Nickie van der Wulp (1995-2001)
Out in the field, studying the characteristics of an oak, while totally chilled out and writing on rain-soaked paper, is just not what I enjoy doing. I simply disliked the poppycock about trees and plants during my MSc of forest and nature conservation. However, what I find fascinating is that some of my fellow students were thrilled by the field work and almost wetted their pants when seeing red list species. Then, there are more people like me, who like forest and nature, but don’t care much about single flowers and plants. Furthermore, there are real city-dwellers, who never visit natural parks, but initiate action groups to save the trees in their street. Taken together, nature affects people and I am intrigued about the different ways in which nature affects people.
In my second year of studying forest and nature conservation, I became aware of my joint interest for nature and psychology. Fortunately, it was well possible to organize my studies in such way that I could learn a lot about these two subjects. I chose to specialize in leisure and tourism and took all of the psychology courses that were being taught in Wageningen. The highlight of my MSc was my thesis, in which I conducted experimental, environmental, psychological research about the effects of natural versus urban areas on the recovery of stress.
This thesis was the bridge to my first job. Due to my experience in experimental research, I was accepted as research assistant at the department of Social Psychology at the Vrije Universiteit (VU), Amsterdam. It was my job to assist two researchers in experimental psychology. I programmed experiments on the computer and I collected and analyzed data. The experiments had nothing to do with forest or nature, but I learned a lot about social psychology. After one year I was ready to start my PhD project at the same department, which was a good opportunity to learn more about psychology.
The topic of my PhD project was about how people attend to negative objects compared to positive objects. For four years I conducted experiments with which I could measure attentive processes. For example, I designed an experiment in which student participants were instructed to read words in different words on the computer. They had to say aloud the color of the words as quickly as possible. I measured how much time participants needed to respond to the colors of the words. Data analyses showed that participants required more time to respond to the colors of negative words compared to positive words. This experiment led to the conclusion that people pay more attention to the meaning of negativity than to positivity.
Early this year, my PhD contract ended and I was offered a new job at Alterra, a research institute of Wageningen UR. In this job, I am involved in different projects about landscape appreciation. Now, I am able to combine my psychological research skills obtained at the VU with my knowledge about nature acquired during my MSc. For example, I design a questionnaire to be filled out by 3000 respondents, about how Dutch people appreciate their environment and what factors influence this appreciation. In this job, I like to cooperate with different colleagues and to learn a lot about diverse subjects.
I don’t know yet how long I will remain working at Alterra, or how my career will develop. Over the years I have become an experienced researcher with rather uncommon knowledge about the different ways in which nature affects people. Career wise I will be happy if in future times this highly interesting common ground of psychology and natural matters becomes a flourishing research area.