Abstract
There is growing evidence to support the notion that contact with nature is helpful for emotion, attention, mental fatigue, behavior, and health. This study adopts a quasi-experiment approach to investigate the effects of plants in a classroom on students’ psychology, physiology, and behavior. This study was a control series design, which covered a whole semester (from September 6 2004 to January 21 2005). Two classes of sophomores at a junior high school (8th grade, n = 76) served as the experiment and the control groups, which were surveyed about every other week for 10 times (4 pre-tests in the baseline phase and 6 post-tests in the manipulation phase). Results indicated that after the plants were placed in the classroom, the experiment group had immediately significantly stronger feelings of preference, comfortness, and friendliness, as compared to the control group. Also, the experiment group had significant fewer hours of sick leave and punishment records due to misbehavior than the control group. This suggests that plants in a classroom have positive influences on students’ health and behavior.
| Keywords: | preference; comfortness; friendliness; sick leave; misbehavior |
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