Human emotional and psycho-physiological responses to plant color stimuli

Abstract

Studies have shown that plants have both physiological and psychological benefits for people. Such studies have investigated the value of plants or flower colors in human being, but they typically have not considered how the color might also influence eye movement, emotional status and brain activity of the individuals.This study focused on the relation between plant variegation and human psycho-physiological functioning. Twenty-nine undergraduate students (14 males and 15 females) participated in this study to measure their psycho-physiological responses to five different foliage colors of Hedera helix L. Each plant was presented for 60 s in no particular order. During the exposure time eye movements were recorded by eye mark recorder as well as 47 channels of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) were used to measure the brain activity in the frontal, temporal, parietal and occipital lobes. The participants were asked to describe their impressions towards each plant category on a five-point scale based on the semantic differential questionnaire (SD). The results showed that the participants pay less attention through eye movements for the common and ordinary colors. The cerebral blood flow (CBF) increment was correlated with the degree of attention settled by the participants to the visual. The results also revealed variant responses for each color in both eye movements and brain activity. Moreover each color correlated with some emotional responses, thereby each color is recommended for specific situations. The outcome may have some practical applications to the environment. The dark green