This chapter addresses what general law and psychology have to say that may be helpful to environmental law, as they are in other areas of law. It addresses what law and psychology can tell us about getting people to change their attitudes and their behaviors—when attempts to change might work, when they might fail, and why. The chapter addresses persuasion, motivation (with an emphasis on motivated cognition), cognition, and social influence. In each category, the chapter first describes the broad strokes of the psychological research, before giving examples of how it might be used to understand the law generally, and environmental law more particularly.
Problem of the incompatibility between the law and psychology and the use of psychological knowledge in the law