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Why People Harm the Environment Although They Try to Treat It Well: An Evolutionary-Cognitive Persp...
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00348/fullPerspective ARTICLE
Front. Psychol., 04 March 2019 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00348
Why People Harm the Environment Although They Try to Treat It Well: An Evolutionary-Cognitive Perspective on Climate Compensation
Anthropogenic climate changes stress the importance of understanding why people harm the environment despite their attempts to behave in climate friendly ways. This paper argues that one reason behind why people do this is that people apply heuristics, originally shaped to handle social exchange, on the issues of environmental impact. Reciprocity and balance in social relations have been fundamental to social cooperation, and thus to survival, and therefore the human brain has become specialized by natural selection to compute and seek this balance. When the same reasoning is applied to environment-related behaviors, people tend to think in terms of a balance between “environmentally friendly” and “harmful” behaviors, and to morally account for the average of these components rather than the sum. This balancing heuristic leads to compensatory green beliefs and negative footprint illusions—the misconceptions that “green” choices can compensate for unsustainable ones. “Eco-guilt” from imbalance in the moral environmental account may promote pro-environmental acts, but also acts that are seemingly pro-environmental but in reality more harmful than doing nothing at all. Strategies for handling problems caused by this cognitive insufficiency are discussed.
Introduction
The environmental impact of one’s own behavior is difficult to grasp, partly because issues related to climate change are perceived as psychologically distant (cf. Spence et al., 2012). When people try to act in environmentally friendly ways, they often in fact do further harm to the environment. They might purchase some extra groceries because the groceries are “eco-labeled”; think that they can justify taking the airplane abroad for vacation because they have been taking the bicycle to work; and think that they can skip recycling their waste because they started having meat-free Mondays. Entire economic systems have been built on the same principle. Companies, private persons, and even nations, trade carbon offsets within the European Union Emission Trading Scheme, whereby they compensate emission rates with financial means. Although interventions in developing countries create some climate gains from the system, the system may also license irresponsible behavior for people prepared to pay for it. Ideas associated with “climate compensation” (e.g., planting trees, trading emission rates or supporting green projects to compensate for environmentally harmful behavior) can hence be found in the context of both local and global decision making. The purpose of the present paper is to outline a theoretical perspective on the evolutionary basis of the psychology that underpins attempts to compensate for unsustainable behavior.
The Evolutionary Basis of Human Cognition
From an evolutionary psychology perspective, the mind can be seen as a collection of evolved adaptations; people think and behave the way they do because it has given them advantages in the process of natural selection. It is assumed that the human brain structure has been shaped by evolution, which in turn influences human cognition. One such example is hemispheric lateralization, whereby it is easier for most people to perceive speech that enters the right ear (Tervaniemi and Hugdahl, 2003).
The evolutionary perspective also assumes that evolution has shaped specific, recurring thought-patterns or mental heuristics within the human mind. A heuristic is a mental tool or guiding rule, designed to solve a specific goal (Gigerenzer, 2001). An example of such an adaptive heuristic is “availability” (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974); the tendency to think that an occurrence (e.g., a natural disaster) is more likely to happen when the memory of such an occurrence is easily accessible (as after recent reports of an earthquake on the news). Another example is “anchoring”; the tendency for estimates (e.g., of future global temperatures) to fall relatively close to available anchor points (e.g., a proposed future global temperature suggested by someone else; Joireman et al., 2010). Heuristics make information processing and decision-making fast, frugal and computationally inexpensive. They are also largely successful when applied to the type of problem they are supposed to solve. When the human brain confronts a task it is not well adapted to, however, it applies heuristics designed for other purposes. This mismatch often results in erroneous thinking (Gilovich et al., 2002), such as people being more likely to believe in global warming on hot days (Zaval et al., 2014).
…
Front. Psychol., 04 March 2019 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00348
Why People Harm the Environment Although They Try to Treat It Well: An Evolutionary-Cognitive Perspective on Climate Compensation
Anthropogenic climate changes stress the importance of understanding why people harm the environment despite their attempts to behave in climate friendly ways. This paper argues that one reason behind why people do this is that people apply heuristics, originally shaped to handle social exchange, on the issues of environmental impact. Reciprocity and balance in social relations have been fundamental to social cooperation, and thus to survival, and therefore the human brain has become specialized by natural selection to compute and seek this balance. When the same reasoning is applied to environment-related behaviors, people tend to think in terms of a balance between “environmentally friendly” and “harmful” behaviors, and to morally account for the average of these components rather than the sum. This balancing heuristic leads to compensatory green beliefs and negative footprint illusions—the misconceptions that “green” choices can compensate for unsustainable ones. “Eco-guilt” from imbalance in the moral environmental account may promote pro-environmental acts, but also acts that are seemingly pro-environmental but in reality more harmful than doing nothing at all. Strategies for handling problems caused by this cognitive insufficiency are discussed.
Introduction
The environmental impact of one’s own behavior is difficult to grasp, partly because issues related to climate change are perceived as psychologically distant (cf. Spence et al., 2012). When people try to act in environmentally friendly ways, they often in fact do further harm to the environment. They might purchase some extra groceries because the groceries are “eco-labeled”; think that they can justify taking the airplane abroad for vacation because they have been taking the bicycle to work; and think that they can skip recycling their waste because they started having meat-free Mondays. Entire economic systems have been built on the same principle. Companies, private persons, and even nations, trade carbon offsets within the European Union Emission Trading Scheme, whereby they compensate emission rates with financial means. Although interventions in developing countries create some climate gains from the system, the system may also license irresponsible behavior for people prepared to pay for it. Ideas associated with “climate compensation” (e.g., planting trees, trading emission rates or supporting green projects to compensate for environmentally harmful behavior) can hence be found in the context of both local and global decision making. The purpose of the present paper is to outline a theoretical perspective on the evolutionary basis of the psychology that underpins attempts to compensate for unsustainable behavior.
The Evolutionary Basis of Human Cognition
From an evolutionary psychology perspective, the mind can be seen as a collection of evolved adaptations; people think and behave the way they do because it has given them advantages in the process of natural selection. It is assumed that the human brain structure has been shaped by evolution, which in turn influences human cognition. One such example is hemispheric lateralization, whereby it is easier for most people to perceive speech that enters the right ear (Tervaniemi and Hugdahl, 2003).
The evolutionary perspective also assumes that evolution has shaped specific, recurring thought-patterns or mental heuristics within the human mind. A heuristic is a mental tool or guiding rule, designed to solve a specific goal (Gigerenzer, 2001). An example of such an adaptive heuristic is “availability” (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974); the tendency to think that an occurrence (e.g., a natural disaster) is more likely to happen when the memory of such an occurrence is easily accessible (as after recent reports of an earthquake on the news). Another example is “anchoring”; the tendency for estimates (e.g., of future global temperatures) to fall relatively close to available anchor points (e.g., a proposed future global temperature suggested by someone else; Joireman et al., 2010). Heuristics make information processing and decision-making fast, frugal and computationally inexpensive. They are also largely successful when applied to the type of problem they are supposed to solve. When the human brain confronts a task it is not well adapted to, however, it applies heuristics designed for other purposes. This mismatch often results in erroneous thinking (Gilovich et al., 2002), such as people being more likely to believe in global warming on hot days (Zaval et al., 2014).
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