Nature Connectedness

Last reviewed 5 October 2026

What it is

Nature connectedness is a person's felt sense of being part of the natural world rather than standing outside it. Researchers use several names for closely related ideas: nature relatedness, connectedness to nature, inclusion of nature in self. Each comes with its own questionnaire, and the answer a person gives depends partly on which questionnaire asks.

Four instruments do most of the work. The Nature Relatedness Scale has 21 items covering identification with nature, contact with it, and attitudes toward protecting it. This description comes from the NR-6 paper [15], because the 2009 source paper [16] could not be read for this page. The scale's six-item short form, the NR-6, keeps four items about identification, spirituality and oneness with living things, plus two about liking wilderness and noticing wildlife [15]. The Connectedness to Nature Scale is titled as a measure of feeling in community with nature [17], and that paper could not be read either. The Inclusion of Nature in Self scale is a single picture item: seven pairs of circles labelled "me" and "nature", overlapping more and more, and the person picks the pair that fits [15]. The NR-6 paper credits it to Schultz [18], another source that was not accessible here. Most psychedelic studies below used the NR-6.

The short form has known weak spots. It has no reverse-scored items, so people who tend to agree with everything can inflate it, and it leaves out the attitude items of the long scale. Over one month its scores correlated at about 0.83 to 0.84 with themselves, and 0.64 to 0.75 with the single picture item [15]. Its links to well-being were modest, roughly 0.2 to 0.4 with positive mood and weaker with life satisfaction, while its links to environmental concern were stronger [15]. A meta-analysis of 30 samples (8,523 people), all using trait measures of nature connectedness, put the average link with happiness at r = 0.19 under a fixed-effect model and 0.18 under a random-effects model [19]. About two thirds of the samples came from Canada and the United States. That is a real but small association, measured at one moment, with no way to say which comes first.

Two more terms matter. A trait is how someone tends to be over months and years. A state is how they feel right now. The authors of the NR-6 call nature relatedness stable and trait-like, but add that it may not be fixed, and they cite work suggesting that even a brief look at nature scenes can lift it for a while [15]. That second point is a second-hand citation here. A score taken on a forest path and a score taken at a desk three weeks later are two different quantities.

Metanoia describes itself this way: "Metanoia is a California 501(c)(3) public charity advancing the science of natural psychedelics for personal growth and human flourishing in healthy adults. Not treating illness. Expanding potential." Nature connectedness sits among its twelve dimensions for three reasons. The sense of where the self ends is one of the things psychedelic experiences are reported to change. The dimension has a long drug-free research tradition, so an honest comparison is possible. And access to nature is also a setting variable. In an international expert consensus on how to report the setting of psychedelic trials, 46 of 89 experts named access to nature when asked to list the setting variables they thought most important, and it became one of the checklist items [27]. That is agreement on what to report, not causal evidence that the variable matters, and the same variable can be both an outcome and a context.

What is known

The short version. People who have used psychedelics, especially psilocybin, tend to score higher on nature relatedness than people who have not. Small prospective and uncontrolled studies report rises after a psychedelic experience, some lasting months. No randomized, placebo-controlled study in healthy adults has tested the question, the rises are small on a five-point scale, and the strongest observational study cannot separate the substance from the people who choose it or the places where they take it.

Surveys of people who have used psychedelics

The earliest evidence is cross-sectional, meaning a single snapshot. A 2017 internet survey of 893 people, with data collected in 2015, found that lifetime psychedelic use predicted higher nature relatedness after accounting for sex, age, education, cocaine and alcohol, as did the degree of ego dissolution in a person's most intense experience [5]. Ego dissolution, asked of 604 of the respondents, means a temporary loosening of the sense of self as separate from the surroundings. Cocaine use did not predict nature relatedness, and alcohol use predicted lower scores. The median NR-6 score was already 4.2 out of 5 in this self-selected sample, which skewed young, male and well educated. The design is cross-sectional, so it cannot show cause or direction. A second survey of 1,487 people in the general population used statistical modelling to suggest that psychedelic experience was linked to pro-environmental behaviour through a stronger sense of identification with nature [4]. The authors stress that the design is correlational, and only the abstract of that paper was read for this page.

The most detailed observational analysis pooled five datasets, 3,817 people in total [3]. The main analysis used the 1,289 who had tried psychedelics, so that the comparison was between people already willing to use them. Among those, only past psilocybin use predicted nature relatedness once other substances were taken into account (coefficient 0.10, p below 0.001). The authors then checked two cautious subgroups. Among 153 people who had used psilocybin and no other psychedelic, more frequent use went with higher scores. Among 96 who had used only LSD, it did not (coefficient 0.08, p = 0.31). When the whole sample was recoded to simple yes-or-no use, psilocybin stayed the strongest predictor, and the combined DMT and ayahuasca category remained a weaker one after correction for multiple tests.

Two points keep this from becoming a verdict on any compound. A Brazilian online survey of 283 people using the same NR-6 found a different pattern: current use of ayahuasca or DMT and of mushrooms, and past use of LSD, were each linked to higher scores, and once age, income and similar factors were added only ayahuasca or DMT use stayed significant [6]. The sample leaned toward university-educated, higher-income respondents, and the authors had no data on how long, how often or how much people had used. The authors of the five-dataset paper also checked one obvious explanation, that psilocybin might be taken more often outdoors or with the aim of feeling closer to nature. In the one sample that asked, reported access to nature was similar for psilocybin (34 percent), LSD (35 percent), ayahuasca (36 percent) and smoked DMT (25 percent), and the stated motive to feel closer to nature did not differ by substance. Mescaline stood out at 82 percent access to nature. The authors note that this rests on a single sample, that it asked only about the most recent experience, and that people may link a mushroom or a plant to the natural world without realising it.

Effect sizes in this literature are small. A pre-registered survey of 2,822 US adults looked at a neighbouring idea, attitudes toward animals. Lifetime classic psychedelic use was linked to slightly lower speciesism (beta -0.07) and slightly higher solidarity with animals (beta 0.04), and not at all to a wish to help animals. Ego dissolution in the most intense experience, asked only of the 613 respondents who had used a psychedelic, showed larger links (beta from 0.10 to 0.18 in size) [9].

Following people over time

The best-known prospective study recruited people online, through drug-related websites, who were planning to use a psychedelic soon [1]. Substances were psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, DMT, mescaline or iboga. Participants completed the NR-6 a week before, and again two and four weeks after. A subset answered at two years. The numbers shrink fast: 654 at baseline, 315 at two weeks, 212 at four weeks, and 64 at two years.

Baseline scores were already high, 4.01 on a five-point scale against 3.00 to 3.34 in the Canadian student samples the authors compared with. Scores rose to 4.13 at two weeks and 4.12 at four weeks (p = 0.027 and 0.024). That is a rise of about 0.1 point, and it moved together with a measure of well-being (r = 0.33 at four weeks). Among those who answered at two years, the mean was 4.38, but 47 of the 64 had taken part in at least one further psychedelic experience in the meantime, and the authors flag attrition bias and a possible ageing effect. They also note that the sample was mostly highly educated men, that recruitment selected for interest in psychedelics, and that dose, purity and place could not be verified.

What predicted the rise is less clear than the paper's abstract suggests. In the full sample, only ego dissolution predicted change, and the effect was modest (p = 0.014). Among participants who started below the sample average, ego dissolution weakened to a trend, and the perceived influence of natural surroundings, rated on a single 0 to 100 slider, also reached only trend level in the main model (p = 0.058). In a simpler correlation among those who reported having access to nature, the influence rating and the rise were related (r = 0.36, p = 0.007). The authors call the effect "state-mediated and context-dependent" in their title, which this review reads as a hypothesis the data lean toward, not a settled finding.

A smaller naturalistic study followed 54 people at a paid ayahuasca retreat centre in Costa Rica, with surveys a week before, a week after and a month after [7]. The analysis included 54 of the 77 who started, and there was no control group. Gratitude, nature relatedness and appreciation of nature all rose at both follow-ups. The link between that rise and the intensity of the experience is thinner than it first looks. At one week, none of the three experience measures (mystical-type experience, awe and ego dissolution) was significantly related to the change in nature relatedness. At one month, mystical-type experience (r = .29) and awe (r = .34) were, while ego dissolution (r = .26, p = .06) just missed the threshold. That is a difference in crossing a significance line, not in size, and the mystical-type and awe measures were themselves highly correlated (r = .86), so this study neither confirms nor rules out a role for ego dissolution. The number of ceremonies attended was unrelated to the change in gratitude, and the paper reports that test for gratitude only. The authors note that the retreat grounds and social ties may have contributed, and that people who take ayahuasca may expect to feel connected to nature.

Reviews pull some of this together. A 2025 review, read in abstract only, proposes that psychedelics may widen the sense of connection to the natural and the social world, and lists the obstacles to proving it: functional unblinding, reliance on self-report and small samples [10]. A 2025 validation study of a questionnaire for the weeks after psychedelic use, based on 1,323 users, ended with five factors, one of them relationship to nature [12]. That factor has four items and accounts for about 2 percent of the variance, and the questionnaire has no test-retest data. The item pool was built partly from existing scales, including a nature relatedness scale, so the factor exists in part by design. The comparison group was people who had used stimulants or opioids, not people with no drug experience. The study shows that the theme can be measured in users, not that the substance causes it.

Controlled and clinical studies

Only one small controlled comparison measured nature relatedness before and after psilocybin with a comparison group, and it was in a clinical population [2]. The study was open-label, so everyone knew who received what. Seven patients with treatment-resistant depression received psilocybin with psychological support, and seven untreated healthy adults served as a comparison. The NR-6 rose in patients from 3.67 at baseline to 4.14 a week later (p = 0.003, Hedges' g about 2.5) and stayed at 4.12 at 7 to 12 months (p = 0.021, g about 1.2). Several cautions apply. The scale was added late, so the follow-up sample was only six. The psychological support, and not only the drug, may account for some of the change. All treated patients were men, and the controls were mostly women. The two groups did not differ significantly from each other at any time point, so the case rests on within-group change. The authors call causal claims premature and ask for a double-blind trial with an active control.

A 2026 randomized study put the setting itself under test [8]. It was a secondary analysis of a pilot trial, and random assignment applied to the first of two psilocybin sessions only. Twenty adults with alcohol use disorder, a clinical group, took part in psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy. Ten were assigned a visual healing condition, which meant three nature videos: a 3-minute introduction, a 42-minute film right after dosing and a 15-minute film as the effects eased. The other ten had a standard setting with a guided body scan and music with eyeshades. Two weeks after the first psilocybin session, nature relatedness had risen in the video group (median change 0.33, p = 0.01) and not in the standard group (median change 0.00), and the difference between the groups was significant (p = 0.02). The medians behind that difference need care. After the session the median NR-6 score was the same in both groups, 4.33, and the video group had started lower (3.83 against 4.50), although that baseline gap was not itself significant (p = 0.27). Social connectedness did not differ between the groups. The two conditions differed in more than the video, including the music at the start of the session. The analysis made no correction for multiple comparisons, and participants could not be blinded because the consent form said a nature film was under study, so expectation may have played a part. At pilot scale, in a clinical group, this is a signal that a nature cue may shift the score. There was no arm without psilocybin, and the result says nothing about the substance itself.

In registered research, one ongoing trial is close to Metanoia's population. It randomizes 120 healthy adults with lower-than-average well-being to psilocybin or placebo in one of two predefined contexts, and its primary outcomes include a general connectedness scale [13]. Nature relatedness is not among its registered outcomes. A search of ClinicalTrials.gov on 1 October 2026 for nature relatedness or connectedness as a trial condition returned ten interventional records, none involving a psychedelic. That search would miss a trial that lists the scale only as a secondary outcome.

Does the place matter? Measuring in nature versus in a lab

Almost every result above was collected under conditions nobody controlled. In the online prospective study, participants chose where to take the substance and then reported on it from wherever they were [1]. The authors could not verify the real environment. In the clinical pilot, treatment happened in a decorated hospital dosing room with dim lighting and music [2], and the 2026 trial changed the setting, although its two conditions differed in more than the video [8].

There are two separate problems here. The first is that place can change the experience, and so possibly the outcome. The online study suggested a two-by-two design, crossing drug with setting, with forest walking or natural scenery added before or after dosing, and the registered set-and-setting trial uses that logic for context in general [13]. The second problem is the moment of measurement. If a questionnaire is answered outdoors, or soon after a nature cue, the answer reflects state as well as trait. A review of 28 studies that combined a nature-connection scale with physiological measures noted that studies treating connectedness as state-like found it rising after nature exposure [24]. The gain did not always last: in one forest-bathing study it had fallen back at a four-month follow-up. The review also found the studies too varied in method to compare directly, and most combined time in nature with physical activity. The one randomized psychedelic study measured two weeks after the session, long after the video [8]. Most others did not control the moment at all.

Who these studies describe

The observational and prospective studies describe adults who chose psychedelics, not a random draw of the population, and their own authors report baseline nature relatedness well above student norms [1] [3]. The authors label these samples general-population or healthy, but the papers read here do not describe diagnostic screening. The two controlled studies used clinical groups, one with depression and one with alcohol use disorder [2] [8]. A state-regulated program in Oregon shows how mixed real-world populations are. In a cohort of 346 clients, 64.5 percent sought services to treat mental health symptoms, and 48.0 percent listed connection with others, the Earth or nature among their reasons, though nature connectedness was not a reported outcome [14]. A wish to feel closer to nature is a common motive, and that reflects expectations as much as effects.

What is not known

The central question is whether a psychedelic changes nature connectedness in healthy adults beyond what expectation, setting and the intention to connect with nature already produce. No design that can answer it has been run. Several gaps follow.

Direction and cause are untested. People who feel close to nature may be drawn to psychedelics, to outdoor settings or to retreats. The prospective study began with people already well above student norms on the scale [1]. Expectancy is a related problem: psilocybin is widely associated with nature in popular culture, and a participant who expects to feel closer to the natural world may report it [3].

The compound question is unsettled. One analysis singles out psilocybin [3], another finds ayahuasca or DMT [6], and a retreat study found no link with ceremony counts [7]. Differences in samples, countries and measures could explain the split, and the evidence does not yet allow any claim about which compound does it best.

Durability is thinly documented. The best long-term figure comes from 64 people, most of whom used again [1]. The clinical pilot's 7 to 12 month result has six people in it [2]. Whether any rise lasts, or fades to the person's starting point, is open.

Behaviour is mostly missing. Nearly every outcome here is a questionnaire, and in the general literature nature relatedness correlated only modestly with self-reported nature contact [15]. In the psychedelic work, a behavioural follow-up is mostly suggested and rarely done, and the 2025 review asks for behavioural measures and active placebos [10].

Finally, the scales are imperfect. A ceiling effect, an unchecked acquiescence problem in the NR-6, and changes of about a tenth of a point on a five-point scale all leave room for doubt about what a statistically significant rise means to a person. Baseline scores were already high in the user samples, a median of 4.2 in one survey [5] and 4.01 in the prospective study [1]. A 2020 review suggested that follow-up studies use either the NR-6 or the longer Disposition to Connect with Nature scale, which it describes as psychometrically better and less prone to ceiling problems [11].

What Metanoia asks. Two kinds of measurement would help here. One is behavioral: on how many of the past 30 days a person spent 20 minutes or more outdoors, away from built surroundings. The other separates felt connection from plain time outdoors, for example by asking how often, over the same period, time outside passed without noticing anything around. Neither has been validated for this purpose, and they are given only to show what the research question looks like in practice. Access to nature should also be recorded as a setting variable and tested against the outcome, so that one variable does not stand in for both. The questions Metanoia wants answered are the ones above: in healthy adults, how large is any change, how long does it last, and how much belongs to the place and the expectation rather than to the substance.

How it compares with other routes

The comparison that fits this dimension best is with nature contact itself. It is the established, drug-free route, and the reason the construct exists.

Nature contact is associated with better health and well-being, though less is known about connectedness as an outcome. A cross-sectional study of 19,806 adults in England found that people who spent at least 120 minutes a week in nature were more likely to report good health (odds ratio 1.59 for 120 to 179 minutes) and high well-being (1.23) than people who spent none, and that less than 120 minutes showed no clear link [20]. Associations peaked between about 200 and 300 minutes. The authors say that this is a snapshot, that the 120-minute threshold could partly reflect how people round their answers, and that time in nature explained about one percent of the variance in unadjusted models. It also did not measure connectedness.

Experimental work on nature exposure mostly measures mood, not connectedness. In a small study of 38 healthy urban residents randomly assigned to a 90-minute solo walk in natural or urban surroundings, self-reported rumination, the tendency to dwell on negative thoughts about oneself, fell in the nature group (d = 0.34) and did not change in the urban group [21]. The difference between the two groups was not statistically significant (interaction p = 0.07), and the nature group had started with higher rumination scores. The study did not measure nature connectedness. A consensus paper by 26 authors summarizes agreement across the natural, social and health sciences on the benefits of nature experience for mental health [22]. Its authors write that it is less established whether the emotional changes translate into long-term health, and that little is known about how long the effects last. In its framework, a person's sense of connection to nature shapes how much benefit an experience delivers, and the paper does not treat it as a measured outcome.

A few trials do measure connection as an outcome. In a Brazilian randomized trial of 486 adults, both a multicomponent nature-based programme and classical forest bathing raised nature connection (p below 0.001), and the multicomponent version stayed higher at 30 days (p = 0.021) [23]. Only the abstract of that trial was read. That finding says time in nature raises the score, which is the comparison any psychedelic claim must beat. With no non-nature control, the size of the effect is unknown. A nature-based mindfulness course of three weekly sessions, four hours each, was tested in a non-randomized study of 56 intervention and 49 waiting-list adults, a self-selected group with prior interest in nature [25]. The authors used adapted scales for mindfulness in nature and emotional affinity with nature, not the NR-6 or the other scales described above. Both scores rose more in the course group than in the waiting group by the end of the course. Time spent in nature did not follow the same pattern: the difference between the groups after the course was not significant (p = 0.114). Time in nature was higher at the three-month follow-up than at the start, but only the course group was followed, so that comparison has no control group. Environmental behaviour rose in both groups with no difference between them. The paper reports 56 and 67 for the size of the course group in different places. In young children, a systematic review of nature-based early education covered 36 studies, nine of them (792 children aged 2 to 7) on connection to nature [26]. It found positive associations with nature relatedness, graded as very low certainty, while results on environmentally responsible behaviour were mixed. Of the 27 quantitative studies only two were of moderate quality and the rest were weak, and none followed children over time.

Magnitudes cannot be compared directly, because these trials used different scales and the abstract of the Brazilian trial reports significance and not effect sizes. The psychedelic data come from uncontrolled settings, and the nature data come mostly from different outcomes. Nobody has run the head-to-head test, and a combined design looks more plausible than a contest. One review argues that natural settings and psychedelics may reinforce each other, with nature supporting preparation and integration, and presents this as a proposal and not a finding [11].

For other routes, such as exercise, psychotherapy and formal education, this review did not read evidence with nature connectedness as the outcome, so it makes no comparison.

The book on all twelve dimensions   Back to the twelve dimensions