Stressed? Get a plant

Backed by research.

Apr 01, 2025

My fellow Americans, we are stressed, stressed, stressed. But, a study out of Japan has a solution.

At least, a partial solution.

Researchers at the University of Hyogo in Awaji, Japan had a theory: They thought that simply putting a small plant on office workers’ desks might improve their well-being and reduce their stress levels.

No need to hide the ball on this. Their study worked, they say.

But you have to take a look at the work environment that the employees worked in to realize just how significant the findings were.

Seriously, it sounds like these people worked in corporate hell:

None of the 63 employees in the study was in a management position.
They all worked in big, open office spaces — in a company described only as a “privately owned electric company.”
They had regimented schedules, and were required to be in the office each day: 9 to 12 p.m., then an hour for lunch, and then from 1 to 6 p.m.
Nobody had any real natural light. In fact, even those who worked near windows were made to keep the blinds drawn, in order “to block the sunlight” for some bizarre reason.

“Therefore, the participants whose desks were near a window did not have a window view,” the study said.

Even the way the participants were recruited for the study — “via interoffice e-mail,” with “[n]o incentives … offered” seems a little dystopian.

The fact that only 75 employees out of 1,500 volunteered for the program — where the pitch was basically, get a free plant — might tell you something else about morale. (Of the 75, a dozen were disqualified for various reasons.)

Then, there’s the study itself. There were two parts:

First, a one week control period, during which the workers were just told to go about their business as usual, to establish their stress baselines on a scale called the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), and
Second, four weeks in which the workers were given small desk plants, and told to take 3-minute breaks at their desks, in view of the plants, when they felt stress.

That was it — well, we should probably also mention that they had to take a short course on how to care for the plants, and to do things like take their own pulses.

The whole thing sounds like such a terrible environment to me — exactly what I was afraid I was getting into when I worked for one single day in the bureaucracy of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (and then quit).

And yet: It workedQ As the researchers wrote:

The STAI scores decreased significantly from pre- to post-intervention. The results did not differ significantly when we looked at the data within the age groups nor the different plant groups.
These results suggest that placing small plants chosen by the participants within close sight of them contributed to their psychological stress reduction regardless of their age or plants choice.

Honestly, the degree to which this helped might be surprising, but the fact that it did at all, isn’t.

Bottom line. If you want a friend in Washington, President Truman once said, get a dog.

But if you want to reduce stress: Get a plant.

7 other things worth knowing today

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen conceded on Monday that a court's decision to bar her from office for misuse of European funds ruled her out of the 2027 presidential election, adding she had no confidence in an appeal being heard before the vote. (Reuters)
President Trump pressed his case for global tariffs Monday by posting a list on social media of U.S. companies considering major domestic expansion plans, hours after threatening Russia and Iran with "secondary" tariffs and suggesting levies will help the U.S. auto industry "make a lot of money." Trump has repeatedly said he will announce details Wednesday. (USA Today)
A millennial who quit her tech job details the costs and challenges of making a career change to a self-employed baker. She said her past work meant living for the weekend, and she felt exhausted. It's a different story now. Even though she's not a morning person, she's excited to wake up and make pastries before the crack of dawn. (Business Insider)
Elon Musk gave out $1 million checks on Sunday to two Wisconsin voters, declaring them spokespeople for his political group, ahead of a Wisconsin Supreme Court election that the tech billionaire cast as critical to President Donald Trump’s agenda and “the future of civilization.” As Musk and groups he supports have spent more than $20 million to help conservative favorite Brad Schimel in Tuesday’s race, Musk himself has increasingly become the central issue of the contest. (Associated Press)
Adults can sleep with stuffed animals, too. It might even be a good thing, experts say. (CNN)
A new study of Einstein explores his search for spiritual meaning. (The Washington Post)
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has created a system for private aircraft owners to request that their registration information — including their name and address — be kept private. That may impact celebrity private jet trackers, which have used FAA registration information to identify jets belonging to the likes of Elon Musk and Taylor Swift. (The Verge)

Understandably by Bill Murphy Jr.

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