The effect of instructions on scenic beauty ratings of riverscapes and the prediction of those ratings by environmental questionaires

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of instructions on scenic beauty ratings of riverscapes. 128 college student observers viewed and rated 200 slides of riverscapes for overall scenic beauty with a magnitude estimation scaling procedure. There were two groups of observers differing in the instructions each received. One group received biased instructions which emphasized the presence of industry while the other group received neutral instructions. The hypothesis that overall scenic beauty ratings would be lower for the biased instructional group was supported. Also, it was found that the Easy Living scale from the Leisure Activities Blank (McKechnie, 1975) interacting with the effects if the manipulation predicted these ratings.