## 4 Discussion  
The present study demonstrated verbally reported and physiological emotional responses to virtual walks through six urban environments varying in median real estate price. Regarding objective startle reflex measures the contrast highest _versus_ lowest price category representing the conditions with the hypothesized maximum difference in affective valence revealed a strong effect and reached significance. Startle data correlated significantly with real estate price, which was in turn significantly correlated with ratings of valence, suggesting that real estate price was indeed a valid approximation of the affective quality of the presented areas. Simultaneous recordings of heart rate and skin conductance revealed no significant findings with respect to influences of different urban environments on these measures. It can be concluded that evaluation of urban environments does indeed have a strong affective component, detectable through a basic biological and phylogenetically old mechanism. Thisappears to be in line with the notion of an evolutionary developed system of preference for environments. An alternative attentional account of the startle modulation observed here cannot be completely ruled out although it seems unlikely as both verbal and physiological measures were not differentially affected by the urban areas, which might be expected had they engaged attention in different ways. The present study thus provides support for the hypothesis of affect guiding interaction with the environment by priming reflexes and behavior which match current affective states. Two issues remain open for future investigation: Firstly, the concrete variables causing the affective response are not elucidated in this study. Several of the above mentioned theories of environmental preference could potentially explain why some urban scenes resulted in more positive effect than others. Was it a particular combination of mystery, complexity, coherence and legibility displayed by the scenery, a prevalence of prospect and refugee elements, or did our subjects infer social characteristics of the areas from certain visual cues? Possibly more than one theory can explain the observed differences in affective responses, leaving open the question to which degree they contributed respectively. Figure 1: Mean relative startle amplitudes for all six areas with different median real estate prices per m\({}^{2}\). All means are calculated relative to their corresponding baselines. The lowest startle amplitude in the highest price condition differs significantly from the highest startle amplitude in the lowest price condition. This reflects the most positive emotional and motivational state while walking through the most expensive urban environment. Note that the second most expensive urban environment is associated with a higher startle amplitude than two cheaper urban environments. Secondly, it remains unclear whether the variables influencing verbally stated affective appraisal are the same as those determining changes in physiological state. Albeit verbal and physiological measures were roughly correlated in this study they actually could have been evoked by different sets of stimulus properties which incidentally co-occurred within any area. For instance, variables concerned with the informational content could have been effective in producing verbally reported liking while the perceived danger of being attacked inferred through the analysis of the social makeup could have mainly contributed to the alteration in physiology. In fact, the second highest real estate price area (area five) highlights potential differences between subjective rating and objective startle response (see Figures 1 and 2). While it was rated to be the second most pleasant area, startle modulation indicated that it evoked less positive affect than the much cheaper areas three and four (this pattern is identical for males and females suggesting that it is not caused by outliers or incidental fluctuations in the startle data).