The Impact Of Restorative Environments On Self-control

Self-control refers to the ability of individuals to restrain impulses,desires,and habitual reactions,to conform individual behaviors to social norms,and to achieve long-term goals(Baumeister,Vohs,& Tice,2007).But the strength model of self-control(Baumeister,Bratslavsky,Muraven,& Tice,1998;Baumeister,Tice,& Vohs,2018)considers self-control to be a limited shared resource,once used Loss,causing a temporary decline in self-control,or "ego-depletion",manifested as the inability to continue to effectively control their subsequent behavior(Zhang,2013)So,how to find a safe,convenient,and labor-saving way to improve individual self-control?Environmental psychologists Kaplan and Berman(2010)propose nature based on the attention restoration theory(Kaplan,1995)and the central role of attention in self-control(Englert,Zwemmer,Bertrams,& Oudejans,2015).As a restorative environment,the environment can improve individual self-control performance by restoring and supplementing attention to resources.Therefore,this study explores the impact of the natural environment on self-control based on a self-controlled power model(Baumeister et al.,2007)and a theory of attention recovery(Kaplan,1995).At the same time,based on the self-control classification framework(Zhang & Zhang,2017)and the sports classification system(Tian & Liu,1984),this study divides the self-control into two dimensions,not only from inhibition and persistence perspectives examines the impact of the natural environment on self-control,and explores the impact of the natural environment on self-control from a cognitive and sporting perspective.In summary,this paper uses a pre-experiment and four formal experiments to explore the improvement of the natural environment on inhibition and persistence self-control in cognitive and motor tasks.The pre-experiment is aimed at screening natural environment pictures and urban environment pictures.According to the Chinese version of the "Recovery Environmental Scale"(Ye,Zhang,& Wu,2010)and the criteria for selecting urban images in previous studies(Beute & de Kort,2014a;Tang et al.,2017),pre-experiment screening 25 pictures of the natural environment and 25 pictures of the urban environment provided intervention materials for subsequent restorative research.Experiment 1 was designed to examine the effects of the natural environment on inhibitory self-control in cognitive tasks.Sixty ordinary college students were selected,and the Stroop task was used to induce and detect ego-depletion.The independent variable was the intervention method and the dependent variable was self-control performance.The experimental procedure was to first complete the Stroop task of 4 blocks,and then the subjects were randomly divided into 3 groups for intervention,one group watched the natural picture,one group watched the urban picture,and one group performed the simple rest.Finally,1 block Stroop task were performed again.The results showed that after the intervention,the subjects who watched the natural picture group performed significantly better on the Stroop task than the other two groups,with a large effect size.Experiment 2 aimed to explore the impact of the natural environment on inhibitory self-control in sports tasks.Sixty ordinary college students were selected and the “nerve activation inverse reaction” task was innovatively used to induce and detect ego-depletion.The independent variable was the intervention method,and the dependent variable was self-control performance.The experimental procedure was basically the same as Experiment 1.The results showed that after the intervention,the subjects who watched the natural picture group performed significantly better on the nerve activation inverse reaction task than the other two groups.Experiment 3 aimed to explore the impact of the natural environment on persistent self-control in cognitive tasks.Sixty ordinary college students were selected and the unsolvable maze task was used to induce and detect ego-depletion.The independent variable was the intervention method and the dependent variable was self-control performance.The experimental procedure was basically the same as that of Experiment 1.The difference was that there was no time limit for the subjects to perform the unsolvable maze task after the intervention,and the requirement was to insist as long as possible.The results showed that after the intervention,the subjects who watched the natural picture group performed significantly better than the other two groups on the unsolvable maze task,with a large effect size.Experiment 4 aimed to explore the impact of the natural environment on persistent self-control in athletic tasks.69 ordinary college students were selected and the wall-sit task was used to induce and detect ego-depletion.The independent variable was the intervention method,and the dependent variable was self-control performance.The experimental procedure was basically the same as that of Experiment 1.The difference was that when the subject performed the wall-sit task each time,there was no specific time limit,and it is required to persist until exhaustion.The results showed that after the intervention,the subjects who watched the natural picture group performed significantly better on the wall-sit task than the other two groups,with a large effect size.The present study provided empirical support for attention restoration theory and offered a compensatory strategy for the rapid recovery of inhibitory self-control and persistent self-control.In this study,the intervention of viewing natural environments contributes to replenish the depletion of resources and improve the abilities of self-control not only for cognitive performance,but also for motor performance,which is convenient and labor-saving.This approach can be used to relieve the pressure and fatigue in many domains,such as competitive sports,military,medical treatment,rescue and education.