Socio-Emotional Connections: The Heartbeat of Earth and Humanity
In this blog post, which is part of NORRAG’s “Social Emotional Learning and Pro-Environmental Behaviour” blog series, Anvi Anand reflects upon the importance of socio-emotional connection with the environment.
Have you ever taken a moment to ease your busy mind, pause your breath, and observe your surroundings with a clear perspective? That includes avoiding the tendency to check your phone every 5 minutes to connect with social media, and instead, reconnecting with nature, even just for a bit. The environment can do you good, and as a result, you can do well for Earth too.
Social media and the internet have become an inevitable part of people’s lives, with 9 in 10 U.S. adults reporting being online every day, according to a 2024 report from the Pew Research Center. Furthermore, urban communities continue to augment, projected to rise to 70% of the world’s population by 2050. These populations face prevalent issues of mood disorders, high stress levels, and anxiety, rooted in a common cause of the lack of connection to nature, or “eco-therapy”, in their daily lifestyles.
Forming deeper bonds with the environment has proven to have beneficial effects, cognitively improving one’s vitality and attentional functioning. A recent study conducted by Harvard’s School of Public Health and Stanford’s Nature Capital Project highlights that green spaces are a win-win situation, acting as a mental health solution for individuals while lowering temperatures and sequestering carbon in the process. On the other hand, there lies a reciprocal effect that benefits the Earth too: socio-emotional connection. Ultimately, humans who form social and emotional connections with their natural landscapes become more motivated towards conservation and environmental practices. Emotional investment in nature is often inspired by particular moments that strike our minds, such as observing wildlife in a national park from afar, hiking up a breathtaking summit, or seeing the harsh impact of wildfires firsthand. These experiences establish an empathetic drive that empowers sustainability much more than the inundation of scientific facts.
Scientists often use the “knowledge deficit model” to communicate science, and in this case, environmental issues, to the larger public. The core assumptions of this model are that the public is ignorant, and their defiance towards the respective science stems from their lack of knowledge; that communication is a one-way street from experts to people who need to fill their “knowledge gaps”; and that higher scientific knowledge will lead to a better attitude towards that science. However, these assumptions fail to value the experiences the public already has, such as a socio-emotional connection to nature that shapes their knowledge and values towards the Earth. Additionally, the “knowledge deficit model” has been proven ineffective in cases, seen in periodic surveys done in the US and UK, where there was little increase in public scientific literacy over decades. Thus, more information does not always correlate with higher acceptance of science. The flood of scientific facts can also have the opposite impact on humanity, belittling people to feel powerless to make a difference in such a “vast” issue, or cause comprehension struggles due to the amount of technical jargon and fact complexity.
Socio-emotional connection is an ongoing alternative we naturally do by holding personal relevance and values to experiences, something scientific facts lack in evoking. These connections validate a spectrum of emotions, such as anxiety at the thought of plastic trapped in marine life and serenity inspired by the sight of pristine glaciers, that genuinely drive the collective ecological passion we see in millions today. Environmentalists and eco-activists also apply these bonds in their work, sparking change through effective information and empathetic communication.
In essence, human nature is rooted in social and emotional bonds that subconsciously influence our mindset development. Though cognitive overload may seem the correct approach, its impact on humanity is limited—facts can go ignored, but true connections endure. The more you connect with Earth, the more it heals you and the more capable you become of healing it. So take a moment to embrace its beauty, and start that ripple effect.
The Author:
Anvi Anand is a junior at the Lawrenceville School and has been a passionate Eco Ambassador with Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Development for the past 3 years. She has focused on multiple Sustainable Development Goals and presented on topics of Climate Justice, Global Citizenship, and Microplastics in the Northeast at different platforms. Her interests fall in biotechnology and engineering, public health, and eco-activism. Anvi believes in starting the “butterfly effect” for the planet by taking small steps that lead to bigger outcomes, and hopes to achieve this goal through her future research.