ArticleFrontiers in psychology2015
Is the preference of natural versus man-made scenes driven by bottom-up processing of the visual features of nature?
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed.
- What is Nature? A Prototype Analysis of the Natural Environment.Environment and behavior · 2026Article
- The Influence of Forest Landscape Spaces on Psychological and Visual Attention Responses: An Analysis Based on Different Seasons and Sexes.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2026Article
- Article
- Article
- Mind and body recovery: how rural tourism promotes occupational health in the public health context.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Effects of hue and orientation on naturalness and preference: evidence from concrete and abstract art.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Image statistics substantiate Gaudí's naturalistic design principles.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Perceptual Complexity as Normalized Shannon Entropy.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Bibliometric analyses of factors influencing color preferences in urban environmental spaces.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- The scenicness of historic buildings rivals that of natural features: evidence from crowdsourced photographs of English urban areas.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Direct perception of affective valence from vision.Nature communications · 2024Article
- The perceived beauty of art is not strongly calibrated to the statistical regularities of real-world scenes.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Low-Level Visual Features of Window Views Contribute to Perceived Naturalness and Mental Health Outcomes.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- Article
- Visual properties and perceived restorativeness in green offices: a photographic evaluation of office environments with various degrees of greening.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Nature-based experience in Venetian lagoon: Effects on craving and wellbeing in addict residential inpatients.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Sustainable materials: a linking bridge between material perception, affordance, and aesthetics.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Review
- Understanding how virtual reality forest experience promote physiological and psychological health for patients undergoing hemodialysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
- Swipes and Saves: A Taxonomy of Factors Influencing Aesthetic Assessments and Perceived Beauty of Mobile Phone Photographs.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Review
- The contour effect: Differences in the aesthetic preference and stress response to photo-realistic living environments.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Previous research has shown that viewing images of nature scenes can have a beneficial effect on memory, attention, and mood. In this study, we aimed to determine whether the preference of natural versus man-made scenes is driven by bottom-up processing of the low-level visual features of nature. We used participants' ratings of perceived naturalness as well as esthetic preference for 307 images with varied natural and urban content. We then quantified 10 low-level image features for each image (a combination of spatial and color properties). These features were used to predict esthetic preference in the images, as well as to decompose perceived naturalness to its predictable (modeled by the low-level visual features) and non-modeled aspects. Interactions of these separate aspects of naturalness with the time it took to make a preference judgment showed that naturalness based on low-level features related more to preference when the judgment was faster (bottom-up). On the other hand, perceived naturalness that was not modeled by low-level features was related more to preference when the judgment was slower. A quadratic discriminant classification analysis showed how relevant each aspect of naturalness (modeled and non-modeled) was to predicting preference ratings, as well as the image features on their own. Finally, we compared the effect of color-related and structure-related modeled naturalness, and the remaining unmodeled naturalness in predicting esthetic preference. In summary, bottom-up (color and spatial) properties of natural images captured by our features and the non-modeled naturalness are important to esthetic judgments of natural and man-made scenes, with each predicting unique variance.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.