Lifetime experience with (classic) psychedelics predicts pro-environmental behavior through an increase in nature relatedness

This survey study (n=1487) probed the association between experience with classic psychedelic substances and pro-environmental behavior using structural equation modeling. The conclusion found that the lifetime experience with psychedelics may indeed be a factor in people’s pro-environmental behavior by altering their self-construal in terms of an incorporation of the natural world, regardless of core personality traits or general proclivity to use mind-altering substances. This indicates the potentially positive effects on a societal level and also supports the beneficial effects of psychedelic use on mental health.

Abstract

“Introduction/Methods: In a large-scale (N = 1487) general population online study, we investigated the relationship between past experience with classic psychedelic substances (e.g. LSD, psilocybin, mescaline), nature relatedness, and ecological behavior (e.g. saving water, recycling).

Results: Using structural equation modeling we found that experience with classic psychedelics uniquely predicted self-reported engagement in pro-environmental behaviors, and that this relationship was statistically explained by people’s degree of self-identification with nature. Our model controlled for experiences with other classes of psychoactive substances (cannabis, dissociatives, empathogens, popular legal drugs) as well as common personality traits that usually predict drug consumption and/or nature relatedness (openness to experience, conscientiousness, conservatism).

Discussion: Although correlational in nature, results suggest that lifetime experience with psychedelics in particular may indeed contribute to people’s pro-environmental behavior by changing their self-construal in terms of an incorporation of the natural world, regardless of core personality traits or general propensity to consume mind-altering substances. Thereby, the present research adds to the contemporary literature on the beneficial effects of psychedelic substance use on mental wellbeing, hinting at a novel area for future research investigating their potentially positive effects on a societal level. Limitations of the present research and future directions are discussed.“

Authors: Matthias Forstmann & Christina Sagioglou

Summary

Although clinical research in the 1950s and 1960s hinted at the vast therapeutic potential of psychedelic substances, regulatory restrictions and sensationalized media coverage made human trials effectively impossible. As a result, research on the intricate effects of psychedelic substances on human cognition and behavior is still in its infancy.

Following a gradual political shift, psychedelic research has seen a resurgence in the last two decades. These studies have revealed that administration of psychedelics can considerably benefit psychotherapeutic interventions, including the treatment of anxiety, mood disorders, and addiction.

We found that people’s degree of self-identification with nature explained the relationship between past experience with classic psychedelic substances and their self-reported engagement in pro-environmental behaviors. This suggests that people’s self-construal in terms of an incorporation of the natural world may be changed by such experience.

Psychedelics’ mechanism of action

Psychedelics may enhance mental wellbeing by enhancing memory recall, decreasing mental time travel, and increasing suggestibility. They may also aid psychotherapeutic efficiency by decreasing cerebral blood flow in brain regions that serve as structural “hubs” for information transmission between different brain regions and as systems for cognitive integration and constraint of external stimuli.

In one of the rare cases of experimental research into the effects of psychedelics on healthy subjects, psilocybin reliably induced self-reported “mystical experiences” in hallucinogen-nave participants, who reported long-lasting positive changes in their attitudes about life, mood, (altruistic) social effects, general behavior, and life satisfaction. A follow-up study replicating these findings suggested that psilocybin administration produced dose-dependent persisting increases in life satisfaction, spirituality, and overall happiness. In particular, the mystical experience seems to have affected participants’ core personality traits.

A large-scale population survey found that psychedelic substances have a positive effect on mental well-being, manifesting in reduced psychological distress and suicidality. This effect cannot be fully explained by hedonistic experiences caused by these substances.

Psychedelics and nature

Psychedelics were found to decrease integrity within brain networks while increasing functional connectivity between different brain networks, which caused the lines between self and environment to blur.

According to a number of anecdotal reports, psychedelic experiences oftentimes manifest in a sense of connectedness with all living beings, certain plants and animals, or nature as whole.

The biophilia hypothesis argues that because humans evolved in the Savannah, they have an innate preference for natural environments. This preference may contribute to the intuitive appreciation of natural environments that many people anecdotally choose for psychedelic experiences.

Under the influence of psychedelics, people often report encounters with “earth souls”, mother nature, or spirits associated with the hallucinogenic plants themselves. These encounters may have unique cognitive and behavioral consequences for the person experiencing them.

Attributing a mind and feelings to an entity is a process commonly referred to as mind perception. An empathic connection with an entity is a prerequisite for considering it a moral patient, which is why some indigenous cultures engage in more pro-environmental behavior.

A study found that people who tended to anthropomorphize non-human entities were more likely to engage in pro-environmental behavior, and that this relationship was partially explained by empathic feelings towards nature.

Based on the indirect link between psychedelics and experiencing unity with one’s environment, we hypothesized that lifetime experience with classic psychedelics uniquely predicts nature relatedness and engagement in pro-environmental behavior.

There are two main reasons why observing the direct connection between humans and nature would be of great societal relevance: firstly, there are many benefits on the individual level, and secondly, behaviors aimed at the protection of our environment are crucial.

Variables included in theoretical model

We focused on four separate classes of substances when studying lifetime experiences with psychedelic substances.

Classic psychedelic substances are usually characterized by their action as 5-HT2A receptor agonists, and can cause a long list of somatic, perceptual, psychological, and hallucinatory symptoms. Ibogaine is a psychedelic tryptamine, but also acts as an NMDA receptor antagonist and weak -opioid receptor agonist.

Dissociative anesthetics include ketamine, dextromethorphan, PCP, and newer research chemicals such as methoxetamine. They can cause a detachment from one’s physical body and the external environment, and can cause a state of wildly dissociated experiences.

Empathogens are substances that increase emotional openness, empathy, and personal relatedness to other human beings. MDMA and MDA are prominent exemplars of empathogens, and are used in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Natural deliriants are anticholinergic tropane alkaloids found in plants such as datura, belladonna, mandrake, or henbane. They are frequently described as extremely unpleasant and consumption can have fatal consequences.

In addition to psychedelic substances, we included three personality traits and experience with two other classes of psychoactive substances.

Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the principal psychoactive compound found in cannabis, and synthetic variants of it. It is strongly associated with counterculture and liberal politics, both of which are positively related to pro-environmental behavior.

We included the three most-consumed legal psychoactive substances in the United States to assess the potential effect of psychedelics on nature relatedness.

Conscientiousness is one of the so-called “Big 5” personality traits and is negatively correlated with consumption of unhealthy or illegal substances, and positively associated with pro-environmental behavior and ecological concern.

The personality trait of openness to experience was found to be positively associated with non-conformity and positive attitude towards psychoactive drugs, as well as positive attitudes towards nature.

Political conservatism was found to be negatively correlated with recreational drug attitudes and pro-environmental behavior, and was thus expected to account for any effect we might find between those two constructs.

Nature relatedness is a stable personality trait that captures people’s ecological self-construal, and thus centers around their perceived connectedness with the natural world. It can be separated into three sub-dimensions, labeled NR-Self, NR-Perspective, and NR-Experience.

NR-Self is a dimension that represents people’s internalized identification with nature. It is expected to be primarily affected by experience with classic psychedelic substances.

The NR-Perspective sub-dimension captures people’s external, nature-related attitudes and behaviors, and is affected by experience with classic psychedelics to a lesser extent than the other two sub-dimensions.

The third sub-dimension of nature relatedness is NR-Experience, which is based on people’s affect-based attitudes towards actual nature-related experiences. It was expected that NR-Experience would be similarly affected by experience with classic psychedelic substances.

We used self-reported pro-environmental behavior as our main dependent variable and focused on 12 so-called “headline behaviors” that were established by the UK DEFRA (2008). These behaviors tap into four general areas of proenvironmental concern: domestic energy/water use, waste behavior, transport, and eco-friendly shopping.

A total of 1501 participants completed the study on Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk website, with a mean age of 35.77 years (SD = 11.88) and an age-range from 18 to 78.

Mechanical Turk is a crowdsourcing website that allows users to complete minor tasks, such as participating in a research survey, in exchange for small monetary incentives. The data collected by Mechanical Turk is oftentimes more representative of the US population than samples obtained through census-representative web panels.

Although the sample is self-selected, increased anonymity may foster more honest responding, especially when it comes to sensitive topics.

Participants completed a questionnaire assessing their lifetime experience with 30 psychoactive substances. They were asked to indicate how often they took each substance and whether they had ever taken it for recreational purposes.

Participants were asked to rate their relationship with nature on three unique dimensions and indicated their agreement with 21 statements using a scale ranging from 1 to 5.

Participants were asked how often they take 17 different environmental actions, and were rated from 1 (never), 2 (occasionally), 3 (often), and 4 (always).

Participants were asked to respond to the Ten-Item Personality Inventory, which consisted of 10 statements. They were asked to indicate their agreement with each statement using a Likert-type scale.

We assessed demographic variables such as age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, first language, highest level of education, self-assessed socio-economic status, general attitude towards psychoactive substances, and political orientation.

Results

26.9% of participants indicated previous experience with at least one classic psychedelic substance. This is substantially greater than the 13.6% found in the NSDUH study.

We modified our model in two noteworthy ways: we dropped the latent variable for natural deliriants and added covariation between indicator variables “other psychedelics” and “other dissociatives” and “other empathogens”. This improved model fit.

To reduce estimation errors, indicators for the three nature relatedness subscales were parceled once, and indicators for pro-environmental behavior were parceled twice. Full information maximum likelihood estimations were used to obtain model fit estimates.

All indicators significantly contributed to their respective latent variables, and the three subscales of nature relatedness significantly covaried with one another. In line with our main hypothesis, lifetime experience with classic drugs was positively related to openness to experience.

Psychedelic substances positively predicted two subscales of nature relatedness, suggesting that psychedelics have a unique effect on how people perceive themselves in relation to nature.

While none of the other substance classes significantly predicted any of the three nature relatedness subscales, three marginally significant regression paths emerged. These paths included one positive path for experience with classic psychedelics and two negative paths for experience with dissociative anesthetics.

The three nature relatedness subscales were significantly predicted by all three of our personality-related control variables, except for political conservatism, which was negatively related to all three subscales. The nature relatedness self dimension exclusively predicted pro-environmental behavior.

We tested whether lifetime experience with classic psychedelics would explain any direct effect of experience with psychedelics on pro-environmental behavior, and found no evidence for this.

We found that the effect of lifetime experience with classic psychedelics on pro-environmental behavior was partially accounted for by the extent to which people’s self-construal incorporates the natural world.

We used demographic covariates, personality variables, and a single overall NR-Score to predict nature relatedness and proenvironmental behavior. Classic psychedelics remained the only significant predictor of nature relatedness.

A linear relationship was found between lifetime experience with classic psychedelic substances and scores on two sub-dimensions of nature relatedness. NR-Self was the only dimension of nature relatedness that positively predicted self-reported engagement in proenvironmental behavior.

General discussion

A lifetime experience with psychedelic substances uniquely predicts self-reported nature relatedness, which in turn predicts self-reported engagement in pro-environmental behavior.

Our study did not gather causal evidence for the proposed link between the psychedelic experience and increased nature relatedness, and it is unknown whether people who feel greater nature relatedness have a greater propensity to take psychedelic drugs.

People who feel a stronger relatedness to nature are not more likely to take psychedelic substances, but show no greater affinity to take other classes of psychoactive substances. Furthermore, the relationship we found remained significant after controlling for demographic variables and personality traits.

Future research should focus on determining whether the effects reported here can be causally validated through experimental means, such as more elaborate within-subject designs based on longitudinal data.

Future research should investigate whether the settings in which psychedelics are consumed influence the degree to which they have an effect on people’s nature relatedness. In addition, the degree of experienced ego-dissolution may play a moderating role in the association between past experience with psychedelics and nature relatedness.

A second shortcoming of this study is that we were only able to assess participants’ self-reports of pro-environmental behavior. Therefore, it is possible that people who take classic psychedelic substances cultivate a certain lifestyle that views eco-friendly behavior as ideal behavior. Assessing true ecological behavior is an empirically daunting task. Future research is needed to investigate actual effects on ecological behavior in more detail.

The present research suggests that people’s perceived relationship with nature may be positively affected by experience with classic psychedelic substances. This in turn affects their everyday behavior, such as energy consumption, waste management, or shopping behavior. Recent research revealed a growing trend of society’s disconnection from nature, and a recent meta-analysis revealed a positive relationship between perceived nature relatedness and positive affect, vitality, and life satisfaction.

A potential increase in nature relatedness as a consequence of experience with psychedelics may constitute a second pathway by which psychedelics could exert their positive effects on mood and happiness.

Notes

Although empirical evidence is scarce, some research shows that 40% of adolescents consume illicit substances outdoors, partly to establish a connection with the natural world, and partly to avoid disruption by sober individuals or contact with law enforcement.