Absorption Facilitates Nature-Related Restoration from Spoken Stories

Interactions with nature have been shown to elicit psychological benefits to mood and cognition. The present study investigated whether more conceptual representations of nature, depicted through short spoken narratives, could similarly elicit restorative effects, and if so, whether individual differences in absorption and mental imagery would relate to restoration effects. Undergraduate students (n = 54) listened to four brief narratives depicting either natural or urban scenes. Participants completed measures of current mood, state anxiety, cognition (n-back, self-reported mental fatigue), and psychological restoration before and after a narrative listening intervention. Results revealed interactions of absorption and narrative condition on current positive mood ratings (calmness, happiness), state anxiety, and perceived restoration, with individuals higher in absorption showing the predicted differences between nature and urban conditions (e.g., increased positive affect and greater restoration following nature narratives) and individuals low in absorption showing no discernible effects of environment. No significant results were observed for cognitive measures. These findings demonstrate that the restorative benefits of nature are not limited to direct exposure to perceptual features of the environment, although the efficacy of more conceptual representations of nature to elicit restorative effects may depend on absorption.