| Summary: | Aims: It is claimed that viewing images of nature can reduce delay discounting, a measure of impulsive decision-making (Berry, Sweeney, Morath, Odum, & Jordan, 2014). However, these authors did not control for the effects of aesthetics, in that the natural scenes were attractive images while the urban scenes were unattractive. We sought to determine whether this effect would be replicated when aesthetic pleasantness is controlled for, and to extend this examination to probability discounting, a separate measure of impulsivity.
Method: Participants (n = 312) viewed either nature or urban images that were aesthetically pleasing or unpleasing, and then completed a temporal and probability discounting task.
Results: There was no significant difference in delay discounting between groups F(1,172) = .613, p = .607. Males discounted significantly less than females on temporal and probability discounting tasks F(1,300) = 6.795, p = .010; F(1,300) = 9.941, p = .002, respectively. Older individuals delay discount significantly less than younger individuals F(3,300) = 11.826, p < .001. Older individuals had significantly higher positive affect than younger individuals F(3,300) = 7.956, p < .001.
Conclusions: The discounting functions obtained were consistent with previous studies. The results for age and gender on discounting contributes to discussion of these matters: While lower levels of impulsivity in older adults is perhaps to be expected, the gender effect obtained here is less easily explained. Contrary to Berry et al. (2014) we found no evidence for any effect of viewing natural scenes on discounting, regardless of their aesthetic properties. While this discrepancy could relate to the differences in methodology employed, it would suggest that the claims for an effect of natural scenes on impulsivity should be treated with caution.
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