A growing body of research links time in nature to better well-being. A new study looked at how birdsong and time spent in forests relate to people's stress and mood.
Some studies link exposure to birdsong to benefits for well-being. In laboratory studies, birdsong has been associated with lower self-reported stress, and bird sounds tend to go along with greater perceptions of restorativeness. Walks in nature are also associated with more positive emotions and lower physiological stress.
Researchers wanted to establish the relationship between birdsong, the physical landscape, and well-being. Does where you listen to the birdsong make a difference?
So, in this new study, they used two soundtracks and two landscapes. The first landscape was a small, recently restored forest within an urban environment, with over 70 percent canopy cover. The second was a "grey space" location, a campus plaza at North Carolina State University.
A total of 106 volunteer students were randomly assigned to start at one of the two locations and then visit the other. At each location, they were played both a birdsong soundtrack and a traffic soundtrack (10 minutes each) on noise-cancelling headphones, in a designated order. At the end of each soundtrack, participants completed a survey about their well-being and mood. Each participant then walked to the second location and repeated the process there.
Participants who were in the forest and listened to birdsong reported an average stress score of 3.2 on an 11-point scale. This was much lower than the 6.4 for those on the plaza hearing traffic. The combination of birdsong and forests was also associated with the highest positive emotion and the strongest sense of restoration. The plaza-traffic combination had the lowest ratings on these measures.
For mental restoration, the physical setting mattered more than the soundtrack. However, for stress and for positive and negative emotions, both sound and setting were equally important. Overall, this suggests that listening to birdsong may help, and listening to it in a forest may help even more.
Even a small, recently restored forest in an urban setting was linked to lower stress. The grey space and traffic noise were less restorative than the forest and birdsong.