Let the sun shine! : measuring explicit and implicit preference for environments differing in naturalness, weather type and brightness

Natural environments offer restorative effects on multiple indicators of wellbeing. Viewing natural environments often coincides with daylight exposure, which in itself has very similar beneficial effects on wellbeing. In a first attempt to disentangle these effects, we studied preference, an important indicator of restorative potential. In this paper we investigate whether preference ratings for images differ depending on the naturalness and light characteristics of the depicted scenes. In three consecutive studies we investigated both explicit preference and implicit preference, using ratings of the scenes and an affective priming task, respectively. The scenes were manipulated across three dimensions; naturalness (nature vs. urban), brightness (light vs. dark), and weather type (sunny vs. overcast). Consistently, we found explicit preferences for natural, bright, and sunny scenes. These findings lend first tentative support to the hypothesis that, in addition to natural scenes, light may also serve restoration purposes. In contrast, no evidence was found for an implicit preference for nature, brightness, or sunlight.