Affective scaffolding in nature

ABSTRACT

Environmental scaffolding refers to the ways in which agents make use of features of the environment to augment and enhance their cognitive behavior. Recent discussion on the notion of affective scaffolding extends this perspective to investigate how agents’ affective states are supported by environmental scaffolds. This paper builds on such discussion by exploring how elements of nature, such as forests, oceans, and gardens, function as affective scaffolds. Empirical research demonstrates that the presence of natural elements has a positive impact on health and wellbeing, as well as a modulatory effect on stress response mechanisms. I argue that there are specific characteristics to these types of scaffolds which can be surveyed to shed philosophical light on this research. I suggest that natural environments scaffold our affective lives by enabling, enhancing, and promoting a specific bodily affective profile characterized by restorativeness and immersion attentiveness. An analysis of this scaffolding can aid in understanding the relationship between nature and affect, in turn identifying a new application for the scaffolded mind framework.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental scaffolding
• situated affectivity
• natural environments
• human-environment relationship
• restorativeness
• wellbeing

Acknowldgement

This paper has benefitted from generous feedback from several audiences. I would like to thank Alan Love’s lab and the Philosophy Departments at the University of Minnesota and Wake Forest University, the attendees of Philosophy in the Wild’s Inaugural Workshop on Environmental Philosophy, and those in the audience at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy for their questions and suggestions. I am also grateful for the thoughtful and constructive comments of two anonymous reviewers. Lastly, I would like to acknowledge the John Templeton Foundation for their financial support during the initial stages of this project. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the John Templeton Foundation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I acknowledge that there is some ambiguity in defining nature element affective scaffolds. Some objects may be artifacts, such as faux plants, but may have the same or similar effects on our affective state as genuine nature elements. Some artifacts may be comprised of natural materials but may fail to scaffold a positive-tone affective state in a similar manner as the type of elements I am interested in here. While my focus is on a specific subset of those elements, there may be no hard distinctions to draw between these kinds of objects. Instead, we might conceive of them as occupying spaces on a continuum based on the degree of impact the object has on our affective state.

2. Ulrich (1983) defines a natural environment (in contrast to an urban environment) based on categorizations made by experiment participants; environments populated predominantly with vegetation and/or water with a marked absence of artifacts such as cars and buildings were categorized as natural.

3. S. Kaplan (1995) attempts to synthesize both theories into an integrated framework, taking into consideration effects on both an agent’s stress response and attentional capacities.

4. S. Kaplan (1995) describes these sorts of experiences as “soft” fascinations due to their effortlessness, or the undramatic way in which they capture our attention.

5. In certain kinds of natural environments, familiarity with one’s surroundings is likely key in whether or not the experience will be restorative. Seeing a cobra alongside a walking path, for example, may be extraordinarily startling to those who do not regularly see cobras out in the world, but a fairly unsurprising experience for those familiar with that environment. This feature corresponds to the notion of “coherence” in R. Kaplan and Kaplan (1989): a sense in which an environment is predictable and understandable. Some dimensions in the taxonomy provided by Coninx and Stephan (2021) also capture this feature, namely “robustness” and “awareness” (Coninx & Stephan, 2021, p. 13).

6. This is assuming that the typically encountered natural setting is a relatively benign place where one does not have to readily address significant concerns for one’s safety or wellbeing in navigating that setting. Environments which typically function as restorative places but fail to do so due to the introduction of dangerous elements, such as predators (non-human or otherwise), will likely fail, in turn, to promote positive-tone affective states. Sadly, I can speak from experience that the introduction of a (human) predator caused a previously restorative natural environment to cease to be so.

7. Some research does suggest that exposure to extreme environments may, on a longer timeframe, bring about positive affect, in some cases by encouraging a sense of awe upon reflection of the experience. Anderson et al. (2018), for example, found that individuals who embarked on a whitewater rafting expedition reported an increase in wellbeing upon later reflection, identifying a sense of awe as a contributing factor.