Rainbows : Tiny Human Things

Why Are Rainbows So Good?

It’s hard to sum up exactly why we like rainbows so much. When Scenery Studios got in touch to chat with me for their podcast Tiny Human Things about what makes a rainbow so appealing, I realised what a tough question it actually is. As you'll hear in the episode, I talk about how we’re drawn to colour from birth, and explore a few theories that might help explain the universal appeal of rainbows. At the end of this post, I’ve included some further reading if you’re interested in digging into the research I mentioned, plus a little extra below about some of the ideas that I'm interested in with my own research.

Why is Nature Good For Us?

Attention Restoration Theory (ART) and Stress Reduction Theory (SRT) are two of the key theories that come up a lot for why spending time in nature might be good for us. Attention Restoration Theory suggests that natural environments help restore our ability to focus or our attentional resources by engaging our attention without effort, what they call “soft fascination.” Meanwhile, Stress Reduction Theory (Ulrich) argues that nature reduces stress through automatic, evolutionarily developed responses.

For both these theories, there's interesting questions about what happens if you're in environments which we haven't evolved for. Comparing a busy city vs the plains of the savannah for example, if our sensory systems find one type of environment 'easier' to process than another, is that somehow better for us? When in development does this benefit of nature start to kick in and why? These are the sort of questions my current research is interested in investigating.

Nature as Numbers

In my research we often boil down different environments into numbers. We look at how intense the colours are in a scene, how often patterns repeat, how many edges or contrasts there are, and how colour varies across a scene. These are what we call scene statistics or natural scene statistics. What’s surprising is how similar these numbers can be across very different-looking environments. Many people have heard of fractals, these are patterns that repeat at different scales. Natural environments tend to have a specific fractal dimension, meaning their patterns repeat in a mathematically consistent way as you zoom in and out.

We Line Up with Nature Without Even Realising

Our visual system often aligns with the natural world in ways we don’t consciously notice. For instance, people tend to prefer fractal patterns that match those found in nature. In terms of colour, our perception aligns with the way that colour varies in natural scenes for infants and adults. And although not always, many people tend to prefer images that align with this axis too. We're often tuned to the natural world without realising it, and that might be part of why looking at a rainbow can feel so right.

Here's some suggested reading for some of the other things I mentioned:

• On the power of infant synchrony : Cirelli, L. K., Wan, S. J., & Trainor, L. J. (2016). Social effects of movement synchrony: increased infant helpfulness only transfers to affiliates of synchronously moving partners. Infancy, 21(6), 807-821. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12140

• ASD and specific colour preferences: Ludlow, A. K., Heaton, P., Hill, E., & Franklin, A. (2014). Color obsessions and phobias in autism spectrum disorders: The case of JG. Neurocase, 20(3), 296-306.https://doi-org.sussex.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/13554794.2013.770880

• On the development of colour perception: Maule, J., Skelton, A. E., & Franklin, A. (2023). The development of color perception and cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 74(1), 87-111.https://doi-org.sussex.idm.oclc.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-032720-040512

• Talking about art: Igdalova, A., Nawaz, S., & Chamberlain, R. (2025). A view worth talking about: The influence of social interaction on aesthetic experience and well-being outcomes in the gallery. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/37794/1/AViewWorthTalkingAbout_GRO.pdf

• Breaking the rumination cycle : https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/break-the-cycle