The Influence of Physical Burden on the Esthetic Preference for Green Natural Environment

Abstract

The perception of beauty is known to be associated with the bodily sensations and evolutionary implications. However, whether the esthetic preference for natural landscape environments with different evolutionary benefits changes on the basis of different degrees of bodily sensations is still an open issue. The present study used four experiments to address this issue. The results showed that participants wearing a heavy backpack gave higher esthetic scores to and generate a strong attentional bias toward the green natural landscapes. Furthermore, the implicit association test (IAT) revealed that a green natural landscape was more readily associated with a high level of relaxation when the participants wore a backpack. The results indicated that the bodily sensation of a physical burden modulates the esthetic preference for natural environments when they consist of green plants, which are associated with a high level of relaxation and have significant evolutionary implications.