Psychologists Can Do Much to Support Sustainable Development 1Authors' names in alphabetical order. E-mail [email protected] and [email protected].

2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Schmuck ◽  
Charles Vlek

With our biosphere steadily degrading, a solid psychological perspective on environmental, social, and economic (un)sustainability is urgently needed. This should supplement and strengthen biological, technological, and economic perspectives. After discussing positivistic and constructive psychology, we summarize major environmental problems with their social and economic implications. We also compose some essential psychological reasoning about them, including the commons dilemma model, different behavioral processes and strategies of behavior change, and various aspects of human quality of life (QoL). Psychologists can help analyze and mitigate the biggest sustainability problems: population growth, resource-intensive consumption, and harmful technologies—if their research is well-tuned to other environmental sciences, if the incentive structure for this work is improved, and if more attention is paid to the collective side of human behavior.

2021 ◽  
Vol 164 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Li ◽  
David K. Sewell ◽  
Saam Saber ◽  
Daniel B. Shank ◽  
Yoshihisa Kashima

1974 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
R M Dawes ◽  
J Delay ◽  
W Chaplin

One way of studying the pollution problem is to examine the decision making process in situations in which gain accrues directly to an individual, while loss is spread out across the group of which the individual is a member. Such a situation has been termed a commons dilemma by Lloyd in 1833; it is a variant of the well known prisoner's dilemma. The mathematical model of rational decision making when facing the commons dilemma implies the dismal conclusion that individuals acting rationally will end up by destroying, or nearly destroying, the common wealth. Suggestions are made concerning ways in which people may be persuaded not to pollute our environment.


1993 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Scott Mio ◽  
Suzanne C. Thompson ◽  
Geoffrey H. Givens

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