Abstract

This study examined whether the strategic placement of certain plants which provided acoustic quieting, could reduce the stress levels of participants in an acoustically noisy environment. Student participants were randomly assigned into a plant, synthetic plant, or no plant condition group and tested on two cognitive tasks. We hypothesized that participants in the loud environment with acoustically quieting plants will have lower levels of stress, as measured by heart rate, than those with a non-quieting, artificial plant, or no plants. Our results found no significant effect of the presence of live, synthetic, or no plants on participants’ heart rate during the cognitive tasks. While our study obtained non-significant results, there were noticeable trends, which were consistent with previous findings on the benefits of human-plant interactions. Further studies could help shed light on potential green methods for dealing with issues of noise and stress in the work place.

Advisor

Clayton, Susan

Department

Psychology

Disciplines

Environmental Studies | Social Psychology

Keywords

Environmental Psychology

Publication Date

2016

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

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© Copyright 2016 Bryan Smith