alternative contexts or settings: “one is thus tempted to look beyond this particular setting to any environment in which similar factors operate... We have termed this presumably diverse class of beneficial settings restorative environments” (p. 193). Understandings of restorative effects of environments, particularly through attention restoration, have subsequently been developed (Hartig, Kaiser and Bowler, 2001; Hartig, Mang and Evans, 1991; S. Kaplan, 1995).