Cameron Brick and Sander van der Linden on how psychologists can help solve the largest social dilemma in history.

A discussion of climate change as a stubborn problem.
"Yawning at the apocalypse"

In a front cover feature of the September issue of the British Psychological Society Journal, THE PSYCHOLOGIST (September 2018), Cameron Brick and Sander van der Linden AFBPsS (from the Department of Psychology) talk about the Psychology of Climate Change and how psychologists of all stripes can make a difference. 

They expose the psychological challenges of how the human brain thinks, feels, and reacts to the risk of climate change and how psychologists have the opportunity to make a difference by illuminating how people perceive and interact with the world around them and explaining the reasons for why they behave the way they do.

‘I see climate change as the defining problem of our era. In graduate school, I became aware that many barriers to sustainability are more social and psychological than technological, and I think a robust science of decision making and collective behaviour is necessary to overcome our challenges.’ - Cameron Brick

Climate change is the ultimate psychological dilemma: it’s abstract, depersonalised, long-term, there’s intertemporal trade-offs, intergroup conflict, and a lack of social incentives. I came to realise that if we can understand the psychology of climate change, we can potentially solve many difficult puzzles about human behaviour and make a difference all at the same time.’ - Sander van der Linden

Click here and access the full article "Yawning at the apocalypse" (The psychologist, September 2018, Vol.31, pp.30-35)

PDF copy.