Connectedness is in my character: the relationship between nature relatedness and character strengths

Abstract

Fostering interdependence with nature is a central goal of environmental education. Exposing students to nature has been a common practice in environmental education for nurturing this connection among students. However, this exposition is not always feasible, especially in the context of higher education, nor is it clear that exposure to nature engenders nature connectedness equally among students. Thus, there are calls for a greater understanding of the psychological factors that may impinge on greater nature relatedness so to identify complementary educational routes for nurturing this interdependent construal. Responding to these calls, in a sample of 967 students, we examine whether character strengths covariate with nature relatedness and which character strengths better differentiate between high and low levels of nature relatedness. Our results show that intellectual character strengths (i.e. appreciation of beauty, love of learning, and curiosity) are strongly associated with nature relatedness. Moreover, our findings show that appreciation of beauty is the strongest covariate of nature relatedness. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for environmental education.

Keywords:

• Nature relatedness
• nature connectedness
• appreciation of beauty
• environmental education
• character strengths
• character education

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted thanks to a grant by Aristos Campus Mundus (ACM2017_10). We are most grateful to Isabel Carrero, Angela Ordoñez and other members of faculty at Universidad Pontificia Comillas for their help in data collection and valuable inputs to this manuscript. We are also grateful to the VIA Institute on Character for graciously share with us the VIA-72 questionnaire.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 A broader notion of appreciation of beauty refers to the foundational values of the Western canon—Truth, Beauty, and the Good—or to the Eastern idea of beauty as integrated with goodness, since the former cultivates the latter (Diessner and Steiner 2017). See also Diessner et al. (2018) for a review of definitions of appreciation of beauty.