Mark Berman

And many people might be thinking, well, maybe it's just because walking in nature is pleasant and people really like the walk in nature.

And it's true.

Participants did enjoy the walk in nature for the most part.

But we didn't see a strong correlation between how much people liked to walk or how much their mood improved on the walk in nature being correlated with their improvements on this working memory task, this backwards digispan task.

So it wasn't the case that just the people who loved the nature walk so much were the ones who showed the biggest improvement.

And an even stronger demonstration of this is that we had participants walk at different times of the year.

So some people walked in June when it was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and participants said, oh, Mark, I love the walk.

I can't believe you're paying me to go for a walk in nature.

They showed really healthy mood improvements, and they also showed really healthy improvements to directed attention as measured with this backwards digi-span task.

But we also had people walk in January when it was 25 degrees Fahrenheit.

And participants said, Mark, I was freezing out there.

I did not like that walk in nature.

But those participants that walked in January showed the same cognitive improvement as the people that walked in June.

So sort of the short answer is to get these cognitive benefits, you don't even need to enjoy the nature walk to get the benefit.

I think that's right to some extent.

So I definitely don't think all of these effects are driven by preference.

And you even have people that say, you know, I'm a city lover.

I don't like being in nature.

And we don't think that really matters.

However, I think if we would have sent those participants in January on the walk in nature without a coat and they were so uncomfortable, I think that would have used a lot of directed attention and they wouldn't have seen the nature effects.