For the love of nature: People who prefer natural versus synthetic drugs are higher in nature connectedness

摘要

Across cultures, people seem to have a strong default belief that natural entities are better, healthier, and safer than non-natural entities. While the majority of research has thus far primarily focused on the exploration of a naturalness bias in general, few studies have directly attempted to examine the relationship between individual differences and naturalness bias. Based on previous theory that the naturalness-is-better belief runs deep into our evolutionary history, we investigated whether individual differences in nature connectedness, the degree to which people feel close to and are identified with nature, are associated with people's natural drug preference. We conducted three studies (N = 524) using different populations in China (students and general population) and complementary measures of natural connectedness (the Connectedness to Nature Scale and Nature Relatedness scale). A consistent finding across the three studies was that individuals preferring natural versus synthetic drugs scored higher in nature connectedness. Furthermore, the results indicate that perceived safety may also play a role in predicting a cognitive bias for a natural drug. Taken together, our research highlights the importance of factoring into individual differences when investigating the natural-is-better bias in drug choices.