Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

Chapter 6 discusses how physical environments influence internal dialogue and mental well-being. Kross begins with the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago, a massive public housing project built in 1963 that became notorious for crime and social problems. This setting became an unexpected laboratory for studying environmental psychology.

In the late 1990s, Ming Kuo, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, discovered that the random assignment of residents to apartments provided a natural experiment. Some apartments faced green spaces with trees and grass, while others overlooked concrete. Kuo’s research revealed that residents with views of nature demonstrated better attention, procrastinated less when making decisions, and approached challenges more positively than those without green views. The natural scenery appeared to function as “mental vitamins” that enhanced residents’ ability to manage stress.

Kuo’s findings built upon the work of Stephen and Rachel Kaplan, psychologists who developed attention restoration theory in the 1970s. The Kaplans distinguished between two types of attention: voluntary attention, which requires effort and becomes depleted, and involuntary attention, which is effortlessly engaged by intriguing stimuli. Nature, according to their theory, draws involuntary attention through “soft fascination”—subtle stimuli like trees, plants, and small animals that capture attention without demanding concentration.