When an individual is confronted with a stressful situation, his / her psychological arousal tends to increase. Psychological arousal is difficult to tap directly but can be indicated by any number of physiological responses in the peripheral nervous system (e.g., changes in skin conductance level and / or heart rate. This change in arousal can be labelled “task engagement” or “distress”, depending on whether it resulted in a positive or negative change in performance on some task. To contrast with stress, restoration is associated with a decrease in psychological arousal. For the present study, we measured changes in psychological arousal during navigation through an urban environment. Participants navigated through a virtual city from one explicit goal location to another with the option of pressing a button to make a compass visible for a limited amount of time. City parks (and other landmarks) were sparsely distributed throughout the city for all participants. Also, eye-tracking, skin conductance, and survey data were used for testing two specific hypotheses related to stress and restoration.