No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Environmental Effects on Beliefs
Abstract
Beliefs play a central role in our lives. They lie at the heart of what makes us human, they shape the organization and functioning of our minds, they define the boundaries of our culture, and they guide our motivation and behavior. Given their central importance, researchers across a number of disciplines have studied beliefs, leading to results and literatures that do not always interact. The Cognitive Science of Belief aims to integrate these disconnected lines of research to start a broader dialogue on the nature, role, and consequences of beliefs. It tackles timeless questions, as well as applications of beliefs that speak to current social issues. This multidisciplinary approach to beliefs will benefit graduate students and researchers in cognitive science, psychology, philosophy, political science, economics, and religious studies.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
A central question in behavioral and social sciences is understanding to what extent cultural traits are inherited from previous generations, transmitted from adjacent populations or produced in response to changes in socioeconomic and ecological conditions. As quantitative diachronic databases recording the evolution of cultural artifacts over many generations are becoming more common, there is a need for appropriate data-driven methods to approach this question. Here we present a new Bayesian method to infer the dynamics of cultural traits in a diachronic dataset. Our method called Evoked-Transmitted Cultural model (ETC) relies on fitting a latent-state model where a cultural trait is a latent variable which guides the production of the cultural artifacts observed in the database. The dynamics of this cultural trait may depend on the value of the cultural traits present in previous generations and in adjacent populations ( transmitted culture ) and/or on ecological factors ( evoked culture ). We show how ETC models can be fitted to quantitative diachronic or synchronic datasets, using the Expectation-Maximization algorithm, enabling estimating the relative contribution of vertical transmission, horizontal transmission and evoked component in shaping cultural traits. The method also allows to reconstruct the dynamics of cultural traits in different regions. We tested the performance of the method on synthetic data for two variants of the method (for binary or continuous traits). We found that both variants allow reliable estimates of parameters guiding cultural evolution, and that they outperform purely phylogenetic tools that ignore horizontal transmission and ecological factors. Overall, our method opens new possibilities to reconstruct how culture is shaped from quantitative data, with possible application in cultural history, cultural anthropology, archaeology, historical linguistics and behavioral ecology.
Air pollution is one of the primary concerns of our society for its effect on human health and the environment. Among the policy measures that can be put in place to limit air pollutant emissions, end-of-pipe technologies and/or regulatory instruments may be implemented through legislative acts. Also, equally important are behavioural measures, requiring citizens’ active involvement. The success of any measure to limit pollutant emissions requires the acceptance by the citizens that, in turn, implies a correct perception of the main pollutant emission drivers. We present here the comparison between the public perception of air pollution sources and the real-world situation through a survey carried out in seven European countries and involving 16 101 respondents. Our study shows a dramatic underestimation of the contribution of the agri-food sector to air pollution. This result is common to all respondents in the seven countries examined and only to a small extent depends on gender, age and socio-economic status of the respondents.
This article has two goals. First, to make explicit the theories of change currently operative within transitional justice and, second, to critically engage with both these theories, and dominant theories in international development. As such, it seeks to replace a focus on results, attribution, and linearity with a privileging of process, contribution and complexity. Developing theories of change for transitional justice is challenging, as it is characterised by diverse interventions, complex and contested contexts, and the need to balance principles and pragmatism. Normative, linear and mechanism-based claims remain dominant, while the evidence base for transitional justice is still weak. This article looks at insights from adjacent fields, some of the challenges facing the development of theories of change within transitional justice, and evidence from impact studies and evaluations. In a final section we propose an alternative, drawing on complexity theory and actor-oriented approaches, which suggest an important set of terms – systems, interaction, contingency, context, encounter, emergence, incrementalism – to inform what we term evaluation as understanding.
End-users base their consumption decisions not only on available budget and direct use value, but also on their social environment. The underlying social dynamics are particularly important in the case of consumer goods that implicate high future energy demand and are, hence, also key for climate mitigation. This paper investigates the impact of social factors, with a focus on 'status perceptions', on car and appliance ownerships by urban India households. Using two rounds of the household-level data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS, 2005 and 2012), we test for the impact of social factors in addition to economic, demographic, locational, and housing on ownership levels. Starting with factor analysis to categorise appliances by their latent characteristics, we then apply the bivariate ordered probit model to identify drivers of consumption among the urban households. We find that while income and household demographics are predominant drivers of car and appliance uptake, the household's perception of status, instrumented by a variable measuring expenditure on conspicuous consumption, emerges as a key social dimension influencing the uptake. The results indicate how households identify themselves in society influences their corresponding car and appliance consumption. A deeper understanding of status-based consumption is, therefore, essential to designing better demand-side solutions to low-carbon consumption.
In this essay, I examine the usage of the term “just-so story.” I attempt to show that just-so storytelling can be seen as an epistemic concept that, in various ways, tackles the epistemological and methodological problems relating to evolutionary explanations qua historical/narrative explanations. I identify two main, yet mutually exclusive, strategies of employing the concept of a just-so story: a negative strategy and a positive strategy. Subsequently, I argue that these strategies do not satisfactorily capture the core of the “original” meaning advanced by Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin at the end of the 1970s. I revisit the foundation(s) of their anti-adaptationist critique in order to reframe it as a critique of distinctive methodological manners and epistemic maxims related to historical inquiry. Last but not least, I suggest that contemporary evolutionary thinkers have two conceptually different options: they can either adhere to the “original” meaning of the term “just-so story” or accept that “just-so story” is a term equivalent to “implausible narrative explanation.”
That social desirability might be a confounder of people's survey responses regarding environmental actions has been discussed for a long time. To produce evidence for or against this assumption, we conducted meta-analyses of correlations between social desirability scales and self-reports of environmentally relevant behaviors, intentions, and (broadly defined) attitudes, based on data from 29 previously published papers. The pooled correlations with social desirability are generally small, ranging from 0.06 to 0.11 (0.08–0.13 when correcting for measurement error attenuation). However, our results do not lead to the conclusion that social desirability can be completely disregarded by environmental psychologists as a potential confounder. For example, we found evidence of substantial heterogeneity across studies, so the effect of social desirability may be more pronounced in specific cases. Continued attention to social desirability bias is needed to fully understand its possible subtle effects.
A survey of 620 Swiss households was conducted to investigate the determinants of purchases of organic fruits and vegetables and identify subjectively perceived requirements for more environmentally friendly and healthier food consumption. An integrative behavior model incorporating various psychological and socio-structural variables was applied to explain the ratio of organic vs. non-organic purchases. The theory of planned behavior was considered fundamental for the development of this integrative model, and supplementary variables were included, accounting for moral justifications, education level, income, and further aspects. The resulting model accounted for 42% of the variance of organic food consumption. Financial and environmental justifications for purchasing non-organic food resulted as the most important predictors, followed by recent consumption changes, health-related aspects of attitudes and social norms, perceived behavioral control, environmental values, income, and education level. The participants considered more knowledge and information and having more money at their disposal to be important requirements for achieving more environmentally friendly and healthier food consumption. Furthermore, they considered having more time to prepare meals oneself as particularly important to achieving healthier food consumption.
Protecting the environment is a social dilemma: environmental protection benefits everyone but is individually costly. We propose that protecting the environment is similar to other types of cooperation, in that environmentalism functions as a signal of one's willingness to cooperate with others. We test several novel predictions from this hypothesis. We used a mathematical model to show that environmentalism can indicate one's valuation of others and thus one's cooperative intent. We found support for this prediction in two online studies, and then conducted two laboratory studies to extend the idea that environmentalism signals one's willingness to cooperate. Participants donated more to an environmental charity when donations were public than when anonymous, but they donated the most when competing to be chosen by an observer for a subsequent cooperative game. In other words, people competed to donate more to the environment. Bigger donors benefited, as they were subsequently chosen more often and received more cooperation from their partners. Partners benefited from choosing environmental donors: bigger donors cooperated more with subsequent partners, such that environmental donations were reliably informative about participants' future cooperativeness. We compare multiple theories about why people behave environmentally (indirect reciprocity, signal of wealth, signal of cooperative intent), and find most support for our proposed theory of signaling cooperative intent. By understanding the function of environmental behaviour and stimulating competitive giving, we can increase people's support for environmental and other charitable causes.
Do politicians use the representativeness heuristic when making judgements, that is, when they appraise the likelihood or frequency of an outcome that is unknown or unknowable? Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts that facilitate judgements and decision making. Oftentimes, heuristics are useful, but they may also lead to systematic biases that can be detrimental for decision making in a representative democracy. Thus far, we lack experimental evidence on whether politicians use the representativeness heuristic. To contribute to and extend the existing literature, we develop and conduct a survey experiment with as main participants Dutch elected local politicians from the larger municipalities (n = 211). This survey experiment examines whether politician participants display two decision-making biases related to the representativeness heuristic: the conjunction error and scope neglect. We also run the experiment with a student sample (n = 260), mainly to validate the experimental design. Our findings show that politician participants neglect scope in one scenario and that they display the conjunction error in two of three scenarios. These results suggest that politician participants use the representativeness heuristic. Conversely, our third conjunction error scenario does not find evidence for politician participants displaying this bias. As we discuss in the article, the latter may be an artifact of our experimental design. Overall, our findings contribute fundamentally to our understanding of how politicians process information and how this influences their judgements and decision making.
I argue that theoretical developments in the study of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) should occur alongside progress in moral psychology, particularly moral cognition. More specifically, I argue that Universal Moral Grammar (UMG), a model positing an innate, regulative, and universal moral faculty characterizable in terms of rules and principles, fulfills the role of the foundational model needed to usefully conceptualize the UDHR. As such, I provide a detailed account of UMG against competing models in moral psychology. Furthermore, I combine UMG with Talbott’s Historical-Social Process of Moral Discovery and Rawls’s reflective equilibrium to show how the UDHR represents a major development in moral exploration, one indicating a more penetrative look into the inner moral nature of humans that attempts to reach, but does not attain, one interpretation of reflective equilibrium tied to cognitive moral psychology.
We review psychological research on global human identification and citizenship, Thomas Paine’s belief that “The world is my country, and all mankind are my brethren.” In turn, we review the theoretical foundations that guided our work, research with measures that preceded our own, and our own work with our correlated scales. We review its foundations, its effects upon attitudes and behaviors, and how it might be enlarged. Global human identification and citizenship is related negatively to ethnocentrism, authoritarianism, the social dominance orientation, and self‐centeredness, but positively to dispositional empathy and the values of universalism, care, and justice. It is expressed in attitudes and behaviors that support human rights and work to reduce global suffering and inequalities. It is associated with greater global knowledge and with efforts to acquire that knowledge. Childrearing that emphasizes cross‐cultural exposure and awareness of others’ suffering may promote global human identification and citizenship, as does education that encourages global mindedness. Environments that support global human identification also induce it, as does envisioning it as a moral ideal.
Recent evidence of an association between status and eco-friendly practices invites examination of environmental concern across social class. Analyzing interview data from 64 socioeconomically diverse residents of Washington state, we observe variation in orientation to the environment across social class. High-status participants embody an eco-habitus—a sense that being “green” is good and also achievable. Lower-status participants express “eco-powerlessness”—fear and uncertainty in the face of environmental issues and a sense that one’s daily actions have little bearing on broader issues. We suggest that, among our participants, existing measures of environmental concern capture variation in their alignment with high-status preferences for environmental actions and in self-evaluations of their role in mitigating environmental problems. Our research contributes to a more culturally nuanced understanding of environmental concern by using qualitative data to explicate the association between social class and perceived self-efficacy to enact socioecological change in an era of consumer-based solutions to ecological crises.
As in many nations, air pollution linked to rapid industrialization is a public health and environmental concern in Malaysia, especially in cities. Understanding awareness of air pollution and support for environmental protection from the general public is essential for informing governmental approaches to dealing with this problem. This study presents a cross-sectional survey conducted in the Klang Valley and Iskandar conurbations to examine urban Malaysians’ perception, awareness and opinions of air pollution. The survey was conducted in two languages, English and Malay, and administered through the online survey research software, Qualtrics. The survey consisted of three sections, where we collected sociodemographic information, information on the public perception of air quality and the causes of air pollution, information on public awareness of air pollution and its related impacts, and information on attitudes towards environmental protection. Of 214 respondents, over 60% were positive towards the air quality at both study sites despite the presence of harmful levels of air pollution. The air in the Klang Valley was perceived to be slightly more polluted and causing greater health issues. Overall, the majority of respondents were aware that motor vehicles represent the primary pollution source, yet private transport was still the preferred choice of transportation mode. A generally positive approach towards environmental protection emerged from the data. However, participants showed stronger agreement with protection actions that do not involve individual effort. Nonetheless, we found that certain segments of the sample (people owning more than three vehicles per household and those with relatives who suffered from respiratory diseases) were significantly more willing to personally pay for environmental protection compared to others. Implications point to the need for actions for spreading awareness of air pollution to the overall population, especially with regards to its health risks, as well as strategies for increasing the perception of behavioural control, especially with regards to motor vehicles’ usage.
Investigating the bases of inter-individual differences in risk-taking is necessary to refine our cognitive and neural models of decision-making and to ultimately counter risky behaviors in real-life policy settings. However, recent evidence suggests that behavioral tasks fare poorly compared to standard questionnaires to measure individual differences in risk-taking. Crucially, using model-based measures of risk taking does not seem to improve reliability. Here, we put forward two possible – not mutually exclusive – explanations for these results and suggest future avenues of research to improve the assessment of inter-individual differences in risk-taking by combining repeated online testing and mechanistic computational models.
Food production is a major cause of energy use and GHG emissions, and therefore diet change is an important behavioural strategy for reducing associated environmental impacts. However, a severe obstacle to diet change may be consumers’ underestimation of the environmental impacts of different types of food. Here we show that energy consumption and GHG emission estimates are significantly underestimated for foods, suggesting a possible blind spot suitable for intervention. In a second study, we find that providing consumers with information regarding the GHG emissions associated with the life cycle of food, presented in terms of a familiar reference unit (light-bulb minutes), shifts their actual purchase choices away from higher-emission options. Thus, although consumers’ poor understanding of the food system is a barrier to reducing energy use and GHG emissions, it also represents a promising area for simple interventions such as a well-designed carbon label.
Inconsistency between the expressed support for resource-conservation ideas and behaviours has emphasised the need to develop a better understanding of the psychosocial processes through which formal laws (reified universe) also become informal norms (consensual universe). Experimental paradigms of the sociocognitive approach to social norms are able to assess if cultural change fostered by the legal/reified universe have been incorporated by society to the level of influencing, and being expected, in interpersonal communications. This article proposes to combine elements from the social representations theory and the sociocognitive approach to social norms in a diagnose proposal for cultural change (appropriation and consensualisation dimensions). Through a self-presentation paradigm, results of Study 1 show that conservation beliefs and behaviours are indeed used in interpersonal contexts in order to be well-seen; yet this informal valorisation is context-dependant. In Study 2 a hetero-evaluation paradigm was used. Results show that conservation beliefs are socially valued and crucial for people to be positively seen (appropriation). Yet the expression of conservation behaviours is not required (consensualisation). Overall, these results show that conservation beliefs and behaviours have become informal norms in Portugal. Still, this valorisation is not yet homogeneous; it partially tolerates belief-behaviour inconsistency, a typical dynamic of emancipated representations.
This field experiment increased the frequency of curbside recycling among community residents using feedback interventions that targeted personal and social norms. My team of researchers observed curbside recycling behaviors of 605 residents of single-family dwellings for 17 weeks. Groups of contiguous houses were randomly assigned to 1 of 5 experimental conditions: plea, plea plus information, plea plus neighborhood feedback, plea plus individual household feedback, or the control condition. Interventions were implemented using door hangers delivered to each household over a 4-week period. Results showed significant increases from baseline in the frequency of participation and total amount of recycled material for the individual (i.e., personal norm) and the group feedback (i.e., descriptive norm) interventions. None of the interventions altered the amount of contamination observed. These findings are interpreted as consistent with recent research on personal and social norms and suggest a link between behavior change produced through norm activation and behavior change produced through feedback. Implications for research and public policy are discussed.
The UK needs to accelerate action to achieve its 80 per cent carbon reduction target by 2050 as it is otherwise in danger of lagging behind. A much discussed question in this context is whether voluntary behaviour change initiatives can make a significant contribution to reaching this target.
While providing individuals with general information on climate change or low carbon action is increasingly seen as ineffective, some studies argue that personalised information has greater potential to encourage behaviour change. This mixed methods study examines this claim through a longitudinal field experiment which tested the effectiveness of a carbon calculator interview. It finds that the intervention significantly raised awareness of ways in which participants could reduce their carbon footprint. However, this increased awareness did not translate into measurable behaviour changes in relation to home energy and travel. Qualitative analysis shows that participants refer to infrastructural, social and psychological barriers to change. This indicates that more ambitious government and corporate action is required to speed up carbon reduction.
Examining the regional distribution of 15 different Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Practices (MPs) across Australia, we study the tendency for consumers to imitate visible pro-environmental behaviour in their local region. While there is a great deal of variation in the specific type of MPs adopted by consumers located in the same region, ANOVA results suggest that they tend to adopt a similar number of MPs as their neighbours. Using discrete choice modelling, our results suggest that this is due to the peer adoption of certain visible MPs, such as using public transport or car-pooling, encouraging agents to adopt other types of visible MPs. However, the character of this spillover is limited in that visible pro-environmental behaviour does not appear to influence the adoption of non-visible MPs. We also find that social imitation patterns help individuals overcome the observed gap between their stated concern about climate change and their propensity to act on this concern, known as the climate 'value-action' gap. Policy implications are discussed.
In this paper I look at belief and degrees of belief through the lens of inquiry. I argue that belief and degrees of belief play different roles in inquiry. In particular I argue that belief is a “settling” attitude in a way that degrees of belief are not. Along the way I say more about what inquiring amounts to, argue for a central norm of inquiry connecting inquiry and belief and say more about just what it means to have an inquiry or question settled.
Since the industrial revolution in the 1800s, plastic pollution is becoming a global reality. This study aims to assess knowledge and attitude about plastic pollution among secondary school students in Sharjah city, United Arab Emirates. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 400 students in 6 different secondary schools in Sharjah city. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed through probability stratified random sampling method between February and April 2016. Majority of the population understands how harmful plastic wastes are to the environment (85.5%). However, the students' mean knowledge score was 53%, with females (P < 0.01), grades 11 and 12 (P = 0.024), and students whose mothers were more educated (P = 0.014) being more knowledgeable and inclined towards pro-environmental behavior. Yet, all students showed tendency to be involved in the fighting against this dilemma. Strategies which address deficiencies, provide incentives for change, and assure governmental support along with environmental education are needed to bridge the information gap and enhance opportunities to adopt pro-environmental behaviors.
Dehumanization concerns the denial of others’ human uniqueness (animalistic dehumanization) or human nature (mechanistic dehumanization). Imagined intergroup contact has been suggested to be an effective technique for reducing dehumanization. We examined whether this intervention might primarily work by increasing the type of humanness the group specifically lacks. Study 1 revealed that after imagining contact with an animalized outgroup (i.e., Gypsy people), participants attributed higher levels of human uniqueness. Study 2 replicated this finding, eliminating improved intergroup attitudes as an alternative explanation. Further, it demonstrated that imagined contact increased support for human rights, and that this was mediated by increased adscription of human uniqueness. Study 3 confirmed previous evidence by showing that after imagining contact with a mechanized outgroup (i.e., Japanese people), participants attributed higher levels of human nature that explains support for human rights. Overall, imagined contact specifically works at increasing the type of humanness the group is typically denied.
In an earlier issue, I argue (2014) that psychology and epistemology should distinguish religious credence from factual belief. These are distinct cognitive attitudes. Levy (2017) rejects this distinction, arguing that both religious and factual “beliefs” are subject to “shifting” on the basis of fluency and “intuitiveness.” Levy’s theory, however, (1) is out of keeping with much research in cognitive science of religion and (2) misrepresents the notion of factual belief employed in my theory. So his claims don’t undermine my distinction. I conclude by suggesting some approaches to empirically testing our views.
Effective climate change mitigation is a social dilemma: the benefits are shared collectively but the costs are often private. To solve this dilemma, we argue that we must pay close attention to the nature and workings of human cooperation. We review three social cognition mechanisms that regulate cooperation: norm detection, reputation management and fairness computation. We show that each of these cognitive mechanisms can stand in the way of pro-environmental behaviours and limit the impact of environmental policies. At the same time, the very same mechanisms can be leveraged as powerful solutions for an effective climate change mitigation. Human cooperation, which is essential for climate action, is shaped by the social cognition of individuals. This Review examines three mechanisms that play an important role in discouraging pro-environmental behaviours, but which can also provide effective solutions for collective action.
While the economic case for carbon pricing is compelling, public support for it remains low. Using a stated-choice experiment with a sample of 6000 German household heads, we examine how their fairness preferences influence support for carbon taxes under different revenue uses. We find that respondents who prefer green spending are more likely to support a carbon tax, but the support diminishes considerably for higher tax rates – in contrast to respondents who support social cushioning. When restricted to options for direct revenue redistribution, Germans prefer lump-sum payments over directing payments to the poorest or the most affected. Preferences over these options depend both on genuinely different concepts of fairness and economic circumstances. Our findings have implications for advancing carbon pricing, as its support can be increased substantially when designed according to citizens' fairness preferences.
Belief storage is often modeled as having the structure of a single, unified web. This model of belief storage is attractive and widely assumed because it appears to provide an explanation of the flexibility of cognition and the complicated dynamics of belief revision. However, when one scrutinizes human cognition, one finds strong evidence against a unified web of belief and for a fragmented model of belief storage. This chapter uses the best available evidence from cognitive science to develop this fragmented model into a nascent theory of the cognitive architecture of belief storage.
With the continuous growth of the global population and the increasing demand for natural resources, ecological resource scarcity has become a global issue that cannot be ignored. However, little is known about individuals' environment-related responses to ecological resource scarcity. Will people save resources for the future or consume them for immediate interests when resources become scarce? Drawing on the life history theory and construal level theory, we propose that individuals' environment-related responses to ecological resource scarcity depend on levels of future orientation. Analyses of multilevel data from 30 countries found that only in highly future-oriented countries could objective ecological resource scarcity positively predict individuals’ daily pro-environmental behaviors (Study 1). Two subsequent studies at the individual level again established the moderating effect of future orientation on the link between perceived ecological resource scarcity and pro-environmental behaviors (Studies 2 & 3), and the causal effect was also clarified (Study 3). Specifically, only for future-oriented people, perceived ecological resource scarcity or reminders of it could positively promote pro-environmental behaviors. We further verified the moderation hypothesis with water-saving posters to explore potential practical implications, i.e., whether the poster with water shortage information would have an effective promotional effect only when information about “concern for the future” is presented (Study 4). We concluded with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of the research findings.
The empirical study of belief is emerging at a rapid clip, uniting work from all corners of cognitive science. Reliance on belief in understanding and predicting behavior is widespread. Examples can be found, inter alia, in the placebo, attribution theory, theory of mind, and comparative psychological literatures. Research on belief also provides evidence for robust generalizations, including about how we fix, store, and change our beliefs. Evidence supports the existence of a Spinozan system of belief fixation: one that is automatic and independent of belief rejection. Independent research supports the existence of a system of fragmented belief storage: one that relies on large numbers of causally isolated, context‐sensitive stores of belief in memory. Finally, empirical and observational data support at least two systems of belief change. One system adheres, mostly, to epistemological norms of updating; the other, the psychological immune system, functions to guard our most centrally held beliefs from potential inconsistency with newly formed beliefs. Refining our understanding of these systems can shed light on pressing real‐world issues, such as how fake news, propaganda, and brainwashing exploit our psychology of belief, and how best to construct our modern informational world.
This article is categorized under:
• Psychology > Reasoning and Decision Making
• Philosophy > Knowledge and Belief
• Philosophy > Foundations of Cognitive Science
While a major aim of cognitive science is to understand human cognition, our conclusions are based on unrepresentative samples of the world’s population. A new wave of cross-cultural cognitive science has sought to remedy this with studies that are increasing in scope, scale, and visibility. Here, I review the state of this new wave of research. The portrait of human cognition that emerges is one of variations on a theme, with species-typical capacities shaped by culture and individual experience. The new wave has expanded our understanding of processes underlying human variation and cumulative cultural change, including mechanisms of social learning and cultural transmission. Less consensus has been reached, however, on the cognitive foundations of human nature. The promise of cross-cultural cognitive science will not be fully realized unless we continue to be more inclusive of the world’s populations and strive for a more complete cognitive portrait of our species.
By using an environmentally extended multi-regional input-output model, this paper analyses the Spanish households’ carbon footprint for the 2008–2017 period considering the municipality size as well as the urban or rural residential zone where families live. Results show that, on a per capita basis, inhabitants of medium-large municipalities emit fewer carbon emissions than those settled in small ones (between 0.34 and 0.54 tCO2/cap depending on the year studied). This carbon unbalance is mainly explained by the higher direct carbon footprints of dwellers who reside in small municipalities and, in special, in rural zones. Furthermore, applying inequality measures through a consumption-based carbon footprint Gini coefficient, we show that both income and CO2 emissions inequality are lower in small municipalities. In the light of the findings, in Spain, the application of a carbon pricing on direct and indirect carbon footprints will be regressive, disproportionally affecting people of small municipalities and rural areas. Accordingly, household carbon inequalities must be contemplated to avoid poorly designed climate change mitigation policies.
Rationalization through reduction of cognitive dissonance does not have the function of representational exchange. Instead, cognitive dissonance is part of the “psychological immune system” (Gilbert 2006; Mandelbaum 2019) and functions to protect the self-concept against evidence of incompetence, immorality, and instability. The irrational forms of attitude change that protect the self-concept in dissonance reduction are useful primarily for maintaining motivation.
The 1993 World Conference on Human Rights (World Conference) and its Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action remain as instrumental to international human rights law and discourse in today’s world as they were in the aftermath of the Cold War, chiefly because the World Conference’s underlying ideologies remain relevant. Despite its formal commitment to the indivisibility principle, the World Conference promulgated ideas that were products of global post-Cold War economic conditions, including civil and political rights, democracy, and liberalism. Current conditions continue to reinforce these ideas. Indeed, as long as these conditions persist, the human rights community is likely to embrace the “Viennese” concept of rights.
So far, there has been mixed evidence in the literature regarding the relationship between environmental attitudes and actual 'green' actions, something known as the attitude-behavior gap. This raises the question of when attitudes can actually work as a lever to promote environmental objectives, such as climate change mitigation, and, conversely, when other factors would be more effective. This paper presents an online experiment with real money at stake and real-world consequences designed to test the effect of environmental attitudes on behavior under various conditions. We found that environmental attitudes affected behavior only in low-cost situations. This finding is consistent with the low-cost hypothesis of environmental behavior postulating that concerned individuals will undertake low-cost actions in order to reduce the cognitive dissonance between their attitudes and rational realization of the environmental impact of their behavior but avoid higher-cost actions despite their greater potential as far as environmental protection. This finding has important consequences for the design of more effective climate policies as it puts limits on what can be achieved by raising environmental concern alone.
There is a growing effort to quantify and track trends in human rights. The reliance on large, international indicators, including global indexes and national human rights report cards, is increasing as part of international development assistance and human rights monitoring. This article explores the limitations of mainstream human rights indicators, particularly in the developing world, arguing that many of these approaches overlook local realities. An alternative strategy for designing bottom-up human rights indicators is offered drawing on the experience of constructing the Uhakiki Human Rights Index in Tanzania. The challenges of developing an appropriate and feasible methodology in complex environments is discussed, particularly given that with bottom-up indicators, what works in one situation might not necessarily be transferrable to another context.
The main reason for Article 18 being one of the most opaque provisions of the Vienna Convention is that it establishes a relatively vague ‘interim obligation’ for States to refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of a treaty between its signature and ratification. Although the existence of such an interim obligation has been recognized by States and in various international legal regimes, it remains problematic since Article 18 neither defines nor determines its own contours and when and under which conditions it is being breached. It goes without saying that the legal consequences of a possible breach of this provision are left equally unclear. It remains uncertain how the interim obligation of Article 18 fits into the general international law of treaties; what its legal nature and temporal scope is; which role the principle of good faith plays as a possibly underlying principle of this provision; and how we should understand the object and purpose of a treaty and how it can be defeated. Furthermore, its apparent focus seems to be on bilateral rather than multilateral treaties, but this exclusive application of this interim obligation to bilateral treaties would contravene both the expressed and implied intent of the drafters. Therefore, this article also discusses how Article 18 fits within the normative system of international law and law-making treaties, such as human rights treaties.
Meat consumption in Western countries is declining and, while the proportion of strict vegetarians remains low, intermediate diets such as flexitarianism have been developing in recent years. Our objectives were to identify the different levels of transition towards low-meat diets, characterize how these diets differ in terms of food intake, and identify whether attitudes and beliefs can explain these degrees of transition. In a representative survey of the French adult population conducted in 2018 (n = 2055), participants declared whether they followed a particular diet and completed a food frequency questionnaire on 29 food sources of protein and a questionnaire on their attitudes and beliefs regarding protein sources. We identified four dietary types based on these declarative data: vegetarians, flexitarians, pro-flexitarians and omnivores. The theory of planned behavior was used to predict meat intake and intentions to reduce meat intake. The sample contained 2.5% vegetarians, 6.3% flexitarians, 18.2% pro-flexitarians and 72.9% omnivores. The diet groups displayed specific dietary profiles and attitudinal scores. Compared with omnivores, pro-flexitarians consumed less red meat, more vegetables and legumes and were much more in agreement about the environmental impacts of meat. Compared with pro-flexitarians, flexitarians consumed less red meat and processed meat, and agreed much more about the health impacts of meat. Finally, versus flexitarians, vegetarians consumed almost no meat but far more legumes, nuts and seeds, and were much more sensitive to animal welfare issues. Attitudes, social norms and perceived behavioral control (PBC) predicted intentions to reduce meat consumption but attitude was the most important predictor. Intentions and PBC were both predictive of meat consumption. The dietary type related to the level of meat intake could be predicted by self-declared attitudes and beliefs regarding protein sources.
In industrialised countries, emissions from fossil-fuelled vehicles show little sign of abatement, with citizens’ opposition to policy interventions arguably the key reason. To better understand the sources of public opinion towards particular types of policy instruments designed to reduce vehicle emissions, we focus on the perceived consequences of such instruments, notably the extent to which they are regarded as effective, fair, and unintrusive. Switzerland is the empirical focus because it lags behind neighbouring European countries. We assess public support for seven policy instruments, identified by existing literature and expert interviews. A survey-embedded experiment with a representative sample of 2,034 citizens provides support for the argument that policy instruments perceived as effective, fair, and unintrusive achieve higher levels of public support. These results may help policymakers design interventions that strike a balance between political feasibility and problem-solving effectiveness.
To document human rights, monitoring organizations establish a standard of accountability, or a baseline set of expectations that states ought to meet in order to be considered respectful of human rights. If the standard of accountability has meaningfully changed, then the categorized variables from human rights documents will mask real improvements. Cingranelli and Filippov question whether the standard of accountability is changing and whether data on mass killings are part of the same underlying conceptual process of repression as other abuses. These claims are used to justify alternative models, showing no improvement in human rights. However, by focusing on the coding process, the authors misunderstand that the standard of accountability is about how monitoring organizations produce documents in the first place and not how academics use published documents to create data. Simulations and latent variables that model time in a substantively meaningful way validate the conclusion that human rights are improving.
Suspicion of the concept of belief is now widely held among anthropologists. To determine whether this suspicion is justified, we must understand what belief is. Yet the question of how we are to reach an understanding of belief has not received much attention among anthropologists, who tend to assume that they know what belief-ascriptions entail whenever they criticize the use of the concept. But is this assumption warranted? This paper addresses this question by going back to a central text in the history of anthropological debate about belief, Rodney Needham’s Belief, Language, and Experience. It focuses particularly on Needham’s use of the later philosophy of Wittgenstein, arguing that Needham systematically misunderstands Wittgenstein’s work and misses the challenge that Wittgenstein poses to his own guiding assumptions about psychological concepts. The author argues that the failure of Needham’s critique of belief has broader implications. Although recent critics of belief are not motivated by Needham’s concerns, their understanding of belief-ascriptions, and so of the nature of belief, is continuous in important respects with the understanding that structures Needham’s work. If this is really a misunderstanding of belief, as Wittgenstein’s discussions of the concept suggest, then it follows that their criticisms are no more compelling than Needham’s. More specifically, it suggests that, like Needham, they are not really talking about belief at all. The author develops this argument with a discussion of the critiques of belief in the work of Joel Robbins and of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Martin Holbraad.
A new and often controversial theoretical orientation that resonates strongly with wider developments in contemporary philosophy and social theory, the so-called 'ontological turn' is receiving a great deal of attention in anthropology and cognate disciplines at present. This book provides the first anthropological exposition of this recent intellectual development. It traces the roots of the ontological turn in the history of anthropology and elucidates its emergence as a distinct theoretical orientation over the past few decades, showing how it has emerged in the work of Roy Wagner, Marilyn Strathern and Viveiros de Castro, as well a number of younger scholars. Distinguishing this trajectory of thinking from related attempts to put questions of ontology at the heart of anthropological research, the book articulates critically the key methodological and theoretical tenets of the ontological turn, its prime epistemological and political implications, and locates it in the broader intellectual landscape of contemporary social theory. Offers the first overview of the ontological turn in anthropology. Provides an intellectual genealogy of the traffic in ideas between the three main national anthropological traditions over the last 3-4 decades. Engages with most important critiques made of the ontological turn, and how one might respond to them. Sketches the framework for future theoretical and methodological developments.
Addressing social issues such as climate change requires significant support and engagement of citizens with diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. The present research examines whether individuals who vary in their socioeconomic status significantly differ in their psychological antecedents of support for pro-environmental action. Study 1, using U.S. nationally representative data, showed that personal beliefs about climate change predicted support for pro-environmental policies more strongly among individuals with a higher, relative to lower, SES background. Studies 2 and 3, by employing correlational and experimental approaches respectively, found that general sense of control over life outcomes underlies the extent to which support for pro-environmental action is contingent on personal beliefs about climate change. Study 4 identified perceived social norms about pro-environmental actions as an alternative predictor of support for pro-environmental action among people from lower SES background. Taken together, the present research shows that individuals with distinct socioeconomic backgrounds differ in their key psychological levers of pro-environmental action. To grasp how to solve urgent social issues such as climate change requires greater understanding of the psychology of citizens with diverse backgrounds.
In this book, López proposes the ‘political imaginary’ model as a tool to better understand what human rights are in practice, and what they might, or might not, be able to achieve. Human rights are conceptualised as assemblages of relatively stable, but not unchanging, historically situated, and socially embedded practices. Drawing on an emerging iconoclastic historiography of human rights, the author provides a sympathetic yet critical overview of the field of the sociology of human rights. The book addresses debates regarding sociology’s relationships to human rights, the strengths and limits of the notion of practice, human rights’ affinity to postnational citizenship and cosmopolitism, and human rights’ curious, yet fateful, entanglement with the law.
Human Rights as Political Imaginary will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, politics, international relations and criminology.
Research has established that people's environmental concern does not always translate into pro-environmental behavior. On the basis of the social dilemma perspective, the present article examines how this concern-behavior gap can be narrowed. We posit that individuals who are concerned about environmental problems feel reluctant to contribute because they fear being exploited by free riders. We further argue that generalized trust can temper this fear because it allows people to expect others to contribute. Accordingly, we hypothesize that the concern-behavior association is stronger among individuals and societies with higher levels of trust. Findings from multilevel analyses on two international survey datasets (World Values Survey and International Social Survey Programme) support our hypothesis. These findings not only elucidate the concern-behavior gap but also suggest how environmental campaigns can be improved. They also signify the need to explore cross-national variations in phenomena pertaining to environmental concern and behavior.
The iconoclastic Brazilian anthropologist and theoretician Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, well known in his discipline for helping initiate its "ontological turn," offers a vision of anthropology as "the practice of the permanent decolonization of thought." After showing that Amazonian and other Amerindian groups inhabit a radically different conceptual universe than ours-in which nature and culture, human and nonhuman, subject and object are conceived in terms that reverse our own-he presents the case for anthropology as the study of such "other" metaphysical schemes, and as the corresponding critique of the concepts imposed on them by the human sciences. Along the way, he spells out the consequences of this anthropology for thinking in general via a major reassessment of the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, arguments for the continued relevance of Deleuze and Guattari, dialogues with the work of Philippe Descola, Bruno Latour, and Marilyn Strathern, and inventive treatments of problems of ontology, translation, and transformation. Bold, unexpected, and profound, Cannibal Metaphysics is one of the chief works marking anthropology's current return to the theoretical center stage.
Studies have demonstrated that environmental concern does not always translate into pro-environmental behavior. This concern-behavior gap results partly from the influences of psychological barriers. Based on the cross-cultural psychology literature, we propose that these barriers also reflect some general psychological orientations that are culturally patterned. In support of our hypotheses, we found with data from 32 countries that the association between concern and behavior was weaker in societies characterized by higher levels of distrust, belief in external control, and present orientation. In addition, we observed that the concern-behavior association was stronger in societies with higher levels of individualism and looseness. These findings deepen the understanding of the concern-behavior association and psychological barriers. They also highlight the benefits of integrating insights from cross-cultural psychology into environmental psychology research and inform environmental practice.
Compensatory green beliefs (CGBs) reflect the idea that a pro-environmental behavior (e.g., recycling) can off-set the negative effects of an environmentally detrimental behavior (e.g., driving). It is thought that CGBs might help explain why people act in ways that appear to contradict their pro-environmental intentions, and inconsistently engage in pro-environmental behaviors. The present study sought to investigate the nature and use of CGBs. A series of interviews suggested that participants endorsed CGBs to (a) reduce feelings of guilt with respect to (the assumed or actual) negative environmental impact of their actions and (b) defend their green credentials in social situations. Participants also justified detrimental behaviors on the basis of higher loyalties (e.g., family’s needs), or the perceived difficulty of performing more pro-environmental actions. In addition to shedding light on how, when, and why people might hold and use CGBs, the research also provides new insight into how CGBs should be assessed.