Birdsong and Forest Settings Reduce Student Stress at NC State

Mental health has been worsening across university campuses for years. By 2020, almost 60 percent of students said they faced some form of mental health difficulty, and the pandemic intensified that pressure.

Spending time in nature is among the remedies repeatedly found to help. Even brief exposure can reduce stress, improve mood and restore the attention depleted by everyday demands.

Two established theories help account for these effects. One suggests that natural environments reduce stress by soothing the body, while the other argues that they restore exhausted concentration by softly drawing attention away from internal demands.

A recent experiment aimed to disentangle two features that normally occur together outdoors. It posed a more precise question: for mental wellbeing, is the setting itself more important, or are the sounds within it?

A growing need for calm

The research was headed by Nils Peterson, a professor at North Carolina State University (NC State). His team investigated how much of nature’s benefit comes from what people see and how much comes from what they hear.

The issue is especially relevant in cities. Green space is limited in densely built areas, so identifying the most beneficial element could help direct scarce funding.

Birdwatching offered the researchers a useful way to explore the question. It is inexpensive, needs no specialist ability and, in its simplest form, relies on birdsong, which can reach places where trees cannot.

Birds are particularly suited to this role. They inhabit urban areas as readily as forests, meaning their songs can be heard by almost anyone nearby, including people on a concrete plaza.

Testing birdsong against stress

The deliberately straightforward study involved 106 students, each of whom spent time in two sharply contrasting locations on the Raleigh campus.

One site was a restored area of riverside woodland beside Rocky Branch, a waterway redesigned and replanted from 2002 to 2006. The other was a grey plaza outside a busy student union, surrounded by roads and buildings.

At both sites, the participants sat in a camp chair while wearing noise-cancelling headphones.

Through the headphones, they heard either 10 minutes of birdsong recorded in a Florida marsh or 10 minutes of traffic noise recorded at a busy Paris junction.

The researchers varied the order of locations and soundtracks for each participant. This enabled them to distinguish the effects of the visual setting from those of the sounds.

When birdsong beat traffic

Following every session, students assessed their stress levels and emotions. They also reported how restored they felt: in other words, the extent to which the setting appeared to refresh their minds and reduce strain.

The results showed a clear pattern. The woodland combined with birdsong generated the most positive mood, the lowest stress and the strongest feeling of restoration.

“For participants who were in a green space listening to the birds, there were significant effects,” Peterson said.

“Positive emotions went up, negative emotions went down, stress went down, and perceptions of feeling restored went up more than any other combination.”

“On the other hand, you had the complete opposite when participants in a gray, urban area listened to the sounds of cars, and more mixed reactions when the sounds and areas were mismatched.”

Why the forest mattered more

Both elements made a separate contribution. The mixed combinations – birdsong on the grey plaza or traffic noise among the trees – fell squarely between the two opposite outcomes.

For stress and immediate emotional responses, the soundtrack and surroundings were roughly equally influential. Birdsong reduced stress whether students were seated among trees or looking out at concrete.

Restoration produced a somewhat different result. The sense of mental renewal relied more on the woodland than on birdsong, although both increased it.

The questionnaire may partly explain this difference. Because its questions repeatedly referred to “place”, participants may have focused more on what they could see than on what they could hear.

Small green patches can help

This woodland was not an ancient, untouched forest. It was a relatively small tract of restored trees within a university campus.

That point is significant. A restored strip of woodland only two decades old produced the calming effect that researchers generally associate with mature forests.

Peterson sees a practical implication for bleak urban spaces. An unforgiving plaza could be made gentler without demolishing or rebuilding it.

“When you have a really gray space that is going to stress people out and give them negative experiences, if you can change that space so that it has natural sounds, you can ameliorate the downsides of that gray space,” Peterson said.

“In our research we have evidence for bird sounds, but there is also a lot of literature supporting the use of water sounds and other things in nature.”

Birdsong offers stress relief

The study design suggests a reassuringly low-cost option. The students required only the sound of birdlife, rather than the birds themselves.

There was no need for binoculars, field guides or a lengthy walk into woodland. Students needed only 10 minutes seated on a bench.

The forest itself was small and set within an active urban campus. This suggests that a suitably positioned seat and view in a city park could deliver similar benefits.

Its accessibility is the central promise. A recording and a handful of trees could introduce a measure of calm to a stressed urban block.

Bringing nature to more people

The key obstacle is equity. Green, bird-filled spaces are more often found in affluent neighbourhoods, meaning the mental health benefits may bypass those with the greatest need.

Students especially may have limited access to conventional mental health support. A readily available dose of nearby nature could reach some people whom clinics do not.

Restoring both trees and the birds that inhabit them could extend those benefits more broadly. Just 10 minutes and some birdsong required very little from the students who left feeling better.