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Naturbewusstsein und Identität: Die Rolle von Selbstkonzepten und sozialen Identitäten und ihre Entwicklungspotenziale für Natur- und Umweltschutz
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Twenty-five years ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 1700 independent scientists, including the majority of living Nobel laureates in the sciences, penned the 1992 “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” (see supplemental file S1). These concerned professionals called on humankind to curtail environmental destruction and cautioned that “a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided.” In their manifesto, they showed that humans were on a collision course with the natural world. They expressed concern about current, impending, or potential damage on planet Earth involving ozone depletion, freshwater availability, marine life depletion, ocean dead zones, forest loss, biodiversity destruction, climate change, and continued human population growth. They proclaimed that fundamental changes were urgently needed to avoid the consequences our present course would bring.
The authors of the 1992 declaration feared that humanity was pushing Earth's ecosystems beyond their capacities to support the web of life. They described how we are fast approaching many of the limits of what the biosphere can tolerate without substantial and irreversible harm. The scientists pleaded that we stabilize the human population, describing how our large numbers—swelled by another 2 billion people since 1992, a 35 percent increase—exert stresses on Earth that can overwhelm other efforts to realize a sustainable future (Crist et al. 2017). They implored that we cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and phase out fossil fuels, reduce deforestation, and reverse the trend of collapsing biodiversity.
Increased attention has focused on methods to increase empathy, compassion, and prosocial behavior. Meditation practices have traditionally been used to cultivate prosocial outcomes, and recently investigations have sought to evaluate their efficacy for these outcomes. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of meditation for prosocial emotions and behavior. A literature search was conducted in PubMed, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Embase, and Cochrane databases (inception to April 2016) using the following search terms: mindfulness, meditation, mind-body therapies, tai chi, yoga, MBSR, MBCT, empathy, compassion, love, altruism, sympathy, or kindness. Randomized controlled trials in any population were included (26 studies with 1714 subjects). Most were conducted among healthy adults (n = 11) using compassion or loving kindness meditation (n = 18) over 8–12 weeks (n = 12) in a group format (n = 17). Most control groups were wait-list or no treatment (n = 15). Outcome measures included self-reported emotions (e.g., composite scores, validated measures) and observed behavioral outcomes (e.g., helping behavior in real-world and simulated settings). Many studies showed a low risk of bias. Results demonstrated small to medium effects of meditation on self-reported (SMD = .40, p < .001) and observable outcomes (SMD = .45, p < .001) and suggest psychosocial and neurophysiological mechanisms of action. Subgroup analyses also supported small to medium effects of meditation even when compared to active control groups. Clinicians and meditation teachers should be aware that meditation can improve positive prosocial emotions and behaviors.
Large-scale environmental crises are genuinely collective phenomena: they usually result from collective, rather than personal, behavior and how they are cognitively represented and appraised is determined by collectively shared interpretations (e.g., differing across ideological groups) and based on concern for collectives (e.g., humankind, future generations) rather than for individuals. Nevertheless, pro-environmental action has been primarily investigated as a personal decision-making process. We complement this research with a social identity perspective on pro-environmental action. Social identity is the human capacity to define the self in terms of “We” instead of “I”, enabling people to think and act as collectives, which should be crucial given personal insufficiency to appraise and effectively respond to environmental crises. We propose a Social Identity Model of Pro-Environmental Action (SIMPEA) of how social identity processes affect both appraisal of and behavioral responses to large-scale environmental crises. We review related and pertinent research providing initial evidence for the role of four social identity processes hypothesized in SIMPEA. Specifically, we propose that ingroup identification, ingroup norms and goals, and collective efficacy determine environmental appraisals as well as both private and public sphere environmental action. These processes are driven by personal and collective emotions and motivations that arise from environmental appraisal and operate on both a deliberate and automatic processing level. Finally, we discuss SIMPEA’s implications for the research agenda in environmental and social psychology and for interventions fostering pro-environmental action.
Mindfulness, derived from Buddhist origins, refers to deliberate, unbiased and openhearted awareness of perceptible experience in the present moment. With its focus on cultivation of benevolent and clear-headed values and actions to self, others and the world, as well as its possible value in fostering greater coherence between values, attitudes and behavior, the concept of mindfulness has most recently attracted the interest of scholars in sustainable consumption research. So far, however, research on the connection between mindfulness and sustainable consumption is scattered across different disciplines and lacks integration. This paper contributes to a consolidation of the field. Based on a systematic literature review (Ninitial sample=1,137 publications, Npreliminary sample=32, Nfinal sample=7), it represents a stocktaking exercise to evaluate the research methodologies used and findings reported in the emerging field of empirical research relating mindfulness to sustainable consumption. The focus of the review is on four potential mechanisms of mindfulness for sustainable consumption that have been postulated in seminal conceptual works in the field: to disrupt routines, to promote more congruence with regard to the attitude-behavior gap, to nurture non-materialistic values, to enhance well-being, and to foster pro-social behavior. Preliminary evidence suggests support for these assumed potentials. However, the review also reveals that there are serious methodological challenges and shortcomings in existing empirical approaches, namely with regard to definitional issues, the development and use of instruments, selection of samples, study designs and the inclusion of mediating or moderating variables. The paper concludes with a discussion of challenges and recommendations for future work in the field.
Understanding others’ feelings, intentions, and beliefs is a crucial social skill both for our personal lives and for meeting the challenges of a globalized world. Recent evidence suggests that the ability to represent and infer others’ mental states (Theory of Mind, ToM) can be enhanced by mental training in healthy adults. The present study investigated the role of training-induced understanding of oneself for the enhanced understanding of others. In a large-scale longitudinal study, two independent participant samples (N = 80 and N = 81) received a 3-month contemplative training. This training focused on perspective taking and was inspired by the Internal Family Systems model that conceives the self as being composed of a complex system of inner personality aspects. Specifically, participants practiced perspective taking on their own inner states by learning to identify and classify different inner personality parts. Results revealed that the degree to which participants improved their understanding of themselves—reflected in the number of different inner parts they could identify—predicted their improvements in high-level ToM performance over training. Especially the number of identified parts that were negatively valenced showed a strong relation with enhanced ToM capacities. This finding suggests a close link between getting better in understanding oneself and improvement in social intelligence.
Der Mensch ist als Teil der Natur im biologisch-materiellen Sinne an den Zustand der Natur gebunden. Ulrich Gebhard geht es um die psychische Seite dieses grundlegenden ökologischen Zusammenhangs und wie er sich auf die Entwicklung von Kindern auswirkt. Hierzu werden theoretische Annahmen ‒ vor allem der Psychoanalyse und der Umweltpsychologie ‒ entfaltet und vor diesem Hintergrund empirische Befunde und Beobachtungen ausgewertet. Neben der anschaulichen Darstellung, wie die äußere Natur ‒ Tiere, Pflanzen und Landschaften ‒ die innere Natur des Menschen beeinflusst und wie sich ein entsprechender Mangel ‒ ‚unwirtliche Städte‘ und ‚Umweltzerstörung‘ ‒ auswirken, werden ‚Naturerfahrung und Gesundheit‘, ‚Naturerfahrung und Umweltbewusstsein‘ und ‚Naturästhetik‘ thematisiert.
Die Zielgruppen
• Wissenschafterinnen und Wissenschaftler aus den Bereichen Pädagogik, Psychologie, Gesundheitsforschung und Fachdidaktik Biologie
• Akteure in der Natur- und Umweltbildung
• Lehrerinnen und Lehrer
Der Autor
Dr. Ulrich Gebhard war bis 2019 Professor am Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaft der Universität Hamburg und ist Psychoanalytiker für Kinder- und Jugendliche.
We have entered an age of disruption. Financial collapse, climate change, resource depletion, and a growing gap between rich and poor are but a few of the signs. Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer ask, why do we collectively create results nobody wants? Meeting the challenges of this century requires updating our economic logic and operating system from an obsolete “ego-system” focused entirely on the well-being of oneself to an eco-system awareness that emphasizes the well-being of the whole. Filled with real-world examples, this thought-provoking guide presents proven practices for building a new economy that is more resilient, intentional, inclusive, and aware.
The culture movement challenged the universality of the self-enhancement motive by proposing that the motive is pervasive in individualistic cultures (the West) but absent in collectivistic cultures (the East). The present research posited that Westerners and Easterners use different tactics to achieve the same goal: positive self-regard. Study 1 tested participants from differing cultural backgrounds (the United States vs. Japan), and Study 2 tested participants of differing self-construals (independent vs. interdependent). Americans and independents self-enhanced on individualistic attributes, whereas Japanese and interdependents self-enhanced on collectivistic attributes. Independents regarded individualistic attributes, whereas interdependents regarded collectivistic attributes, as personally important. Attribute importance mediated self-enhancement. Regardless of cultural background or self-construal, people self-enhance on personally important dimensions. Self-enhancement is a universal human motive.