A key shift is interest in mechanisms: which features of nature—sounds, light, movement, unpredictability—trigger calming or energizing emotional responses, and how long those effects last. Understanding these links lets clinicians, planners, and educators target interventions that support wellbeing and inclusion. This focus also reveals when nature contact might help some people more than others, and why the timing and dose of exposure matter.
If you care about designing places or programs that nurture resilience and belonging, the evolving science offers new tools and questions worth exploring. Follow the full article to see how researchers are connecting sensory details, social context, and measurable emotional change, and to imagine how those connections could expand opportunities for human growth and inclusion.
Nature contact has long been considered salutary. Recently, scientists from a variety of home disciplines have begun to systematically document these benefits through new assessment approaches and considerations of a wide range of negative and positive affective outcomes. They also have expanded the scale of their investigations, increasing their capacity to understand specifics about the characteristics, magnitude, and timing of effects. Although much remains to be learned about why these affective benefits occur, impressive progress has been made in identifying some of the mechanisms linking nature contact to human functioning. In this review, we focus specifically on mechanisms and outcomes related to affective functioning. We discuss emerging insights and highlight promising directions for future research in this rapidly evolving field.
