Different Explanations of
Climate Change
 Economics
 Explanations of human responses to climate change
arise due to factors related to economic structures
 Psychology:
 Explanations of human responses to climate change
arise due to factors related to individuals
 Sociology (next week):
 Explanations of human responses to climate change
arise due to factors related to social groups
Before we begin
 Short game, related to psychology that we will be
discussing today
Game One
 Imagine I have just given you $30
 Now, I give you a choice based on my flipping a coin
 Heads: you win $9
 Tails: you lose $9
 Do you want to do the coin flip?
Final Paper Discussion
General Points
for Research Paper
 Highlight your research question right up front
 Don’t do research on a question that you already know
the “right” answer for – its uninteresting!
 Consider alternative explanations seriously
 Write a draft and then delete, delete, delete
 Only leave in those parts that relate to your research
question
 Keep the “background” section short (or non-existent)
General Points
for Research Paper -- continued
 Question must relate to climate change!
 Can’t just be description or summary of prior research
– must be analytic in some way, looking at some
relationship or variation and applying theory
 E.g.: If interested in affects of climate change, then look
at vulnerability/adaptation/resilience literature and
make the argument be about which countries will be
more (or less) successful in responding to similar
climate impacts
Final Paper Discussion:
One Option
 “Apply concepts to empirical cases” option
 Intro
 Review literature that categorizes things in the social
world related to climate change (adaptive capacity,
vulnerability, or similar)
 Show how these concepts allow you to see differences
between different cases, e.g., which country is more
vulnerable to climate change
 Conclusion
Final Paper Discussion:
Another Option
 “Comparison of alternative policies” option
 Intro
 Criteria of comparison
 Describe the alternatives
 Assess the alternatives against your criteria
 Conclusion
Final Paper Discussion:
Another Option
 “Explaining something” option
 Intro
 Theory


How scholars discuss the DV
What IVs scholars suggest cause variation in the DV
 Describe your case(s)
 Assess which of the IVs does the best job of explaining
the variation you see in your cases
 Conclusion
Logistics and Style Stuff
Be a Professional
 NO experiments or surveys – its illegal without





“human subjects clearance” which takes too long to do
during a quarter
Use headings to structure your argument
Run spell-check
Proofread as a separate step
Alphabetize and be consistent in formatting of
citations
Use in-text citations to keep things simple
Many slides courtesy of Ezra Markowitz
Used with permisson
Psychology and Climate Change
 We are not “rational” as a basic assumption
 People use 2 types of thinking (Kahneman, 2011)
 Associative/affective reasoning: fast, intuitive, emotional,
personal
 Analytic/intellectual reasoning: “slower, deliberative, logical,
statistical
 Psych and what we understand:
 Availability heuristics
 Psych and what we worry about:
 Finite pool of worry
 Psych and what we do
 Single action bias
 Social norms
Psychological assumptions
 People lack information about climate change
 More information = better decision-making
 “Right” information = more support for policy
 Information availability = use of information
 Scare people = more action
 Make people feel guilty = more engagement
 THESE ARE ALL FALSE (at least some of the time)
How people get and use climate
change information
 Decision-makers only pay attention to certain sources,
types of info
 Republicans go to FoxNews, Democrats go to MSNBC
 We tend to reject information that goes against core
beliefs, values
 Or that suggests something be done that we disagree
with (motivated reasoning)
 We evaluate information both emotionally (“System
1”) and cognitively (“System 2”)
Two systems
 Affective system:
 Fast, automatic, associative, emotional
 Cognitive or rational system:
 Slower, deliberative, “cold and calculating”
 Two systems operate in parallel to interpret
information about CC
 When outputs are in disagreement (e.g., Affect says CC
isn’t a problem but Cognitive says it is), decisionmaking is generally driven by affective system
Risk perceptions
Experience more important than description
 Learn about risks from description vs. experience
 Learn about CC mostly from description from
scientists
 Learning from experience is more powerful driver of
risk perception (but directly experience weather, not
climate)
Game Two
 Imagine I give you a different choice based on my
flipping a coin
 Heads: you win $39
 Tails: you win $21
 If don’t do coin flip, you get $30 for sure
 Do you want to do the coin flip?
Results of two games
 Only difference is whether I “primed” you to think of
yourself as having the $30 before you start or not
 Game One: losses frame – might go down from $30 to $21
 Generally, more people take the bet
 Risk seeking behavior
 Game Two: gains frame – going up from $0 to $21 or $39
 Generally, more people go for “sure thing”
 Risk averse behavior
 Similar to gambling or stock market
How info is presented
 Humans are sensitive to how information is presented
 CC can be “framed” in multiple ways:
 Content frames: public health, national security,
environmental conservation
 Structure frames: loss vs. gain; present vs. future
 We generally accept risk if thinking about possible
losses; but avoid risk if thinking about possible gains
 So, take more risks when come across loss-framed info
 Climate change generally presented as losses frame
Lots of evidence that
we do not act rationally
 Game presented you with information that is objectively
the same, but often people make different decisions in the
two cases
 Small, irrelevant, things often influence our decisions
(parole judges)
 Women overestimate risk of breast
cancer but underestimate risk of
heart disease
We don’t perceive risks “rationally”
Estimates of Probabilities of Death From Various Causes
Amos Tversky study: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/prospect.htm
Cause
Subject Estimates
Statistical Estimates
Heart Disease
0.22
0.34
Cancer
0.18
0.23
Other Natural Causes
0.33
0.35
All Natural Causes
0.73
0.92
Accident
0.32
0.05
Homicide
0.10
0.01
Other Unnatural Causes
0.11
0.02
All Unnatural Causes
0.53
0.08
We take “unsmart” risks when we
FRAME (“think of”) things as losses
 Implications for climate change
 Take more chances and risks if believe we are faced with
losses
 If see climate change as mainly framed as a “loss” which
means we are likely to take unrealistic risks to get back
to the “no climate change world”
 Alternatively, if see climate change as going to happen
and our behavior allows us to get the less-warmed world
as a “sure thing” if we take certain actions, we might take
actions that are more in line with the “real” odds
Psychology:
barriers to understanding
 Beliefs influence perceptions, not vice versa
 Farmers see what they believe, not believe what they see
 We believe personal experience, not the statistics
 Perceptions about climate change causes and
consequences are socially constructed within
communities and lead us to “attend to, fear, and
socially amplify some risks while ignoring,
discounting, or attenuating others” (Weber 2010)
Psychology:
barriers to worrying about climate
 Finite pool of worry
 Can only worry about so much: if worry more about
climate change, we worry less about other things
 If worry more about other things (like the economy), we
worry less about climate change, with no change in the
objective risks
Psychology:
barriers to worrying about climate
 Availability heuristic: whether we believe something
depends on whether we can think of examples
 Use easily-available and recent memories to estimate
likelihood of things happening, regardless of how rare we
know them to be
 OVER-worry about things that have happened recently
 UNDER-worry about rare things that haven’t happened for
awhile
 Not scared enough by rare events, but scared too much
when they happen (Sandy/Katrina; Fukushima;
earthquakes). Overreact after major event but then “falls
off radar”
Psychology:
barriers to taking action
 Single action bias
 “Regardless of which single action is taken first, decision
makers have a tendency not to take any further action,
presumably because the first action suffices in reducing
the feeling of worry or vulnerability.”
Psychology:
barriers to taking action
 Status quo bias
 “People do not move away from hazards even when they
are aware of them”
 Won’t move into bad situation but will stay in one
 “Nudge” issues: wherever we start, there we stay
 Netflix subscriptions
 Automatic enrollment in retirement plans
 BUT policies can make a difference – UK retirement plan
 Env’l options? EWEB make renewable energy default


People retain freedom but behave differently
Sometimes even prefer the default option, although would not
choose it
Psychology:
barriers to taking action
 Optimistic biases (Weinstein, 1980): Uncertainty
promotes optimism
 Not my fault
 Commons dilemma
 Undercuts responsibility and action
 Lack of “efficacy” – feeling that you can make a difference
 Moral judgment system ill-equipped to recognize and
deal with unintended outcome of our own behavior
(Markowitz & Shariff, 2012)
 No obvious villain to blame
 Unintentional side-effect of modern life
Psych discussion
 How can we use these insights to address the problem
of climate change?
 Default options: e.g., green energy
 Framing: risk seeking