Natural Beauty Moves. Aesthetically Rewarding Nature Motivates to Work on a Mindless Task – a Preregistered Study

In the present research, we propose and test the notion that nature, through its aesthetically rewarding qualities, can increase work motivation. In a preregistered study, we asked participants (N = 219) to watch a slideshow of either aesthetically rewarding (high reward condition) or relatively unrewarding nature scenes/elements (low reward condition), while also varying pre-slideshow workload (high vs. low workload). Following the slideshow, all participants had to perform a mindless routine task, i.e., clicking radio buttons. We found that under a low (vs. high) workload, participants who had watched aesthetically rewarding nature clicked more buttons, and reported to feel more motivated to click buttons compared to participants who had watched unrewarding nature. These findings testify to the motivational potential of aesthetically rewarding nature, and raise the possibility that cognitive nature benefits observed in restoration studies are not solely indicative of resource replenishment, but might also reflect increases in work motivation.