Nature run can't be outdone

If you’ve started working from home over the past few weeks and find your physical space lacking, I recently shared some tips with Architectural Digest on the basics to focus on when setting up a work-from-home environment.

For newer readers, a longer piece from a few weeks ago covers what makes working from home work (or not). The gist is that working from home a moderate amount can be great, especially for individual, focused work. But for more collaborative work and interdependent workers, too much time working at home doesn’t bring additional benefits (I think a lot of people are feeling that by now!).

Joggers, joggers everywhere

Here in Montréal, only essential businesses remain open and life as we knew it is on pause. Normally busy streets are nearly empty. But one surprising effect of societal lockdown has been, as far as I’ve observed, an increase in the number of joggers. At times, it seems like nearly everyone you see out is running, especially around parks. Two likely reasons are because gyms are closed and the weather is getting nicer (yes, anything above freezing feels like paradise at this point in the year). But I think that another reason for this increase is because people can recognize that going outside and moving is a way to feel better right now, when other positive activities like meeting friends or going to cultural events are off-limits.

Are you noticing the same thing where you live?

A jogger in Montréal’s Mont Royal park. With snow on the ground, it could be December, or it could be March 26th. Image credit and source.

In light of this observation, I wanted to share a relevant research study from a few years back tracking people’s mood in different environments. More than 20,000 participants provided over one million happiness ratings as they moved around the world — a dreamy sample size for scientists. The main take-aways: people tended to be happier outdoors, especially in natural environments. And when they engaged in physical activity.

The details of the study and more specific findings are pretty cool, so I hope you follow along.

The study was conducted in the UK from 2010 to 2011. Participants used an iPhone app (which no longer exists as far as I can tell) called Mappiness to take part in the study. At random points during the day, the app would ask users to rate how happy they were feeling on a continuous scale from 0 to 100. 

Image source. The distribution of study participants' happiness ratings. You’ll notice some spikes that tend to occur even when survey respondents use a continuous scale. One is at 50, where the slider started (How happy am I? “Meh”). There are also spikes at 0 and 100, because people sometimes have a desire to answer with a resounding “yes” or “no" ("Yes, I’m happy, 100 happy!”), and another spike at what looks like 75. You’ll often see spikes in responses around multiples of 10 and 25 (like 60, 75, 80), because people will put in effort to drag a slider up to an even number like “80” rather than letting it sit at a close-but-unsatisfying number like “81”. The whole distribution is skewed: people rated themselves as happy much more often than unhappy.

In addition to rating their happiness, app users were asked to specify who they were with (e.g., friends, spouse/partner/girlfriend or boyfriend, clients/customers, etc.), where they were (in a vehicle, outdoors, or indoors, and, if indoors, whether they were at home, at work, or somewhere else), and what activity they were engaged in from a list of 41 specific activities.

This method of data collection, in which people are prompted at random times to note what they are doing and how they are feeling is called the experience sampling method. It’s great way to discover the “topology” of our everyday life—to understand our daily activities and their associated feelings.

When app users provided responses to the prompts, the app also recorded their precise location using GPS. Using this location, researchers were then able to classify what kind of outdoor habitat people were in when they responded (e.g., urban, developed suburban/rural, broad-leaved/mixed woodland, marine and coastal margins, etc.), the local weather conditions, and whether there was daylight outside. 

The goal was to associate what kind of environment people were in and what they were doing with how they were feeling.

Because people reported their happiness in different environments and during different activities, researchers were able to compare how the same individuals felt under different conditions (e.g., how a person felt outdoors vs. indoors). Analyses also tested and controlled for a number of factors that could influence people's happiness, like who they were with and the time of the day.

Happier outside

Overall, people were happier when they were outdoors than when they were indoors. And when outdoors, they were happier in nature, especially if they were in a habitat on the edge of a body of water. 

People’s level happiness in an urban environment was used as a benchmark. Compared to this benchmark level, the same people were around 6 points happier (on a 100-point scale) when in a natural, water-edge environment. This difference in happiness was as large as the difference between what people experienced visiting an art exhibit vs. doing housework! 

Water edge looks nice, doesn’t it? Image source.

People were also happier in other types of natural environments, like mountains, wetlands, woodlands, and grasslands, as compared to urban environments, but the “mood boost” for these environments was less extreme.

Another interesting finding was that some people benefited from being in nature more than others. In particular, women and older adults experienced bigger happiness benefits when in nature. 

Weather, activities, and companionship

When outdoors, weather had an effect on people’s happiness, as you might expect: people were happier when it was warmer, less windy, more sunny, and not foggy or raining.

Controlling for other factors, people were happiest when doing physical activities like walking, exercising, and gardening. This last one is pertinent as we likely face months of on-and-off lockdowns. If you can’t go out freely but have a yard, balcony, or windowsill space, taking care of plants could be a way to spend more time outdoors or close to the outdoors while staying active.

And if you have the ability to move around outside, there’s no substitute for running or walking in a natural area. The exercise setting matters. Using only data from people who exercised outside in both natural and urban areas, the researchers found that the same people were still happier when exercising in nature. If you live in a city, heading for a run to a park could be a way to get some nature in.

How do people around us affect our happiness? As compared to being alone, people were happier when with their spouse/partner/girlfriend/boyfriend, with friends, or with other family members. But they were less happy when they were with colleagues or classmates, or other people they knew. Shared experience is better with those close to us.

So that explains all those jogging couples in the parks.

As an example of how strongly our environment and activity relate to our perceived happiness, consider the following estimates. We'd predict a study participant who was outdoors birdwatching in a shrubby habitat with friends on a sunny, hot Sunday early afternoon to be 26 points happier than if they were on their own, commuting in a vehicle on an early weekday morning that’s cold and cloudy.

A message from outer space

The findings from this study fit well with advice that U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly, master of isolation, had to share with us, isolation beginners (I spent a year in space, and I have tips on isolation to share). The whole list is worth reading and thinking about, but his #1 suggestion was to go move around outside.

Kelly described his increasing yearning for contact with nature when in space: "After being confined to a small space for months, I actually started to crave nature — the color green, the smell of fresh dirt, and the feel of warm sun on my face.” An experiment to grow flowers in space, a.k.a. space gardening, "became more important to me than I could have ever imagined.” Nature noises also helped: "My colleagues liked to play a recording of Earth sounds, like birds and rustling trees, and even mosquitoes, over and over. It brought me back to earth.” 

You know things are bad when you’re missing mosquitos.

Hope that you stay healthy, stay well, and get some outdoor time in. I’m currently writing this while fighting off a cold and enjoying some nature noises through an open window (no mosquitos yet!). But it’s no substitute for a run outside.

Feel free to share, use, or adapt any of the contents of this newsletter under the condition that you give appropriate credit — a link to my website. CC BY 4.0, Full details.