Researchers at North Carolina State University in the United States recently studied how different sounds and surroundings affect people’s emotions and stress levels.
They asked students from the university’s College of Natural Resources to wear noise-cancelling headphones while sitting in one of two places: a restored nature trail or a busy urban area.
Through the headphones, participants listened to either birdsong or traffic noise.
Both the location and the sound were randomly assigned so the researchers could measure the separate effects of the environment and the sounds.
The natural site was a restored forest beside a creek that had been replanted and redesigned in the early 2000s.
It had more than 70% tree cover and no visible buildings, with participants facing the trees.
The urban site was outside the Talley Student Union, an area dominated by buildings and concrete with little greenery.
After every 10-minute session, participants reported how stressed they felt and how mentally refreshed they were, a measure known as “restorativeness”.
Among the four combinations tested, the restored forest with birdsong produced the best results.
Participants reported the lowest stress levels, the fewest negative emotions, the most positive emotions and the greatest feeling of mental refreshment.
In contrast, traffic noise in the urban setting had the worst results.
It caused the highest stress levels, the most negative emotions, the fewest positive emotions and the lowest sense of mental restoration.
The mixed combination of birdsong in the city and traffic noise in the forest produced moderate results, suggesting that both natural surroundings and bird sounds independently improve mood, and together, they provide the greatest mental health benefits.
“When you have a really grey space, that is going to stress people out and give them negative experiences.
“If you can change that space so that it has natural sounds, you can ameliorate the down-sides of that gray space,” says study author Prof Dr Nils Peterson.
“In our research, we have evidence for bird sounds, but there is also a lot of literature supporting the use of water sounds and other things in nature.” – dpa
