The effect of visual and auditory coherence on judgments of tranquility to simulated nature experiences

Many contemporary work and home environments produce attentional fatigue. One way to recover from such attentional fatigue is to place oneself in environments that promote feelings of tranquility. One way to begin a systematic study of environment-tranquility relations is to frame the research within attention restoration theory (ART). Tranquility is an important experience of restoration and may be evoked by coherence. Coherence refers to environmental arrangements that are structured in such a way that a setting is easy to understand. Visual and auditory coherence can be nested within two emotional genres: one is -pastoral‖ and the other is -sublime.‖ It has been proposed that the level of perceived tranquility may vary according to combinations of different coherences. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the effect of visual and auditory coherence on judgments of tranquility to simulated nature experiences. Participants included 102 students at the University of Utah in summer 2012. Three hypotheses were established and tested using a 1 x 6 repeated measures design. Tranquility was measured using a 7-point 6-item tranquility indicator. Sublime and pastoral photographs of nature were combined with sublime music, pastoral music, and no music, yielding six conditions. Repeated-measures ANOVA yielded significant differences among different combinations of visual and auditory coherence. These results lend support to the notion that less sublime auditory - visual combinations provide tranquil experiences and serve a purpose for people who are seeking a particular natural environment to achieve restorative psychological outcomes. Even though the more sublime combinations garnered comments on increased excitement and enjoyment, this study found that individuals may want to seek out less arousing environments to optimize restorative benefits.