Climate Change and Psychology

Have you ever awoken from a dream and thought, “One more dream like that and I am off to the shrink!” I had one these just the other day. 

Psychologists and sociologists often time work in the caregiver role, helping and assisting many people in this environment. However, there are other careers that psychologists/sociologists work in. The most profitable work for psychologists may be gathering data and giving advice to corporations and to ideological think tanks. These psychologists devise methods to manipulate what we want to buy and what we politically believe. A more poignant and current example of this is how the Russians attacked our social media prior to the presidential election. If you want to learn more on how our opinions are deviously twisted by these truths massaging companies, just read the book, “Merchants of Doubt” or watch the DVD by the same name. 

Many more psychologists have the legitimate role of discovering how we interact. Their goal is to make scientific truth easily understood to us. In the last column, I wrote about how we form opinions. Psychologists tell us we do not use science to form opinions.  We form opinions based on our tribe’s beliefs.  These beliefs become our world-view.  Psychologists tell us that we have a lot of trouble making changes to our world-view, even when challenged by well-established facts.

Psychologists have stated several reasons we create barriers to accepting climate science. In just one article written by Robert Gifford in the American Psychologist, May-June of 2011, he identified Twenty-nine psychological impediments to accepting climate science. He refers to these as “dragons of inaction”.  

Twenty-nine is a very large number to cover. Tackling three would be more realistic. Here are the three most common terms I have read, time and again: status quo, cognitive dissonance, and confirmation bias. It took me awhile to get my head around these so if you are like me, don’t give up on the first pass.

One reason we dislike talking about climate science is that we are faced with inevitable change. One future is the bright clean future we can choose, like switching to LEDs (thank you Wakefield City Council). But this future means making a choice to change. That means abandoning what we love, the status quo. 

If we choose inaction and the status quo, we get to save the investment money we won’t have to pony up to make the transition. If we choose inaction, we also choose health risks, the loss of winter, and more violent summer storms. The well-researched and projected forecast by the National Climate and Atmospheric Research Center tells us that the inaction choice will deliver us, here in the Midwest, 5 times as many big storms and up to 70% more rain by the year 2100. For example, by 2100 the 12 inches of rain Saxon Harbor suffered in 2016 may increase up to 70% or a possible dump of 20 inches. This, coupled with the possibility of mega-storms occurring five times more often in our region, is tough to swallow.

The “inaction choice” guarantees an unsavory future for our kids. It is hard to accept.  It is an element of denialism called cognitive dissonance. This is a proven human practice. We abandon fact when it conflicts with what we want to believe.  

Here is a helicopter pilot dark humor analogy of cognitive dissonance:

Flying single engine helicopters at night was dangerous. If we lost an engine we were going down, but the unknown critical question at night was where? One thing you did instinctively was turn on the landing light. Unfortunately, by the time you focus on something you are committed to an impact point. The last unwritten line in the emergency procedure was, IF YOU DO NOT LIKE WHAT YOU SEE…. TURN OFF THE LIGHT!  

We, simply by virtue of how we are wired, look out at the world and automatically see and acknowledge what we already know, while filtering out conflicting data.  This is well studied and well documented and is called, “confirmation bias”. 

Have you ever noticed how you react emotionally to information you do or do not like?  If it is something that I like I smile and give myself a pat on the back. If it is something I do not like I feel my blood pressure rising. What is happening?  I am either confirming a previous assumption or I am getting ready to defend some belief in my world-view.  After all, if I have an opinion, it must be correct otherwise I would not have it, right? The other person must be wrong!  

We are firmly wired to “stick to our guns” even when the facts we ignore could save our lives. In fact, research suggests that we internally give ourselves a dopamine hit when we remain stubborn. Thus, the sense of pleasure that we experience at “getting our way” is, with or without logic or reason, something we pursue by nature.

Psychologist are trying feverishly to counter this. After all, a community of shaky knowledge based on an unreasonable way of forming opinions is dangerous.  The only way to counter this is to teach the scientific method and information literacy to all citizens. I suggest we listen first, research second, and judge last. 

Is it any wonder that our impressions are remarkably persistent right or wrong? In his wry revealing humor Mark Twain sums us up well. Let’s pretend it is a warm pleasant night and we are seated on the porch listening intently to one of the greatest American minds, “It ain’t what you do not know that gets you in trouble, (a puff on his cigar) It is what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Let’s not turn off the landing light. Join Citizens Climate Lobby. There is a safe landing in sight.

TIP: Channeling what our creator tells us about this is way above my pay grade.  I will simply refer you to Mathew 7:3.  

Reference books:  Denying to the Grave: Why we Ignore Facts That Will Save Us; The Enigma of Reason; The Knowledge Illusion; How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate; Don’t Even Think About It.