A new study finds the sounds and sights of nature are associated with significant positive effects on mental health compared to loud, urban environments.

The study, by North Carolina State University researchers, compared the experience of hearing different types of sounds in natural and urban environments to determine their effects on the listeners’ emotions.

Study participants were asked to wear noise-cancelling headphones while sitting in either a reclaimed nature trail isolated from development or a busy urban area. The headphones would play either the sounds of traffic or birdsong, with both the location and soundtrack randomized for each participant to allow researchers to isolate the effects of both place and sound.

Participants were then asked to report changes in their levels of stress and how refreshed they felt after the experience, a metric called restorativeness. The effects of natural sights and sounds were immediately apparent, said Nils Peterson, a professor in the NC State College of Natural Resources and lead author of a paper on the study.

“For participants who were in a green space listening to the birds, there were significant effects. Positive emotions went up, negative emotions went down, stress went down, and perceptions of feeling restored went up more than any other combination,” Peterson said. “On the other hand, you had the complete opposite when participants in a gray, urban area listened to the sounds of cars, and more mixed reactions when the sounds and areas were mismatched.”

While the initial implication of these findings is that natural sounds and sights are good for mental health, Peterson said, they also show that urban environments might be made better by incorporating green spaces.

“When you have a really gray space that is going to stress people out and give them negative experiences, if you can change that space so that it has natural sounds, you can ameliorate the downsides of that gray space,” Peterson said. “In our research we have evidence for bird sounds, but there is also a lot of literature supporting the use of water sounds and other things in nature.”

The paper, “Both restored forest and birdsong promote psychological well-being,” is published in Environmental Conservation. Co-authors include Lincoln Larson, Trenton Ford, Payton DeMay, Faith Swartz, Jd Kluttz, Kushagra Meshram, Caitlin McDade, Hannah Desrochers, Aaron Hipp, Jackson Webb, Made Pratiwi, Eron Foy and Christian Burke of NC State.