Examining the Effects of Nature and Animal Videos on Stress

Animals are often prohibited in public areas, which limit opportunities for people to experience improvements in well-being from their presence. Visual representations of animals, such as videos, may serve as an alternative intervention to the physical presence of live animals. University students, in particular, may benefit from virtual animal-assisted interventions, given that they report high rates of stress, and opportunities to interact with live animals at tertiary institutions are generally limited. This study recruited 200 participants from introductory psychology courses through a research participant pool at Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada. Following exposure to a mental arithmetic stressor that was 3 minutes in length, participants were randomly assigned to watch a 3-minute video that featured either a dog, puppy, nature, or blank screen. In light of previous research that found that infantile facial features elicit greater attention and positive affect among viewers compared with mature facial features, this study hypothesized that the video of the puppy would be the most effective at enhancing wellbeing. Data were collected through the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21), Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), Visual Analog Scale (VAS), and the Subjective Appraisal of Video Affects (SAVA). The results revealed that the puppy video produced significantly higher scores of happiness relative to the nature and control videos (F(8.54,557.94) = 3.29, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.05). Additionally, participants reported that the puppy video was significantly more effective at inducing relaxation compared with the control video (F(3,199) = 7.58, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.10). These results suggest that watching a video of a puppy can be useful to improve wellbeing among university students. This study offers novel contributions to the limited literature examining the impact of visual representations of infant animals on stress.