Designing an Experiment to Test Our Destressing Images

By Yiler Huang

Question: Are the images of nature more de-stressing than non-nature images?

Because people in the society are stressed, so we want to make imaages that are destresesing. We found out that many researchers said that images that have nature in content are more relaxing. In order to know if it is true, we will design a experiment. First, we need normal images as our control group (man-made object), and the nature images as the experimental group. We are going to find some volunteers and show them the images, and ask them how relaxing it feels when looking at the image from -5 to 5. -5 means the picture is very stressing, and 5 means the picture is very destressing. 0 means neutral.

Dependent: The score people give to the images

Independent: pictures of nature and artificial objects

Control: Same set of pictures, same testing environment

Control group: 3 pictures of artificial object

Experiment group: 3 images of nature

Hypothesis: Images from the nature world are more relaxing than ones that are not.

Prediction: If the pictures shown are the ones that contain things from mostly nature, then the test subjects will give higher scores

1. Independent variable
   1. The picture being shown to the subjects
   2. The order of pictures being shown
2. Measurements
   1. The score subjects give, from -5 ~ 5. 5 means very destressing, -5 means very stressing
3. Requirements for test subjects
   1. Must be older than 12, younger than 25
   2. Can't be color blind
   3. Can't be blind
   4. Can't have phsychological issues

1. prepare 3 nature pictures and 3 artificial pictures
2. find 20 people to test
3. show them the first artificial object image
4. ask them to score it
5. show them the first nature image
6. ask for their score
7. repeat step 2 ~ 5 till the subject scored all the images
8. calculate the average of the score for man-made pictures, and nature pictures
9. analyze the result