Expansion of Self-Boundaries Foster Humans’ Ecological Behaviors: Relationship Between Self-Transcendence and Connectedness to Nature

Abstract

Environmental sustainability is one of the major social issues discussed in the current scenario. Connectedness to nature is the key factor fosters humans’ ecological behaviors. Self-transcendence is the expansion of the self-boundaries through connectedness with the self, individual, environment and transcendent beings. The current study examines the relationship between self-transcendence and connectedness to nature. We hypothesized that self-transcendence significantly predicts connectedness to nature feelings of participants. To verify this hypothesis we conducted a survey among 102 participants in the age group 20 to 58 from the southern states of India. Selected tools were administered to the participants and obtained data was analyzed using Pearson’s correlation coefficient and linear regression. The results showed that self-transcendence significantly predicted the participants’ feelings of connectedness to nature.