Below is my Independent Study Proposal. This includes a description of the project, my timeline for completion, helpful resources, and more!
Psychological Attitudes towards Climate Change: An Independent Study
Content Advisor: Ms. Caruso
Purpose: To investigate the psychological and neurological causes behind climate change skepticism and inaction and the motivations for action against climate change. By gaining a better understanding of these underlying causes, my goal is to develop methods to utilize our psychological habits in order to create meaningful change!
Description: During this study, I will research the psychological factors that drive attitudes towards climate change through various methods, including but not limited to examining scientific literature, exploring media, conducting interviews, and interacting with and observing the behaviors of influential members of society as well as those around me. I would love to connect this study with the work we’ve done in the Sustainability Committee (perhaps by examining potential causes for past successes and failures and proposing new initiatives that take psychological and neurological processes into account) as well as with this coming year’s sustainability course and other environmental initiatives around the school. Likewise, my goal is to build a final product that motivates members of my community to more actively work towards combating climate change!
My plan is to begin the study at the end of June and finish the week of August 23rd, creating a timeline of about 10 weeks. By devoting 8-10 hours a week (1-2 hours a day) over this period, I would be able to devote an equal or likely greater amount of time as I would to an Independent Study conducted over a semester of school. I would also like to request a stipend for my Independent Study content advisor (Ms. Caruso) from the Jack Linger Independent Study Fund, as I believe doing so would bring to life Jack’s mission to empower students, faculty, and the Durham Academy community to fully embrace the opportunities around them no matter the time of year.
Driving Questions:
Why do we prioritize other factors, such as the economy, over our environment?
Do certain patterns of thinking prevent us from fully grasping the impacts of climate change?
What can we gain from understanding the causes behind our attitudes towards the environment?
How can we leverage our patterns of thinking to make a bigger change on the environment?
List of Resources and Activities:
- Advanced research (journals, books, studies)
- Psychology and climate change:
- Facing Climate Change: An Integrated Path to the Future, Kiehl, Columbia University Press, 2016
- Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change : A Clinician’s Guide, Davenport, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2017
- Psychology and Global Climate Change: Addressing a Multi-faceted Phenomenon and Set of Challenges, American Psychological Association, 2009
- Assessing the macroeconomic impacts of individual behavioral changes on carbon emissions, Niamir, Kiesewetter, Wagner, Schöpp, Filatova, Voinov, Bressers, Climatic Change, 2020
- Climate change action
- “The role of climate change education on individual lifetime carbon emissions”, Cordero, Centeno, Todd, PLOS One, 2020.
- “The Climate Club: How to Fix a Failing Global Effort”, Nordhaus, Foreign Affairs Magazine, 2020
- Facing Climate Change: An Integrated Path to the Future, Kiehl, Columbia University Press, 2016
- “Responding to Climate Change: Governance and Social Action beyond Kyoto”, Bulkely and Moser, Journal of Global Environmental Politics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007
- “Cognitive and Behavioral Challenges in Responding to Climate Change”, World Bank, 2009
- “Consumer neuroscience to inform consumers—physiological methods to identify attitude formation related to over-consumption and environmental damage”, Koller, Meier, Waller, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
- Focuses on to use neuroscience to change people’s environmental habits
- Behavioral Change
- Behaviour change techniques: the development and evaluation of a taxonomic method for reporting and describing behaviour change interventions (a suite of five studies involving consensus methods, randomised controlled trials and analysis of qualitative data), Michie, Wood, Johnston, 2015
- Assessing the macroeconomic impacts of individual behavioral changes on carbon emissions, Niamir, Kiesewetter, Wagner, Schöpp, Filatova, Voinov, Bressers, Climatic Change, 2020
- Psychology and climate change:
- Podcasts & Media
- Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam, NPR
- You are Not so Smart, David McRaney
- Freakonomics, Dubner and Douglas
- Specifically focused on behavior!
- Naked Neuroscience, Chris Smith, University of Cambridge
- Outrage and Optimism, David Attenborough, Global Optimism
- Focused on channeling human attitudes towards making change
- Focused on channeling human attitudes towards making change
- General resources: articles, reports, etc.
- Psychology and Climate Change
- Behavioral Change:
- Climate Change Skeptics:
- “Know the Facts: A Skeptic’s Guide to Climate Change”, Berkeley Earth, 2014
- “How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic: Responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming”, Coby Beck, Grist Magazine
- Points out a large amount of causes for skepticism and the reasons behind them
- Points out a large amount of causes for skepticism and the reasons behind them
- Interviews with climate change skeptics
- Interviews with climate change activists
- Youth: Durham Academy students and other local students
- Adults: Sustainability Committee leaders, adults around campus, adults in my community
- Leaders: Organizers of marches, letter writing campaigns, businesses etc.
- Compost Now founders
- Local representatives
- Interviews with psychologists and neuroscientists
- Duke faculty
- UNC faculty
- Psychologists and neuroscientists whom I know personally
- Attend climate strike
- Online
- Observe trends on twitter/social media
- Hopefully in person once things open back up
- Online
- Tour a neuroscience laboratory at Duke, UNC, or another local university
- Visit a psychology department
- Observe behavioral attitudes towards climate change
- Stories of others’ behavioral transformations on climate change
- Climate change skeptics
- Observe routine of a person undergoing behavioral change
Plan/Schedule:
June: Develop a primary understanding of how psychology impacts climate change
- First few days: compile resources
- reach out and gain access to any resources that aren’t directly available
- Email people to interview
- Initiate conversations to determine other methods of accessing resources
- Explore journals, magazines, libraries in depth
- reach out and gain access to any resources that aren’t directly available
- Next few weeks: explore resources and draw conclusions
- Schedule time to interact with various different types of resources
- Take notes
- Write down any reflections/thoughts!
- Based on this research, identify broad goals for final product
July: Explore more deeply how these psychological patterns apply to real world examples
- First few weeks: continue researching and compiling data/notes
- Next few weeks: find real world examples and apply psychological concepts
- Explore resources that go more in depth on specific examples
- Pick interesting examples and apply concepts to them
- Discuss these with content advisor and an expert in the topic if possible!
August: Draft methods to leverage human behavior towards driving change
- First few weeks: identify specific goals for final product
- What actions should participants be motivated to take?
- Next few weeks: develop a methodology to achieve these goals
- Design activity
- Run trials and adapt based on response
- Finish final product by end of August/beginning of September!
Mechanism for showing progress: weekly reports of the information I learned that week, potentially including methods to reinforce that knowledge, such as diagrams, tutorials, or quizzes
Expected form of Final Product: Activity or presentation with psychological components designed to encourage climate action among peers and other members of community