Examining the moderating effects of anthropomorphism between nature connectedness and mood

Abstract

Extant literature has shown that exposure to nature, regardless of actual or virtual setting, was positively associated with positive affect and negatively associated with negative affect, so improving mood . Other research revealed that an individual’s nature connectedness acted as a mediator between the nature contact and mood. In recent years, anthropomorphism of nature was demonstrated to enhance connectedness to nature. However, no studies have examined whether anthropomorphism moderates the relationship between nature connectedness and mood. In view of the scarce literature regarding the exposure to the virtual nature together with the use of anthropomorphism of nature, the current research replicated earlier studies on brief exposure to virtual nature, operationalized using nature scenes presented as videos, and examined whether it was associated with mood improvement including increased positive affect and reduced negative affect. Furthermore, the current study also studied whether the use of anthropomorphism inserted an impact on the relationship between nature connectedness and mood through randomized trial intervention. An experimental, between-subjects (Time x Condition) design was used. The final sample consisted of 124 participants. Results showed that brief exposure to virtual nature could bring a significant outcome in reducing negative affect and enhancing balance affect across both experimental (Anthropomorphism) and control (Non-anthropomorphism) conditions, which suggested virtual representations might offer an alternative way that would be beneficial to the illustration of actual natural environments and the brief virtual nature exposure that was associated with mood improvement. However, anthropomorphism of nature did not moderate the relationships between nature connectedness and affective components. The implications of these results for this research and future research directions were discussed below.