The Cognitive Psychology Of Climate Change

Download or read book The Cognitive Psychology of Climate Change written by Patrik Sörqvist and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change is one of society’s great challenges. The scientific community agrees that human activity is to a large degree responsible for these changes and efforts to promote more sustainable behaviors and lifestyles often backfire. People travel for longer distances when driving a vehicle that uses a ‘sustainable’ energy source; they purchase ‘organic’ food as a means to be environmentally friendly without necessarily reducing other means of consumption; and those who deliberately change their behavior to be more environmentally friendly in one area often start behaving environmentally irresponsibly in another. Environmentally harmful behavior and decision making often have their roots in cognitive biases and cognitive inabilities to properly understand climate change issues, to understand the effects of one's own behavior on the environment, and other means by which thinking and reasoning about climate change issues are biased.