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"Most people think climate change and sustainability are
important problems, but too few global citizens engaged in
high-greenhouse-gas-emitting behavior are engaged in
enough mitigating behavior to stem the increasing flow of
greenhouse gases and other environmental problems. Why
is that? Structural barriers such as a climate-averse infrastructure
are part of the answer, but psychological barriers
also impede behavioral choices that would facilitate mitigation,
adaptation, and environmental sustainability. Although
many individuals are engaged in some ameliorative
action, most could do more, but they are hindered by seven
categories of psychological barriers, or “dragons of inaction”:
limited cognition about the problem, ideological
worldviews that tend to preclude pro-environmental attitudes
and behavior, comparisons with key other people,
sunk costs and behavioral momentum, discredence toward
experts and authorities, perceived risks of change, and
positive but inadequate behavior change. Structural barriers
must be removed wherever possible, but this is unlikely
to be sufficient. Psychologists must work with other scientists,
technical experts, and policymakers to help citizens
overcome these psychological barriers."

climate-change global-warming environment psychology action individual

"To ask questions about how to live life, to question whether you should be doing what you are doing, is indeed admirable. But to conclude that a positive attitude can solve all problems is naive and denies the possibility to enact change, when necessary, on your circumstances."

self-help psychology popular positive-thinking positive individual system scale

"And that’s a big part of why I’m not an economist. And I think it’s a really helpful scope condition – in cases where it makes the most sense to think of an individual (or, importantly, a firm) as a unified actor with stable preferences, economics has a lot of insight. But I think it can also lead to either frustration (why are these people so irrational?!) or prescriptive rather than descriptive findings (here’s how they should be rational!). In other words, economists, and economic thought, try to make the world more like the one they assume it to be by helping individuals be true to themselves, and by ignoring how much individuals usually aren’t. "

economics sociology individual rationality assumptions

"The point can be made more general: surveys of hundreds of significant new technologies show that almost all of them are invented simultaneously or nearly simultaneously by two or more teams working independently of each other. Invention appears in significant part to be a social, not an individual, phenomenon. Inventors build on the work of those who came before, and new ideas are often "in the air," or result from changes in market demand or the availability of new or cheaper starting materials. And in the few circumstances where that is not true – where inventions truly are "singletons" – it is often because of an accident or error in the experiment rather than a conscious effort to invent. "

invention innovation creativity social individual genius intellectual-property patents law

"In a post-moral establishment time, how can we rebuild collective ethical norms (the given rationale for the moral establishment) that are fair to the individual (in ways that moral establishmentarian repression was not)? Or to put a Hollingerian spin on the question: how do we have solidarity without coercion? How do we widen the circle of “we” without alienating and repressing those newly brought into the expanding circle? "

american-studies america history ethics norms individual moral-establishment

I'm much more interested in how we can can join together to believe truth, and it actually seems easier to design institutions which achieve this end than to design institutions to test individual isolated general tendencies to discern truth.

rationality institutions organization individual

genius creativity innovation group community individual

future work individual knowledge-management

The Greater Good Science Center is an interdisciplinary research center devoted to the scientific understanding of happy and compassionate individuals, strong social bonds, and altruistic behavior.

psychology research academic happiness individual group altruism