Landscapes Have Distinct Emotion Profiles

Places fundamentally shape people’s experiences: Contact with natural environments compared to artificial ones elicits positive emotions and dampens negative emotions. In the current study, we examine the link between landscapes and emotions at a more granular level than done before, differentiating between different types of natural and artificial landscapes, as well as between different emotions. We tested how 19 different landscape types related to 17 different emotions that participants rated (48,943 datapoints, nested within 192 participants). While multilevel analyses supported a soft nature-artificial dichotomy, whereby predominantly natural landscapes elicited overall more positive and less negative emotions compared to artificial landscapes, landscapes varied in their emotion profile. Coastal landscapes and forests had a homogeneously positive emotion profile, and heavily built landscapes had a homogeneously negative emotion profile. Yet, other landscapes showed heterogeneity in the specific emotions they elicited. These findings demonstrate that the link between landscapes and emotions is more nuanced than previously established and offers detailed insight into the emotion profile of landscapes. These results can inform psychological theory and can help planners, policy makers, and mental health practitioners build human-centric spaces.