Assessing Stress-Relief Effects of Indoor Plants Evoked by Visual and Olfactory Dual Sensory Stimuli
Date Issued
2009
Date
2009
Author(s)
Shen, Nydia Kuei-Feng
Abstract
Creating a relaxing indoor environment is helpful in dealing with stresses from life and work, and plants have been proven to improve indoor environmental quality and physical health. A number of studies have substantiated that flowers and foliage plants in an indoor environment generate psychological benefits, whether stress-relief effects of flower color, or evoked by different sensory stimulations have not been distinguished. This study is proposed to find out how different colors of roses and diluted rose odor influence anxiety perception in a indoor environment. he experiment included three interventions: a video of a unversity dormitory room as baseline (A phase), a French thriller movie clip to stimulate stress (B phase), and sensory stimuli: the same dormitory room decorated either with white roses, red roses, champagne roses, or no plants at all, along with ambient rose odor (C phase). The experiment adopted four measure tools, psychological scales such as Room Assessment Survey (RAS) for environment attractiveness, and a brief 8-items State Anxiety Inventory (SAI) for stress perception, physical responses of heart rate (HR) and forehead electromyogram (EMG) recorded all through the experiment, while only the three intervention periods have been clipped for analysis. total of 166 unversity students were divided into five test groups, either visual (white roses, T5), olfactory (rose odor, T4) or both stimuli (white roses + odor, T1; red roses + odor, T2; champagne roses + odor, T3), while each group has a sample pool from 29 to 39 Taiwan University graduate or undergraduage students. Graphic and statistical analysis includes paired-samples t-test, independent-samples t-test, one-way ANOVA, regression, and histograms. Findings suggest that both olfactory and visual stimuli decrease stress perception, while the later also increases environmental attractiveness. Different colors of roses against white walls may make impacts: all three colors plus rose odor significantly lower stress perception psychologically, while white roses and champagne roses better influence physical responses of HR or EMG. Environmental attractiveness is proven to significantly negatively correlate to state anxiety. Single or double stimuli have no significant difference on state anxiety, however, the latter may make more impact on physical responses. his study proves that either watching a picture of plants or inhaling plant fragrance in an indoor environment may relieve stress, while visual relaxation becomes effective because environmental attractiveness is increased. Color of rose cutflowers may generate stress-relief effects either by increasing environmental attractiveness, or by color on its own. Discussions and recommentions have been proposed regarding plant material selection, olfactory intervention, operation of biofeedback device, laboratory environment, and double sensory stimulus.
Subjects
Stress relief
roses
rose essential oil
state anxiety inventory (SAI)
room assessment survey (RAS)
environmental attractiveness
biofeedback
Type
thesis
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