Happiness: The Concept Of Nature Contribution To Happiness And Happiness

In today’s world it seems that happiness eludes many of the people who search for it. The reason for this is that many of these people may not be looking for happiness in the right places. Many people today do not connect with nature and this may be why happiness eludes them. In this essay the concept of nature connectedness and how it contributes to happiness will be analyzed to determine and answer to the question, how does nature connectedness affect happiness. To answer this question, the first thing that must be made clear is, what is happiness? In this essay Happiness will be split into three different categories; positive affect, life satisfaction, and vitality. These three categories of happiness have been measured against each other

Capaldi, Raelyne L. Dopko, and John M. Zelenski to increase when people are more connected to nature. The analysis of the data compiled by these researchers shows that positive affect varies by 55.77%. (CITE THIS) This was then put through three different meta-analyses to determine what this means for different measures of nature connectedness. These measures included connectedness to nature, inclusion of nature in self, and nature relatedness. When the positive affect results were put through these analyses it was shown that positive affect increases across all measures that were studied. This shows that in all types of nature connectedness that were studied, positive affect is altered in a way that boosts the experience of positive emotions. This result could be due to evolution and the human history. Humans have evolved through thousands of years of living in the natural world. That being said, the return of a human to his natural environment could lead to an increase in positive affect. This could explain why this study showed that people were able to experience more positive emotions in nature than if they were

Of the three types of happiness, vitality was the most affected. In Colin A. Capaldi, Raelyne L. Dopko, and John M. Zelenski’s study it was observed that vitality was most closely associated with nature connectedness. This result stems from nature being viewed as a life source (CITE). Vitality is a measure of strength and activity. So if nature is viewed as something that invigorates people then vitality would be expected to increase in people who are more connected to nature than those who are not. The next question that must be answered is why is vitality affected by nature more than